Directors and actors go into a closet filled wall to wall with DVDs, pick out some favourites and tell us why those fillms are important to them. Their choices are generally not what you’d see on some stereotyical “best movies ever” list (though certain directors like Kurosawa often get a mention) so it’s quite interesting.

Pogacar’s winning reputation and finishing speed makes some of these guys panic I think. Like they feel they must do something before it gets to the finish, they can’t try to beat him on the line, but they end up playing into his hands anyway.

I haven’t seen it, but Onibaba (1964) has a good reputation. Willem Dafoe recently recommended it as one of his Criterion Closet Picks.

I Saw the Devil

I saw this as part of my university film club back in the day and we had a break afterwards before the next film. Everyone was so shocked that there was barely any discussion, just stunned silence lol

Yeah I think he had a bit of a rush of blood to the head coming off the back of his TT win and finding himself up the front on a climb with good legs. It was worth having a crack but he should have swung off way earlier when it was clear that he was just wasting energy.

Big Room is slower than 90s Trance, usually more around the 126 - 130 BPM mark (old school Trance is more in the mid-to-high 130s, sometimes up to 142 BPM). In Big Room there are usually other elements tied directly to the kick as well, like snares, claps, hats or the bass which gives it a “jumpy” kind of feel. If you were to compare it to an older genre, it’s a lot closer to something like Hands Up or Jumpstyle which are also a big jumping genres (also think classic Eurodance like Basshunter). Designed for festivals and raves or anywhere you have tons of people packed in a tight area where they can only move vertically.

Aside from generally being faster, Trance also has a lot more complexity which means there is a lot more variety in how you can dance to it. There are extended breakdowns and slower build-ups, which is where the name comes from (people feel like they’re in a trance). Swaying, hand movements like gloving, and Tecktonik are some of the other common ways people dance to Trance subgenres. Trance and its subgenres are much more underground and niche than House and its subgenres though, which I suspect is due to the complexity and tempo making it more challenging and individualistic to dance to (some people feel more self-conscious to dance in their own unique way). Stuff like Big Room is super accessible because the structure is short and basic and it’s built around very friendly “drops” after which everyone can just jump up and down together, which I think is another reason why it has that Saturday night mainstream club popularity.

There is of course overlap between House and Trance since they are both four-on-the-floor genres and they both have tons of subgenres, some of which blend elements of both. For example, Progressive Trance is a similar tempo to House but retains the complexity and melodic structuring of Trance. In the 2010s there was also this subgenre called “Progressive House”, which had nothing to do with the more traditional Progressive House and was more like a predecessor to Big Room. “Progressive House” had some more Trance elements like atmospheric (but shorter) breakdowns and big uplifting synth leads, but it was still very much a House subgenre.

Anyway, subgenres of electronic dance music can get quite messy and there is often a lot of blending and overlap which means it’s often up to the individual how they want to define a particular track. In the case of Big Room and 90s Trance, however, there are so many major differences that they live quite firmly in their own distinct categories.

My impression was that he gassed himself riding on the front in an attempt to distance everyone else and gain some time for the podium. Ultimately he couldn’t maintain the gap and when the sprint opened up he had nothing left and slipped behind everyone else.

Not sure if it was just the close proximity of the camera, but that crash towards the end sounded like one of the hardest so far. Hope there are no serious injuries.

I only go to raves and specific artist/label events these days, so I’m not too sure what’s happening in mainstream clubs on a Saturday night. In my experience, the dance floor is always full later in the night and people are enjoying the music and having fun. Interesting to note that one guy quoted in the article complained about people “just jumping” instead of dancing - that’s the result of genre trends in electronic music, not social media or smartphones changing our behaviour. The more popular mainstream club genres for at least the last decade have been house sub-genres like Big Room that are festival-friendly and designed to be jumped to.

Sure, it’s a fun thought bubble. I’m still not convinced it’s anything more than that at the moment (and the abysmal sales appear to back that up). Apple’s hesitance to enter the market also speaks volumes.

UAE Team Emirates has a massive budget and has recruited some of the best riders in the world to support the best rider in the world, Pogacar. So yeah, of course they’re are stronger than most other teams. INEOS has declined massively over the last decade (maybe you should be questioning what they’ve been doing) and until very recently AG2R had nowhere near the budget of the big teams. At every point throughout history there have been big teams and small teams, that’s how the sport works. Comparing the biggest team to a couple of middling ones and saying “look how much better they are, they must be cheaters!” is a nonsensical argument.

