Messages

61

/dev/random / Re: The Strange and Interesting Thread

« on: June 21, 2024, 03:03:34 PM »

I would love to spend a week or two just riding back and forth down the length of this highway on my motorcycle, maybe camping and fishing at different points every night. Possibly the most amazing stretch of highway in the whole country.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIqSg3xt4Fs

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/dev/random / Re: The Good Old Days thread

« on: June 07, 2024, 01:45:48 AM »

If that apartment scheme is working then I'm happy for the landlord and tenants but I'm not sure many people would like living in a windowless condo complex born from the death of big box retail. I expect if you could research the developer and landlord books they are underwater on the deal.

Nah, it had tons of windows. I think that was one of the big problems with finding someone else to take over the building after Sears stopped using it. Tons of homeless people broke into it to live (and turned it into the biggest multistory crackhouse you've ever seen) and many of the windows were broken out. Nobody needed that much space, nobody wanted to replace all the windows and clean the place up, and the neighborhood at the time was a shithole.

This is a more recent one. See the big vertical "PONCE" and clock sign hanging off the side. That was added when it was turned into the Ponce City Market. You can see the beltline there in the foreground. It might be a more recent pic because in more recent times, they don't mow the grass as often along the trails and it doesn't look as nice as it did when it first opened. Funny how that always happens. But thats taken from an elevated position where the railroad bridge crosses Ponce De Leon Ave right beside the building.




I think this is an older pic from the 2000's. See the railroad bridge going over Ponce. The building on the front side of the railway is the old Ford Factory building. Before WW2, they produced Model A's, Model T's, and flathead V8's for the Model 18's. After WW2, they moved production to a larger plant down by the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport, which operated until about 2006 building pretty much nothing but the Ford Taurus. (My youth pastor at the church I went to in high school worked there as a paint dept mgr or paint quality control guy - he said he HATED IT) It ALSO sat empty and derelict for many many years. But that was actually a pre-gentrification craze project where they renovated it and turned it into apartments with shopping storefronts on the first floor. The Kroger next door to it finally closed recently I think, probably more plans for expensive shit only douchebags can afford. Since the 2000's it was often refered to as the "murder kroger", because so many people have been murdered in that parking lot and around the Ford building. Lovely, huh.



And this is a current screenshot from google streetview. You can see the fence they added to the railway bridge to keep idiots from falling off or jumping to their deaths when they realize they cant afford the rent anymore.



According to wiki:
 
As Sears, Roebuck -
From 1926 to 1979, it was a Sears, Roebuck and Co. retail store, warehouse and regional office. ... In 1979, the retail store closed but the building continue operating as a Sears regional office until 1987.

As City Hall East -
In May 1990, the city of Atlanta bought the building for $12 million, with plans to place 2,000 police and fire employees there, and later rent space out to county, state, and federal agencies. The city subsequently moved the central offices of its police department and fire department into the building. A city-funded art gallery was also established on the first floor. From 1995 to 1999, the Southeastern Flower Show was held here. The building was closed to the public on March 29, 2010.

As Ponce City Market -
The City sold the property for $27 million to Jamestown, a private-equity group, on July 11, 2011. Jamestown, which also invested in the redevelopment of the White Provision retail and restaurant complex in West Midtown, bankrolled the 180-million-dollar plans by developer Green Street Properties to convert it into a mixed-use development. In a July 2011 interview, Michael Phillips, managing director of Jamestown, said that Jamestown is focused on Ponce City Market becoming the fourth nationally relevant food hall in the U.S., alongside Pike Place in Seattle, the Ferry Building in San Francisco, and Jamestown's own Chelsea Market in New York City. Jamestown also plans rooftop gardens where local restaurants can grow food. Jamestown planned to complete renovations by early 2015 and then have the building added to the National Register of Historic Places. It was hoped that the new development, along with the new adjacent BeltLine trail and Historic Fourth Ward Park, would stitch together the four neighborhoods that meet where it is located and revitalize the Ponce de Leon Avenue corridor. Ponce City Market officially opened on August 25, 2014.

---------------------

Well... what wiki doesn't tell you is that even though Atlanta bought the building in 1990, they really only fixed up the first couple of floors facing Ponce De Leon Ave, the rest of the building was still a a garbage dump. City Hall East and the part of East Atlanta Police used the first floor back side of the building facing North Ave. The art gallery? Yeah nobody cared or ever went to see it. Their lofty plans to make so much money for the city renting the place out as offices and such... never really happened. Just another example of the Atlanta city council being stupid with money and never being held accountable for it.

2011... the gentrification begins... If you've seen the episode of South Park where they turn dirt poor Kenny's house into a douchey wine bar and noodle shop district with overpriced loft apartments, yeah, that's what this is.

