Birmingham's hidden industrial heritage saved from the skip.

Denise has launched its new audio plugin God Mode, introducing a new push-pull technology that gives you full control over what frequencies to saturate and distort. God Mode features a node EQ graph and linear phase filters that allow for unlimited options to shape the coloration of your sound. The God Mode makes use of […]

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Plugin Boutique has launched a sale on the FireCobra audio plugin by United Plugins, an analog saturation and tube effect. FireCobra combines the accuracy of the digital world with the live randomness of the analogue. Behind its simple user interface, there’s more technology than meets the eye. FireCobra intelligently analyses the audio signal and makes […]

The post FireCobra saturator effect by United Plugins on sale for $55 USD appeared first on rekkerd.org.

EndeavoxFX has announced the release of Pantastic, an audio effect plugin that is designed to place audio naturally in the stereo field without compromising mono compatibility. Panning is a simple effect that is easy to take for granted. It is one of the fundamental mixing tools. However, the conventional method for panning is anything but […]

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Plugin Boutique has announced a sale on Kuassa, with discounts of up to 50% off on its guitar amplifier and audio processing plugins for a limited time. The sale includes the Amplifikation amplifier series, EVE equalizers, and Efektor stompbox plugins, including the recent Efektor RV3604 Reverb. Efektor RV3604 Reverb comes with 5 different types of […]

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AudioFB has launched a channel strip effect plugin developed for all styles of mixing. Daga’s StripTeaser was developed in collaboration with producer brothers Adriano and Giu Daga. Stripteaser’s multi-effect rack features: 4-band equalizer, where the extreme bands can be switched to bell or shelf types, ‘high pass’ filter with option of 12db / octave or […]

The post AudioFB releases Daga’s StripTeaser channel strip effect plugin appeared first on rekkerd.org.

Kuassa is celebrating a great decade of its vision for a palette of inspiring technology for musicians with the release of Amplifikation 360, a virtual “playground” for stacking pedals, amps, and cabs to create the perfect sound for guitarists. Amplifikation 360 allows you to combine every Kuassa product you own with ease. Try routing Matchlock’s […]

The post Kuassa releases Amplifikation 360 complete guitar amp and effects playground for guitarists appeared first on rekkerd.org.

Neural DSP has announced availability of its new Fortin Cali Suite, a 3-channel guitar amp effect plugin. The plugin aims to cover the cleanest vintage tones, classic hot rod British styles, and rich high gain distortion. The Fortin Cali reflects the history of Fortin Amplification, culminating in a 50w amplifier that covers the cleanest vintage […]

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Bluezone Corporation has announced the release of Tank – Explosion Sound Effects, a new sound library including a wide range of loud explosions, distant blasts, military tank firing and reloading, mechanical parts, incoming artillery shells, debris and more. Devastating impact: With an arsenal of 184 audio samples, this intimidating sound library brings sound designers a […]

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Fred Anton Corvest has announced its new audio effect for iOS inspired by famous phaser units from guitarist and keyboardist world. FAC Phazer aims to satisfy most fans of phasing effects with a rich sonic palette and an elegant interface. The design development has been inspired by some pedals as well as built in phaser […]

The post Fred Anton Corvest intros FAC Phazer phaser effect for iOS/AuV3 appeared first on rekkerd.org.

K-Devices has announced the release of an iOS/AUv3 version of WOV, an effect plugin for creating a wide range of textural transmutation, from familiar static tremolo waves to evolving glitchy stutters. WOV for IOS comes with a set of intriguing presets from sound designers Richard Devine and Stév! It is a deeply creative tool that […]

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Plugin Boutique has launched an exclusive sale on the SplineEQ linear phase equalizer plugin by Photosounder. SplineEQ is a linear phase equalizer plugin. Designed to be simple and flexible, SplineEQ allows you to create filters using Bézier splines, the best known way to design curves. SplineEQ features Linear phase equalizer. Spline-based filter design. Up to […]

The post Save 40% on SplineEQ equalizer effect plugin by Photosounder appeared first on rekkerd.org.

Igor Vasiliev has announced the release of Classic FX, an iOS app featuring a selection of reworked classic audio effects designed to add brightness and expand the sound space of any instrument. The app features unique effects with unified control parameters that provide convenience and at the same time many opportunities for individual expression and […]

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Woodman’s Immaculate Maple Syrup Studio has launched WoodScaper 1.2, an audio effect that delivers classic guitar effects. Version 1.2 adds Next and Previous preset buttons and some more improvements and fixes. WoodScaper combines the 4 classic guitar effects into one unit : phaser, chorus/flanger, wah-wah and tremolo. Besides the familiar controls each effect has some […]

The post WoodScaper classic guitar effects by Woodman’s Immaculate Maple Syrup Studio appeared first on rekkerd.org.

