Notices by David McMullin (mcmullin@musicians.today)

@jrp
I used to follow the data and statistics closely but I don’t anymore, because even when the level of COVID transmission is relatively low, it’s not low enough for me to go around unprotected then come home to care for immunocompromised family members in their late 80s. Just in my own life I know multiple people who catch it more than once a year, and several times since the pandemic “ended.” That’s enough reason for me to keep wearing the mask.

@jrp
Each time you get COVID, maybe nothing bad happens, and maybe you get permanent disabling fatigue or a heart attack or brain damage. The more times you roll the dice, the more the chance of a bad outcome. If I’m wrong, I will have worn a mask and been thought a weirdo for nothing. (That’s what I hope!) But if I’m right, 25 years from now I could be one of the only healthy people of my generation still around.

@skinnylatte
“There’s maybe something here about the lack of national coherence that makes a lot of ‘America is X and Y’ feel incomplete.”

Definitely. This is something everyone everyone underestimates, including Americans.

@skinnylatte

A general observation from an American who is interested in the outside world and enjoys talking to people from all over:

• Everyone knows us better than we know them.

• No one knows us as well as they think they do.

@skinnylatte
I think a lot of our problems come from Americans who fail to appreciate or accept this. They think there is one way and it’s their way. All the evidence to the contrary—the mere fact of such diversity—drives them nuts and they treat it as a threat.

A spinoff of the John Gotti trial,* the defendants were (allegedly**) high-ranking members and associates of the (alleged**) Gambino Family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gotti

3/

This was a RICO racketeering case with 6 co-defendants and various charges spread among them. The headline ones were three murders, including the infamous, very public 1985 killing of the former Gambino boss Paul Castellano and Tommy Billotti, as they rolled up in their car to Sparks steakhouse on E46th St. This was the hit that made Gotti the new boss.
5/

The other murder charge was for Tommy Spinelli, an aging mobster who disappeared shortly after testifying to a grand jury in 1989. The rest of the charges I don’t remember clearly now, but they mostly had to do with corrupt control of the private sanitation business by one of the defendants.
6/

Okay, I’m pretty sure this was about me.

So: here follows Part 1 of a long thread on my time with the mob.

Re @NadiaPurge : https://musician.social/@NadiaPurge/116235358678396610

cc: @ShaulaEvans , @inpc , apologies to anyone else I may have forgotten who expressed curiosity at one time or another.
1/

#BiographicalTrivia

My first job out of college was as a paralegal with a New York law firm that specialized in criminal defense. It was a small firm that handled all kinds of things, and I was involved in many of them, but the main case I was responsible for was a major mafia trial.
2/

*A friend of mine who graduated two years ahead of me had the same job on the Gotti trial. They asked him to help find a replacement when he went off to grad school, and that’s how I got the job.

** “Allegedly”—It’s an old habit, and maybe a still-binding professional obligation, for me to specify this. I may not keep it up consistently due to character limits, but for the record: Nothing I’m about to say should be taken as acknowledgment of anyone’s guilt or membership in anything.
4/

Aside—I thought of this the other day when @skinnylatte mentioned a racist Australian saying he was surprised they have white guys as garbage men in San Francisco. I don’t know about SF and I don’t know about now, but in NYC in the 60s to 90s, they sure did: and the industry was run by a very specific kind of white guy that you don’t want to mess with.
7/

@skinnylatte
You must love the northern Chinese way of making potatoes, with tons of vinegar and sugar…

@Violinknitter

Quick, name three important businessmen from 18th century Vienna.

No?

Okay now try composers.

@skinnylatte
If you’re adventurous you can dip anything in anything :)

@skinnylatte
Hmm, but isn’t you tiao getting perilously close to donut territory?

(I know it’s different: a little crunchier and chewier, and not sweet. For the record, I think I like everything on both your lists, what you want for breakfast and what you don’t like being told you’re supposed to want for breakfast.)

Life has intervened as usual, so I’m still at this; I’ve finished a first pass of proofreading, putting my choral/orchestral score under the microscope, and I’m about 3/4 of the way through updating the computer file with the corrections.

1/too many

https://musicians.today/@mcmullin/115279184853181293

@composers
#ContemporaryMusic #orchestra #ChoralMusic #NewMusic #OriginalMusic #wip #composers

I’ve only done a tiny bit of adding, deleting or recomposing. I’m not finding much substantively wrong, but there’s a notation correction of some kind to make in almost every bar of almost every part. I’m kind of amazed.

Natural signs continue to drive me crazy. It’s hard to be consistent with them, so I’ve had to think explicitly about what rules I’m following.

Here follows a spontaneous thread-treatise on my use of natural signs. Proceed at your own risk of excruciating boredom. Or if this is your thing, enjoy.

For context, my music is generally atonal, but not always and not completely. I don’t use key signatures, but there are often tonal melodic and harmonic implications.

https://musicians.today/@mcmullin/115279204613718492

@inthehands
I feel like I’ve had this conversation here before (sorry) and I’m not the best person to say this (@venya maybe?), but since no one else has yet as far as I can see:

The efficiency/risk trade-off is especially apparent in military contexts. A maximally efficient military operation, using the bare minimum of necessary manpower and 100% utilization of committed resources, can be completely disrupted by almost anything the enemy might do.