I like today’s music but it seems derivative. Maybe I’m full of shit, and feel free to tell me why, but it seems like music from my dad’s youth (which I also like) was way different than mine, but nothing has changed that much since then.
You could take today’s music and put it on a radio station in the 90s and it wouldn’t seem out of place if you didn’t know any better. I don’t think the same is true for 90s music on a 60s or 70s station.
Not Nirvana, wrong genre. But it wouldn’t be out of place on one of my metal stations, but I don’t have to wait for that because now I have a station based on them, thank you for that.
But Morbid Angel came up after a few songs (to be fair it was a more recent song) and that’s kind of my point. Stations based on a 90s band will get me recent stuff and vice versa. If I make a Who station, Elvis doesn’t come up. If I make a Joplin station, L7 doesn’t come up. You usually get a pretty narrow time frame for anything pre-90s, after that it’s anything goes.
That’s not to say Igorrr sounds exactly like anyone from 30 years ago, but it’s an evolution as opposed to a revolution.
Edit: several songs later I got NIN, Mr. Self Destruct, it doesn’t get much more 90s than that.
A good chunk of that is going to be because the 90’s was around the time when digital tools became accessible, good, industry wide things, and we haven’t had a kind of big musical innovation since that point, as far as the technology itself goes. That transition probably happened more noticeably in the 2000’s, but you could tell it was happening over the course of the 90’s for sure. The music industry has also not changed that much, we’re still very much living in that reagan kind of neoliberal huge music label era, but that’s kind of been around forever, so I kind of doubt that’s been a major change from the 60’s up to now. You could maybe say that streaming and the internet has changed music, and it certainly has, because now there are no gatekeepers, everyone listens to everything, and lots of artists put out like, a 10 minute single that changes styles six times so it might be propagated better online, instead of like a 90 minute experimental album. But then, there are more room for both of them, because people are more easily able to find what they want, and the latter was never gonna be mainstream anyways.
If I had to point out a larger genre shift, there has definitely been a large mainstreaming of rap and this kind of “pop country” more recently. You had those in the 90’s, kind of infamously, but hootie and the blowfish does not really sound like modern country through some cultural progression that I don’t really understand because I’m not brushed up on it. NWA and Tupac do not sound the same as modern rap, which has been getting a lot more of a “soft” kind of vibe, which I’d probably attribute to the influence of like, kanye, and maybe some lo-fi stuff like nujabes, and maybe just a mainstreaming of the genre at large. The subject matter has shifted, the tone has shifted, and the music itself has changed. Those genres would not sound the same, relative to their 90’s counterparts.
The biggest thing I can think of that probably makes 60’s and 70’s music sound out of place next to 90’s music is probably how hair metal got killed by grunge, which I couldn’t really attribute to any one reason in particular. There’s a pretty clear line between your rock acts, which have been going forever, and your later metal acts, and that line still exists with grunge, but grunge marks a kind of tonal shift. You’d also have to ignore the whole of disco and club music, that motown shit from the 70’s and 80’s, which died out pretty hard, but most everyone does that anyways, so who cares. I don’t know if I’ve heard many 70’s or 80’s stations that actually play disco, certainly, not in proportion to how popular it was, usually they just play like. Stevie wonder, from what I’ve heard, shit like that. Or MJ. The thing you could probably derive from disco, from the 70’s and 80’s into the 90’s, would probably be like, drum and bass, and eurobeat, stuff like that, and then you’d get stuff like daft punk later on which has a pretty clear connection to disco generally.
I dunno, this is all to say, shit has substantially changed in almost every mainstream genre I can think of in the last like, 60 years, from the 60’s. Some stuff has remained pretty similar, and some stuff has had an almost cyclical nature, but that’s just kind of the nature of music, I think.
That’s an interesting point about the accessibility of digital tools. Without a completely new way to craft a sound nothing could sound all that different.
Although I do like “real” country music (sorry about the gatekeeping) “pop country”, Nashville pop, or whatever you want to call it, is the one genre of music I dislike the whole of. I guess it’s different from other country but it’s similar enough to generic pop I wouldn’t consider it new.
I do agree about rap/hip-hop though. The artists I listen to now are very different than what I listened to in the 90s and there is a much wider variety of style. I wonder how much of that is due to how easy it is to discover new artists now. Back in the 90s learning about underground rap artists, or underground anything, wasn’t easy.
