It wasn't the beginning of the end, just a harbinger of it. Subsequent formats such as aac, ogg later sprang up based around the same ideas, and the overall concept had already been made a reality by prior formats such as ac3 and mp2 - they just didn't do it as *well* as mp3 did. Discard psycho-acoustically negligible information to gain a 5-12x reduction in file size - meaning a song could comfortably and easily be ported around the internet, even in the days of dialup. It's amusing to me now that the idiotic reasons used to justify piracy now were the same idiot reasons given to me at the outset. 1999, a fellow university student told me about this new thing called MP3, which, due to the aforementioned properties, would allowed us to 'stick it to the fat cats of the music industry'. Laughably, sadly, the social experiment that is filesharing has shown a picture of a harsher, not gentler world, wherein the consumer and cohorts-in-trade the anarchist, the internet freedom-fighter, and even the starry-eyed (and easily influenced) teenager, are all as duplicitous as the aforementioned 'fat cats'. Just as ignoble, exactly as precious, demanding, and greedy. If it's taught us anything useful, it would be that the individual in modern society is usually as unjustifiably unethical as the institutions they claim to hate. Leaving aside the archaic social rhetoric used by pirates to justify their means and ends, what does MP3 mean to us?
There are, or were, two music industries, when it comes to online distribution. One based on the old model, one based around the rise of the 'long tail' of independent music. The old model propagates the fame and fortune of a select few, based entirely around CD/online sales and extensive advertising. The new model propagates the more sporadic income of lesser-known (usually independent) artists while eschewing the more wholesale artists. The independent artist, who's monetary benefit previously consisted of minor concert sales and cd sales to friends, with the advent of MP3, suddenly had a platform which exposed them to millions of people, if they were any good, without having to rely on the goodwill or approval of the old model record companies. Witness then the demise of the first 'new industry' music services - MP3.com (in it's first incarnation), riffage.com, a host of others. All failed to satisfactorily monetise their services in a way that satisfied both the consumer and the independent artist, and were competing in an uphill battle against another strain of social virus - MP3 piracy. The peer to peer networks (and later, torrent sites) which sprung up almost overnight to enable music-sharing on a super-massive scale, made comparisons to tape or cd piracy irrelevant. With virtually no cost in terms of storage medium (ala tape or CD), negligible waiting-time, and no necessary relationship to the person you were getting the music from, piracy was made accessible to the masses on an unprecedented scale.
It would be years before the extend of the damage became obvious to industry outsiders, but by 2001 the effect it was having on the new industry was profound. How do you compete with name-brand artists with massive marketing campaigns when they're made available for free? You can't. You might be as good as them, but people are generally pretty lazy - they won't bother trying something new for cheap instead of something they know for free - especially if they're not made to feel bad for destroying the emerging cottage industries by their friends, peers, and society at large. Even today, if you manage to 'make it' in the current climate, as soon as an independent gets some sort of recognition their tracks are pirated wholesale - usually before they even hit the online shelves. The "rebel" pirate then laughs 'sink or swim', in a strange, mind-meltingly laissez-faire indictment of you not agreeing with their (disingenuous and resource-specific) communistic outlook on ownership. Most pirates are impatient and/or callous... get used to it. While some would urge the independent artist to capitalise on the relationship with their audience - by selling t-shirts, concert tickets, pre-funding album costs or whatever - they ignore the fact that while t-shirts and everything are... just *fantastic* (anyone other than a big-name artist generally loses money playing live BTW), the reasons people buy t-shirts in the first place is because they like the music - not the other way around. So why aren't people comfortable paying for music and not t-shirts? Because they're not used to it any more. No other reason.
