Tits McGee

club of all time by performing for Igor Stravinsky at Birdland. Alfred Appel tells it definitively in his book Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce: The house was almost full, even before the opening set - Billy Taylor's piano trio - except for the conspicuous empty table to my right, which bore a RESERVED sign, unusual for Birdland. After the pianist finished his forty-five-minute set, a party of four men and a woman settled in at the table, rather clamorously, three waiters swooping in quickly to take their orders as a ripple of whispers and exclamations ran through Birdland at the sight of one of the men, Igor Stravinsky. He was a celebrity, and an icon to jazz fans because he sanctified modern jazz by composing Ebony Concerto for Woody Herman and his Orchestra (1946) - a Covarrubias "Impossible Interview" come true. As Parker's quintet walked onto the bandstand, trumpeter Red Rodney recognized Stravinsky, front and almost center. Rodney leaned over and told Parker, who did not look at Stravinsky. Parker immediately called the first number for his band, and, forgoing the customary greeting to the crowd, was off like a shot. At the sound of the opening notes, played in unison by trumpet and alto, a chill went up and down the back of my neck. They were playing "Koko, which, because of its epochal breakneck tempo - over three hundred beats per minute on the metronome - Parker never assayed before his second set, when he was sufficiently warmed up. Parker's phrases were flying as fluently as ever on this particular daunting "Koko." At the beginning of his second chorus he interpolated the opening of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite as though it had always been there, a perfect fit, and then sailed on with the rest of the number. Stravinsky roared with delight, pounding his glass on the table, the upward arc of the glass sending its liquor and ice cubes onto the people behind him, who threw up their hands or ducked. Parker didn't just happen to…

Stravinsky saw Charlie Parker play at Birdland

We are big, dumb apes

👍

The one I always think of is that the final guillotine execution in France happened after the release of Star Wars

WHAT

The tagging procedure!

bsky.app/profile/sask...

This is just incredible

A tiny, tagged Monarch butterfly has flown from Southern Ontario in Canada to *Oklahoma* in a couple of weeks, as part of their migration

And they haven't got google maps open on their phones either, they just know where to go

You know who doesn't integrate? People like Robert Jenrick. You think he works out at the local leisure centre? Goes to the Tuesday night pub quiz? You think his golf club lets anyone play? Or his private members' clubs let anyone in? He puts the ick in prick

the most delightful version of logging on to see what news you've missed

Awful. It's been altered in so many ways beyond "colourisation". The kid has an entirely different face! AI is being used in so many ways to undermine history, information, even reality.

Our investigation finds that 1611 people experiencing homelessness died in 2024 - a 9% increase on the previous year. — Museum of Homelessness We are devastated to share our latest research into the deaths of those who die. It has revealed the continued impact at the sharpest edge of the homelessness crisis, as the Labour Government has fail...

With heavy hearts we release our findings of our annual investigation into the deaths of people experiencing homelessness in 2024.
Read more on our site here:

museumofhomelessness.org/news/new-res...

This stuff is so tiresome. In a world where hard skills like coding are getting replaced faster than they can be taught, it’s the soft skills that arts degrees teach you that remain valuable.

Me for the i Paper when Sunak tried this very same nonsense last year: inews.co.uk/inews-lifest...

I'm not an economist but seems worrying that the whole US economy is seven companies in a trenchcoat, passing the same $20 up and down

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

A whole bunch of us have grown up in the UK knowing to flee in the other direction if we spot this flag anywhere. We’re not going to pause to see if there are stickers stuck below them.

And if they’re stuck elsewhere, we will not get close enough to see the text - again, we’re just going to leg it.

This lurid headline is about British tourists no longer getting away with overstaying in Schengen. Or being 'illegals', as it's often called in the UK.

I'm still not convinced Reform would win enough votes to govern outright, but they will immediately form a coalition with the Tories and we'll have the worst Government ever

If there is anything likely to hobble F*rage, it's his close links to Trump, who most Britons detest

On an evening bus out of Worcester. A stoned passenger is sitting on the back seat, playing a flute. The driver just audibly muttered "When the fuck is Tom Bombadil getting off my bus".

We journey on, into the darkness. With musical accompaniment.

People Are Making Sora 2 Videos of Stephen Hawking Being Horribly Brutalized People are using OpenAI's Sora 2 to generate videos of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking being brutalized in ghoulish ways.

NEW: People are generating Sora 2 videos of famed physicist Stephen Hawking being horribly brutalized in terrible ways -- no matter how bad you thought OpenAI's guardrails were, I guarantee they're worse

futurism.com/artificial-i...

As you should be!

Happy anniversary!

everyone on any zoom when a cat or dog shows up

[when someone tries to move their cat off camera during a call]

LEAVE IT 🔫

It's so incredible how low homicide rates are in Europe. The UK, with a population of 70 million people, had fewer than 600 murders in 2023.
www.connexionfrance.com/news/double-...

“I had to flat out tell [the Microsoft sales team] VP we're not buying any fucking copilot - whereupon she revealed that the only thing she is being measured on for Q4 is sales of copilot, so if that's off the table the conversation is not interesting. LMAO”

Good lord

Same energy.

I am not happy about this either, but there you go!

Sure, but as the piece points out - other people aren't able to consent to their face being scanned (especially random people like delivery drivers) and that is bad from a privacy POV

Amazon Ring plans to use facial recognition scans Amazon added facial recognition, branded as “familiar faces,” to Ring cameras — sparking fresh privacy and consent concerns.

Don't like the sound of this

mashable.com/article/amaz...