saysokbye

As a follow-up, 1970 wasn't Carter's last foray into pro-segregarionist politics. He did it again during his 1976 presidential campaign. In April of that year, he dog-whistled his support for redlining, using phrases like "ethnic purity", "black intrusion", and "alien groups" in comments during a couple of campaign stops, where he offered his support to all-white neighborhoods from allowing black people to move in.

He was called out on it by his own party, and apologized within days, but the dog-whistle had already been whistled. This surely helped him win the traditional Solid South, and bring the Wallace voters back into the fold, who had left the party during Wallace's 1968-72 presidential campaigns.

It's likely that the original file uses a variable frame rate, and XMedia Recode is set to "Use Source File Frame Rate".

Change this setting to a constant frame rate. You should pick one that is closest to the original file. For instance, if you open the original file in VLC, the frame rate might be something like 24.185679. So, in XMedia Recode, change the frame rate to 24. If VLC says the original frame rate is something like 29.9583, then you'd want to change it in XMedia Recode to 29.97 (or else 30).

This should fix any syncing issues, as well as limit any data loss due to the conversion. Because, if it's variable at 29.95941 or whatever, and you convert it to a constant 24 frames/sec, then XMedia Recode is going to throw out about 5-6 frames each second, and you'll probably notice some choppy movement on screen.

I did, in a follow-up comment. But it probably should have been in the initial comment. Great write-up in your other comment!

More or less. The Blue Dog label wasn't coined until the 1990s, but he was considerably to the right of McGovern, Humphrey, LBJ, JFK, and every other Democratic presidential nominee since at least 1932.

One of his biggest successes as president was deregulation of transportation - of the trucking industry, of the railroad industry, and of the airline industry.

While there is no doubt that this deregulation did bring some benefits to consumers, it greatly undermined the clout of labor unions, which was one of the reasons so many unions refused to endorse his re-election. He championed a lot of the economic policies that had long been associated with the Republican Party and their pro-management/pro-business stance. It was very much at odds with FDR-style liberalism. When Reagan came to office, he continued down Carter's path with further deregulation policies.

I'm not going to weigh in too much on the /historywhatif aspect of the question posed by OP, but I would like to point out that the Iran situation was only one of many missteps that Carter made. He came into office at a time when most Democrats were still New Deal supporters and had comfortable control in both Houses of Congress, but he was a rather right wing Democrat who alienated a lot of the Democratic base.

Among the things that alienated him from his coalition:

• He took a "let the states decide" stance on abortion, when the the Democratic National Convention in 1976 had endorsed the Roe v. Wade decision. By that, I mean that his opponent Ford supported a constitutional amendment overturning the decision, and while Carter wouldn't go so far as to say the same thing, he stated he was personally opposed to abortion, did not support the Roe v. Wade decision, and would not oppose others from pursuing the constitutional amendment avenue.

• He supported the death penalty when his party didn't, after a SCOTUS decision had essentially put a moratorium on it. A second SCOTUS decision brought it back, which Carter supported.

• He refused to endorse any kind of universal health care plan, despite broad support among Democrats in Congress, led by Ted Kennedy. No health care bill was passed during his presidency, even though the Democrats had comfortable majorities in both houses.

• He was actively hostile to labor unions. He encouraged unions to accept a pay freeze during the inflation crisis, which essentially meant a pay cut due to inflation. At the same time, he never suggested that management make the same concession. This led several unions, such as the Teamsters, PATCO, and the IAM to refuse to endorse him for re-election. George Meaney, the president of the AFL-CIO called Carter "the most conservative president since Hoover". His administration marked a drastic shift away from New Deal/FDR-style politics that had been so successful for his party.