So now what? Where do we go from here? Assuming of course, that we still want good music to be made, for it to be produced to a level of quality we've become accustomed to since the 70's, and that we don't want to have to drill through mounds of mediocrity to find thttp://media.www.thebv.org/media/storage/paper1111/news/2009/04/03/Opinion/Itunes.Profit.Percentage.Too.High-3694902.shtmlhe few gems at the bottom of the barrel (the very few who, despite there being no future in it, still decide to put time and energy into making miraculous music)? As stated there are two music industries - the old, which is supported by radio stations, tv channels, some websites and media, and the new, which is represented by.... well, websites, and the strength of the material contained therein. Here's the thing. They're both failing online. And the second reason they're failing online (piracy being the no. 1 reason) is by trying to coexist on the same platforms. Lets take it down to basic steps - if you want to find something new, different, you go to one of the new websites - amiestreet, emusic, etc. What's the problem? Those websites have all compromised their userbases by letting in material from the big four - SONY, BMG, etc - or from smaller but still powerful labels (4ad for example). Now these companies demand, with their financial leverage, that these smaller companies change their pricing models, exploit their customers, lock out markets in given countries. This kills the userbase. Emusic.com had a fanatic, and media-hungry userbase, all of which were willing to pay good money for good, new, music (hell, even bad new music sometimes). They managed to screw it up by allowing Sony to spin their spurs. Letting in established industry artist material makes it more difficult for the user to find the less mainstream stuff they want. What does it do for the artists already on the network? It makes it more difficult to compete, and makes their material more expensive to buy. Does it draw in new customers from other networks? Nope, just ruins a perfectly good indie-music cottage industry by trying to merge with the old model. Most of the popular indie networks have gotten greedy and gone down this route - unfortunately, and to the detriment of their network, their artists, their userbase, and the industry.
Now look at itunes. This is a classic example of the 'old model' thinking - name-brand artists, locked into particular countries (no access outside of itunes-specified countries), locked into specific media-devices (computers and ipods respectively), locked into a particular software app - and a pretty awful one at that - with the store taking 10% of all profit, the record companies or media distributor (in many cases) taking the majority of the rest, the artist getting... very little indeed. Why would any self-respecting indie artist, in their right mind, want to get their stuff onto itunes? It doesn't compute. For one, they lose most of the money that gets made, and secondly they're competing with big names that are better-advertised than they are, on a platform Designed for those artists... so is it any surprise whatsoever, when indies find their itunes sales - and profits - virtually non-existent?
A complementary problem for internet distribution is playback royalties and localisation. The internet is a global phenomena - the independent artist understands and capitalises on this. It's in their favour. However for the major labels the rights to music and the terms for royalties are managed differently from country to country. The old model of collecting royalties via artist representation agencies is very effective for old media like radio and tv, but quite cumbersome for online. Let me explain - do you think it's simpler for the royalties from streaming music to go directly to the artist through the site's internal payment system, or to be negotiated through a series of agencies, all of which take their cut, to finally be paid to the artist once every quarter-year (if processed correctly)? Thought so. Further, whether or not a streamed piece of music constitutes a 'playback' (with royalties paid to the artist) in the sense of what radio does, or a 'preview pending possible purchase' (with no royalties) in the sense of what a cd store does, should probably come down to the discretion of the service provider and the artists involved. But this per-platform discretion goes out the window once the record companies get their fingers in. Because not only is all that music legally represented by various agencies (apra, amcos, etc), but as mentioned, the rights to each track are managed independently from country to country. This is why you can't, now that Sony is involved, get emusic in most countries. This is why most of the tracks on amiestreet aren't available in most countries. But do you think the independent artist cares whether their playback rights (in terms of streaming) are getting represented online? They're just happy that people are listening to it! Goodbye indie "World Wide" Web! Hello localised digital music store, managed by the old guard in blue uniforms.
And the old guard don't seem to understand the world wide web, or mp3, or in fact their customers.
If they understood, they wouldn't be locking out every country on the globe bar a select few, stopping their media from being played on the VAST majority of media players - instead, they gave people a strong incentive to pirate (or encode their own cds - and either way they lose) in order to get songs onto their $20 mp3 players, by not providing straightforward mp3's, instead providing proprietary-format music through a select few players...
If they understood, they would be leaving the indie cottage industries well-enough alone, instead focusing on getting Their music onto platforms which cater specifically for the non-indie scene, and which go down the usual channels in terms of playback royalties. If they understood, they would realise that consumer greed cannot be controlled through fear tactics, and be focused on destroying the 'enablers' (piratebay, limewire etc) instead of scaring customers or, conversely, relying on the (lack of) ethics of an intolerant, fickle, media-saturated market. This is not hard to do, since all of the content enablers are easily breaching international copyright laws - you cannot call the man who hosts a black market blameless simply because he sells no goods himself.