Your Legal Rights Host Jeffrey Hayden welcomes Janet Brewer and Alicia Gamez, specialists in estate planning, wills, trusts and probate law. We consider new tax laws' effects on planning and special issues to do with international assets and family minors. Questions for Janet and Alicia? Please call toll-free 866-798-8255.

Sarah Stillman joins Dorothy Wickenden to talk about how the deterrence policies of Republican and Democratic Presidents have failed, and what the Democratic candidates should be saying about how to deal with asylum seekers.

Nanfu Wang grew up under China’s one-child policy and never questioned it. “You don’t know that it’s something initiated and implemented by the authority,” she tells The New Yorker’s Jiayang Fan. “It’s a normal part of everything. Just like water exists, or air.” But when Wang became pregnant she started to understand the magnitude of the law—and the suffering that it caused. Wang’s documentary, “One Child Nation,” explores the effects of one of the largest social experiments in history. She uncovers stories of confusion and trauma, in Chinese society at large and within her own family. After Wang’s uncle had a daughter, his family forced him to abandon her at a local market so that he and his wife could try for a son. “He stood there, across the street, watching to see if somebody would come and take the baby,” Wang tells Fan. “He wanted to bring her home, but his mom threatened to commit suicide. . . . He felt so torn. There was no right decision.” 

In 2014, a pair of crimes shocked Israelis and Palestinians. The first was the abduction and murder of three Israeli boys by a Hamas-linked group. Then there was an act of reprisal—the torture, burning, and murder of a Palestinian teen-ager named Mohammed Abu Khdeir—by Israeli right-wing extremists. Even by the standards of this conflict, the killings were shocking. 

“Our Boys,” a co-production of HBO and the Israeli Keshet Studios, examines the forces that led to Abu Khdeir’s killing. It is not for the faint of heart, David Remnick says, but the series is as complex and deep a portrayal of the conflict as he has ever seen. Remnick spoke with two of the creators: Hagai Levi, an Israeli Jew, and Tawfiq Abu Wael, a Palestinian living in Israel. Abu Wael tells Remnick why he resisted pressure from activists not to participate in an Israeli production. 

For most of us, the speed and intensity of the coronavirus pandemic has come as a shock. But not for Lawrence Wright. A staff writer and the author of nonfiction books about Scientology and Al Qaeda, Wright recently wrote a novel—yet to be published—called “The End of October,” about the spread of a novel virus that eerily resembles the outbreak of COVID-19. Wright looked to illnesses of the past to try to understand their enduring consequences, and he mapped those ripple effects onto our contemporary circumstances. “The End of October” is a work of fiction and firmly in the thriller genre, but what he imagined in it turns out to be eerily close to what we are experiencing now. “I read the paper and I feel like I’m reading another chapter of my own book,” he tells David Remnick.  

Lawrence Wright’s “The End of October” is due out in April. 

There are a lot of factors that help to regulate our overall health and wellness. If we are content in our lives and relationships, we are more likely to be healthy. If we exercise and eat well, we reap the benefits in our mind and body. Also, as recent studies by Ted Kaptchuck and others show,...

Completing all the tasks we have to do during the day can be exhausting, but we might not realize the fatigue we feel due to all of the things we leave undone. In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the Zeigarnik effect. Also, check...

A few weeks ago we came across an article on “The Cheerleader Effect,” or the idea that people seem more attractive in a group than in isolation. Although there does seem to be evidence that this is true, we couldn’t help but speculate as to why. In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head,...

There is an observation in psychology that looks at how people behave when they have not lived up to the expectations they set for themselves; the “What The Hell Effect.” In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, and Dr. Bob Duke talk about, not only what it is, but why...

When large groups of people believe something has happened that has not actually happened it is referred to as The Mandela Effect. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about how this happens from a psychological perspective.

This episode was originally posted on Sept. 30, 2018. Most people do not necessarily enjoy being told when they are wrong. The formal education experience can at times seem like it is full of those moments – between corrections, grades, comments and evaluations.  In this episode of KUT’s podcast “Higher Ed,” Southwestern University President Dr....

