HN user
I just listened for the first time, and yeah, it's well presented for a general audience, but I was completely unable to believe that they thought that the steps they took in their search made logical sense. It's like the reality TV version of a lost media search. You don't need experts to find a lost pop song, you just need the internet!
You're right, it was 10 days, not quite weeks. It's not important but here are some of the miscommunications and apologies:
November 18: "The cloud server which hosts one of our database, db141, experienced a disk issue. As a result, a small number of wikis hosted on db141 are unavailable. [...] While cloud14 has been reinstalled, we will have to send the affected disks to professional data recovery. The earliest ETA for having wikis restored is potentially early next week. [...] Our number #1 goal is to restore the data on the disks affected so that wikis are restored versus using a backup which could be various days old"
November 24: An update to the situation was embedded in an unnecessary meeting on Discord: "Our Miraheze Meeting is starting now! Join us while we talk about everything Miraheze, such as recent policy proposals and we'll be providing an update on the db141 issue We'll answer any questions you have and will listen to any comments or concerns."
November 28: "I understand the frustration, and we have not yet given up hope on data recovery, so you can still wait if that is your choice. But I also don't want to give people any false hope. It is not looking super great for data recovery. I won't completely rule it out yet, and I can't say anything definitively. Venues will be opened shortly for requesting that wikis be recreated from scratch (with images at least still intact) if that is your wish [...] in the recent Miraheze Meeting it has been brought up that our communication has been less than ideal, and some feel some questions have been dodged and/or ignored. I have gone back and looked at our responses to some questions, and I can see how this could be assumed [...] I would like to clear one thing up now. Something that seems to keep being brought up is that we sent the drives to a data recovery service. This was not true [...] Owen currently has the drives and has for a few days. They are not at a data recovery service. This was due to some internal miscommunication within SRE, and is something that is being addressed [...] Once again we apologise for this miscommunication and we are working to resolve our internal communication problems [...] Indeed, over the last few days, it would appear that information was not properly being relayed within our own team which led to some breakdowns in communication. Clearly, different members had different insights and views on certain topics. This has led to a strain in communications and we are working to rectify that."
I don't think it was ever explained how the data was recovered.
My impression from reading their Discord server yesterday is this:
- Volunteers from Miraheze planned to create a paid wiki hosting service to supplement Miraheze called WikiForge
- Several of those volunteers left Miraheze to start a free wiki host called WikiTide
- The remaining volunteers were burnt out already and decided to call it quits
- There are some talks of handing off Miraheze to another group of volunteers
FWIW I had a horrible experience using Miraheze last year:
- September: I created my wiki
- November: Miraheze had an error with a drive and over 25% of their wikis were lost. It took them weeks to admit the extent of this error and that they had no plans to use a professional recovery service
- Early December: I recreated my wiki and rewrote it (250+ articles)
- Late December: Miraheze recovered the back-ups they thought they had lost and said they would merge the new and old versions of recreated wikis. Somehow, due to 'someone unplugging a hard drive', they lost all of the content I'd written since November.
I've since learned my lesson about making local back ups, but come on. It was clear there had been tons of technical and communication problems for a long time.
I don't know. When OP describes their community of "furry queer hackers," I can't help but notice that the link to the autism spectrum goes overlooked. While it's very good to find one's people, it's dangerous to define yourself by these kinds of online personas. Autistic people tend to be drawn to and identify with cartoons, animals, and exaggerated displays of emotion — from deficits in the subtler forms of empathy or theory of mind, I don't know. Combine this sometimes highly visible trait with their (our) tendency to obsess and dominate online conversations and it's not hard to see why outsiders are uninterested in paying a visit to the deeper end of autistic-coded fandom where furries, anime fans, and children's media obsessives collect. I'm cishet autistic but I knew a lot of "furry queer hacker" types online when I was a teenager. I think that autistic people are uniquely vulnerable to over-identification with their online disguises; replacing human connections with pseudonymous communities that don't ask too much of them. I'm not telling OP to touch grass or whatever, because I don't know OP, but maybe this will resonate with someone.
The article asks two different questions, one about the decline of the instrumental hit and one about the decline of the instrumentalist, and doesn't go far to answer either.
I'd be interested to see a breakdown of the instrumental hits throughout the decades. Is the decline simply due to classical and jazz going out of fashion? How many are soundtracks? Surely most modern instrumental hits are EDM, yes? This data-driven history could use some more data.