They mention "rooftop gardens". I guess that's part of the douchey gentrification routine. Just a short walk east from the old Sears along Ponce is the old Clermont Motor Hotel built in the 1920's. It got to be a pretty notoriously awful place - with an equally notorious strip club on the basement level known as the Clermont Lounge, a pretty famous dive bar, and I do mean "dive bar" - the strippers are fat and ugly, but they're sometimes comical and fun and that's sort of their "thing". They've tried to shut the place down a thousand times with health code violations and other shit but too many people want the place to stay, so they're still there. The Clermont Hotel upstairs remained closed for a long time - it probably closed about the same time Sears did in 79. In 2013, it was finally bought and renovated into a douchey boutique hotel... with rooftop gardens. They have some kind of rooftop bar open to everyone. I see the same kinds of "rooftop gardens" popping up in downtown Athens GA too. Even the little town where I live, they renovated an old grain mill building that became a microbrewery and restaurant and installed a big rooftop deck. I'm so tired of that shit. The prices are outrageous. I'm not going to pay 60+ fucking dollars for dinner for 2 people in a place where they won't kick me out for wearing jeans and a "Who farted?" T-shirt.

As for the "beltline", it's the old Atlanta Railroad systems outer loop that was built in the late 1800's after the Civil War by several different regional railroad companies as a bypass loop around Atlanta (Atlanta was a major railway hub back then and very congested.) Very few of the rails are still in use anymore, and the loop wasn't used probably since the 80's. If you read the wiki page, you can see the idea behind it is based on this "woke" pie in the sky worldview of "inclusion of marginalized communities" and other such catch-phrases that certain people like to use to pretend they're making the world a better place. One of the ways it states it intends to make the world a better place is by "preserving affordable housing" - says so right on the wiki page too. But again, I say they PRETEND they're making the world a better place, because in reality, they dump assloads of money into redeveloping these places, and then the rent ends up being more than anyone from a fucking "marginalized community" (including poor white folks like me, I'm not making a veiled racist statement here) can possibly afford. On the west corner of the Sears building is a West Elm shop. It's a nice fancy upscale kinda place with sort of expensive stuff. The people who work there can't possibly afford to live anywhere in that neighborhood. Anyway, getting back on topic... the beltway... they pulled up the old rails and put down a concrete walking path, installed some benches and trash cans, some grass and bushes. It's a very popular path everyone uses for jogging, bicycling, walking... robbing, raping, murdering. Don't go alone, and don't go unarmed. You might think. "I'll go with my dog, if something happens, he'll bark and scare them off." Is it a vicious pitbull? Then it might work... or it might just bite someone and then you get sued. If it's not scary though, the people robbing you might rob you of your fucking DOG TOO. That's been another growing issue since covid in Atlanta is people stealing dogs and reselling them.

63

/dev/random / Re: The Good Old Days thread

« on: June 06, 2024, 02:47:40 PM »

Sears.

My grandmother, who I never met (she died when my mom was 10 or 11) worked for Sears at the old Sears & Roebuck building in East Atlanta off Ponce De Leon Ave. It sat mostly empty and in disrepair for many years (as did many of the larger buildings on that street for much of the 80's and 90's). Thankfully, the people of Atlanta value the building and it's history and have kept it rather than demolishing it or radically renovating it. They did renovate the interior and turn it into apartments, but they restored the exterior and kept it looking the same.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XweEZkbKXVM


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOAv9s1u0qY

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/dev/random / Re: The Good Old Days thread

« on: June 05, 2024, 04:26:26 AM »

More Kmart stuff...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjPyvoAx6qc

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/dev/random / Re: The Man Thread

« on: May 30, 2024, 10:34:26 PM »

Debated putting this in my other "Good Ole Days" thread, but since it's about lawn mowers and fixing things, I suppose it fits a little better here.

Recently came across this guys channel. Taryl Fixes All! This guy's a lawn mower wiz - seems to know just about everything there is to know about any lawn mower or piece of power equipment you throw at him. It's interesting to see him go about fixing something. Like I said, he knows everything, so he knows whenever theres some special way you have to remove something, whereas the rest of us would just get frustrated and probably break something in the process. And with some of these old mowers, you can't find parts for them anymore, so breaking something is... very much bad.

He always wears fake hillbilly teeth and jokes around, does some silly skits and such.

In these two videos, he's managed to find an old extremely rare Lawnboy Loafer, which was probably one of the first riding mowers ever marketed. Really, the Loafer was just a motorized go-kart that you could buy separately, but they also had the option to add a motorized push mower deck to the front. The most interesting thing about it is the horizontal disc drive on it. To change the speed, the entire motor shifts over to place the motors drive wheel closer to or further away from the center of the drive disc.