Steve Shulman, longtime grocer and community figure at Leschi Market along Lake Washington in Seattle, died Wednesday night from the effects of COVID-19, his family says. “We all mourn the passing of this generous man who has been a pillar of the Leschi community and beyond for many years,” his nephew Yousef Shulman, co-owner of […]

The study will add a "real-time" element to what UW researchers already know about social isolation, loneliness and their related health risks.

The ban on most hospital visitors during the COVID-19 pandemic is having a profound effect on patients and their families, caregivers and advocates say.

Family dynamics, relationships and dating have all been upended by self-isolation and stay-indoors orders during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The Yetta Dhinnakkal Centre, meaning "right pathway" in traditional language, was established as Australia's first prison exclusively for young Aboriginal men but next year it will close and locals are warning the impact will be disastrous.

Will personal freedom always give way to social control in China? Families have lived through a wave of revolutions in communist China and the legacy flows down the generations. Three authors talk about the cycle of openness and repression from the Cultural revolution to Tiananmen Square as individual freedoms are tolerated and then repressed to meet the goals of China's communist rulers.

Side Effects is many things, and finally becomes a full throttle thriller moving ahead at great pace and no little intricacy.

A CSIRO reconstruction of the Federation drought of 1891 to 1903 finds that if it were to occur again today, its effects would likely be even more devastating.

Business owners at Ivanhoe in outback NSW are staring down closure if a plan to shut the jail goes ahead, and say the jail inmates make a huge contribution to the community.

Theatres and art galleries around the country are on high alert after the NSW Government decision to withhold an annual grant from Australia's biggest multi-arts venue, Carriageworks, forcing it to appoint administrators.

A congestion charge for driving in the CBD during peak hour is once again being pushed, and a new report says it would be easy, cheap and speed up traffic across all major cities.

Coastal dairy farms are culling their herds because they can not afford to feed them while they and their communities feel the flow-on effect of drought.

The ACT's top law officer says federal police should not waste their time chasing Canberrans who use small amounts of cannabis as he urges Christian Porter not to interfere with new laws.

Taking the waters of a mineral pool is a long, human tradition, and today it is often grey nomads seeking out their reputed healing and bubbling waters.

“Als je iemand vertrouwt, maak je hem betrouwbaar”, zei de Romeinse filosoof Seneca. Maar geldt dat nog steeds in deze snel veranderende online wereld? Kun je in tijden van alternatieve feiten en online oplichters wel uitgaan van vertrouwen? En als asociaal eigenbelang op de loer ligt? Zeker in organisaties willen we graag ‘in control’ zijn […]

Denver’s process for auditing marijuana businesses is inadequate and has potentially cost the city countless tax dollars allocated for public service programs, the city auditor alleged Thursday.

Cyclists and noncyclists have a wide range of perceptions of on-street bicycling facility designs — including sharrows, bike lanes, and buffered bike lanes — along a variety of roadway types, with and without curbside automobile parking. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Research Report 941: Bicyclist Facility Preferences and Effects on Increasing Bicycle Trips provides insights from communities where on-road cycling for transportation is less common, particularly in the South...

Incompatible land uses can threaten the safe utility of airports and expose people living and working nearby to potentially unacceptable levels of noise or safety risk. At the state level, all 50 states have enacted some form of airport zoning legislation since the 1950s. The majority of states (90 percent) have enacted laws mandating or enabling local governments to adopt, administer, and enforce airport zoning regulations. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Research Report 206: Guidebo...

The Effects of Left-Turn Traffic-Calming Treatments on Conflicts and Speeds in Washington, D.C. , released by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

Incompatible land uses can threaten the safe utility of airports and expose people living and working nearby to potentially unacceptable levels of noise or safety risk. At the state level, all 50 states have enacted some form of airport zoning legislation since the 1950s. The majority of states (90 percent) have enacted laws mandating or enabling local governments to adopt, administer, and enforce airport zoning regulations. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Research Report 206: Guidebo...

Most nuclear data measurements are performed at accelerators large enough to occupy a geologic formation a kilometer wide. But a portable device that can reveal the composition of materials quickly on-site would greatly benefit cases such as in archaeology and nuclear arms treaty verification. Research published this week in AIP Advances used computational simulations to show that with the right geometric adjustments, it is possible to perform accurate neutron resonance transmission analysis in a device just 5 meters long.