So - what is the only profitable mid-term future for music?
Step 1. Separate the content streams for independent and label-owned music. The two demonstrably cannot get along, draw different crowds, different models, royalty requirements and pricing regimes.
Step 2. Eliminate or block on state-wide levels enablers of piracy - torrents (99% illegal, always) and peer to peer networks - and whatever else turns up. It is not possible to allow a system where an ISP can choose whether or not to enforce this, as ISP's are entirely reliant on the support of their customers - if only one blocks torrents, clients will move to another who will. It has to be enforced on a state-wide level or not at all. This is the only way to ensure any future for media content, and has already been effective in parts of Europe. Advertising profits, selling t-shirts, concert tickets, and leveraging audience connection have all failed dramatically as replacements for traditional music revenue.
Step 3. Use MP3 or FLAC (open-source lossless format) only. Once a song is in a customers pocket, they should be able to use it regardless of playback device - all support MP3, few support other formats. AAC and ALAC (Apple's proprietary lossless format) are unsupported by the vast majority.
Obviously this still isn't the most happy future for musicians, as nothing stops 'sneakernets' - people sharing files with each other offline - without DRM. But the disadvantages of DRM have been shown to outweigh the benefits for everyone, at least when it comes to music. And the modern problem of piracy stems from the ability to trade with people you have no social connection with, creating effectively unlimited download possibilities and market saturation.
And the far future? With city-wide wifi and cheaper bandwidth a likely reality for most cities, and with the increasing popularity of streaming, a licensing model based around streaming of music rather than the traditional 'offline storage' formula seems likely. In this reality, managing music rights becomes cheap and painless - no longer is music locked into a particular player, device or piece of software, as any handheld device with an internet browser can playback streams, given a required logon. The separation between 'streaming' and 'owning' music might become an artificial distinction. Some music providers might encourage monthly subscriptions, some might continue with the per-song or per-album model and some might allow you to 'sell' your content back to the store once you tire of it. Either way, an instantaneous streaming model encourages diversity and the trialing of unknown material more than the long waits and organisation associated with downloading and offline storage. Though latecomers Spotify and Bandcamp can be seen as precursors of this archetype, both unfortunately embody the failings of the current old model (spotify's localisation) and new models (bandcamp's complete lack of monetising for streaming), respectively.
The only problem with this idea is people in rural areas - who still constitute some 44% of the world's population (though probably less than 18% of the music-buying population) - tend to have more sporadic access to internet. It seems likely that offline storage, in whatever form (records, cds, mp3s) may have a future for that reason alone.
The central point of this article is that hopefully we can learn from the mistakes of the past - abolish piracy (in it's current wholesale, socially-acceptable form - piracy will always exist in some form or another) - and get on with our media-generating lives. Because without that, music - recorded or live (and let's stop pretending, in this media-centric age, that the two are financially separate) - has no monetary or creative future. It takes spare time and energy to create music, and piracy gives us neither. As a studio owner, it's discouraging to have to tell artists that even if they 'make it', there's not much of a living to be made out of making songs nowadays. But it's the truth - and until something changes, the age of recording music as a career and not just an "art-form" - including the drive and will to 'make it' in that field - will never return again.
m@
Consider the earth. We generally regard ourselves as separate from the earth, though dependent on it - bugs crawling round a petridish, or a person in a house. When we walk along the earth, we regard ourselves as (a) person, (b) the earth underneath the person. But in reality there is no (a) or (b), just (c) - a process.
On a subatomic level, nothing ever touches, with the exception of energy transfer and electron collisions. The atoms of your body do not touch the atoms of the earth. They never even get close. The atoms are pushed apart from each other by the inherent electromagnetic force of the electrons. Otherwise, we'd simply be engulfed by whatever we touch. When we break it down, we see that the earth exerts a gravitational effect on our body, pulling it against the earth, which we experience as pressure through our body putting pressure on the nerves in our legs, which transmits impulses to our brain, which tells us that the earth (b) is exerting gravitational pressure on our body (a).