He had me laughing popping wheelies on it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6SwVRZ7iTE


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLwpc-QxpLQ

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/dev/random / Re: Whatcha listening to?

« on: May 27, 2024, 07:08:05 PM »

Ive found that music Ive liked was usually music I didnt at first care for.  The more you listen, the more you tend to like it.  Hence a lot of Type O Negative stuff that I am now a big fan of. Dream Theaters drummer...best of all.

I posted a Miles Davis song up there too. For years I've always thought of Miles Davis as "fashionable douchebag music" because... just my bitter spiteful opinion, but there's just certain people who try to achieve a certain identity through claiming to like certain music. By saying they like Miles Davis, they wanna look hip and classy.

For the longest time, I ignored jazz and wrote it off, but the older I get the more my attitude and tastes mellow out a bit, and I finally gave Miles Davis a chance ("Let's see for ourselves what everyone keeps talking about."). I listened to what is considered his #1 best album, Kind of Blue (1959), and I absolutely LOVE it, it's fantastic, it's everything a classic jazz album should be. So then I thought as much as I love that album, surely he'll have a lot more stuff to love.... NOPE. I went through most of the discography. The stuff right before that period in 1959 is slightly okay, but not nearly as good as kind of Blue. And everything he did from about 1961 onwards I do not like AT ALL.

I've always loved Type O Negative, and Carnivore too, which is what a lot of their early stuff came from. Unfortunately, it's kinda hard to listen to some of it now, particularly October Rust, because that was the album I listened to so many times while dating someone... it all fell apart in a bad way, she did me dirty, etc.  Love you to death, that was kinda our song, used to really like it, can't hear it now without wanting to kick a hole in the wall. Fuckin sucks when someone can ruin a perfectly good song like that.

67

/dev/random / Re: Whatcha watchin'/streamin'...

« on: April 27, 2024, 08:41:44 PM »

I sometimes browse through stuff on youtube through the tv app at bedtime. Here lately, I've been turning on these ambient rain sound videos to help me sleep. Came across something similar - a Bladerunner themed video with various pictures of the city from Bladerunner while it's raining, with rain sounds mixed with what I suppose is the music score from the film. And that one led me to this one: Floyd Runner Radio - a bunch of ambient type music similar to Bladerunner, with similar synth sounds to Pink Floyd during the Wish You Were Here period. Not sure if this is AI generated music or what, but it's nice and droney and good for mellowing down.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVh3OzdZ9SE&ab_channel=%28LUX%29-AmbientMusic

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/dev/random / Re: I'm back for better or worse...

« on: April 25, 2024, 09:41:09 PM »

Welcome back.

69

/dev/random / Re: The last movie you saw....

« on: April 24, 2024, 11:05:07 AM »

Got this in my spam barrage... uh, I mean, email, from Peacock. Some new show I guess, starring Orlando Bloom. Do you notice what I notice? 



This guy does not look like that at all. They've airbrushed about 20 years off of him and now he looks more like Cosmo Kramer Jr.

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/dev/random / Re: The Strange and Interesting Thread

« on: April 21, 2024, 09:14:56 PM »

Found this channel where they use AI art to create stylized 50's/60's Panavision-like fake trailers for real movies and TV shows.

Lord of the Rings -


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH59vTJFFhU

Alien -


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puGnoy0Lmc8

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Quake / Re: Quake 2 needs a public square

« on: April 21, 2024, 09:00:09 PM »

It's a shame that Focalor is never treated with the same measure that Beaver deserves especially given how detached from reality and evil they both are.

So first he gets mad that the admins won't let him post links to his buddy beavers discord channels... now he's of the opinion that I deserve to be banned just like beaver.

 

I'm the one "detached from reality"?

Beaver was doxing people.

The worst thing I've done is... poke fun at costigan while presenting perfectly logical truthful arguments against his silly bullshittery and nonsense. I'm sure that may be an absolutely unforgivable sin as far as he is concerned but it's not against the rules.

Seriously, give me one good reason why "I don't like the way the rules are applied" is not what you really mean by "Quake 2 needs a public square"? How much sense does it make to have a public square where you allow people to come and spread information about how to disrupt and destroy the self-same public square and threaten the people in it in real life. At that point, what stops anyone from doing the same TO YOU? Something to consider maybe?

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Quake / Quake 2 needs a public square

« on: April 21, 2024, 01:51:14 PM »

It has come to my attention that Quake2 needs a public square. A place where anyone is allowed to come and post whatever message they like, even ones that might be critical of the administration, because freedom of speech is important. However, some of us recognize that not ALL speech should be free. Maybe the admins have committed the sin of banning someone because they were doxing people, giving out their home address, possibly being a physical threat to that person, their family, and their property. Is that so bad? Well, some of us appear to object to it. On the other hand, it should be noted that the admins have also intervened on behalf of certain aggrieved parties to limit the speech of others, which has been to their benefit. They didn't find that so objectionable.