As for the other question, the article's examples of popular instrumentalists were much more famous as bandleaders than as clarinetists or trombonists. Cheap recorded music and digital music production has pushed both the band and the virtuoso performer out of popular culture, replaced by the solo artist and their multi-instrumentalist producer (sometimes the same person). This is true even outside of hip hop. I bet a non trivial amount of pop fans would be able to name Jack Antonoff from his work with Taylor Swift, Lorde, and Lana del Rey.
I agree it's a good anecdote. It clearly still resonates with professional instrumentalists. But popular music has progressed so much since then that 'jazz theory' is unequip to grasp the complexities of modern recorded music. Beato in the video says modern pop music is getting simpler, but he's just using the wrong tools.
There's no one 'music theory perspective'. Why not analyze it on more axes?
- Rhythmic patterns and variation
- Interplay between instruments
- Instrumentation and arrangement
- Structure
- Vocal style
- Lyrics
- Recording and mixing
By these metrics (and the ears of 99% of its listeners) it's a more or less generic 80s adult contemporary song. Yes it has a weird chord progression. Would it be more complex if it couldn't be boiled down to a series of chords?
How complex is a song that can be played on entirely different instruments without re-interpretation?
When I think of complexity I think of unreconcilable elements that force the transposer to make tough decisions ("intentionally putting their own stylistic spin on it").
I find it hilarious that he concludes the Sergio Mendes recording is "the most complex pop song ever" rather than the obvious takeaway that when a song is simple enough, most of the specific notes being played aren't important. You could easily rearrange the song to be easier to play on guitar without losing "the song" (unless you're a music theorist and the ornamentation is "the song")
The orchestration in Pet Sounds though follows the McCartney/Martin "Yesterday" by the Beatles
Yesterday's orchestration is just acoustic guitar + string quartet
For fun, I tried to see how many of the films on their missing movie list are currently watchable on Youtube or from public trackers
http://missingmovies.org/list-of-missing-movies/
Features, 15/23 available
3 legally viewable:
- 1 to be released on Blu-ray in May 2022: Mississippi Masala (1991)
- 2 more on Apple TV: Gal Young 'Un (1979), Angels and Insects (1995)
11 more available 'online':
- 2 HD rips on public trackers from out-of-print blu-rays: Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), Titus (1999)
- 3 others have full DVD rips on public trackers: Home of the Brave (1986), I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
- 4 others have SD rips on Youtube: The Savage Eye (1959), Black Girl (1972), Deadhead Miles (1972),
- 4 others have low-res VHS rips: Angelo My Love (1983), Baby Face Nelson (1957), Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972), Eat the Document (1972)
3 more not yet 'online':
- 2 have OOP DVD releases: True Love (1989), Union City (1980)
- 1 other has an OOP VHS release: Household Saints (1993)
5 others have no home media releases I can find:
- Annihilation of Fish (1999), The Cool World (1963), The Marijuana Affair (1975), Nothing but Common Sense (1972), Lanton Mills (1969)
Documentaries, 3/9 available
0 legally viewable
3 available 'online':
- 1 has an HD rip on a public tracker: The Memory of Justice (1976)
- 2 others have SD rips on Youtube: Angela Davis (1971), My Architect (2003)
4 more not yet 'online':
- 3 have OOP DVD releases: Ali the Fighter (1975), Image before my Eyes (1981), The Weavers (1981)
- 1 has an OOP VHS release: Weapons of the Spirit (1987)
2 others have no home media releases I can find:
- Agee (1980), That Rhythm Those Blues (1988)
Did Ebert ever become thin?
They want people to post the simple and fun summary image rather than a link or a playlist nobody will click on
This page just confirms the above poster's hunch. A professor of mathematics who teaches one "Mathematical Design 128" class.
That may be an aspect of it, but...
Jacob Collier is an interesting example because the general response I've seen to his music from music fans is that it is too "smart". It's impressive and novel to music academics (and apparently the Grammys) but hardly interesting to fans of the genres he favors (soul, pop, R&B). Common complaints being lack of emotion, lack of taste, poor songwriting, over production. But any negative review will also acknowledge that he's immensely talented and has massive potential.
Honestly this article makes me happy to be young. So many useless practices and attitudes, once brought down on us and simply accepted, now in the trash heap of history. Hopefully next up is 'the pledge.' I'd love some "Socratic reasoning" on why that should be respected.
From your first link, it says that that band changed their name because of a NS band with the same name. NS meaning National Socialist...
Yes the value of the site was much more clear when it was primarily a way to demystify references and slang in rap lyrics - in the same vein as Urban Dictionary.
