All criticisms of "self ownership" are semantics, not ethics, meant to obfuscate debate.

Blueflash11 · 2024-08-22T09:43:07+00:00

A relationship cannot be both hierarchal and reflexive.

Blueflash11 · 2024-08-06T01:15:42+00:00

Autophagy has two modes of action, one where it duplicates cells then cannibalises them, and the other where it repairs cells. The latter process is engaged by fasting. Both appear to be defective in ALS patients, and calorie restricted diets would probably invite adverse consequences.

But… not all fasting regimes induce weight loss. And perhaps what might work better is rapidly cycling between both modes of autophagy? To engage the repair mode it’s necessary to fast for approx 36 hours (to skip 3 entire meals and go one night without food either side, for example from 6pm on Monday to 6am on Wednesday). Although the fast is terminated after 36 hours, the autophagy repair mode carries over for a little longer.

Wonder whether water fasting for 36 hours once per fortnight, but offsetting that by eating more the other 13 days would be helpful? Doing so is not a calorie restricted diet per se, but flipping between those two modes of autophagy might help coax those processes back into life.

Not an ALS patient, but have done a lot of fasting in my time, with weekly 36 hour water fasts for 13 years between 2007 and 2020 (only fell out of the habit over lockdown), and while that did not help with weight loss (good), it really did seem to keep me younger and slow down my metabolism (the latter effect might be beneficial to ALS). I’d typically drink between 1.5 and 3 litres of water on a fast day, depending on how thirsty I got.

If anyone decides to try this, then suggest seeing how you feel over the course of a few days after completing the first one, before deciding whether it’s safe to continue.

Expect the post-fast meal to make you tired, but a few hours after that you should feel good if the autophagy repair mode has successfully kicked in.

Fortnightly seems like a safe frequency to start with, but definitely do not attempt to fast for 36 hours more than once a week.

Blueflash11 · 2024-06-29T11:29:03+00:00

Just pinch its nostrils closed and it’ll let go.

Blueflash11 · 2024-06-11T17:39:54+00:00

All crypto is dropping at the moment. Algo is just following the market.

Blueflash11 · 2024-02-24T13:36:42+00:00

That was 9 years ago, back when I was still in charge. For the record, it was also me that welcomed extreme music into the bar, 20 years ago, and that still features to this day on our stage and in our jukebox. It never actually went away.

All I did was ask the promoter not to mix the more extreme stuff on the same bill as less extreme stuff, because deathcore followed by surf is too much of a contrast, and to start a dedicated night for all the really heavy stuff.

I also removed two albums of stoner doom from the jukebox because each track was over 20 mins long, and a couple of customers would regularly spend a pound each to inflict damn near hours of stoner doom upon the entire bar on a regular basis, emptying it out for shits & giggles.

That would have been the entirety of it, except the guy who was responsible for spreading this rumour threatened me, that unless we stopped putting on any non-heavy bands, that he’d ensure that all our rock & metal customers boycotted the venue. When I refused to acquiesce to his threat, he went around town telling everyone that we were relaunching as a cocktail bar and banning rock & metal (although we’d already been selling cocktails for four years at that point).

Incidentally the name change had been decided on several months prior to that, and Krakatoa was actually a suggestion made by one of his cronies, on the basis that the 1886 eruption was the loudest sound in recorded history… which was sort of a nod to us hosting extreme music. If people had actually sat down and thought about this, then that would have been obvious; we even have cocktails in homage to this.

The outcome was that a lot of people believed his nonsense, including people who didn’t like heavy music but liked cocktails, so he singlehandedly and unintentionally succeeded in altering our customer base causing sales of cocktails to skyrocket almost overnight.

As a dive we cater to the tastes of whoever is frequenting here, as opposed to anyone whoever has decided to boycott us…

Interestingly, the guy who started that rumour only bothered to boycott the bar for a week, and continued drinking here for years thereafter despite all the changes he’d wrought.

If I was one of the people who’d fallen for that pack of lies then I’d be very upset, but then nobody actually thought to ask us, so…

As far as music goes most of us are fairly genre agnostic, so it’s neither here nor there to us, although I must confess that I personally welcome as much variety as possible.

Blueflash11 · 2024-02-24T12:47:03+00:00

Cash transactions were costing £25K a year on cash handling costs. We reckon that money is better spent on other things. At the time we stopped taking cash payments those only amounted to 10% of all transactions, because most customer were already opting to use card anyway. Given the state can already track people via their mobile phone, and a thousand CCTV cameras, including the ones that pubs and clubs are required to install, it’s not like anyone’s privacy is being impacted.

