Comedian Harmonists: Mein Kleiner Grüner Kaktus
more silly German music suggestions in response to my question, this one about "my little green cactus".
also, some vulgar Mozart in Good night, You are quite an ox and one I won't translate.
Comedian Harmonists: Mein Kleiner Grüner Kaktus
more silly German music suggestions in response to my question, this one about "my little green cactus".
also, some vulgar Mozart in Good night, You are quite an ox and one I won't translate.
posted to Strolling
Some things without a price are valuable because they create change on a deeper level.
Why just wash my hands with soap and water when I can hand-wash the dishes with soap and water?
Mussorgsky/Ravel: The Great Gate Of Kiev
bone-chillingly majestic as it is, but it probably feels stronger to listen to the 11 parts before. from Pictures at an exhibition
[The deaf] can comfortably sign while watching someone else sign. In large groups it still makes sense to have one "speaker" at a time, because people cannot look in more than one direction at a time, but conversations between pairs [have more overlapping communication than spoken conversations, as if they talk and listen simultaneously.]
[Conversation is best as duet over duel: each positioning the other to say great things, playing for the game and assist rather than the score.]
[Debate features adversarial "zero-sum" conversation, where weakening their position is as good as strengthening yours, and largely militaristic metaphors of] defending a statement, attacking a position, falling back to a weaker version of a thesis, countering one accusation with another.
[An alternative to the debate game could be one where two sides are given seemingly incompatible objectives for an upcoming legislation and scored on how well they argue that it supports their side. The score of each side added up and given to both sides, so they rank higher by collaborating more.]
music inspired by, and directly sampling, the magnificent sounds of the Mandinka people, recorded during a recent trip to Gambia.
[Answering questions about my book can mean: "short sound bites", "short anecdotes", "long considered reflections", or "long comprehensive explorations". I leave "pores" or pauses in my response to let the listener interject, hint at continuation, or change topics, and then gauge how deep to go based on that feedback.]
[Usage patterns show speakers using "uh" before shorter pauses of less than a second and "um" to indicate that a longer pause is ahead.]
[The longer you analyze stocks, the more markets have time to change. Fashion seasons also change while you shop; most] bad fashion is simply good fashion at the wrong time]
[Bryan Ferneyhough deliberately composes unperformable music to force interpreters to break out of simple reproduction and instead involve themselves as co-creators of site-specific performances (that can't be repeated).]
[Being spontaneous means keeping up with the situation, but you can't be sensitive if it changes while you're making sense of it.]
posted to Blog
Sometimes the author says it better, sometimes I can, but the focus is on what's meaningful for me.
posted to Strolling
everything makes everything possible
Dots connected looking back are also seeds for future moments that can't be predicted.
ive been "promoting" things on the internet for 15 years now! here's my top tips
- show yourself having fun
- many consistent repeated small launches is better than one big launch
- someone needs to see something like nine times before it sticks
- reward people for following along with everything. you can never go too far with in-jokes
- let people feel part of something.
- never show off. never try to be cool
- be like a monster in a horror film - never show the whole thing. make it seem like there's more to discover by clicking through
- create drama and arguments by being fearless and stupid
- make it clear you dont need anyone - you're having fun on your own. its more infectious that way
- show how you feel. feelings are more powerful than information
- its a lot like rolling the dice. to go viral once, roll a thousand dice
"Inevitable" often means "would love to do that without your consent".
[Aspiring tech overlords seek to remove people's ability to consent.]
[Destabilizing the developing world through stealing resources and destructive wars is a cause for mass displacement and migration. The spoils are used to build western tech infrastructure and mass surveillance is proposed as a solution to people's fears of scary migrants walking around.]
[The ruling class wants you to believe you shouldn't have a say in how your society's resources are used to shape the future of your society; it's necessary to convince you because it's actually not inevitable.]
[Computers may be one of the first tools to preceed their tasks: first build it, then figure out what to do with it.]
"There is no shallow end," a philosophy professor told me. Because any objection whatsoever, from any angle, can fell a theory, you can't carve out ace of philosophical territory, master it in isola-, and move on to the next.
My first day of class in the philosophy major, the professor opens the semester by saying that anyone who says that "philosophy is useless" is already philosophizing, building up an intellectual argument to make a point that is important to them, and therefore defeating their own statement in the very breath of uttering it.
You question the assumptions of physics and you end up in metaphysics—a branch of philosophy. You question the assumptions of history and you end up in epistemology—a branch of philosophy. You try to take any other discipline out at the foundations and you end up in philosophy; you try to take philosophy out at the foundations and you only end up in meta-philosophy: even deeper in than when you started.
Universal basic income is not a reward for idleness; it is recognition that productivity gains belong to society, not just to capital.
