FinishingDutch @ FinishingDutch @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Well if you look at his musical career, it's relatively short prior to 1987. So not really.

He started singing in a church choir when he was 10. He played drums in some local bands and left school at 16. He started playing drums for bands that played clubs. In 1985, he became lead singer for the soul band FBI and was noticed by a record producer. His first real songs were singig on 'Let It Be' by a charity group Ferry Aid, after the Zeebrugge ferry disaster. That was march 1987. Followed that up by a duet with Lisa Fabien in may. And in august 1987 Never Gonna Give You Up was released, which he'd actually recorded on january 1 st that year.

It's certainly... not common for someone to go from 'shy guy playing drums in a nightclub band' to having a chart topping hit in 25 countries in less than five years. He managed to actually have a pretty good career after that, though none of his work will ever reach the lofty heights of Never Gonna Give You Up in terms of sheer popularity. And the fact that the song managed to be a hit, disappear, and come back ten times as strong because of a joke is like a fluke on top of a fluke.

1987 to be precise. It was quite a popular song when it was released; it was a chart topper in 25 countries. It was played for weeks on the radio and the single sold like hot cakes.

What’s even wilder: it was Rick Astley’s first solo hit. He had done duets and sang on other people’s tracks, but that was his first single from his debut studio album. And it went straight to the fucking moon.

He had a fair few hits and ‘retired’ in 1993. He was 27 at the time! He returned in 2000, and in 2007 the rickroll became a thing. And the rest you know.

As an 80’s kid, you can imagine it was wild to see kids using one of my favorite songs ever as a meme. I’m just glad Astley himself took the jokes in a good nature and is enjoying his continued career because of it. Gotta be even stranger for him to see the song get back to this level of popularity well over 20 years post release because of a dumb internet joke.

Yep. If you’re on the internet for long enough, you pretty much develop a sixth sense for when you’re being rickrolled. As soon as I saw that ‘Never’ fit, I knew what was up.

You’ll get there eventually; we can’t all be as progressive :D

I honestly don’t think people care that much about a woman running. Because at that level, their gender is not ‘man’ or ‘woman’ but ‘politician’.

People didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton because she was quite unlikeable and the campaign centred around it being ‘her turn’. People didn’t vote for Harris because she was generally invisible and had to run a very truncated campaign. The fact that both were women was the least of their worries.

Other countries have elected women leaders with no issues. Heck, you see women presidents all the time in movies and TV shows. Nobody bats an eye.

So… I take it he’s completely forgotten that disastrous debate by now huh? It was pretty clear to even the most fervent Biden supporters that he wasn’t going to win. When even those folks were telling him to resign, it as done by that point.

If anything, staying in would’ve driven more people to Trump or caused them to stay home due to disillusionment.

Ah good, I really could use another two years of working from home.

Since Americans basically stole every tradition they have from someone else, I’m not gonna worry about their opinion on them :D

The US is a toddler when it comes to history and traditions. I drive by a church that was built in the year 900. That one’s actually called the ‘new church’ since it replaced one from the year 400. That’s history. And we’ve got traditions that go back centuries further.

Just because Americans prefer watered down, tame versions of our European traditions, doesn’t mean the rest of us are going to follow. Krampus, Sunneklaas, Sinterklaas and other traditions are here to stay.

Ohh, handy! Thanks for that link.

You can absolutely mean those things. I’ve said them to others, so they don’t offend me.

I agree that everyone’s a unique individual. But when looking at problems on a global scale, you need to approach things objectively and dispassionately.

From a purely statistics standpoint, I and 1 sibling should be here. Because that’s the replacement rate for when my parents die. A life for a life, so to speak.

Problem is, my parents had three kids. So now we’ve already gone above that replacement rate. And globally, more people have kids above the replacement rate, hence the population growth.

I don’t have or want kids. That’s not for me, and I don’t want them to be born in a world that’s going to get rapidly worse to live in. Unfortunately, not everyone is willing or capable to make such choices.