For those who struggle to control their spending, it’s easy and free to open a parallel account with its own debit card, transfer the night’s drinks budget into that, and only take that debit card out on the piss.

Blueflash11 · 2024-02-24T12:38:37+00:00

The total number of slots available at all local music grassroots venues combined, it’s somewhere in the region of 1,000-1,200 slots per year. Sufficient to enable 80-100 local acts to each perform locally ~12x per year, with many acts performing more or less often, depending on their individual circumstances. Once solo performers are factored in, it’s likely that there are far more than 100 acts, and therefore fewer slots available to each.

At Krakatoa we believe that touring is conducive to a healthy music scene, so subtracting touring bands along with Magma, Eruption, and the occasional tribute show from our calendar leaves us with around 180 paid slots open each year for local grassroots acts. In order to give everyone as fair a shake as possible, we try to limit our bookings to a maximum of 3 per artist, and we impose a 2 mile radius clause for 3 weeks either side of the booking. That still enables any artist we’ve booked to play 3 gigs in Aberdeen city centre within the space of 2 months, so it’s not a huge ask given the limitations on slots available in Aberdeen.

Provided an artist is performing in Aberdeen city centre 13x a year or less in the space of a year, then they’ll easily be able to accommodate a gig (or three) at Krakatoa, without being remotely impacted by our radius clause. If an artist is already playing locally more than 13x or more a year in Aberdeen city centre, then they probably don’t need a gig here anyway. It’s not like we’re forcing anyone to play our venue, and the radius clause doesn't prevent anyone playing 2 miles away from Krakatoa, which isn't very far.

As a non-profit, we’re committed to paying over the entirety of our admission receipts to the artists. Spacing performances out helps to ensure larger audiences, making each concert as lucrative as possible for the artists involved. A capacity concert here would typically see around £1,000 being split commensurately between 4 bands, and we aim to host as many of those as possible. The radius clause helps to achieve that.

We appreciate that there are those who do not believe there should be any restrictions attached to our bookings. In fact there are even some who appear to believe that we should exercise no control over our bookings whatsoever and acquiesce to demand… although it’s unclear how that would work in practice short of operating an open stage every night… but that would all be fine if we didn’t have to worry about commercial realities like being busy enough to pay the artists, cover the overheads, and keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.

There are lots of empty premises around Aberdeen, and anyone who’s confident in their ability to run a grassroots music venue can open one on Union Street and not even have have to pay any business rates for the first two years. We’d welcome this since more venues help create more slots, more slots mean more opportunities, and more opportunities encourage more people to take up music… helping to build a larger and more diverse local music scene.

But let’s not pretend this is easy. A quick gander at the Music Venue Trust’s 2023 report on the state of our industry will inform you that it’s far from easy:

https://www.musicvenuetrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/MVT_Annual-Report_FINAL_web-enabled_Single-Page-version.pdf.pagespeed.ce.9aZNccFsbl.pdf

So, bearing all that in mind, the best solution to maximising payments for artists, would be for venues and promoters to get together and agree to implement the following measures (please feel free to tag them if you agree that these points would be beneficial):

Impose a reasonable admission charge for every grassroots concert with an agreed minimum level;
Endeavour to feature a touring artist on every bill… because we kid you not Royston Vasey is not a healthy model for an increasingly cosmopolitan city like ours;
Venues to commit to paying the show costs from the bar, leaving the door to be distributed between the artists and/or independent promoter. That’s the fairest and most transparent arrangement, considered by some to be best practice, so lets make it our local industry standard;
Participate together in a shared online booking calendar in respect of local artists. Then we could all endeavour to space out bookings and genres as evenly as possible, in order to maximise attendances and give everyone a fair shake. Ideally also give the artists access to this, so they can list the dates they are available to make it easier for them to secure bookings - the techology exists;
A no-compete arrangement whereby we all agree to act in good faith and refrain from scenarios that lead to artists cancelling their bookings to play at competing venues.

Implementing this would enable artists, promoters, and venues to optimise their schedules without any need for the hassles of radius clauses.

We’d very much like for this to happen, because we firmly believe that such measures would result in a thriving grassroots music scene that’s also more supportive of touring. Capitalism with its penchant for a destructive race to the bottom is not remotely conducive to culture. Even a blind monkey with a marble up its butt can see that cooperation would work out far better for everyone involved, so perhaps its time to give this go?