But that's not what's actually happening. There is no substantial difference between the electromagnetic force which the atoms of the earth exert on our leg's flesh, and - in turn - the electromagnetic force which our leg's flesh exerts on the nerves in our legs. From the perspective of a physicist, there is nothing intrinsically special about the atoms in your legs compared to the atoms of the earth. It is merely that the atoms in your leg are "glued" to the other atoms in your body via chemical bonds. But in terms of the interaction, all there is is the earth atoms exerting their electromagnetic force against your leg atoms, which exert their electro-magnetic force against your nerve atoms, the molecules of which respond by sending electrical impulses through your body up into your brain, which does it's own math to further interpret the nerve impulse. In other words, it is all part of one process - the aforementioned (c). This is the mind-body-earth process that is occurring at every second of every day of your entire life. Yet we walk around as if there is just (a) - a person, somehow special and separate, as if it's atomic structure were unique. But there is no separately-existing person- there is only the person who is dependent on the earth for the gravity which allows them to "walk around" - 'walking around' being a mind-body-earth process, not something you inherently 'do' as a solo individual, independent of other things.
Now, let's take that a lot further-
when you walk along, you are not just dependent upon the earth, but upon oxygen, oxygen being predominantly an excretion of trees. So then we say there is tree-earth-body-mind process. You are also dependent on the energy your body derives from food - be it animal or vegetable - so we say animal-vegetable-tree-body-mind process. Further, the food comes from (unless we have grown it ourselves, and even then with seeds and fertilisers provided by others) other people, production lines, chains of people, processes, factories and vehicles often from different parts of the world. So we say people-factory-vehicle-animal-vegetable-tree-earth-body-mind process. And water, which comes primarily from the oceans and lakes via evaporation into clouds, is necessary for all of these processes, in fact we are 55%-78% water. So now we consider this a water-people-factory-vehicle-animal-vegetable-tree-earth-body-mind process. All that food, either animal or vegetable, and the people derive energy from the sun, earth's source of external energy - plus, water cannot evaporate and become clouds without heat from the sun.
So now - sun-water-people-factory-vehicle-animal-vegetable-tree-earth-body-mind-process. And I could go on. People are dependent on friends and family, and communities, those are dependent on other things, vehicles are dependent on fossil fuels, which are objects and animals subjected to time and to pressure by the earth's gravitational pull ie. we are also dependent on dinosaurs to 'walk around', cars burning fossils, fossils squashed to oil. There are most likely even people you consider to be enemies who are, in some way, indirectly involved in your ability to stroll.
When you link it all back, you'll find that every thing, every person, animal or plant or object on this planet, throughout all time (okay, not the future), is or has been a part of your ability to 'walk'. And linking it back further, we see that the way our earth rotates and spins around the sun - which enables it to sustain life - is linked to the way the universe was formed, to the big bang/big crunch/whatever other theories are involved.
So in one action we can see how our ability to do anything is fundamentally linked to everything, not just the earth, nor the sun, but everything. And there is no subtractive process of 'you' or 'i'. There is only one large, singular process. You can abstractly break it down into smaller, and smaller particles, and then further again, but ultimately - singular.
And the separation that we create between processes is what we abstractly project onto a singular entity - not the other way around. The reasons we do this are varied and meaningful.
It is exceptionally difficult to communicate without abstractly breaking processes down into parts. If you try telling someone you're just going out for a midnight 'sum of all processes in the universe', when you meant to say you were going for a midnight 'walk around', they will get inordinately confused. It's not perhaps accurate to say that 'I' 'stroll', but it is meaningful in the sense that it simplifies the concept enough and delineates the aspects of that 'everything' so that you can tell your friend what your part in the action is. It's just another layer of abstraction. From a western reductionist standpoint you could also take the opposite tack and say your walking is just an extension of atomic motion and collision (ignoring for the moment sub-atomic particles, or how many atoms are involved in the process). This would again be an accurate but not useful level of abstraction to describe the process.
