I am a big user of the Internet Archive and public domain works, in general. There is so much amazing writing, art, and music from our past just waiting to be discovered and re-mixed into new creations. – Douglas
Every January we feature works that are entering the public domain. And this year the big story is in recorded music.
Recorded Music from 1922 and earlier
Approximately 400,000 sound recordings made before 1923 will join the public domain in the U.S. for the first time due to the Music Modernization Act (read more at copyright.gov). You can peruse about 38,000 of them in our collection of digitized 78rpm records.
By 1922 we were solidly in the Jazz Age – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age was published in 1922, and the term was already in popular usage. Jazz migrated from Black American communities in New Orleans into the rest of the United States, having evolved from its roots in rag time, blues and Creole music. In fact, 1922 was the year Louis Armstrong left New Orleans to join King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in Chicago.
Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.
The phrase ‘Live Free Or Die” (the motto of the State of New Hampshire) has been bantered around a lot for the last few years, often in ways that directly assault the country in which we live. There are times when Americans lose an understanding of what freedom means and the deep meaning of these words. For me, the Russian attacks on Ukraine brought these words to mind once more but in a much deeper, much more personal, context
From the beginning of the Russian invasion, the country has attempted to forestall any militant reaction by the West by threatening to use nuclear weapons – and threatening it in the most damning words possible. This seemed extremely effective as my Twitter stream filled immediately with “…but that will mean World War III!” It was disturbing to me how many people seemed ready to immediately abandon the people of Ukraine in hopes of protection against a nuclear threat and prevention of World War III as they saw it. For many reasons, I think they lost sight of the desperate future promised by such a retreat.
World War III
In some ways, we are already involved in WWIII. It is simply that it doesn’t look like we thought it would. As in the past, it has started with conventional weapons, but most everyone seems to know that escalating the conflict to nuclear attacks means death for nearly everyone. There is no winner, no loser, just death. It think this is why I fill Russia’s threats mean little. It would take not just one madman, but hundreds of them to effectively execute an attack and I don’t believe there is any will for that to happen.
It seems very clear to me that there is little we can do about these nuclear threats except to see them for what they are – an attempt to make the entire world so fearful they will refuse to act against the most damnable of atrocities. Like a schoolyard bully that threatens to beat you even worse if you tell your teacher, they hope to cow you into a slow “death” instead of an immediate one, but which of these is truly worse, and which one are you willing to live the rest of your life with?
I Refuse to be Bullied
When these threats were first made, my mind, too, flashed to horrific images of nuclear death, but over the next few days, I began to see exactly the bullying that was being attempted and the decisions that lay ahead. The words “Live free or die” didn’t occur to me at the time, but I see now how they brightly illuminate our situation.
For me, to do nothing while Ukraine burns is a far worse fate than to do something and risk, even in the smallest way, a nuclear attack. If I am going to die, at least let me die having attempted to do the right thing. To die anyway, after doing nothing, after trying to protect my own safety at their expense, would seem a useless death indeed and one that, should you believe in an afterlife, be deeply, karmically, damaging. I would have failed in my basic humanity.
Do The Right Thing
Doing the right thing is NEVER easy. I am sure you have seen situations in your life when it has been the hardest things you might ever do. Doing the wrong thing if often the easier road to travel. Going along to get along, ignoring evil, and averting your gaze often seems easier – and safer – in the moment, but amazingly more harmful.
Let us look now at a new resurgence of the phrase, along with its more complete form, “Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.” Death is not the worst of evils. Apathy, ignorance, hopelessness, hatred, total self-interest, fear, and weakness are just a few.
If we let this bully win, if we do nothing, we will be subjecting ourselves – and everyone else – to a future of slavery to the whims of one man, one people, one country, forever. This is not a world I want to live in. I do not want to see the future atrocities this will cause. I want to believe that the world can be a better place than it is and that if we look evil in the face, look deep into its eyes and say NO, then we will have fulfilled the “…better angels of our nature.”