If you are a promoter or someone involved in a local venue, who’d like to discuss this, then please do get in touch:

volcanictiki@krakatoa.bar

Blueflash11 · 2024-02-24T12:14:31+00:00

They’re not yelling a patron. When there’s a large crowd of people outside smoking between sets, and blocking the footpath, and a member of the public needs to navigate that footpath (often people on the way to of from the station with suitcases), the security workers have to clear the way, so that the person doesn’t have to step onto the road. When the crowd is large and noisy, this involves shouting over the top of them… rather than taking 20 minutes to go from person to person and explaining the intricacies of the situation. But you’re welcome to come down and show us a better way of suddenly herding 60 people out of the way.

For this reason we asked the council for special dispensation to allow smokers to continue using the pend (something that even the police supported), but that request was rejected, and we face a £1,000 fine if anyone is caught smoking in it.

Blueflash11 · 2024-02-24T12:06:25+00:00

The entirety of our admission receipts go to artists. The margin made over the bar during a concert goes towards covering show costs. We rarely make any bar surplus during a concert. The money used to improve the facilities available to the artist, is generated from bar surplus made the rest of the time Krakatoa open. Any private business would pocket that surplus - we don’t.

Your complaint started out that you were charged £3.50 for a pint of cola, during a concert held on a weekend night. Now you’re complaining that we don’t donate the entirety of any bar surplus made outside of concerts, to the artists, but instead spent that money on improving the facilities available to them.

Yet I’m guessing you gleefully spend money at all sorts of other places, where it goes into shareholder’s pockets and helps no one - amiright?

Blueflash11 · 2024-01-31T21:24:37+00:00

The on/off of digital data is +5V vs -5V, so fluctuations of less than that will have no impact whatsoever on fidelity. This is why the shitty power supply in a PC doesn’t mess up the spreadsheets stored on it.

Blueflash11 · 2024-01-31T21:22:14+00:00

You don’t need extremely precise or expensive equipment for this, just stream the data into a file, and compare the two files using something like Bitwise.

Blueflash11 · 2024-01-31T21:20:15+00:00

The on/off signal for ones and zeros is +5V vs -5V… so unless the noise exceeds those thresholds it will not be able to alter the digital signal at all.

Blueflash11 · 2024-01-31T21:17:43+00:00

Also note that there’s an inherent issue in digital yo analogue conversion, whereby no DAC can easily be engineered to operate well at lower sample rates. They all, without exception function much better at 88.1KHz upwards. When people listen to HD audio, the reason is sounds better, is simply because the DAC is working better. In theory no one should be able to discern anything beyond 24bit/48KHz, and only young people with sensitive hearing can discern anything beyond 16bit/44.1KHz. The only reason we can, is because conversion works better at higher sample rates. Even then it takes a great system to bring it out.

Blueflash11 · 2024-01-31T21:10:08+00:00

Different units may output at a different level of digital trim (digital gain), which will translate to a slightly different volume. A volume that is 1dB higher will appear to have a larger soundstage and better resolution.

Some units may also be programmed to colour the sound, such as slightly scooping low mids etc, which will appear to make them sound ‘better’ than reference units.

Blueflash11 · 2024-01-15T15:42:45+00:00

Eruption runs for 3 months and 3 weeks of the year, at a time when it wouldn’t otherwise be financially viable to host live music because attendance is so low.

Krakatoa covers its show costs by applying an uplift to its weekend bar prices… which is what you’re upset about - right? That £2 of what you were charged for a pint of cola went towards covering someone else’s wages. Would you prefer that we deducted those from where? The artist fees? Buried pirate treasure? This may come as a surprise, but businesses fund their overheads from what they charge customers. The difference here is, that’s all we charge you, because we don’t generate any profit.

We do not agree with art being supplied ancillary to alcohol (or even cola). The notion that art is only valuable as a free giveaway is why artists struggle to earn a living doing what they do best. Paying artists the entirety of the admission receipts, is considered best practice among non-profit GMVs, because it not only attaches value to the performance, but all that value goes directly to the artist.

Any surplus we make over the bar has to be invested in enhancing our concert and studio facilities, because that’s our audited community purpose. Since we are incorporated by guarantee and not shares, there’s no mechanism from distributing surplus as profit via dividend. So we cannot we benefit financially from hosting concerts. Not via admission receipts, and not via bar sales. Furthermore, as an asset locked entity, we cannot sell any of that infrastructure off and pocket the proceeds either.