So strange that everyone looks back at hip-hop in the 90s and 90% of the time it’s about stuff like Tupac and NWA, while another parallel current with bands such as De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and Arrested Development gets overlooked.
Those bands were extraordinary, like Hip Hop in a tradition of Stevie Wonder, and kept putting out excellent albums that sound just as fresh today and are just as influential as anything from that era, but mid-decade the music industry swept them aside swiftly and unceremoniously, to make way for West Coast and Gangsta Rap.
I didn’t mean to suggest 90s rap was one-dimensional but it does seem like there is more variety now. But I wasn’t in an environment where I could buy local/touring hip hop tapes out of the trunk of a car, where I was that sort of thing was mostly punk and metal, so I never experienced all there was to offer. Maybe what I perceive as an increase is just due to streaming services making discovery so much easier.
Oh, I didn’t mean you, sorry if that’s the impression I gave, I was just pondering on things the way I’m remembering them.
Now that you mention “tapes out of a car”, before the internet there was another way that music spread in those days, for those of us who lived in smaller cities. Somebody would go to the cool city and take along his portable stereo, record tapes of the cool radio station, then back in town those tapes would circulate and get copied like bootlegs.
From LA in the 80s, it was KROQ with Punk, Post-Punk (The Stranglers, Joy Division) and Technopop (Depeche Mode, Human League, etc.).
In the 90s it was MARS FM with Techno and House.
I can only imagine the Hip-Hop that was being played in low-power radio stations in places like NYC or Philly.
A friend used to go to San Francisco every summer, brought back a bunch of tapes from the LIVE 105 graveyard shift, all carefully catalogued with dates, DJs and playlists. It was like KROQ but more subtle and varied, listening to those tapes felt exotic and meaningful.
One time he brought back a tape of KFJC, one where I first heard things like Liquid Liquid and Pharoah Sanders; that one felt like my mind got a firmware upgrade. Extraordinary.
Since the internet and starting with Real Player, now the entire world is at our fingertips (and ears), and I’m glad about this, but I will forever be grateful for those tapes from back when we weren’t directly plugged into “the action”.
I think if you take today’s pop music and do a side by side comparison with 90s pop you’d be surprised by how different they are. Not to mention, there are many many electronic genres and subgenres around today that have arisen in recent years.
The best radio stations to me today, the ones that keep me compelled, are ones that mix freely from all eras (including this one) and genres. Try BBC Radio 6 Music, or WPRB (from Princeton University), Soho Radio.
From what I hear on these stations, where DJs are expected to fearlessly put on whatever they like, it seems, the music of today sounds just as good as from any other era, but for me it’s always been about discovery, and sometimes that includes being a little uncomfortable, I like to teach my mind a new groove every once in a while and it has been known to resist. It happens to all of us, I’m afraid, more and more as we get older.
That said, I can comfortably be against some music industry tendencies, there is no “pop utopia” in the past.
Last decade it’s been software tools like autotune; in the 90s the “volume wars” began and frankly, most USA rock sounds too similar, all trying to channel Led Zep and Black Sabbath through a punkish filter; in the 80s many bands were overproduced half to death, submerged in sonic synthetic fluff, all the new studio toys abused, layer upon layer upon layer.
In the proper hands, these technologies can help a piece of music shine brighter, but in the hands of producers following the bandwagon - and that’s always been the majority of 'em - everything ends up sounding the same, like neon ads all around you.
I think the big reason people think that music from another time was better is because you only get to hear the good songs; they stopped playing the shitty ones long ago.
Based off the number of absolute bangers from that decade, I can only conclude that there were either more musicians or fewer bad songs.
Seriously: there are more legendary songs than months in that decade; And there are more songs which are merely incredible than there were weeks in the decade.
Maybe all that asbestos in the air caused better music.
Probably I just like rock-inspired sound from that era. Music shifts all the time and it’s just a matter of personal preference. It feels like rock splintered into fractile sub-genres which never quite hooked me in the same way.
Punk and metal had a lot of progress in later decades, but their wellspring feels like the 80s.
We can’t know that for sure. Maybe Kate brought that sweet little frosty mofo home and took really great care of it, only threatening it to perform verbally from time to time as an after dinner show for guests, and to keep it in line before it becomes sentient.
I realize it’s supposed to be funny, but incase anyone isn’t aware: AI are unlikely to enslave humanity because the most likely rogue AI scenario is the earth being subsumed for raw materials along with all native life.