For obvious reasons, there has been a lot of attention paid to work going into developing vaccines that could prevent Covid-19 infection, and drugs that could treat it. In particular, there has been some excitement about new animal trial data for remdesivir, a drug developed by Gilead Sciences. Gilead's share price rose nearly 10% on the day the trial data were announced.
It will be some time yet before the safety and efficacy of remdesvir is established, if ever (it's worth noting that it was tried, unsuccessfully, as a treatment for Ebola). And since I started work on this post…

Well, this one hits the sweet spot of topics I keep trying to demonstrate: both a Streisand Effect and Masnick's Impossibility Theorem. As you may have heard, a group of Republican political consultants and strategists, who very much dislike Donald Trump, put together an effort called The Lincoln Project, which is a PAC to campaign against Trump and Trumpian politics. They recently released an anti-Trump campaign ad about his terrible handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, called Mourning in America, which is a reference to Ronald Reagan's famous Morning in America campaign ad for the 1984 Presidential election. The new ad is, well, pretty powerful:

And while it's unlikely to convince Trump fans deep into their delusions, it certainly got under the President's skin. He went on one of his famous late night Twitter temper tantrums about the ad, and later lashed out at the Lincoln Project when talking to reporters. He was super, super mad.

And what did that do? Well, first it got the ad a ton of views. Earlier this week, one of the Lincoln Project's founders, Rick Wilson, noted that the ad had already received 15 million views across various platforms in the day or so since the ad had been released. Also, it resulted in the Lincoln Project getting a giant boost in funding:

The Lincoln Project, which is run by Republican operatives who oppose President Donald Trump, raised $1 million after the president ripped the group on Twitter this week – marking it the super PAC’s biggest day of fundraising yet.

Reed Galen, a member of the Lincoln Project’s advisory committee, told CNBC that the total came after the president’s Tuesday morning Twitter tirade in reaction to an ad titled “Mourning in America,” which unloads on Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. It recently aired on Fox News, which Trump often watches and praises. Galen said it was the Lincoln Project’s best single-day fundraising haul

Not only that, but it has opened up more opportunity for the Lincoln Project team to get their word out. With so much interest in the ad, it opened up opportunities for the project members to get their message in various mainstream media sources. Reed Galen wrote a piece for NBC:

What we accomplished this week was not something to be celebrated. No commercial should have the power to derail the leader of the free world.

And another Lincoln Project founder, George Conway (who, of course, is the husband of Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway), wrote something similar for the Washington Post:

It may strike you as deranged that a sitting president facing a pandemic has busied himself attacking journalists, political opponents, television news hosts and late-night comedians — even deriding a former president who merely boasted that “the ‘Ratings’ of my News Conferences etc.” were driving “the Lamestream Media . . . CRAZY,” and floated bogus miracle cures, including suggesting that scientists consider injecting humans with household disinfectants such as Clorox.

If so, you’re not alone. Tens of thousands of mental-health professionals, testing the bounds of professional ethics, have warned for years about Trump’s unfitness for office.

Some people listened; many, including myself, did not, until it was too late.

That's the kind of media exposure you can't buy, but which you get when you have a President who appears wholly unfamiliar with the Streisand Effect.

And that then takes us to the Impossibility Theorem, regarding the impossibility of doing content moderation at scale well. After Trump's ongoing tirade, Facebook slapped a "Partly False" warning label on the video when posted on Facebook. While the whole situation is ridiculous, it's at least mildly amusing, considering how frequently clueless Trumpkins insist that Facebook censors "conservative" (by which they mean Trumpian) viewpoints. Also, somewhat ironic in all of this: the only reason that Facebook now places such fact check labels on things is because anti-Trump people yelled at how Facebook needed to do more fact checking of political content on its site. So, now you get this.

Part of the issue is that Politifact judged one line in the ad as "false." That line was that Trump "bailed out Wall St. but not Main St." Politifact says that since the CARES Act Paycheck Protection Program has given potentially forgivable loans to some small businesses, and because the bill was done by Congress, not the President, that line is "false." And yet, because angry (usually anti-Trump) people demanded that Facebook do more useless fact checking, the end result is that the video now gets a "false" label.

Of course, this shows both the impossibility of doing content moderation well and the silliness of betting big on fact checking with a full "true or false" claim. One could argue that that line has misleading elements, but is true in most cases. Tons of small businesses are shuttering. Many businesses have been unable to get PPP loans, and under the current terms of the loans, they're useless for many (especially if they have no work for people to do, since the loans have to be mostly used on payroll over the next couple months). But does that make the entire ad "false"? Of course not.

And Rick Wilson is super mad about this. He's right to be mad about Politifact's designation, though it's really a condemnation of the religious focus on "true or false" in fact checking, rather than in focusing on what is misleading or not:

But the ad doesn’t actually claim that small businesses received zero help. Rather, it makes the point that Main Street America is still seriously struggling as the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic continues.