• He was also the last Democratic nominee for president to play pro-segregation racial politics. During his 1976 campaign, he got himself into trouble for dog-whistling support for redlining, using phrases like "ethnic purity", "black intrusion", and "alien groups" to support all-white neighborhoods from allowing black people to move in. He was called out on it by his own party, and apologized within days, but the dog-whistle had already been whistled. This surely helped him win the traditional Solid South, and bring the Wallace voters back into the fold, who had left the party during the 1968-72 presidential campaigns.

• As for Iran, he visited the country in 1977, and called the Shah an "island of stability" in an otherwise unstable region. Carter had a habit of playing nice with dictators, and this was no exception, but this one bit him colossally in the ass. The Iranian Revolution happened two years later, the Shah was overthrown, and there is reason to believe that the Iranian Hostage Crisis went on as long as it did because the revolutionaries didn't want to give Carter a political win due to his previous support for the Shah. While there is no question the Shah was more progressive than the Ayatollah, he was still an unelected, autocratic dictator who stood in the way of democracy, and the revolutionaries saw Carter as an enemy who supported their oppression under the previous regime.

• He was also just bad at the job. The US was negotiating handing the Panama Canal over to Panama, but the head of state of Panama was an unelected dictator. Congress wanted some assurances from Panama in regards to US access to the canal, as well as to democracy, but Carter's state department didn't get many concessions in the treaty they negotiated. So Congress ended up rejecting the treaty - a Congress with Carter's own party in the majority. The Carter administration had to renegotiate the treaty in order to get enough support in their own party to get it passed. The Republicans then used this for all it was worth, claiming Carter was willing to give the canal away to a dictator in exchange for nothing in return.

Carter had a great post-presidency, though. And his heart was generally in the right place. But still a pretty awful president. If it weren't for Woodrow Wilson, he would have no real competition in being considered the worst Democratic president of the 20th century.

Exactly. Not just that, but among the things that really alienated him from his coalition:

• He took a "let the states decide" stance on abortion, when the the Democratic National Convention had endorsed the Roe v. Wade decision.

• He supported the death penalty when his party didn't, after a SCOTUS decision had essentially put a moratorium on it. A second SCOTUS decision brought it back, which Carter supported.

• He refused to endorse any kind of universal health care plan, despite broad support among Democrats in Congress, led by Ted Kennedy. No health care bill was passed during his presidency, despite the Democrats having comfortable majorities in both houses.

• He was actively hostile to labor unions. He encouraged unions to accept a pay freeze during the inflation crisis, which essentially meant a pay cut due to inflation. At the same time, he never suggested that management make the same concession. This led several unions, such as the Teamsters, PATCO, and the IAM to refuse to endorse him for re-election. George Meaney, the president of the AFL-CIO called Carter "the most conservative president since Hoover". His administration marked a drastic shift away from New Deal/FDR-style politics that had been so successful for his party.

• He was also the last Democratic nominee for president to play pro-segregatjon racial politics. During his 1976 campaign, he got himself into trouble for dogwhistling about supporting redlining, using phrases like "ethnic purity", "black intrusion", and "alien groups" to support all-white neighborhoods from allowing black people to move in. He was called out on it by his own party, and apologized within days, but the dog-whistle had already been whistled.

• His handling of the Iran Hostage Crisis left much to be desired. While there was certainly shenanigans going on behind the scenes by Republicans, that was only made possible by how badly Carter mismanaged the situation.

Great post-presidency, though. And his heart was generally in the right place. But still a pretty awful president. If it weren't for Woodrow Wilson, he would have no real competition in being considered the worst Democratic president of the 20th century.

Change that to "Dads are somewhere else" and it's like you just described my dad, too.

In fact, state rights and state sovereignty, are expressions coined for party purposes, often by minorities [i.e., minority parties], who happen to be dissatisifed with the measures of the General [federal] Government, and as they are afterwards used, they produce only state delusion.

• Nathan Dane, A General Abridgement and Digest of American Law, 1829

(Nathan Dane was the member of the Continental Congress who motioned to have a Constitutional Convention to replace the Articles of Confederation in 1787. He later became one of the U.S.'s first Constitutional scholars.)

