March 1, 2025

REMIXING THE BEATLES: “AI is not creating John’s voice. John’s voice existed on that cassette and we made the song around him”: Giles Martin explains why you’d be wrong to think ‘AI’ created Lennon’s parts for The Beatles’ ‘Now and Then.’

Billed as the final single from The Beatles, Now and Then was always going to be a big deal. The track, which is nominated for Song of the Year at this weekend’s Brit Awards, has its roots in a 1977 demo recorded by John Lennon.

Its mix features all four original members – Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with the late Lennon and George Harrison – and comes with a long history that includes an aborted mid-’90s attempt at a finished release.

There’s another headline-grabbing element to the eventual release of Now and Then though. As has been widely, and on occasion a little misleadingly reported, the track’s creation has been made possible thanks to the use of neural network technology. Or, as how some have more flatly termed it – AI.

This latter fact seems to have led to misconceptions among some fans, as the track’s co-producer Giles Martin (son of late Beatles producer George Martin) demonstrates in an exclusive video for MusicRadar.

“I think there is this supposition that we used AI to recreate something, or to perhaps enhance John Lennon’s voice,” Martin tells us. “This simply wasn’t the case. All we did was clean a cassette recording he had made all those years ago.”

It’s true that some of the public reaction to Now and Then, particularly in the wake of its recent Grammy win for Best Rock Performance, has led some to raise a suspicious eyebrow. But this perception stems from the entirely false notion that the track has harnessed some form of generative AI. Which it very much hasn’t.

The demixing technology that Peter Jackson has developed seems like Clarke’s Third Law sort of stuff: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Every commercially-available demix software that I’ve either used or demoed, generates serious artifacts when separating parts, creating digital chirps and a sort of watery filtered sound that’s particularly noticeable when a track is soloed. But listening to Giles Martin playing the soloed tracks of Beatles songs in the video below, and little or no audible artifacts can be heard:

Remixing Beatles songs and digitally cleaning vocal tracks seems like pretty benign stuff. Still though, no one should forget that AI and machine learning technology can also be used to far more terrifying ends:

 

Posted at 2:44 pm by Ed Driscoll 9

HMMM:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll 16

JONATHAN TURLEY: Democrats go full McCarthy with attacks on Musk’s nationality, loyalties.

Throughout the 2024 campaign, the Democrats, including President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, painted Republicans as either aspiring or actual fascists. That continued recently with Minnesota Gov. and former Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz (D), who referred to Republicans as “fascists and Nazis.”

Even journalists and civil libertarians have been reviled using the same terms. After a hearing on censorship two years ago, MSNBC contributor and former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) attacked journalists and members who had spoken in favor of free speech. She denounced the member witnesses (Sen. Chuck Grassley, Sen. Ron Johnson and former Rep. Gabbard) as “Putin apologists” and Putin-lovers.

Stacey Plaskett, the Democratic delegate representing the Virgin Islands in the U.S. House, even suggested arresting respected journalist Matt Taibbi, who, along with Michael Shellenberger, testified on their investigation into a massive censorship system developed under the Biden administration.

The attack on Musk is particularly disgraceful, given his contributions to his adopted country. Ironically, filmmaker Michael Moore denounced the deportations of criminal illegal immigrants last week by noting that Trump was deporting someone who might cure cancer or be the next Steve Jobs. Well, this is a naturalized citizen who not only could be the next Elon Musk. He is Elon Musk.

Not surprisingly, I’m not sure if Moore thought his argument through to its conclusion:

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 25

MATT MARGOLIS: Stephen Miller Reveals What Triggered the Oval Office Showdown with Zelenskyy.

Miller explained that the confrontation stemmed from Zelenskyy’s failure to show proper appreciation for America’s substantial support of Ukraine. “The only reason that Zelenskyy has a country, that Zelenskyy is in power, is because of the United States,” Miller asserted.

During the Oval Office meeting, tension erupted when Zelenskyy suggested that America would “feel it in the future” if support for Ukraine waned, prompting Trump to erupt: “You don’t know that. You don’t know that. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. We’re trying to solve a problem. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel.”

Miller highlighted Americans’ economic sacrifices in the Ukraine conflict: “Americans have suffered economically funding this war now for years, American security has been degraded, our stockpiles depleted, our ability to project power in other regions of the world negatively affected to protect and defend Ukraine.”

The confrontation reached a boiling point when Trump accused Zelenskyy of “gambling with World War III” and Vance repeatedly demanded that the Ukrainian leader express gratitude.

“He couldn’t even say thank you. Just couldn’t say thank you. Thank you, America,” Miller said.

One of the most contentious moments came when Zelenskyy appeared to resist Trump’s calls for an immediate ceasefire. “He repeatedly rejected President Trump’s statement that we should pursue a ceasefire,” Miller noted. “How could you reject a ceasefire?”

“And, you know, he kept saying, Europe’s doing so much more than us,” Miller added. “Well, then what do you need us for?”

Precisely. Zelensky will meeting with King Charles on Sunday; perhaps that meeting will go a bit more smoothly.