For the novice orchid grower, it can be difficult to know where to start with plants that have a reputation for being complicated or delicate. With just a little knowledge of an orchid’s growing preferences however, any gardener can care for these entrancing plants. We have picked six common orchid types that are good entry points for the beginning orchardist. When trying to identify your orchid, always look for any tags provided with your plant. If that is not an option, compare the shape of your plant’s flower to the pictures below, to see which is most similar.
Few seasonal activities are as universal — across time, place, or culture — as the snowball fight. As many of us head into the cold, winter months, hoping for a holiday season with frosted trees or icicles dripping like stalactites from the eaves of homes, we might also long for that slightly slushy grade of powder that makes for perfect packing. Snowmen and angels can be created later. And perhaps there will be sledding: on toboggans (for connoisseurs) or cafeteria trays (for the crafty). Yet nothing signals the year’s first snowfall quite like an apple-sized projectile cutting a parabolic path — through crisp evening air, the haloed light of streetlamps, and exhalations of foggy, illuminated breath — to make direct contact with an unsuspecting hat or coat.
By techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) on Apr 19, 2022 12:46 pm
A new machine learning technique developed by researchers at Edge Impulse, a platform for creating ML models for the edge, makes it possible to run real-time object detection on devices with very small computation and memory capacity. Called Faster Objects, More Objects (FOMO), the new deep learning architecture can unlock new computer vision applications.
Most object-detection deep learning models have memory and computation requirements that are beyond the capacity of small processors. FOMO, on the other hand, only requires several hundred kilobytes of memory, which makes it a great technique for TinyML, a subfield of machine learning focused on running ML models on microcontrollers and other memory-constrained devices that have limited or no internet connectivity.
Between the third and fifth centuries of the Christian era the major world religions ceased to sacrifice animals to appease their gods. For reasons that remain unclear, a practice that had been central to devotional behaviour for thousands of years came to appear grotesque. Joseph Farrell observes that the practice of duelling is now similarly ‘uniformly judged as outlandish and incomprehensible’, its ‘canons and creeds … as beyond recall as the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians’. For five hundred years men of a certain rank settled disputes with sword or pistol in accordance with an elaborate etiquette involving a formal challenge, the appointment of seconds and the negotiation of a time and place for a contest governed by strict rules. The angry brawl was drained of passion, made mindful and even elegant. A doctor was always on hand, but deaths were common. Then, in the second half of the 19th century, the practice declined and disappeared. It’s ‘the sheer incomprehensibility’ of all this that prompted Farrell to write his book. If the duellists were Christian gentlemen, he asks, why did they not see the duel’s incompatibility with basic morality? Why didn’t the state intervene more effectively to prevent individuals from taking the law into their own hands? Why were so many men willing to risk their lives over disputes that often seem trivial?
![Places LA: James Irvine Japanese Garden at JACCC, Little Tokyo, Los Angeles 04 via Instagram [Photography]](http://welchwrite.com/agn/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/japanese-garden-04.jpg)
![Like Places LA: James Irvine Japanese Garden at JACCC, Little Tokyo, Los Angeles 04 via Instagram [Photography] on Facebook](http://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/fb/like.gif){kind=small}
![Welcoming Recorded Music to the Public Domain via Internet Archive Blogs [Shared]](http://welchwrite.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/78_alexanders-ragtime-band_collins-and-harlan-berlin_gbia0017561b_itemimage-1-1024x1024-1.jpg)
![In the garden: Locust Tree in Spring via Instagram [Photography]](http://welchwrite.com/agn/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/itg-locust-tree-spring.jpg)
![My Los Angeles 97: 150’ Solar Tower, Mount Wilson, CA via Instagram [Photography]](http://welchwrite.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/my-la-097-mount-wilson.jpg)
![In the garden: Succulent cutting checkup via TikTok [Video]](http://welchwrite.com/agn/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/itg-20220420-succulents.gif)
![My Los Angeles 96: Street Scene, Little Tokyo via Instagram [Photography]](http://welchwrite.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/my-la-096.jpg)
![Snowball Fights in Art (1400–1946) via The Public Domain Review [Shared]](http://welchwrite.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Sneeuwballen_gooien_RP-P-2008-174B-edit-2.jpg)
![Bluestar Dreams via Instagram [Photography]](http://welchwrite.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/bluestar-dreams.jpg)