So we can see how this abstraction also separates things into 'near' and 'far', 'direct' and 'indirect', 'big' and 'small'. All of these are useful. Even from a non-dualistic perspective, we can still recognise those things which are the easiest for us to effect, even if there is no conceptual separation. If a cup is across the other side of a room, it's more difficult to pick up than if it is in front of us, because there's more atoms in between. On a similar thread, if we consider the fact that coffee is largely made on the ivory coast in Africa where child slave labor and abuse are normalised, unless we have a close relationship with the coffee growers or the companies which support them, we are unlikely to be able to change things there. However, in terms of things closer to us we could talk to our supermarkets, lobby the local representatives of the coffee companies or simply buy fair trade coffee. Or stop drinking it.
What buddhists call the absolute or supreme view of reality is the most accurate conceptually, but the relativistic or conditioned view of reality is the most useful, for those of us who aren't enlightened at any rate.
So what's the point?
Ironically, if it weren't for conceptual labeling, relativism and the general idea of breaking concepts down into separate components we wouldn't understand how atoms work, we wouldn't understand that things aren't inherently separate from each other, that the atoms of trees become atoms of our bodies and vice-versa, and we certainly wouldn't be able to communicate it to each other. Separation allows pragmatic communication, distinction, survival and a reductionist understanding of reality. However it has it's limitations.
For example, if you get approached by a drunk person, and they try to hit you, immediately there is a sense of violation, that this (b) other person has penetrated (a) your space. So you get angry, maybe get violent, perhaps you take them to court, all the while retaining the suffering of the 'I' that this person has violated. You experience an immense deal of suffering from your own anger. If you were to consider the situation as one singular process, the 'I' as an abstraction and the 'they' as an abstraction, then you would be able to respond in the most effective, positive way for the situation - not because you feel you should, but because this way of thinking is natural once you establish a more non-dualistic mind. There is no positive virtue in getting yourself beat up - nor in harming the other person. So, the most positive response would involve the least amount of suffering. It could potentially involve violence (as self-defense or restraint of the other), or talking, running away, it could potentially involve taking the person to court (as a way to help them change) but - it would occur without the suffering of 'violation', anger and negativity and wish to harm the other individual, as they no longer appear separate.
This is what buddhists consider to be an "enlightened' individual" - one for whom an inherently-separate 'I' is no longer a reality, even on a subconscious level (for the record, I've have never met anyone like this, but I do meet people who are closer to it by degrees than I). They still retain the ability to recognise the abstract, separated labels of things, but on every level of awareness there is knowledge that this much is an abstraction, a pragmatic falsehood. This enables an optimistic and compassionate outlook on life with the knowledge that everyone who feels separate from others is in some sense suffering. But unlike the regular individual such as myself, this compassion does not have to be cultured or encouraged to grow - instead, it is the natural and unaffected result of seeing things as they actually are on both a subconscious and conscious level.
But even on an everyday level, for relatively average minds like yours and mine (well, mine anyway), even contemplating non-dualism helps. It helps to reduce anger in given situations, stops excessive worrying, reduces our tendency to separate everyone into boxes - enemy, friend, relative, stranger, suicide bomber, enlightened being - etc - and helps our responses to be more reasonable and useful. It's not all about becoming absolutely free of false conceptualisations. One of the roads to becoming enlightened is to practice being enlightened. As Bertrand Russell says, learning is two things - one, making conscious processes unconscious and two, making unconscious processes conscious. In this context that means one, practice makes perfect and two, "you must unlearn, what you have learned" - in this case, this rigid idea that we are stuck with that we're inherently separate.
Example: a driver was sitting at the lights last week. The light to go was green, but the driver hadn't noticed, and I was stuck behind them, beeping my horn. At first I was angry - "this stupid bastard doesn't know how to drive etc". Then I was reminded both of our lack of separation (what needed to be learnt) and my ignorance that this person is functionally separate to myself (what needed to be unlearnt), and seeing the other driver, my response became calmer. Instead of being emotionally-driven, my mind steered toward "what is the most effective way to resolve this situation to the benefit of all?". Of course, the more tired we are, the more emotional our responses become, and the more our subconsciously dominant mental behaviors take hold of us. In that scenario it is likely that you will become outraged, and the best response is to take stock of your emotions until such point as they fade a little and you are able to think more clearly. But because we have been trained since from when we were young to think of ourselves as islands in a sea of "other", this is not easy.