Of course... I'm only talking about costigan.

We're all rational sensible people. We can see that this place is an open forum, as are any associated Discord channels. But there are definitely RULES. You can't post links to cheats. You can't encourage people to cheat. You can't dox people. You can't post uncensored porn directly to the messageboard. You can't tell someone they should kill themselves (a Discord authored platform rule), and You can't say egregiously racist shit. Other than that, no one gives a damn what you do.

So? What's the problem then? Is the problem that the admins have clear rules, or is the problem that the admins do no consult costigan for his approval each and every time they apply these rules?

I don't understand this "problem". This messageboard is pretty damn public. There are FAR more "random nobodies" and general public lurking in the tastyspleen discord than known community members. As far as I can tell, the problem is not that a public square does not exist - because it obviously does. I'm in it right now voicing my opinion. The problem is that costigan thinks beaver should be unbanned. And that's the great thing about this public square. You can come here and voice your opinion about wanting beaver unbanned. Tastyspleen values freedom of speech, and you are free to express that idea.

However... rules are fuckin' rules, he broke them a zillion times, and made it his mission in life to become a community problem rather than a community member. And the admins, just like everyone else on planet earth (well maybe not ALL of us), have lives and families and SHIT TO DO. They don't have time to have the same arguments with the same people for hours at a time every single day. It's the metaphor of the "noise to signal ratio" that Quadz used to talk about. Eventually, when it's just hours and hours of static and no signal... you have to turn the dial and move on.

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/dev/random / Re: The Good Old Days thread

« on: April 19, 2024, 12:22:10 PM »

On this episode of "People You Forgot that you Forgot"...

Nutritionist, motivational speaker, and 90's infomercial lady, Susan Powter!



She had the "Stop the Insanity" infomercial hocking her "Stop the Insanity" book and weight loss program. See what I mean, you forgot that you forgot about her, right? 

Was browsing the youtube app the other day when I came across a live streaming loop video from Adult Swim for the Space Ghost Coast to Coast 30th anniversary. One of the guests was Susan Powter. I was like, "Ha! I remember that buzz headed bitch! She was great!"

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/dev/random / Re: The last movie you saw....

« on: April 16, 2024, 10:36:21 PM »

Went to a movie theater tonight for the first time in a long time. Tickets were 12 bucks a head. I used to go all the time back in the early 00's, and I think tickets were 8 or 9 bucks back then. I'm not saying it SHOULD'VE cost more, but I was sort of expecting it to - like 18 or 20 bucks. Sort of affordable, so I might actually start going more. I went to see...

Dune Part Two (2024)



Been anticipating this one for a while. I dunno if I posted about it before but... I was NOT a fan of the old 1980's Dune movie that was directed by David Lynch. I thought it was CRAP.




(I saw the 2nd image when I was googling the first one and thought it was a great coincidence - Kyle Maclachlan was in the old Dune movie.)

The new ones don't suck at all. The first one is great. I've seen it probably 3 or 4 times now - watched it again earlier today before heading out to see Part Two just as a refresher. I've never read the books and really wasn't able to pay close enough attention to the old version to know the story well enough.

Part Two is good, but it did seem to jump forward in time a little abruptly without warning in a couple of spots - perhaps there were a lot more scenes that they had to cut out for time constraints (the movie was about 2hrs 45mins - part one was close to that too). Definitely worth seeing on the big screen.

I give part one a 9.8/10, part two a 9.7/10. 

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/dev/random / Re: The last movie you saw....

« on: April 15, 2024, 03:08:39 PM »

(Haven't seen it yet... but WANT to.)

More on the topic of Roman history...

Saw a commercial for this on youtube the other day. Anthony Hopkins as Emperor Vespasian. Should be pretty cool. Something about Roman gladiatorial games and such.

Those About To Die - Peacock original miniseries


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFQcZRCZABo

Hoping it's much better than the old Starz miniseries, Spartacus. I rewatched all 4 seasons of that again in the last several months. Does not stand the test of time as far as I'm concerned. Definitely worse the 2nd time around, not that I really liked it all that much the first time either. Season 1 kept me mostly interested. Season 2 prequel less so. Seasons 3 and 4 were pretty shitty. I even ended up deleting the whole series from my video drive when I was done because I DO NOT forsee that I ever want to watch it again. That's the thing about Starz shows. They're good to watch once. But even if it's 10 years after the premier, the 2nd time around shows you how lame it was. Except Ash vs Evil Dead. That ones corny and silly by design so it's fine. Black Sails - I remember liking that one when it was current. I've considered watching that one a 2nd time before also, but I know if I do, I'll just notice how crappy it really is.