But since then rap lyrics have gotten simpler and the site has expanded. It's interesting to compare early reactions from artists getting their songs annotated to its place in rap today.
"Rap Genius dot com is white devil sophistry" - Kool A.D., 2012
This is the first post that I've had a genuine 'I'm getting old' reaction to.. I was in middle school when Papers Please released and it was huge among indie game fans. I remember like it was yesterday, Yahtzee Croshaw and TotalBiscuit giving it glowing reviews... Please nobody tell me that Yeezus isn't the new Kanye album...
Similar to the plot of the Swedish film 'The Night Visitor' with Max von Sydow
For some data, here's a rough number of Vaporwave albums released per year (source: RYM[1])
2010: 11
2011: 63
2012: 168
2013: 348
2014: 572
2015: 1193
2016: 1144
2017: 812
2018: 816
2019: 798
2020: 732
2021: 269
Interesting, I recognize the channel name from his toxic anti-feminist rant videos I'd seen years ago. Great that he's doing something productive now
Egyptology?
Psychedelic music evolved out of the Space Age Pop easy listening genre from the 40s-60s (e.g. Joe Meek's I Hear A New World) and minimalist classical music (e.g. La Monte Young). Psychedelic sequences in film evolved from non-narrative abstract experimental films from the same era (e.g. Stan Brakhage)
Look up Ken Silverman's Voxlap engine from the early 2000s. It was most famously used for the game Ace of Spades 0.75 from 2011. It had very basic graphics and I remember even at the time it was advertised as being able to run on anything. I can imagine a game resembling Minecraft being feasible on high end machines in the early 2000s
I watched it a couple years ago at age 19 and didn't like it (rated it 1.5 out of 5 stars according to my stats). From my memory:
- The all-macho, no-internal-monologue protagonist is really dull and dated. The one liners are lame, most of his problems are solved via fist or gun. The kind of unaware character parodied by Duke Nukem.
- The concept of waking up and seeing through lies of the media is banal, and now associated with teenagers and stoners. Everyone knows that advertising and the news are run by agendas.
- The media has changed. When we think of someone being brainwashed by the media we think of the all-encompassing internet, not billboards and newspapers. A billboard being revealed to say CONSUME and OBEY has the subtlety of an overly-labelled-political-comic. The specific imagery has been appropriated by fashion brands, advertisers, and artists like Banksy endlessly. I remember OBEY sweatshirts and hats being everywhere in middle school.
- The specific plot, 'a guy discovers the media is run by a conspiracy of aliens so he teams up with a friend to shoot up a tv station', is today more reminiscent of a number of mass shootings and anti-semitic conspiracies than anti-capitalist revolution.
I have friends that like the movie for what it is, but I wouldn't expect the average young person to be enamored with it without a lot of historical context (yuppies, Reaganism, the role of the red scare in classic sci-fi, Edward Bernays, analog synthesizers, etc).
As someone who isn't 'wired for math' (but still knows my fractions, so to speak) I can't imagine putting math up against literacy. Reading is so fundamental to both communication and learning. Why do you equate the two?
As someone who apparently frequents much more pretentious online film circles than OP, the idea that the highest rated films and shows on IMDB represent the "best" of the mediums is kinda silly.
The article uses Star Trek (2009) as its example of a mediocre film. Its IMDB rating is 7.9/10 from over 500k votes over 11 years -- surely this would place the film squarely in the "tried and tested" category.
If I look on some smaller sites I see a different story. Letterboxd: 7.2/10, 234k votes RateYourMusic: 6.4/10, 3k votes The first site has a higher ratio of capital f Film fans and the second site is a much smaller site focused on music. Using these three data points I can deduct that Star Trek (2009) is probably a decent franchise action movie that most will find enjoyable but won't stand up to scrutiny as a stand alone film or for those expecting something more substantial.
The article is right that it's so much easier to access the history of a medium than in the past. It's interesting to me when a previously unknown work from 25+ years ago is rediscovered and entered into "the canon". In alternative music a recent example is Long Season by Fishmans from 1996.
But going through the canonical "best of" lists for a medium is more-or-less a gateway to developing and discovering your own taste in these things (a process that never ends). You shouldn't put much trust in any single source.
Something that's missing now with this intermingling of old and new art is historical context. A film streaming platform is just a directory of video files attached to 250px images and paragraph blurbs. What is Netflix saying about film and its viewers when it has less than 50 films pre-1980? Now that watching 2000+ films before the age of 30 is common for film fans, what will that mean for the future of film?
It's a hoax. Twitter reply: https://twitter.com/TwitterComms/status/1263256788238909441