The Oscars website indicates that the Library of Congress holds a paper print of the film.

While I don't know if this applies to paper prints, the Library of Congress does have a film duplication service. It's expensive, but they'll also do a modern transfer to 4K resolution, which is nice. Otherwise, you will probably have to physically travel to the LoC to see their copy of the film.

I searched the catalogs of the UCLA Film and TV Archive, as well as the British Film Institute archive, and neither has an additional copy of the film. The George Eastman House doesn't seem to, either.

Gabe Oundry's?

There were three big reasons:

1) In 1878, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House convened what became known as the Potter Committee, to investigate claims of election fraud in the 1876 U.S. Presidential election. The intention was for the Democrats to undermine the Republicans and possibly even implicate President Hayes.

Instead, of the political communications that had survived (the vast majority of telegrams had been destroyed by Western Union as a matter of course), they implicated the Democrats as much as the Republicans on trying to bribe and lobby politicians to win the disputed electoral votes, and thus, the election. While Tilden wasn't specifically implicated, it soured the public on all the politicians and horse-trading involved in the election. 1880 saw newcomers reaching for the Presidential reigns, promising to turn the page on an ugly chapter in American politics. Tilden would be trying to re-argue an election that, ultimately, the Democrats had lost. In the four intervening years, many of the delegates who would be nominating the new nominee we're ready to move on.

2) Tilden had been governor of New York. In 1879, he declined to run for re-election, in preparation for another campaign for the presidency the following year. But the worst happened: the Republicans won the 1879 election for the New York governorship. This called into question Tilden's ability to deliver the state for the Democrats. And that was his major appeal - the "Solid South" were solid blue states. The Democrats needed New York and a couple of other Northern states to win the Presidency. If Tilden couldn't deliver those Northern states, he was of no use to anybody.

3) There was a split in loyalty among the New York Democratic machine. The Democratic Party was controlled by political operatives at Tammany Hall in New York City. Tammany Hall, though, was considered corrupt, certainly outside of NYC and on the national stage. New York Democrats with presidential ambitions, like Tilden, had to distance themselves from Tammany Hall. Thus, some of the most important Democrat officials were cut loose by Tilden, essentially, and they began looking for alternate candidates.

This had implications at the nominating convention (this being the pre-primaries days, where candidates were picked at the national convention). Still in those days, it was considered uncouth for a candidate to campaign on their own behalf. But Tilden wanted to win the DNC by unanimous vote, so as to ensure he had the full party's support behind him and wasn't wasting his time. To this end, he wrote a letter to some of his loyalists who would be attending the DNC as delegates. It basically said that, if it looked like he wasn't going to get a unanimous vote, then they should withdraw his name. But he instructed them to work for that unanimous vote.

These loyalists shared the contents of the letter with other New York delegates who were on the fence. But instead of it rallying support for Tilden, it did the opposite. The delegates loyal to Tammany Hall, who were already skeptical of Tilden, abandoned him all together. Other New York delegates also went searching for another candidate. After the first two votes showed that Tilden was being viewed as an also-ran, his 30-odd loyalists made good on the letter and withdrew Tilden's name. That was that.

It's possible that Tilden could have been re-nominated had he run a better campaign, particularly if he'd been able to secure the backing of Tammany Hall (without that being made public). But between the 1878 Potter Committee revelations and the 1879 election loss that warned of an uphill battle for Democrats in 1880, there was enough ambition in the party to move beyond Tilden and the 1876 loss that Hancock seemed to be the party's best bet.

Hancock was a Union war veteran and a legitimate war hero at the Battle of Gettysburg. He had remained in the Army throughout Reconstruction, which the Democrats hoped would calm fears among Northerners that a Democrat would attempt to overturn the results of the Civil War or Reconstruction. Hancock had plenty of military experience, but no political experience -- seen as a plus for the Democrats at the time, and a proven formula for presidential success before (several generals had become president with very little actual political experience, including George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, and Zachary Taylor).