Related: From the home office in Kyiv, VDH proffers the Top Ten “bad takeaways from the Zelenskyy blow-up:”

UPDATE: Time to write some cheques, Old Blighty:

Posted at 1:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 307

BIG APPLE CUOMOSEXUALS, THIS IS YOUR TIME! Cuomo jumps into New York mayor’s race, attempting political comeback.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced Saturday afternoon that he’s entering New York City’s mayoral race, adding a big name to the already busy Democratic primary challenging Mayor Eric Adams (D).

“Our city is in crisis. That’s why I am running to be Mayor of New York City,” he wrote on social platform X, along with a video. “We need government to work. We need effective leadership.”

He also included a link to his campaign website.

Cuomo’s entrance comes as little surprise after months of speculation that he would attempt a political comeback years after resigning as governor amid multiple controversies that eventually engulfed his administration.

Cuomo appears likely to be the immediate frontrunner in the race based on recent polling conducted that includes him, Adams and the half-dozen other candidates already running for the nomination.

That’s understandable, based on his brilliant track record as New York’s governor in 2020: Andrew Cuomo’s Macabre Pandemic Nostalgia.

What but personal gratification explains Cuomo’s otherwise inexplicable dredging up of his disastrous final year in office over the other nine? After all, his conduct during the pandemic remains a drag on his political prospects.

As recently as last week, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released an internal audit that confirmed the Cuomo administration had undercounted Covid deaths in nursing homes by more than 4,000. “The audit details how health officials undercounted deaths in nursing homes by more than 50% at certain points during the height of the crisis,” the New York Daily News reported. The findings underscore the conclusions New York Attorney General Letitia James revealed in a January 2021 report alleging that the Cuomo administration covered up the true death toll and its contributions to the body count. Albany’s “guidance requiring the admission of COVID-19 patients into nursing homes” put long-term care facility residents “at increased risk of harm,” that report revealed. All this only corroborates the many independent journalistic probes into how the governor’s administration contributed to the pandemic’s death toll and subsequently covered it up.

“In politics, like in life, you stand on your record,” Cuomo brazenly insists at the close of his comeback pitch. But Cuomo had more than a record. He had a cult of personality around him, and he loved every minute of it. What he wants isn’t just his name cleared and his career back. He wants the “Cuomosexuals” to fall back in love with the erstwhile object of their affections. Toward that end, Andrew Cuomo is dwelling on what for him must have been one of the best times of his life. That it was also the very worst of times for the rest of us seems to have escaped him.

New Yorkers can finally relive the magical thinking once again.

UPDATE:

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 72

YES, THEY’VE ENTERED THE “FO” PHASE OF FAFO:

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 53

MORE TO THAT NSA CULT THAN SEX: The Washington Stand’s Ben Johnson digs into the back story and finds the pro-DEI/pro-Marxist roots of a bunch of now-former Intelligence Community paycheck recipients.

Posted at 12:41 pm by Mark Tapscott 29

IT’S LIKE BEING MADE CAPTAIN OF A MUTINOUS SHIP:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 126

HEART RATE AND FITNESS TRACKER: Oura Ring, Silver, Smart Ring. #CommissionEarned Has anyone tried these? If so, what did you think of it? Is it worth getting?

Posted at 11:02 am by Helen Smith 29

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Cleaner — The Worst Die Hard Clone Ever (Video). “Ultimately, Cleaner is a perfect example of Die Hard if it was made by Hollywood today. It’s slow, boring, derivative, preachy, pandering, morally confused, striving to grapple with big issues that are far beyond its intellectual capacity. Bristling with tedious intersectional feminism, and boring unlikable girl bosses that went out of fashion years ago and an embarrassing failure that serves to remind us yet again how good we once had it.”

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll 173

JOHN PODHORETZ: Review: The Brutalist. Very brilliant. Very important. Very bad.

The most impressive film of 2024, up for 10 Oscars this weekend, is The Brutalist. It is an extraordinary achievement—nearly three-and-a-half hours and never less than gripping, beautifully rendered dialogue, stunning cinematography and music, all in support of a re-creation of post-World War II America, striking in its specificity and level of detail. It is an epic vision of America on a genuinely grand scale.

The problem is that it gets everything wrong and is, therefore, in the end, bad. The Brutalist is a failure, even an offensive one, but it’s also kind of magnificent as it goes along. I’ve rarely had a more ambiguous or complex reaction to a work of cinema, and I hope I can get The Brutalist right as I talk about it so that I don’t follow director and cowriter Brady Corbet down the path of misrepresenting my subject.

Corbet is unapologetically aiming for greatness with his gorgeously rendered portrait of a Holocaust survivor and his journey through a mid-century America that is simultaneously welcoming of his talents and viciously destructive to his soul. There are two ways to look at the story of Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody). One is that Corbet is telling a singular tale about a singular fictional Jew who undergoes a singular set of experiences as he comes into contact with a difficult, complex, highly intelligent, and very rich American Gentile with the very suggestive name of Harrison Lee Van Buren (that’s the key general of the Confederacy and three presidents combined in just one moniker).

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll 156

FLASHBACK: “The revolving door is just one symptom of a bigger picture: Whatever claims our political class makes about the general welfare, it is really running things mostly for its own benefit. That’s why comparisons to the Hunger Games, where the fat-cats in the Capital City live it up while the provinces starve, keep coming.”

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 35