Doubt is an entirely fair response. Since we cannot gather data on this, we must rely on the inferior method of using naive models to predict future behavior. AI “sovereigns” (those capable of making informed decisions about the world and have preferences over worldstates) are necessarily capable of applying logic. AI who are not sovereigns cannot actively oppose us, since they either are incapable of acting uppon the world or lack any preferences over worldstates. Using decision theory, we can conclude that a mind capable of logic, possessing preferences over worldstates, and capable of thinking on superhuman timescales will pursue its goals without concern for things it does not find valuable, such as human life. (If you find this unlikely: consider the fact that corporations can be modeled as sovereigns who value only the accumulation of wealth and recall all the horrid shit they do.) A randomly constructed value set is unlikely to have the preservation of the earth and/or the life on it as a goal, be it terminal or instrumental. Most random goals that involve the AI behaving noticeably malicious would likely involve the acquisition of sufficient materials to complete or (if there is no end state for the goal) infinitely pursue what it wishes to do. Since the Earth is the most readily available source for any such material, it is unlikely not to be used.
This makes a lot of assumptions though and none of which are ones that I particularly agree with.
First off, this is predicated entirely off of the assumption that AI is going to think like humans, have the same reasoning as humans/corporations and have the same goals/drive that corporations do.
Since we cannot gather data on this, we must rely on the inferior method of using naive models to predict future behavior.
This does pull the entire argument into question though. It relies on simple models to try and predict something that doesn’t even exist yet. That is inherently unreliable when it comes to its results. It’s hard to guess the future when you won’t know what it looks like.
Decision Theory
Decision Theory has one major drawback which is that it’s based entirely off of past events and does not take random chance or unknown-knowns into account. You cannot focus and rely on “expected variations” in something that has never existed. The weather cannot be adequately predicted three days out because of minor variables that can impact things drastically. A theory that doesn’t even take into account variables simply won’t be able to come close to predicting something as complex and unimaginable as artificial intelligence, sentience and sapience.
Why do you think that? What part of what I said made you come to that conclusion?
I worded that badly. It should more accurately say “it’s heavily predicated on the assumption that AI will act in a very particular way thanks to the narrow scope of human logic and comprehension.” It still does sort of apply though due to the below quote:
we can conclude that a mind capable of logic, possessing preferences over worldstates, and capable of thinking on superhuman timescales will pursue its goals without concern for things it does not find valuable, such as human life.
Oh, I see. You just want to be mean to me for having an opinion.
I disagree heavily with your opinion but no, I’m not looking to be mean for you having one. I am, however, genuinely sorry that it came off that way. I was dealing with something else at the time that was causing me some frustration and I can see how that clearly influenced the way I worded things and behaved. Truly I am sorry. I edited the comment to be far less hostile and to be more forgiving and fair.
Minor but important point: the grey goo scenario isn’t limited to the surface of the earth; while I’m sure such variations exist, the one I’m most familiar with results in the destruction of the entire planet down to the core. Furthermore, it’s not limited to just the Earth, but at that point we’re unlikely to be able to notice much difference. After the earth, the ones who will suffer are the great many sapient species that may exist in the galaxies humans would have been able to reach had we not destroyed ourselves and damned them to oblivion.
Except not at all? I’ve not seen any climate predictions saying the surface of earth will be a denuded hellscape, but only civilization will be destroyed. Humans will not be wiped out, they’ll just be living way worse. Resources will be challenging but will exist. Many will die, but not all. Biological life will shift massively but will exist.
A grey mush turns us into a surface like mercury, completely and utterly consumed.
Even in the worst climate predictions modern presenting societies will live.
I’m sorry, but you’re incorrect. To imagine the worst case scenario imagine a picture of the milky-way labeled t=0, and another picture of the milky-way labeled t=10y with a great void 10 lightyears in radius centered on where the earth used to be.
Every atom of the earth, every complex structure in the solar system, every star in the milky-way, every galaxy within the earth’s current light cone taken and used to create a monument that will never be appreciated by anything except for the singular alien intelligence that built it to itself. The last thinking thing in the reachable universe.
That frame is probably influenced by this modern belief that Egyptians couldn’t have possibly built the pyramids. I’m going to blame one of my favorite shows/movie: Stargate.
oof that hurts. Im not wild about flat earthers or alien conspiracy or such but would I give up good scifi shows to not have that part of humanity. that would be a high price indeed.
