apis @ apis @beehaw.org

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366

Joined

2 yr. ago

Uh sort of, but only when she's speaking.

There's a spoken bit on one of her tracks, and EVERY time am momentarily bamboozled into wondering why there's a sample of me speaking playing out of the speakers.

Well done for standing up to the guy.

But idk that he assumed you'd agree because of your shaven head - may just have been your whiteness.

Where I'm from, Nazi skinheads do exist, but they're far, far rarer than other kinds of skinhead. Unless I see indications of far-right inclinations, I'll assume a skinhead dressed in tight jeans & big black boots is an anarchist rather than a Nazi.

Extra fun to see anarchist skinheads chasing Nazi skinheads out of an area though.

Maybe there are some things you could stash in your locker each evening, which would be fast enough to unfurl at a flex space in the morning?

Piece of fabric to lay on the desk, couple of photos to stick up or prop, some item you find soothing to look at or touch. Tiny jar containing something you like to smell. Pieces of stiff card hinged together with tape to make a folding standup "wall" to prop on the desk - stick things you like to it then just fold it up for your locker each evening.

I'd be trying to join you for the Lapsang Souchong. Love the stuff. Can understand why the taste would not be for everyone, but sort of assumed that the smell of campfire was very popular. Anyhow, if it isn't specifically the smoky flavour that draws you to it, there is unsmoked Lapsang Souchong - or rather, made without using pine needles as fuel when roasting the leaves, but you'd probably have to go to an online specialist to find the stuff. Story goes that the smoky stuff came about after a batch got messed up in production, and that as nobody could afford to sell at a discount it was sold at full price all the way down to the end customers, with all of it going for export, but that enough people came looking for more of it that the tea producers ended up making it that way specially for export to the West. There are other smoky teas which aren't really exported, though I don't think any come close to being as smoky as smoked Lapsang Souchong.

GOP doesn't need to, and nor do most of their base.

When one considers that it boils down to key constituencies in swing states, to win you only need relatively small numbers of voters to become sufficiently motivated to get to the polls, or to be insufficiently enthused to bother.

Meantime the same factors impact whether or not people donate to a campaign, financially or otherwise, & how much energy they put into arguing for one course or another with their friends and family.

The arithmetic in a two party federal system is a dreadful flaw, in that it forces a tiny minority to become kingmakers.

Nobody imagines one can get large numbers to totally switch sides, and they seldom need to - working the spectrum of impassioned & disillusioned is everything.

Also crucial to tap the psychology of the justifications voters use to explain their actions to themselves primarily, but also to those around them.

Control, mostly, at least at the meta level.

Many of the parents who freak out hold a lot of shame themselves surrounding bodies & sex, having been denied good sex ed. It is their job to ensure they don't pass that to their children, but I imagine this is easier said than done, especially if shame & ignorance are normalised within a culture.

For them, the best argument may be that children who do not know about sex are vastly more vulnerable, not only to bizarre information and unpleasant mistakes, but to sexual predators.

Just thinking of the shape of Daikon radishes, this might work even better than the potato version, which is pretty great.

Suspect it would operate more on the basis of a person confirming that the article is of reasonable quality & accuracy.

So not unlike editors selecting what to publish, what to reject & what to send back for improvements.

If good articles by AI get accepted & poor articles by people get rejected, there may still be impacts, but at face value it might be sufficient for us seeking to read stuff.

Have got fairly good at spotting these from the first few lines, but it would be nice to not bother clicking on them in the first place & better again if they didn't clog up my search results.

Back when it was just humans churning out rubbish, there was far less of it in the way of good information, but it helped enormously that search engines still respected operands.

Bringing that back would likely help far more than a detector extension.

And yet, we know and he knows that a good slice of his base absolutely scrutinise his every move for coded messages & interpret those as instructions.

I don't know that he necessarily has strong preferences of his own, other than securing his position at the top, coupled with the knowledge that most people do not fall into unquestioning loyalty. He desperately needs intense support backed by the willingness to do violence, and having tried various other options finally found that in the tribalism of the right-wing. He's unlikely to know much about gun stores, or the details of far-right terror attacks, but it is a trivial matter to direct some lackey to identify a store to promote to embolden those who were already desirous of slaughtering their fellow Americans.

But it is of course disturbing that so many support everything that is going on.

Solely? As in being the only person to own a digital copy?

I'd have zero interest in possessing such a thing, and would go as far as boycotting any record company or artist that began to go down that route.

With two exceptions: if a friend gifted me some music which they did not wish to be released, or if someone asked me to guard their intellectual property in the event of becoming incapacitated themselves.