But Wilson is also mad at Facebook:

Speaking exclusively to Mediaite, Wilson called the decision “the typical fuckery we’ve come to expect from both the Trump camp and their tame Facebook allies.”

“Facebook is perfectly content to allow content from QAnon lunatics, anti-vaxxers, alt-righters, and every form of Trump/Russian — but I repeat myself — disinformation,” he pointed out. “This is a sign of just how powerfully ‘Mourning In America’ shook Donald Trump and his allies. Their attempt to censor our ad isn’t a setback for us; it’s a declaration of an information war we will win.”

Separately, the Lincoln Project also sent out an email to supporters, again blaming Facebook:

... it's no secret that Facebook has stood by and done little to nothing as lie after lie — from the Liar-In-Chief himself — runs wild on their platform.

(Oh, and let's also not forget the conspiracy theories, foreign disinformation campaigns and negligence that got Mark Zuckerberg questioned by the United States Congress.)

But, this? This is an entirely different and dangerous kind of collusion.

And what is Facebook's excuse for playing favorites with its recently-transferred former employees in the Trump campaign?

They say a "fact-checker" labeled our claim that "Donald Trump helped bailout Wall Street, not Main Street" was untrue.

....Really?

The email goes on to justify the "main street" line with a bunch of links, and then again argues that Facebook is "censoring the truth" to help Trump:

Is that "Partly False?" Of course not.

We told the truth about Donald Trump...

He lost his damn mind over it on Twitter...

Attacked us in front of Air Force One...

Then sent his spin machine to discredit us...

And now his allies at Facebook are doing his damage control by censoring the truth he doesn't like.

I get the frustration -- and I find it at least a bit ironic that the whole "fact checking" system was a response to anti-Trump folks mad at Facebook for allowing pro-Trump nonsense to spread -- but this is just another example of the Impossibility Theorem. There is no "good" solution here. We live in a time where everyone's trying to discredit everyone they disagree with, and many of these things depend on your perspective or your interpretation of a broad statement, like whether or not Trump is helping "main street."

We can agree that it's silly that Facebook has put this label on the video, but also recognize that it's not "Trump's allies at Facebook" working to "censor the truth he doesn't like." That's just absurd (especially given the reason the fact checking set up was put together in the first place).

But, hey, outrage and claims of censorship feed into the narrative (and feed into the Streisand Effect), so perhaps it all is just designed to work together.

Levodopa-induced dyskinesia (LID) poses a significant health care challenge for Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients. Amantadine is currently the only drug proven to alleviate LID. Although its efficacy in treating LID is widely assumed to be mediated by blockade of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptors, our experiments demonstrate that at therapeutically relevant concentrations, amantadine preferentially blocks inward-rectifying K+ channel type 2 (Kir2) channels in striatal spiny projection neurons (SPNs) — not NMDA receptors. In so doing, amantadine enhances dendritic integration of excitatory synaptic potentials in SPNs and enhances — not antagonizes — the induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) at excitatory, axospinous synapses. Taken together, our studies suggest that the alleviation of LID in PD patients is mediated by diminishing the disparity in the excitability of direct- and indirect-pathway SPNs in the on state, rather than by disrupting LTP induction. This insight points to a pharmacological approach that could be used to effectively ameliorate LID and improve the quality of life for PD patients.

Hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) is strikingly upregulated in many types of cancer, and there is great interest in applying inhibitors of HIF as anticancer therapeutics. The most advanced of these are small molecules that target the HIF-2 isoform through binding the PAS-B domain of HIF-2α. These molecules are undergoing clinical trials with promising results in renal and other cancers where HIF-2 is considered to be driving growth. Nevertheless, a central question remains as to whether such inhibitors affect physiological responses to hypoxia at relevant doses. Here, we show that pharmacological HIF-2α inhibition with PT2385, at doses similar to those reported to inhibit tumor growth, rapidly impaired ventilatory responses to hypoxia, abrogating both ventilatory acclimatization and carotid body cell proliferative responses to sustained hypoxia. Mice carrying a HIF-2α PAS-B S305M mutation that disrupts PT2385 binding, but not dimerization with HIF-1β, did not respond to PT2385, indicating that these effects are on-target. Furthermore, the finding of a hypomorphic ventilatory phenotype in untreated HIF-2α S305M mutant mice suggests a function for the HIF-2α PAS-B domain beyond heterodimerization with HIF-1β. Although PT2385 was well tolerated, the findings indicate the need for caution in patients who are dependent on hypoxic ventilatory drive.