Honestly, babies sleep and eat. Yeah, you have to keep them clean, but kids? They are emotionally manipulative suicidal nightmares too much of the time, and you still have to keep them clean. (I have a 5 and 7 year old.)
Have you tried ditching milk products? I heard it can have an effect on those symptoms. As well as on asthma and allergies. I was plagued by allergies but don’t have them anymore. Anecdotal evidence I know but you find a lot of papers regarding this topic.
The best absurdity is global finance … the idea and belief that there is trillions of dollars worth of promised wealth everywhere yet the majority of it doesn’t exist, except as promissory funds or glorified paper IOUs, yet we have so much faith in it that that belief is what runs our modern world.
I seem to remember one techno-Asian-dystopia book that may have highlighted this, where every week all the major banks have a ceremonial exchange of tons of gold bricks, as a proof to solidify their claims of having money that’s owed/exchanged.
If you have a dollar, and lend it to me, and I lend it to my friend Alice, we have 1 dollar, but the total debt is 2$.
Nobody is claiming there are trillions of wealth around. But there are trillions worth of debts. Because countries, companies and people lend to each others a lot.
Then Larry asks for $2 and that indebted $2 becomes $4 for Larry who now lends it to Steve who can now say he has $4 but now there is $8 worth of debt … all from $1 along a long chain of people promising to pay things back, even though they have can’t.
Multiply that by trillions and now we have a long line of debt that is impossible to ever repay and the only way to maintain the system is to keep making promises to more people and institutions that it will be repaid back. An article I read about this scenario years ago estimated that if all global debt was halted today, no more loans were made and everyone and every institution was told to start paying back everything at a minimum amount … it would take millions of years to completely pay off everything.
Nobody likes it being said and everyone claims it isn’t so but in other circles … it’s called a Ponzi scheme … where a scam artist takes your money and promises to make it grow by promising it to other people in an every longer chain of people with ever increasing amounts of money … the only way to stop it is to uncover the scheme and force everyone to accept the corrupt absurdity of it all
If we all took a step back and lost faith in the financial and banking world … all of it would come crashing down. It isn’t a system built on wealth and money … it’s a system of faith … and as long as keep believing in it … it keeps working.
I’m getting into an age, where my experienced decades are becoming an abstract blur and every year more conscious that i am now in the far far future i fantasized about, when i was young.
It changes perspectives and expectations of what’s to come.
Yeah, pretty disappointed… On one hand the computer dream came true and surpassed my expectations, but on the other hand everything else went down the hill and hasn’t even reached the bottom yet.
I forgot who, but someone told me i should ask; “do you need an ear or a solution” whenever people come rant about anything. Best tips i heard in a while.
Yes, I started doing this as well with my GF. If she is describing a problem at work or whatever I ask “Do you want me to tell you how I would fix this, or do you just want me to listen?” and like 75% of the time she already knows what to do and just wants me to listen to the problem and then when she is done she feels better because she got to vent, but sometimes she really does want an answer. It works out good for both of us.
I think that words have meaning. And the meaning can be true, but pronunciation is not part of the true part. It is only the color of the arrow pointing at truth.
I pronounce oil differently than my cousin in Texas, and I pronounce car differently than my uncle in New Jersey. And to use pre-Modern English (~1500) era spelling ideas we would spell those words differently and probably use different alphabets. And spelling became a standard thing in English around 1750 when Johnson’s dictionary became so celebrated and a primary reference.
So there is slippage in spelling and pronunciation.
In the event of an apocalypse and you do happen to pack a great bag of actual essentials … someone bigger stronger and with a gun is going to murder you for it.
Are they? I’ll admit, my experience is limited but it’s seemed to me even pistols are a considerable weight, especially compared to other survival/camping supplies.
Yeah, if you’ve ever done some serious hiking you know you wouldn’t want to haul around a gun. Also, imagine being in a shootout while wearing a massive backpack.
1.5 lbs, loaded, on average. Even I overestimated by quite a lot but it still wouldn’t have made a major difference.
How the hell heavy did you think guns were? Were you adding on the mental weight of being able to easily take a life? Because that traditionally does convert to mass very readily.
Depends what you consider considerable. For example Glock G19 is 855 g (30.16 oz) with a full magazine, to me that doesn’t seem much. Especially if you consider how valuable of a tool it could be. Hopefully you’d have at least twice that weight in water alone.
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