📚 Roger's Highlights

Join 📚 Roger's Highlights

A batch of the best highlights from what roger's read, .

The dinner in early October was hardly a success. The other Korean politicians present were underwhelmed by Kim’s youth and lack of grace. The more crucial introduction—the public one—came in mid-October, at a mass rally in the Northern capital, and the day proved something of a disappointment to a large crowd eager for the introduction of an important Korean nationalist. The people had apparently expected to see and hear a venerable leader, who had served their cause for many years, and who would reflect their own passion for a country now officially free from foreign domination. But it was a Russian show. Kim spoke flatly, in a monotone, in words written by the Russians, and what the crowd heard was a young, rather inarticulate politician with a “plain, duck-like voice.” One witness thought his suit too small and his haircut too much like that of “a Chinese waiter.” But what really bothered many in the crowd was his adulation of Stalin and the Soviet Union. All praise went to the mighty and wondrous Red Army. Here they were, hoping for distinctly Korean words of freedom, and his words were reflecting a new kind of political obedience, Korean words bent to Russian needs, too much of “the monotonous repetitions which had [already] worn the people out.” There are two very different photos, each of which tells its own truth about that occasion. In the first, Kim, looking young and anxious, is flanked by at least three senior Soviet generals; in the second, doctored version, produced later as Kim was re-creating his own mythic story, one of greater personal independence, he is on the same podium, the angle is slightly different, and the three Russian generals have magically disappeared. Cho Man Sik’s days were already numbered. By early 1946 he had disagreed with the Russians on a number of things important to a Korean nationalist, and had thus become in their eyes even more of a reactionary. General Shtykov had sought and gotten Stalin’s permission to purge him. Soon after, he was put under what was ever so gently called protective custody, in a hotel in Pyongyang. No one was allowed to see him. In fact, no one ever saw him again.

The Coldest Winter

David Halberstam

Word about what we were doing had started to spread in the football circles. They saw we were near the top of the national rankings in most offensive categories. Coaches from all over the country said they wanted to come in and watch film and talk football with us, or have us visit them to share ideas. We met with coaches from Auburn, Florida State, and Georgia, among others. We were pretty open about explaining what we were doing. After all, it’s all on film, and for the most part college coaches are typically open about sharing this stuff. I suspect it’s partially because they aspire to coach at other places and bigger schools, and they’re eager to let others know how good they are. We were happy enough to talk because we loved what we did, plus, we figured we could learn from them, too.

Swing Your Sword

Mike Leach, Bruce Feldman, Michael Lewis, and Peter Berg

Part of what makes recording studios somewhat odd, a little museum-like in spirit, is that the gear of the past is not always rendered obsolete, even as the very latest technologies are welcomed in. A Telefunken U47 microphone from the 1940s is a favorite among artists across genres. Still. A Fairchild 670 compressor from the 1950s—they can cost some thirty thousand dollars on the vintage market—is regularly used in the digital environments of today’s best commercial studios. “There is a mystical air about a Fairchild 670,” Pete Townshend has said. “Sorry, but that’s a fact.” Old technologies, mythic technologies, and the very latest gear mix together in a way that is singular to recording culture. With the shift from analog to digital recording, the mixing of old and new would be ever more conspicuous and common. Imagine an office in which individual workstations have equipment from different eras: a typewriter in one, a Macintosh from 1985 in the next, and, in the following cubicle, a MacBook Pro from 2022. It wouldn’t happen. When the new stuff comes in, the old goes out. Computers, printers, copiers. In a recording studio, because different eras of technology do come together, a common language must be found.

Deliver Me From Nowhere

Warren Zanes

...catch up on these, and many more highlights

Readwise.

Join 📚 Roger's Highlights

A batch of the best highlights from what roger's read, .

LEARN

EXPLORE

CONTACT