SkoomaDentist
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User ID: 84
SkoomaDentist
1d ago
You keep spelling that with one too few *'s, you know...
SkoomaDentist
1d ago
But the point was to test the people putting the concert together—if they can’t do the little arbitrary things maybe they are failing at the bigger important things.
In Van Halen's case, it wasn't just an arbitrary test for that either. They started using it after repeatedly having to deal with venues that were unsafe and several near-misses. They didn't expect the M&Ms to be actually selected either. It was enough if the concert organizer noticed it and asked them "Err, guys, what's this M&M thing here?" because then they knew the organizer had at least read the rider with the actually important technical and safety requirements.
SkoomaDentist
2d ago
Here they were simply infesting the entire countryside on sunny days and would often attack me after barely walking 10 meters from the car if stopping by the side of the road. Worrying about human or animal attacks is for noobs. Real men fear insects for a reason!
Large horseflies are even worse in some ways. When they’re circling you they look like angry wasps and then you can’t quite know if you should smack them or run from them. And the fuckers keep following you unless you run many tens of meters (or over a hundred).
SkoomaDentist
3d ago
I've found my recommendations to be often reasonably decent as long as I keep engaging in that heavy curation.
SkoomaDentist
3d ago
concerns about attacks by wildlife are usually the mark of a greenhorn
Except of course attacks by ticks, mosquitoes, horseflies, blackflies, deerflies and wasps (not to forget midges if you're in Scotland). And probably a bunch more that luckily don't live up here. Goddamned motherfuckers.
SkoomaDentist
3d ago
The OP specifically mentioned they are not in "grizz country".
Also grizzlies are quite literally the same species. The Northern American subpopulation just hasn't developed as much fear of humans as the European one but similar differences exist even between local Eurasian brown bear populations depending on how remote the larger area is and has historically been.
Now polar bears, they are scary fuckers and will happily hunt a human.
SkoomaDentist
3d ago
SkoomaDentist
3d ago
accidentally walking between a cub and mother at precisely the wrong time.
Finland has a fairly sizeable brown bear population (grizzly is basically the same species, just somewhat larger) but unprovoked bear attacks are really rare. A brief search through a national news site shows that there was only one unprovoked attack within the last 10 years and that wasn't serious (the bear struck a guy who fell down, after which the bear left and the guy got off with a few scratches). The rest have all been hunting situations gone bad or a dog aggravating a bear and the owner getting attacked when trying to fend off the bear (and even then they've been very rare). If you make noise and look around, the bears will just hide and avoid you.
SkoomaDentist
3d ago
Good insect repellent. I'm surprised you say that "he most dangerous critters you will encounter are the two-legged kind" when where I live the biggest danger by far is from ticks.
I could see a pocket knife be useful for all kinds of other things. If you're worried about wild dogs, a good flashlight and large stick should help fend them off. For the rest you've basically already lost (eg. a bear encounter or some redneck with a shotgun) or extremely unlucky. Maybe a flare gun or pepper spray?
SkoomaDentist
3d ago
I use free tier youtube via the website and adblocker.
I basically only watch guitar / synthesizer / photography (and now some outdoors backpacking) videos. Just a few days ago I watched a few astrophotography videos which resulted in youtube trying to push some conspiracy theory clickbait bullshit about NASA hiding Voyager findings.
SkoomaDentist
3d ago
Instagram and YouTube both recommend me by far more overtly anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic content
I've found Youtube to be an unusable cesspool unless I heavily curate my recommendations. That means hitting hide on anything offtopic and removing anything remotely general interest from my watch history. Otherwise within a few days it degrades to such state that it starts pushing videos that are trending locally and you can imagine the result of that.
SkoomaDentist
4d ago
I was expecting something dumb, but that's just... wow.
That's pretty much par the course for the current administration, so really not that surprising (eg. recall the formula used to calculate the initial tariffs).
Does it?