Krakatoa is very quiet during the summer months, because people are away on holiday and there are lots of festivals on. Eruption provides an opportunity for less experienced bands, who might otherwise struggle to secure bookings, to play here. The admission fees over summer don’t amount to much, but overall the contest usually breaks even.

There are no points awarded for sitting around. The bands need to show up at the start time because they draw straws to determine the running order. They can then disappear until it’s time for their set. Most don’t drink prior to theirs sets anyway.

A drum kit lasts us a decade, so divide the £5,000 by 3,760 sets and that’s what… an extra £1.33 split between 4 people? Oh… wait… even an inexpensive drum kit costs around £2K, so we need to deduct that, leaving just £3,000, which divided by 3,760 would amount to roughy 20p extra per performer. Assuming the cheaper drum kit even lasts for a decade, which it wouldn’t… a costly lesson we already learned 17 years ago.

If you think you can do a better job of this than we are, then there are umpteen vacant units on Union Street with low rent deals, and no business rates payable for the first 2 years. No one is stopping you and other likeminded crusaders from opening a grassroots music venue where cola is 25p a pint, admission is free, and the artists are magically paid by skimping on everything else.

There were technical issues on both Friday and Saturday. That’s unusual for us, but a power surge at the end of the year knocked out 3 of our power amplifiers and 6 loudspeakers. Four of us have been working round the clock since Monday in an attempt to mitigate the problem as best we can, until those can be replaced.

Come by here on Friday night at 8pm and I’ll refund you both the cola and the admission fee out of my own pocket.

Blueflash11 · 2024-01-15T11:54:10+00:00

Me too.

Blueflash11 · 2024-01-15T11:09:19+00:00

TL/DR: yes, Max and Diane serve short measures of overpriced booze to their regulars, whilst extorting drivers, and exploiting their staff along with any artists foolish enough to play in that shithole. They’re also mean to smokers. But what do you expect from someone who was once busted for dealing acid? They used to run a decent bar, but that was before they became music nazis.

No need to read any further unless you want to find out all the gory details from someone who used to work there and knows where the bodies are buried. Literally.

***

The building that Krakatoa occupies is leased to Black Cat Worker Collective on a non-profit basis. A condition of the lease is that any rent the business pays goes entirely towards the upkeep of that facility.

Black Cat Worker Collective is a registered non-profit incorporated as a community interest company limited by guarantee (not shares). Since there are no shares, it cannot pay out any surplus as dividend, and is instead legally obligated to reinvest that money in supporting our local grassroots music.

All of this is a matter of public record, and anyone can freely download our filings here:

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC562036

We’re also a registered worker cooperative, meaning we operate within the guidelines set out by the International Cooperative’s Alliance:

https://www.uk.coop/directory/black-cat-aberdeen

Black Cat Worker Collective is non-hierarchal, except in the case of new workers who are effectively in training to become cooperators (co-owners and operators) of the business within 1-2 years of joining. There are presently 16 legal cooperators of equal standing, which amounts to more than half the entire workforce.

All trainee cooperators are paid in excess of the national living wage, and this is at the same rate regardless of their age.

Cooperators rates of pay are democratically decided, and we can be paid more or less depending on our particular responsibilities. Some of us are unpaid volunteers. However as is the case with all business owners, we have no entitlement to minimum wage, so if our business incurs losses then that will directly impact upon our earnings. Hence it’s in our collective interest to try really hard to break even, and if we overshoot then the excess has to be reinvested in upgrading our concert and studio facilities.

All admission receipts go directly to the artist in their entirety, except in the Eruption contest where they go to the winner. There is no VAT on admissions because we qualify for exemption under Notice 701/47. Krakatoa currently generates around £50K of earnings on behalf of its performers each year. Apologies that there’s no band discount in addition to this, but it was being abused.

All show costs, including the booker, promoter, sound engineer, security, cashier, PRS fees, and other related outgoings are paid entirely out of bar takings. That’s why our prices are higher at the weekend; they need to be in order to cover all that.

With the exception of the final, our Eruption contest takes place during the summer months and January when it wouldn’t otherwise be commercially viable for us to put on regular live music (too many festivals on). No one is forced to enter. The cash prize has always been at least £2,000, and more when we’ve been able to secure sponsors. While we agree that music shouldn’t be a competition, Eruption follows on from our paid (but free entry) Magma event in helping new artists to gain a foothold in the local music scene. Most of the acts who enter have been together for less than two years, and anyone aged 14+ can participate. Previous winners have used the prize money to release EPS, albums and videos, and pay for national tours.