In any case, the original point you seemed to be making was that Vingegaard, the second best GC rider in the world, is clean but the guy he has beaten in multiple stages and stage races, Pogacar, is a doper. Like I said, I don’t understand how you can come to that conclusion. It just sounds like emotional reasoning because Pogacar’s dominance reminds you of Armstrong. You’ve been following the sport long enough to remember that Armstrong was far from the only doper of his generation, and his team was far from the only one circumventing the rules.

That concept doesn’t seem to appeal to anyone beyond the stereotypical “gadget geek” influencers on YouTube, who in some cases aren’t even paying for these devices. Most people don’t work on their phones, nor do they want to. Most people also don’t have the time or the need for a larger screen that they can carry around everywhere. If they want to use a larger touchscreen device, for common use cases like watching videos or drawing, they want to be doing it for longer periods in a relaxed environment. In which case, there is no reason to buy one of these expensive folding phones over a tablet with a usable aspect ratio and a vastly superior screen that doesn’t have a giant crease down the middle.

From the report:

Despite the financial attractiveness of household energy upgrades, many households including renters or those on low incomes have no ability to undertake upgrades. Furthermore, even consumers who can invest in household energy upgrades are subject to “bounded rationality” – a barrier that is often overlooked by energy efficiency policies.

Increasing minimum energy performance standards to encourage a shift from gas or inefficient electric appliances to efficient electric alternatives is a compelling solution. New legislation to phase out gas hot water systems in Victoria presents one example of an approach to achieve this, and there is an opportunity to reinvigorate the federal Equipment Energy Efficiency programme.

In the near term, financial incentives play a critical role to reduce the upfront cost hurdle for consumers and scale up the industry capacity to deliver upgrades. However, the current approach to incentives is piecemeal.

Victoria and New South Wales have implemented broad-based incentives for household energy upgrades, but there is a case for more comprehensive national versions of these schemes to be rolled out, which could be complemented with specific state government schemes where they would bring further benefits.

Pricing reform is not the sole solution, but it is nonetheless critical to ensure consumers have access to fair electricity plans that reward their contributions to the grid, without imposing unrealistic expectations on consumers to become energy traders.

I don’t really know how anyone can watch cycling for that long and think only the very best rider is doping. There’s absolutely no way Team Visma is clean if Pogacar is not.

Pogacar was 28 seconds slower than Vingegaard in a time trial half this distance last month, but go off. It wouldn’t be the Tour without one-eyed fans arbitrarily deciding which rider is doping based on whether they were happy with the day’s results.

Thw result was mostly just Vingegaard being shit, not Pogacar being amazing. He was even slower than the washed up Roglic who started his season earlier at the Giro.

He made his fans sweat a little at the start!

I love the Arkea race radio encouraging Vauqelin:

YOU’RE FASTER THAN ROGLIC! YOU’RE FASTER THAN VINGEGAARD! YOU’RE FASTER THAN JORGENSON! GO BOY!

The time trial is tomorrow. so I’m not 100% sure if any of the major players will be risking a move today. But I agree that the course seems perfect for someone to try an attack, particularly with how hard the final climb is and how close it is to the finish. It looks harder than Stage 2, and Pogacar and Vingegaard were both very close to winning there.

What hardware (other than 5G antenna) changed since the first/second one?

Everything would have changed. Smartphones are not desktop computers, they are not designed to be iterated on piece-by-piece over a long period of time. Fairphone has been trying to convince Qualcomm to develop a modular chipset that can be swapped out like a desktop CPU, but it is just one small European company in an industry filled with global giants. It doesn’t have a lot of bargaining power, unfortunately. The same can be said for its negotiations with suppliers, which is why Fairphones tend to have very middle-of-the-road specs and don’t lead the industry in any area. It is designing and sourcing with long-term availability in mind, because it knows it doesn’t have the market power to go out and demand things.

Since Fairphone is unable to create a truly modular phone, it is forced to release newer models to keep afloat as a business. It releases one phone every two years, less than most manufacturers, and has a very low profit margin. Less than 0.1% in 2022, for example. It’s also a bit of a misconception that Fairphone is solely focused on modularity or e-waste, because it is also doing a lot of work behind the scenes on industry working conditions and pay rates throughout its supply chain and is taking on an advocacy role within the industry to push for change. For example, in 2020 it launched the Fair Cobalt Alliance which now has over 20 members, including major tech companies like Google and Tesla.