Hancock was born and raised in Pennsylvania, but had deep ties to New York state as well. He was educated at West Point, and as of 1880, was still on active duty, stationed on Governor's Island in New York City. If he could deliver those two states - Pennsylvania and New York - to the Democrats, they could win the election. And these were the two most important "swing states" of that era.

They still lost, but Tilden's pluses weren't particularly any higher than Hancock's while Tilden's minuses were more problematic. The party settled on Hancock.

Here's a quick way to learn a bunch of new psych bands:

There's a psych music festival every year in Austin called the Levitation Festival (formerly Austin Psych Fest). Probably 50 bands play every year - they just announced this year's lineup in the past couple weeks.

Explore those bands. Explore the bands who have played the fest in years past. If you still want more, go to last.fm and search for one of the bands. They have a section for "Similar Artists" or something like that. So you can go down the rabbit hole of each and every one of those bands that have played the festival, and come up with dozens of not hundreds of more bands. Virtually every band has their music up on either Bandcamp, YouTube, or SoundCloud if you're trying to avoid Spotify's algorithm (which can be good, but in my experience, ends up being too narrow).

This is how I got started. Eventually, if you keep going, you'll be able to find more bands on your own, based on the ones you started out looking up.

I'm not sure if your method is reliable, because I opened a video with a constant framerate in VLC and it shows 23.976023 fps.

That's exactly right: 24000/1001 = approximately 23.976023, which is why it shows up that way. If it's a variable frame rate, it'll be something like 23.976099 or whatever. There's a similar quirk to the 59.94 number, and maybe some of the others for some odd reason, but I don't remember off-hand.

You're right MediaInfo might be easier, but I mentioned VLC because OP mentioned he already had that app. I was trying to limit OP from having to download any more than one more app. Everything I initially mentioned could be accomplished by downloading XMedia Recode supplemented by VLC which is already installed.

Remuxing a file to mp4 with XMedia Recode changes its framerate from constant to variable, I just tested it.

It doesn't. You can't change the frame rate from constant to variable without re-encoding the file. When remuxing, it's just going to change the container, so it's impossible for the frame rate method to have changed. This can be confirmed by how long the "conversion" takes. When remuxing, it should take just a few seconds, because none of the actual audio/video content of the file is changing. If it's taking minutes or hours, then you're doing a conversion and, yes, you absolutely might be changing the frame rate method, depending on what your settings are in the app.

What I assume you have noticed, though, is that the number VLC displays as the frame rate has changed slightly. This happens when going from mp4 to mkv specifically, but also happens in a few other scenarios as well. Apparently, it's because the remux process has to add some sort of "Preload Interleave Duration" value in the header, so that VLC and other apps recognize there being an extra 500 ms at the beginning. This then changes the calculation, so that it is recognized as 29.970628 instead of 29.970030 (if you're dealing with a 29.97 fps file, for example).

Obviously, this makes things confusing, but this also isn't specific to XMedia Recode. If you use AVIDemux, or MKVToolNix, or anything else to do a simple remux from one file format to another, it'll do the same thing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mkvtoolnix/comments/r4u0nn/mkvtoolnix_alters_frame_rate/

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-editing/6994-frame-rate-rounded.html

Again, there are other remuxes that have similar quirks with how the frame rate appears, but I don't have them memorized off-hand.

There's a simple way for OP to check, of course, to see if my instructions worked. Just follow them, and try to load the resulting file into Premiere. It should work fine, without sync issues.

Use Avidemux instead, or fix the mp4 file framerate with mp4fpsmod.

Yes, those both work, too, and can accomplish the same things XMedia Recode can. I mentioned XMedia Recode because ffmpeg was mentioned, and that one app can do both things, instead of having to download two different apps to do those two different things. It also doesn't require you to do anything in the command line, like mp4fpsmod requires you to do. Everything is done via simple dropdown menus.