The more we practice non-dualism in a conscious way - when we are in a upright state of mind (far more difficult to achieve in this busy, busy world than in previous decades) - the more this way of thinking gets re-enforced and re-learned in our subconscious - piece by piece making our lives slowly, easier and more compassionate. I am totally nowhere fucking Near there as yet.
How could you be so cruel to me?
And yet she can be so cool about it
Guess the rest is history
Hey I'll catch you soon but I doubt it
Yeah I doubt it.
- Dane Rumble, Cruel
There must be something strange about me in that I dig this, but Egoraptor's Girlchan in Paradise series of anime/dubbing pisstakes is seriously rad.
p.s. Probably helps if you've watched at least one bad episode of anime in your past.
Yeah, this is rad :).
Reminds me of the time- no, doesn't remind me of any particular time, just a vibe. Well done Patrick Jean.
m@
Awful film. While Leaving los vegas was revolutionary, this pursues the same situation, if not the same story, with little realism or panache. Alec Baldwin's acting is good, and won a few awards, but William Macy seems off-key in his attempt to portray lovable loser Bernie. The romance seems improbable to say the least, and the dialogue is both boring and entirely predictable- add to that the offense of a main character with seemingly supernatural unluckiness, and you have a near-disaster. If it weren't for the sex scenes- which were brave, if overly improbable again - I wouldn't've felt the slightest amount of encouragement for this unhappy loser of a dvd.
Good luck would be avoiding it.
Because the thread this competition is located on is members-only, I will just post the images:
lol.
lol.
double-lol.
Needless to say the competition is for the most ridiculously-complicated and overly-redundant form of data backup possible in human lifetimes.
I think the sadder aspect of love is not so much when it's over and finished, but when you stop feeling it.
This is awesome.. Uses depleted uranium (ie. what other power stations throw away) and needs refueling only once in every 100 years. Thanks Bill Gates.
The Bhut Jolokia (Ghost) Pepper - hottest pepper in existence. So hot the indian military are going to use it as a weapon.
Digital rat brain spontaeneously develops wave patterns.
Homeopathic A&E
An old classic
The Academy award-winning movie trailer,
and finally Nutragrain - the greatest bar on earth...
m@!
Getting sick of the commodification of NZ's natural resources, by european and maori alike. Sickening. Okay for tourists I guess, but when I see advertisements to win an all-expenses paid holiday in huka lodge etc, I begin to think NZ has lost it's edge, and is slowly becoming another commerce dropzone. If you can take your kids to a bach or just camp somewhere, thats a real new zealand holiday. Agrarian pioneer mentalities have to pass sometime I guess, but to what? Comfort-laden smooth-edged commercialism? F**k that. I'd rather people learn to make their own beds.
Speaking of which, walking teddy-bears on Uk shores: Neat.
m@
Had no idea Raid 5 arrays were significantly more dangerous than other raid/non-raid configurations. Old news, but new to me. Learn something new everyday with this interwubs.
Watching Idiocracy. Would be funnier if it wasn't the inevitable trend that pop culture suggests. Ah well,
speaking of that- here's comedy:
A depressed Whale
Llamas with Hats 2
Burnt Face Man 9
And Dr Firth's blog is somewhat amusing: here and here.
Enjoy.
Incidentally, please show your support for a global movement against Nestle, for it's support of indonesian logging for palm oil. And for being dicks.
More details here.
Okay, so now that it's March, I should probably get around to posting that mini-review of the Faith no More concert. Here it is:
Crowd - large but not packed to the rafters, and may it be said that Faith No More drags a slightly more sophisticated breed of munter to it's kennel.
They played everything under the sun, from epic through to the last album (there're hints of a new one on the horizon) - all performed with energy, enthusiasm, and a waking sense of fun, as if they were getting up to perform after an over-long sleep. The crowd got insulted several occasion for being ridiculous enough to come back and see them again after 15 years of absence. But even when Mike Patton was harassing the skinhead in the front, telling him to 'shut the fcuk up? Can't you use your fcuking ears, you bald bastard?' everyone was well aware that it was all in good faith (ooo bad pun).