Well you can also turn that around and ask: why do we need more people? What does another individual add?

One might argue that a baby born today might cure cancer or all known diseases. They might invent free, unlimited energy. They could be the greatest writer to ever live. Humanity’s best poet. He could bring about world peace.

But he could also be our next Hitler, Saddam Hussein, etc.

Earth is a finite planet. It’s not getting any bigger. So every human we add to it, takes up yet another square meter that consumes resources for an average of 80 years or so. I’ve seen my country get more crowded and the problems it causes.

We don’t need more people. At all.

I did that test late last year, and repeated it with another town this summer to see if it had improved. Granted, it made less mistakes - but still very annoying ones. Like placing a tourist info at a completely incorrect, non-existent address.

I assume your result also depends a bit on what town you try. I doubt it has really been trained with information pertaining to a city of 160.000 inhabitants in the Netherlands. It should do better with the US I’d imagine.

The problem is it doesn’t tell you it has knowledge gaps like that. Instead, it chooses to be confidently incorrect.

There’s also simply way too many people on earth as it is. My country - one of the smallest on earth- had 15 million people back in 1995. Right now, 30 years later, we’re at 18 million. And in 2037, they’re expecting 19 million.

Small numbers on a global scale, but definitely a lot of growth that’s causing issues. There’s a housing shortage, rising prices, healthcare and pensions are under threat, etc etc.

And there’s places that are much, much worse. For example, even India is encouraging population growth. When the country is still very poor. That’s going to help their economy in the short run, but it’s going to be a much larger problem down the line.

We need a controlled population decline, sooner rather than later.

You know, just for you: I just changed it to the Coca Cola santa :D

Ugh. Don’t get me started.

Most people don’t understand that the only thing it does is ‘put words together that usually go together’. It doesn’t know if something is right or wrong, just if it ‘sounds right’.

Now, if you throw in enough data, it’ll kinda sorta make sense with what it writes. But as soon as you try to verify the things it writes, it falls apart.

I once asked it to write a small article with a bit of history about my city and five interesting things to visit. In the history bit, it confused two people with similar names who lived 200 years apart. In the ‘things to visit’, it listed two museums by name that are hundreds of miles away. It invented another museum that does not exist. It also happily tells you to visit our Olympic stadium. While we do have a stadium, I can assure you we never hosted the Olympics. I’d remember that, as i’m older than said stadium.

The scary bit is: what it wrote was lovely. If you read it, you’d want to visit for sure. You’d have no clue that it was wholly wrong, because it sounds so confident.

AI has its uses. I’ve used it to rewrite a text that I already had and it does fine with tasks like that. Because you give it the correct info to work with.

Use the tool appropriately and it’s handy. Use it inappropriately and it’s a fucking menace to society.

We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

Honestly though, a week should be fine for most purposes if we’re talking simple infantry weapons and general population readiness.

Most weapons are so easy, a child can use them. And they do. If the average Afghan dirt farmer can use a Kalashnikov, it wouldn’t be too hard to train you or anyone to use something like an AR-15 or a Glock pistol. Or indeed even a Kalashnikov, should you be able to liberate one from an invader.

Most people in Europe have never held a gun, much less shot one. That makes it a scary, unknown thing. A week’s worth of training should at least make people more comfortable with them and allow them to shoot one if the need arises. Think of it like learning first aid, only… the opposite.

We’re also talking deterrence here. To make it very unappealing to invade somewhere. You’re not going on the offensive.

Absolutely. There can be zero disagreement on this.

Could be. But I was also around when the Soviet Union was still a thing and reached to East Germany.

Also, if you think I trust those shifty Belgians, you’re very wrong ;-)

Well, give us all a rifle, a hundred rounds and some marksmanship training, you knobhead. I’ve always been a big proponent of arming your populace in defense of a large threat from beyond your borders. And this seems like the right time to do it.

I’ll gladly follow a week’s worth of training and do a background check if it means I get to keep a machine gun in my closet.