I’ve met my fair share of public school administrators. They were 1) very small in number compared to the total school staff and 2) did the necessary ground level admin work mandated by the law and city, required planning (eg. resource allocation depending on student numbers, scheduling classes etc), hiring teachers and so on. They had zero input into any of the ”improved” education styles and similar foolishness (that was all mandated at city / ministry level). Of course this wasn’t in the US, but I’d be surprised if it was all that different.
Now university administration is a whole different game.
SkoomaDentist
5d ago
You have to be willing to dive beneath the surface, long enough to find the pockets of original and specifically high quality work that the indie scene is putting out.
So, how many hundreds or thousands of hours would you say is it acceptable to use to find more than a tiny handful of such gems? Please give a serious answer with actual numbers.
I've spent a lot of time looking for good music. When I do find some I haven't run into before, it's almost inevitably tracks made 30+ years ago, some new tracks from legacy artists (who may be rich enough to keep doing much the same thing they did 40 years ago, nevermind commercial viability) or some very occasional niche stuff. The last time I found an entire new album worth of good material was when Loreena McKennitt released Lost Souls in 2018 (and she was in her 60s by then, so not exactly a "modern" artist). Finding new indie releases on the level of say Depeche Mode's Violator, Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 1 or Roxy Music's Avalon just isn't going to happen.
SkoomaDentist
5d ago
Its like 10 second segments stitched together
I'm pretty sure it's more or less exactly that: short segments stiched together.
SkoomaDentist
5d ago
Meh. That just sounds like a collection of shitty djent cliches.
SkoomaDentist
6d ago
And perhaps more importantly, using Suno or other service might be quite a bit faster than trying to find a suitable backing track from collections of free tracks.
SkoomaDentist
6d ago
Also, like two years back I talked about how I was still collecting music to my local devices through force of habit. It seems even more laughably futile now in the face of tech which can keep producing songs faster than I can even listen to them.
Why would it be futile if you actually cared about those songs? Unless you mean you collect music in the same way warez people collect releases, ie. without any real care about the actual content.
Unless AI music generators achieve near true sentience level understanding of music and prompts and can use that understanding to analyze a database of my preferences, I just can't see AI music in any way competing with the music I have collected (and slowly keep adding). If anything, the problem with collecting more music is that it's so hard to find something I'd like that I didn't already know of (and Spotify's piss poor recommendation system certainly doesn't help there *).
*: Would it really be that difficult for them to add options to "never suggest this artist / album / any variant of this song for this playlist / ever"?
The idea of relying on the feedback loop of remixed AI slop for entertainment and it drowning out genuine good stuff evokes in me disgust that is hard to convey.
I can't find myself caring one bit about it because the good stuff slowed to a teeny tiny dribble over two decades ago. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing left for AI to drown.
SkoomaDentist
6d ago
Beethoven and Mozart were "pop" for the upper crust of society.
Sure, but that was an economic divide, not a divide based on artistic qualities. It doesn't change the fact that 1) they were widely popular and 2) they have inarguable artistic merit. If anything, they were more pop music than what general folk listened to as folk music was anonymous and lacked any of modern pop music's parasocial relationship that Mozart and Beethoven had among parts of their audience.
Music is perhaps not the point of pop music
Certainly not today, but it used to be, at least for the better tier pop. Just take the Beatles. Are they pop? Inarguably. Were they musically good? Without even the tiniest shadow of a doubt.
There are gobs of excellent pop music all the way up to the 90s. Then it went to shit for reasons I haven't been able to fully articulate yet but involves the concentration of labels, rise of solo artist & built groups and of course modern production methods (and a bunch of other things).
Edit: The music being a major point of pop music goes back centuries: For example Mozart and Beethoven were "pop" artist in their time.
SkoomaDentist
6d ago
The question of the hour: Is that really different than most songs produced by human artists?
Does it even matter? The world is already full of slop and having one more way to produce slop isn't helpful for anyone except some SEO spammers.
SkoomaDentist
6d ago
Can it do The 80s?
Not just completely forgettable fourth rate slop or faux-80s but actually good stuff that resembles songs like this, this or this, without forgetting this absolute classic.
What the hell is ”CRA”? Googling mostly turned up Cyber Resiliency Act and something from Canada.
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