I have terrible news. The brewery no longer makes Fokking Beer!

Scoop, ... 2 comments.

“Fokking Vers” from the KOMPAAN Dutch Craft Beer Company

IPA – Imperial / Double

This beer is no longer being produced by the brewery.

We are all going to miss their great ads:

“Good friends, good fun, good Fokking”

“Some people prefer Fokking in the morning”

“Hell, even if you don’t like beer, you’ll love Fokking”

“What’s a party without some Fokking?”

“Nothing satisfies like a good Fokking”

“Driving and Fokking don’t mix”

“You won’t get a good Fokking in Milwaukee”

“Tonight, tonight……let it be Fokking”

“I always take my clients for a hearty Fokking… with plenty of head”.

“The difference between a good day and a bad day is Fokking!”

“Granny’s 93, and she still loves a daily Fokking”

“Our taste test shows: Budweiser C+, Fokking A”

“9 out of 10 beer drinkers prefer Fokking to just plain Busch”

Harvard’s grade inflation experiment

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85% of all grades awarded at Harvard are either A or A-. 67% are A.

In the Harvard class of 2025, 21% of the graduates finished with a perfect 4.0!! That’s more than 300 students.

(SIDEBAR: I wondered how they select a valedictorian when there is a 300-way tie for first? It turns out that they don’t. The concept of “valedictorian” no longer exists.)

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What does that mean in reality?

Imagine a class of 100 students. The best student in the class gets the same grade as the 67th best. One can essentially graduate cum laude at the bottom of the class.

B is the new F.

Many educators feel, probably correctly, that this has two important negative effects on society:

1. Employers and grad schools who want the very best students have no idea who they are. They have to resort to logic like “This guy got a B in one of his classes. He’s probably cognitively impaired.” (This was especially true when the use of standardized tests was declining, although I have read that elite universities are going back to the standardized tests after a brief experiment with abandonment.)

2. The students are not encouraged to really master the subject matter when 67th best produces the same results, leading to an overall decline in competence in all fields.

Do the brilliant educators at America’s most elite university have a solution?

Well, maybe.

But it ain’t gonna to be a popular one.

Sissy Spacek nudography

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Sissy came into focus yesterday when I looked at the 16mm, open matte version of Carrie.

She did a fair amount of nudity in the period from 1972-1984 (her age 22-34), then did no more. Realistically, she really stopped in 1976, because she did no significant nudity after that point. Her nipple was visible for a split-second in Missing, and her other two post-1976 nude scenes (Raggedy Man and The River) were filmed in near-darkness.

Now 76, the diminutive actress has kept working, albeit fully clothed, to this day, picking up many accolades along the way. She has been nominated for six Oscars, winning once for Coal Miner’s Daughter, in which she also got to demonstrate her musical ability. She also won a couple of Golden Globes, and has been nominated for several Emmys and BAFTAs.

1972 – Prime Cut

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1972 – on the set of Prime Cut

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1976 – Carrie

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1976 – Welcome to L.A.

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1981 – Raggedy Man

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1982 – Missing

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1984 – The River

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HD videos from every film except Carrie. They need to be downloaded rather than streamed.

The 4K widescreen and 3K open matte versions of Carrie are here, and are not streamable.

Be careful what you wish for, part infinity

Scoop, ... 9 comments.

I mentioned in my post about the grainy, pinkish, full-screen version of Carrie, that it might be nice to see what AI could do with those images.

I ran one “full frontal” image through two AI programs and it turned out that the idea wasn’t so nice after all.

AI did a so-so job at cleaning up the image, but it strongly suggested that what I thought was a full-frontal turned out to be a merkin. I discarded one of the images because it just did too much smoothing (so much that she seemed to be laughing), but the one I tossed suggested that you could actually see the thin strap holding the merkin up. I don’t know about that – no strap was visible in the full rear shots, but be that as it may …

The one I kept (below) didn’t show the strap, but it resolved the grainy image into a shape that suggests “patch,” not “pubes.”

I’m sorry I asked.


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Click on the image to see the full size pic.

Sissy Spacek – full frontal and rear nudity in the full-frame version of Carrie (1976)

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A group called Scanners, Inc took the original negative from Carrie, and scanned it into an open-matte 16mm print. I don’t really know what point they are making with this exercise, but it turned out to be interesting for us, because the full negative includes more information above and below the 4K widescreen version, and that means more nudity from Sissy Spacek in the opening scene. (Nancy Allen and the others don’t seem to be significantly affected, but if you’re that interested, you can judge for yourself in the film clips linked below.)

I don’t have enough technical knowledge to explain why the whole 16mm version is so pink, but I think that sharpening the nudity up and restoring the colors would be an excellent use of AI.

Here’s a comparison:

Nancy Allen

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Sissy Spacek

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The film clips (HUGE downloads, and they won’t stream.)

If you have an ultra-speed connection, the entire 16mm version – all 54 gig of it – was online as of yesterday. (Third from the bottom.) In theory, that entire site is just a storage for open matte versions of films. I have not had time to comb through it carefully. If you have time to browse, you may find some treasures in there.