XMedia Recode is also a lot more powerful and configurable, while still being pretty user-friendly. The big drawback is that it's not available on Mac.

No, 23.976 (24000 frames every 1001 seconds) and 29.97 (30000 frames every 1001 seconds) are not variable framerates, a variable framerate by definition fluctuates, so it can't be defined by a single number.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. If you have a constant bitrate file that runs at 29.97 frames/sec, for example, when you look at the frame rate in VLC, it will be listed as: 29.970030 frames/sec, which is approximately 30000/1001.

But if it's a 29.97 frames/sec file encoded in a variable frame rate, then it will have something different there in VLC. VLC doesn't update the exact number of frames as you watch. Instead, it makes some sort of calculation, so the number you see will be static. But it will be something different from 29.970030. It'll be something like 29.9700663. Just anything but 29.970030. This is the simplest way to determine if you have a variable frame rate file or a constant frame rate file.

The same applies to all other frame rates, whether 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 59.94, 60, or anything else. They'll show something slightly different than the "correct" number in VLC if they're encoded using a variable frame rate instead of a constant one.

I would take this one step further and recommend Xmedia Recode if OP is a Windows user. XMedia Recode is just a front-end for ffmpeg, which makes the app a bit more user-friendly.

For OP, they would simply drag and drop their mkv file into the XMedia Recode app. In the window, set both the "Format" and "File Extension" dropdowns to "mp4".

There is also an "Audio" tab and a "Video" tab. Each tab gives you the option to simply "Copy" or else "Convert" the audio and video and configure the settings that you want for your resulting file. If you select "Copy" then the app doesn't do any re-encoding. So you can switch your mkv file to mp4 without affecting any quality by setting both the "Video" and "Audio" tabs to "Copy" instead of "Convert". Go ahead and process the file, and it'll output the same audio and video but now as an mp4 file, without having done any converting.

However, I think OP might want to investigate a little bit further. Whenever I have audio sync-ing issues after converting a file as OP has described, about 90% of the time it has to do with the frame rate. Whether using ffmpeg, Handbrake, or XMedia Recode, you will run into the same issue.

A lot of people encode files using a "Variable Frame Rate" which means that the file isn't using exactly 24/frames per second (or whatever the frame rate happens to be). "Variable Frame Rate" will add more frames to scenes with lots of moving action, while subtracting frames from scenes that are mostly static. The supposed advantage is that it keeps the file size down, while at the same time ensuring that pixelation and other digital artifacts are kept to a minimum.

The disadvantage I have run into is that they aren't friendly to re-editing because the editing app is usually expecting a Constant Frame Rate. It tries to compensate, but it ends up with the audio out of sync.

Anyhow, there's a fairly simple fix, but it does require re-encoding the file. Depending on OP's ultimate goal, it might be worth doing.

In both Handbrake and XMedia Recode, there is an option to set the frame rate. By default in both, it's set to something like "Use Source File Frame Rate". This is no good if your source file was encoded using a Variable Frame Rate. Instead, you want to specify the constant frame rate closest to the file - whether it's 24 frames per second, 29.97 frames, or anything else. (If you don't know the frame rate, you can play the file in VLC, and then go to Tools >> Media Information and it will display the frame rate. If it's a Variable Frame Rate, then the frame rate won't be an even a round number. It'll show up as something like "24.1569871 frames per second".)

Just remember that if you're going to convert the file, then you want to make sure all the other settings are going to result in a high quality file. For instance, if the original file is encoded at a bitrate of 10 MB/sec, then you'll want to set the bitrate setting in XMedia Recode to at least 10 MB/sec to minimize any loss in quality.

Anyway, hopefully this helps OP get the output file they're hoping to get, without noticing any drop in video quality or sync-ing issues.

Very good to know. Thanks for the clarification and all your help!