You'd have to have good faith be to sit through 5 minutes of non-stage-activity three-quarters through a song (on purpose), with Mike 'shushing' the audience after the first two minutes of silence.
Or when they performed their final song - 'Don't dream it's over' by Crowded house - three times - once for each encore - without Patton actually knowing what words he was meant to be singing. They did, in the end, finish on a FNM classic (I forget which one, they were all played at some point in the evening, except perhaps 'we care a lot'), but only after another 3 minutes of Mike Patton again harassing the audience for expecting more from a mere covers band.
More than I expected, and the best live band I've seen to date, out-performing Tool, A Perfect Circle, SuperJesus and Rammstein. But only if you like the songs.
Patton can still scream and/or croon with the best of them, despite 22(?) years of doing exactly that, and everybody else was on form.
I can provide only one fault, and that was that they synced lady gaga lyrics to their opening (new) song. But all in good faith, again.
In a side-note, currently discovering Boondocks, the calvin and hobbes of race relations, ten years late.
Had no idea australian government was so entirely f**ked up.
m@
DId an article about 5 years ago about current tv entertainment trends. At this point, things've changed - where five years ago the emphasis was on the quirky individual, light comedic weirdos, at this time the emphasis is on violence, seriously damaged individuals, and the group situation that it involves. Dexter, CSI and it's one hundred proliferating clones, Breaking Bad, Midsummer Murders, etc, etc, etc. This time, I'm not sure what to make of it. While the popularity of shows like Abby Mcbeal et al showed a prevalence of acknowledgement, or at the very least, amusement at, the slightly offset madness of the individual in a modern age of confusion and complex lives, I don't know what the current thirst for violence and damage is inspired by. Perhaps an acknowledgement of the epic brutality of the world scene over the past ten years. Perhaps an increasing awareness of global catastrophy and damage. Maybe people need something equally violent to block out the inevitable damage of day-to-day life. Or maybe just people's thresholds are growing. Which is bad.
Either way, I find it disturbed and really quite screwed.
m@
Although the guy is predominantly talking about game piracy, this article pretty adequately describes what I see to be the truth behind the bullshit on the web. This one is also quite good.
F_ckknuckle. That means we'd have to have ~200000 samplerates to accurately record and playback with audio. Which means the people saying 192khz sounds more analog are correct. Not that there's many clocks that can accurately do that timing with good jitter. F*ck. Still, it's positive in that it sets a limit as to how much temporal resolution you can have before it becomes meaningless. As it turns out, quite a lot. As for volume resolution, I'm all for 24-bit, providing people can produce music which actually makes use of the extra resolution (ie. not -4db RMS).
This piece of japanese research - quite old now - provides further details on how ultrasonics affect brain actitivy and subjective perception.
Yes, I have a New EP. It's angry! My New Years passed in relative uncertainty and weirdness. Hooray!!!
I put together a list for a friend of mine with energy problems due to cancer, of the things which help. Hopefully it can help someone else too-
re: starting. I recommend trying everything, but starting with one thing at a time for a week or so, then adding another - gives your body time to adjust to what you're taking, and time for you to evaluate whether it's actually helping you. I recommend checking some out with your doctor if you're on any drugs.
re: places to buy. I've found the online pharmacies much cheaper than their offline equivalents. Supermarkets are good for vitamin C and herbal stuff.
re: Sleep - if you've had any problems with sleep, a healtheries herbal "easy sleep" capsule + a healtheries St Johns wort "Mood and nerves" (both supermarket-available) is useful.
Re: energy. I percieve a difference between energy and agitation - some things seem to give me more balanced, sustained positive energy, while others give me more negative agitation without really sustaining me. Certain things, like CoQ10 and consumer-grade multivitamins, seem to give me more agitation than energy personally. Your experience may vary-
again for me, if you are on a range of supplements, and you have a lot of energy, it's good to take days off every so often (obviously not for stuff like hormones) to give your body a chance to crash.
m@
All crap (c) Copyright 2010 Matt except when quoting others - then it's their crap!
