Remastering Parasite Puppeteers

Posted on 2021-12-28 by arjaybe

I’m working on remastering the audiobook of Parasite Puppeteers. When I originally made the recordings, I was working with very little knowledge of what was required. I thought that a clean recording that sounded good was all that was necessary. It turns out that there are certain things that have to meet specifications. The overall volume must fall between a couple of levels. The peak volume mustn’t exceed a set level. And even the silences between speech segments have to fall between a maximum and a minimum loudness. Most of the work I’m doing now has to do with replacing the silences I inserted then with an adequate amount of noise. Who knew?

rjb

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Snopes Fact-Checked These Images in 2021

Posted on 2021-12-19 by arjaybe


Readers send suspect photos in to Snopes for verification or refutation. In the linked article they present some of the best of 2021.

This should go without saying: Not every realistic-looking photo you see online is a true depiction of reality.

That said, Photoshop and other digital editing apps can be tricky, tricky tools that even fool people who consider themselves pretty media savvy.

In May 2021, a video claimed to show Bill Gates with breast implants

In September 2021, the day after the country’s strictest abortion law went into effect in Texas, a photograph started circulated on social media that supposedly showed the new “Handmaid’s Tale” uniforms of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

I guess some of the perpetrators are just having fun, but some of them are serious. They want to cause trouble, maybe even to the point of destabilizing society. It’s good to have Snopes and others to watch out for us, but it’s disheartening that so many of us want to take the fake images at face value.

rjb

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The Whoppers of 2021

Posted on 2021-12-17 by arjaybe


The FactCheck website has published its compilation of the biggest fibs of the year. It covers lies about vaccinations, election fraud and red meat. Here are some samples. Click the link for the full article.

Mass rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines has been the defining story of 2021, yet for all its success, vaccination rates remain stubbornly low in some populations.

Another prominent line of misinformation is a carry-over from 2020, former President Donald Trump’s continued instance that massive voter fraud caused him to lose the 2020 election. The president’s false claims came to a head in a fact-challenged Jan. 6 speech in Washington, D.C. that preceded a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol while Congress was meeting to certify then-President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

And, of course, we fact-checked numerous claims made by, and about, the new Biden administration, which took office this year. Among the false claims: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s statement that “all” Americans who wanted to leave Afghanistan were evacuated by early September, and Republican claims that Biden had plans to drastically cut U.S. red meat consumption and force families to sell their farms.

Liars will lie and believers will believe.

rjb

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