Idk, those harvesters are often rather delicate, so unsure how well they'd manage backfire from a rocket launch, but you have me imagining those farm machines with the huge sprayer wings, but fitted with lightweight guns, all controlled from the cab.

Still a bit confused - haven't we been able to do this since the gramophone (if not before, idk much about early media)?

Vinyl, tapes, CDs, etc. & digital files? These can all be bought & sold today. My city doesn't have as many record stores as it did in my teens, but two of the big chains are still here as well as one big independent, there's a few small specialists & several second-hand places. Supermarkets & charity shops often have a small selection of new & second-hand respectively. Vinyl sales are steadily increasing & though I can't imagine cassettes making much of a comeback, one local hifi shop recommenced stocking cassette players a while ago, and now carries three of them.

To display a piece of music you can usually apply to the copyright holder for a license - this is typically very expensive, with prices set by negotiation according to the purpose & frequency of the intended display and the audience size.

For the pieces in your survey which I have copies of, I paid whatever was the standard retail price at the time, but that spans ~16 years in different parts of the world. Sometimes music purchases felt expensive, at other times I was able to buy more than one album at once, but more often than not music purchases were plain out of reach. If I had to replace my whole collection now I doubt I'd bother, as I don't really listen to music anymore, but if only a few albums got damaged I'd probably be ok replacing them at current retail prices.

Doubt I'd pay more for as-yet-unreleased work than for music which is already out there.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jun/07/boxed-life-inside-hong-kong-coffin-cubicles-cage-homes-in-pictures

Have you seen the tiny rooms? They're arguably more cramped & dangerous than the bunkhouses & a long way from traditional bedsits, though as a basic idea there's no reason why they couldn't be alright.

EDIT: no idea how this reply ended up here. Removing main body & hopefully can post it in the right place.

EDIT EDIT: seems it was in the right place, so putting the main text back.

Bit confused what you are asking about, as "own" could mean everything from full copyright to the piece in multiple countries & the ability to collect royalties & to sue people for using the piece without your permission, to owning the original written manuscript & composers' notes, or owning a master recording, or a copy to play as one wished, or just access to a copy.

When you ask about the dollar value I'd give to specific pieces, I don't know whether you want to know how I'd assign a monetary amount to the value to humanity, to the music industry, to the artists involved, the retail price of an album or single, or just what I'd pay today to hear those pieces.

I'd have no interest in owning full rights to music I had no part in creating, so wouldn't want to buy such a thing - guess if someone gave me something like this as a gift I'd make it available to the world on a CCC license or similar?

Manuscripts & master recordings? Again, I'd want to make these accessible to the public.

Physical & digital copies of recordings am happy to buy, and do this instead of streaming. Have copies of the released stuff your survey mentions, but idk what I paid for any of it.

Never fear, am too far too idly curious to leave things like that unexplored.

So, went to a committee meeting for this community service group I've been invited to join. It was interesting, but there are signs of things to be wary of with this group.

Happily am able to walk if those flags turn out to actually be red, but doubt the rest of the members can.

We shall see...

Otherwise, finally obtained a new (to me, it is refurbished) computer. Expected setting it up to my liking would be a lot more stressful than it is turning out to be. Looking forward to availing of greatly enhanced tools for some creative endeavours. As this is the first time I've used a desktop since the late 1990s, there's been a lot of rearranging of my space alongside this process.

On that note, settling into watching The Wire. Got the box set forever ago, but previously it was an awkward faff to set up the DVD player, etc., so kept leaving it be after a couple of episodes.

Maybe, but how the pressure of gas prices would interact with the cost of housing in areas where it would be possible to ditch or substantially reduce commutes by car is moot. Those areas are already expensive & oversubscribed, and are likely to become much more so as commuting by car becomes more costly.

If there is less need for city centre office space, cities could embark on building high density housing & amenities, but few cities will want to risk being earlier than others to go down that route.

I could more easily see an increase in the type of accommodation that exists in places like Hong Kong, with many people sharing a bunk-filled room, or many tiny rooms little bigger than a single bed all sharing a bathroom with the rest of the corridor.

Love this idea.

Have a blanket to finish, which I've been procrastinating over as I need to redo a small part which will be fiddly, as well as some things I haven't even started.

Think I'd prefer to use one of the yet-to-be-started projects for this, but it should motivate me to crack on with the blanket.

Try to find a group near you that shows it in a venue. Many of these put it on fortnightly or monthly.

Late October would be best, but anytime is good.