A society that automates its way to prosperity while abandoning its workers has not progressed at all.
Technology advocacy without social advocacy is just greed with better tooling.
most daily choices are reversible, and because life presents an endless stream of future opportunities, spending excessive time and energy on minor decisions is inefficient and puts you at the end of the lunchtime rush of orders put into the kitchen.
we create a caste system at our companies that mimics the caste system we create with respect to our own bodies and selves. My hands are mine, we say, but my brain is me. This fits in nicely with our sense of an inner homunculus pulling the levers and operating our body from a control room behind our eyeballs.
[If a musician is constantly and fluidly inventive, it's partly because they refuse to bore themselves.]
[What you call "being stuck" is for me "composing".]
[Art resists scale.]
What I can do here, I cannot—I cannot do in another place.
[Chess openings and closings can be tabulated, whereas the middle is actual gameplay.]
Take a recipe website URL and remove the cruft.
a lightweight protocol for humans to assert authorship of their site content and vouch for the humanity of others.
[Customer service] works by the gradual buildup of sympathy through failed attempted solutions. If person X has told you to try something and it doesn't work, person X feels slightly sorry for you. X is slightly responsible for the problem now, having used up some of your time. Person Y, however, is considerably less moved that you tried following her colleague X's advice to no avail-even if it is the same advice that she herself would have given you had she been party to that earlier conversation. That's beside the point. The point is that she wasn't the one who gave you that advice. So she is not responsible for your wasted time.
[The same customer service representative miraculously] returns. "I can make an exception for you," she says.
It occurs to me that an "exception" is what programmers call it when software breaks.
["Impersonal friends" are those we are drawn to for their type, which makes them more or less fungible, in contrast to specific individuals we care about which can't be swapped. The difference develops through shared history.]
I've seen it happen between friends: "Once again, you've neglected to do what you've promised." "Oh, there you go right in with that tone of yours!" "Great, let's just dodge the issue and talk about my tone instead! You're so defensive!" "You're the one being defensive! This is just like the time you x!" "For the millionth time, I did not even remotely x! You're the one who …" And on and on. […] each remark after the first is only about the previous remark. Th "context, a kind of "Markov chain" of riposte, meta-riposte, meta-meta-riposte. If we can be induced to sink to this level, of course the Turing test can be passed.
I imagine an ancient Egyptian woman, say, who catches a man looking tenderly into her eyes, up at the far extreme of her body near her useless, good-for-nothing brains, and chastises him, hand at her chest. Hey. I'm down here.
[If every act is the means to an end, "eudaimonia" (εuδauovia in Greek) describes the ultimate end of "well-being of spirit". Closer to "flourishing" than "happiness" (which could be through consuming a destructive vice) or "success" (which could be cutthroat if you win, scam, or kill). It's not a feeling: you either have it or not, regardless of how you feel. Related is "arete" which refers to "excellence" and "fulfillment of purpose":] Flowers are meant to bloom; knives are meant to cut; what are we meant to do?
I find it so tragic that when an infant cries, the parents sometimes have no idea what might be the cause of the cry—hunger? thirst? Dirty diaper? fatigue? If only the child could tell them! But no, they must simply run down the list—here's some food, no, still crying, here's a new diaper, no, still crying, here's your blanket, maybe you need a nap, no, still crying … But it occurs to me that this also describes my relationship to myself. When I am in a foul mood, I think, "How's my work going? How's my social life? How's my love life? How much water have I had today? How much coffee have I had today? How well have I been eating? How much have I been exercising? How have I been sleeping? How's the weather?" And sometimes that's the best I can do: eat some fruit, jog around the neighborhood, take a nap, and on and on till the mood changes and I think, "Oh, I guess that was it." I'm not much better than the infant.
In a Canadian study, a woman gave her number to male hikers either just before they reached the Capilano Suspension Bridge or in the middle of the bridge. Those who met her on the bridge were twice as likely to call and ask for a date.
[They explained to me that although things would get a lot better after the body dies, suicide is decisively against the rules.]
In Western contexts, "martyr" carries a heavy political or theological weight—the idea that someone made a conscious choice to die for a cause. But that isn't how shaheed functions for Palestinians.
Calling a child playing in a yard, a sleeping family, or an elderly patient in a hospital bed a shaheed isn't claiming agency or choice. None of them chose to be targeted. Instead, shaheed is an act of love, sanctity, and honor. It is a communal refusal to let a life stolen by Israeli military violence be reduced to a cold, clinical statistic.
This creates a constant struggle in translation: In English, saying someone was "killed" feels completely inadequate—it strips away the honor owed to the victim and flattens the active, systematic violence taking their life.