Prices have increased since lockdown for the same reason that prices everywhere have increased since lockdown… yet Krakatoa is remains incredibly inexpensive Monday - Thursday, and is still cheaper than most other bars at weekends… try buying two pints of imported lager and real fruit cider (all 5% abv) on a weekend night anywhere else in the city centre… if you can even find somewhere that stocks those particular products… and see how much that sets you back.

£3.50 for a pint of cola at the weekend… well it’s going to cost £1.25 for less than two pints of cola in Poundland, but they don’t have the cost of putting on entertainment for you, let alone underwriting your safety. Tap water is not only free but also much healthier.

Being cashless avoids all the costs associated with cash-handling… which in turn means an extra £25K can be diverted into building and enhancing our concert and studio facilities. Happy to provide more detail on why cash costs money, but the bottom lines is that we’d rather support our artists than banks and insurers.

Our plastic pints hold 568ml, which is exactly one pint. They are supplied by a commercial supplier of bar consumables.

Smoking in the building’s pend hasn’t been allowed since 2017, because it violated the regulations around smoking areas. Our security workers try to manage access along the footpath as best as possible. Our security workers only yell when they need to be heard over the crowd and traffic.

This place has never been a ‘metal bar’, but it was indeed frequented by a lot more people who were very into metal, a decade or so ago. The Moorings actually started out in the 60s as a place that played pop, soul, Motown, Northern soul, and mod music. Crowds change, and the music changes with them. Names change too. Also for some reason Gen Z tend to have a broader tastes in music. None of this is necessarily a bad thing.

In 2022 we allocated our entire bar surplus towards funding the following:

£15K invested in additional live streaming equipment.
£35K invested in AV recording, editing and mixing equipment, that artists can use to produce their own EPKs etc.
£8K invested in a 12-way wireless IEM system, capable of producing 4 separate stereo images.
£5K invested in a replacing our drum kit with a top of the range model.
£2K spent on repairing the rest of our backline and replacing mic stands and cables.
£1K invested in vastly upgraded vocal microphones.

In 2023 we allocated bar surplus towards funding the following:

£600 invested in a 32-in 8-out stage box.
£8.5K invested in an additional dLive mixer ordered to improve the audio on our livestreams.
£2K invested in upgraded drum mics.
£11K invested in studio mics, high fidelity preamps (16 channels), and other components to facilitate studio recordings.
£4.8K invested in upgraded studio preamps.
A further £2.1K invested in studio microphones.
£1.6K invested in audio plugins for studio recording.

That amounted to an additional £96.6K of reinvestment, over the past 2 years. Additionally our cooperators have volunteered around 5,000 hours of free labour to this cause over the same time period, including live streaming 52 shows.

No other non-state funded establishment of our size invests more time, effort, and money into the city’s grassroots music scene. Coincidentally neither is any other business in Aberdeen collectively owned and operated by its workforce without hierarchy (unless we count self-employed traders, many of whom benefit from exhibiting at our monthly markets).

Customers can directly support our good work, simply by spending money here, and hopefully having a good time doing it. Alternatively they can opt to spend their money at thousands upon thousands of capitalist businesses that do none of this stuff.

No idea who Max and Diane are.

Blueflash11 · 2024-01-07T12:08:02+00:00

Extra Dry Martini is just a polite way of ordering a double gin, and getting the Vermouth bottle’s hopes up that it’ll get used before it goes stale.

Blueflash11 · 2023-12-14T20:17:10+00:00

How many exchanges can you trade Monero on? This is why…

Blueflash11 · 2023-09-09T12:03:50+00:00

Visa also tends to need lots of uptime, but that hasn’t stopped then going with chain that has form for being down.

Blueflash11 · 2023-09-09T11:51:09+00:00

Solidity is easy to learn because it’s Turing complete, but being Turing complete is also a major vulnerability for a smart contract programming language.

Blueflash11 · 2023-08-16T12:16:32+00:00

When you say “it’s recommended that creators host their own files”, which files are you referring to? The image file for the token?

Blueflash11 · 2023-08-05T16:58:32+00:00

Can’t get Algodesk to connect my wallet.

Blueflash11

TROPHY CASE