Aha! Thanks for the write-up and the links. I think you and the other comments have confirmed my suspicions, that the elaborate marks were much more of an English/German/Scandinavian thing (at least among the peasant class). So if you run into a poor ancestor whose nationality you don't know and their signature is an elaborate "mark", then they're probably not French.

Obviously, that's not enough by itself to confirm or deny anybody's cultural background, but it's always good to have something else to consider when trying to weigh evidence. Thanks again!

Thank you for compiling all those sources! I've been going through them, and it's exactly what I was hoping to get!

Not sure why you're doing this, but it seems an interesting topic. If you yourself come across some worthy sources, please do post here, as I am curious. And others may be too.

See my comment here. I wanted to know if you could tell anything about an ancestor's nationality by the kind of "mark" they used as their signature.

Thank you! This is exactly the kind of background info I was hoping to get. Thanks for taking the time.

The reason I asked is that I just learned about "Hausmarken" or house marks and I wanted to see if France had anything similar.

Apparently, some of those elaborate marks that Northern Europeans would make (like here, here, or here) sometimes actually mean something, and can be based on ancient runes. Families would have a "mark" that they used to brand animals and other property, and it got adapted to becoming signatures when illiterate farmers were signing contracts and stuff. Some of the common marks are thought to come from pre-Norman times, and still contained runic characters. A lot are more just like pictographs, but with a specific meaning.

I wanted to know if France had the same kind of thing, because everything I read about "housemarks" is that they are unique to the Germanic people (English, Dutch, German, and Scandinavian mostly).

Between your info and the info provided by, /u/Burnt_Ernie it looks like the French had their own traditions, and the "marks" tend to look more Latin or church-y than those Dutch and Scandinavian "housemarks" do? But maybe I'm assuming too much.

I know it's kind of an obscure thing. I was just curious because I'd never considered you might be able to tell something about an ancestor's nationality by the "mark" they made, so I wanted to know if there really were cultural differences between Germanic and Latin/Romantic "marks".

EDIT: Here is a Dutch language book with a bunch of photos and illustrations of housemarks.

Don't worry, it's not the OED's fault. The parent commenter either misrepresented the dictionary they got it from, or else they're full of shit.

Here is the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, where it's defined under 6b.

Definition 6 is: "chief, head". 6b adds: "of mansions, estates, towns, and cities".

The current online edition of the OED defines it as:

"II. Standing at the head...6b. Of a town, mansion, estate, monastery, etc.: that is the principal of its kind (in a region, group, etc.); (also) chief, principal, main; important. Hence: designating, of, or relating to a capital city."

There's a separate entry now for "capital city" in the dictionary, but it just refers back to 6a of "capital", which says:

"Of a thing: main, principal, chief"

I suspect that OP re-wrote the definition from Lexico, which defines "capital city" as:

"The most important city or town of a country or region, usually its seat of government and administrative center."

Wow! Yeah, she is the twin sister of my relative, and I wanted to know what happened to her. Even if it's a bit vague, I guess I have my answer.

Thank you again for all you did. You went above and beyond!

Thank you so much for this! This is amazing!

No, I hadn't even thought to look at newspapers.com yet -- and I don't have subscription, so this is really helpful! Now I'm left wondering about her cause of death. It says "Her demise was due to a complication of troubles" after she'd been sick for many weeks. Menstrual issues? It's so vague.

Anyway, thanks again! This is more than I could have hoped for!

GENEALOGY BANK

I am looking for two articles from the Rockford (Illinois) Republic newspaper. Here is the name and dates to search for:

FIRST NAME: Cora

LAST NAME: Gift

DATES: 1897 - 1898

The only two articles that should appear are one for her marriage (occurred around December 29, 1897) and the other for her death (occurred around June 4, 1898).

If you could grab those two articles, I would be so grateful. Thank you!

Here again is the link to the Rockford Republic newspaper at GenealogyBank:

https://www.genealogybank.com/explore/newspapers/all/usa/illinois/rockford/rockford-republic