Satans Little Helper

I'm sorry, but if consumers believe their products work, they simply earn more $$$. The placebo effect, for instance, is a well researched effect. Or in other words, consumer confidence is key. And these guys bloody well know it. I'm not here arguing the pharmaceutical industry are angels. But generally speaking, they're not doing business like some proverbial Trump. That's simply not a viable business model in a heavily regulated field as medicine. I'm not denying there's a strong commercial/economic bias in the industry, because there simply is. But that doesn't mean they don't have "skin in the game" when there are currently exceptions being made when it comes to legal liabilities.

That's a rather one dimensional look at the amount of risk. Legally, sure. But in terms of business, who's going to trust them if their vaccines end up being shit? So yeah, I disagree, they have lots of skin in the game. Even though they might be less culpable legally speaking.

@headplasticAnother interesting link to culture is through (popular) movies, I guess. Some obvious examples of electronic music ending up scoring popular movies are the Matrix movies, I guess. Interesting to draw the lines from movies with electronic scores in the early eighties (blade runner) and late seventies (clockwork orange), till now. As far as I'm concerned to sound effects of all those shitty Transformers shit movies are relevant as well. Those movies trained lots of ears to listen to weird sounds. And pretty much made it easier for these sounds to be used in popular music. The sounds become part of the zeitgeist, if you will.

This won't make me popular, I'm afraid, but the funny thing about the pharma industry here is that besides the economic aspects they will be hell bent on having these new vaccines being safe and effective. Why? If they're not, it will be obvious pretty soon. As these vaccines will be used by huge numbers of people, so their efficacy and safety better be good. Their business will be pretty much over otherwise. The entire world is watching intently. There's a clear risk vs reward here. Sure there might still be some unintended long term side effects. But when it comes to unintended long term side effects, I don't hear people crying about sugary drinks. Bets are, there's plenty of stuff available in regular supermarkets with worse long term side effects. Gotta light? I'm guessing these vaccines will probably sit somewhere between milk and soda, in terms of long term side effects. Feel free to call me naive though.

Just had a first listen. If you liked their previous work, there's nothing here to put you off. And reversely, if you didn't like their previous work, this album won't change your mind either. So yeah. Good stuff. Fits right in with the other Biceps. They're loyal to their formula. And as far as I'm concerned, it's varied enough to keep me interested. No obvious four-to-the-flour booms. Without making things needlessly complicated. And plenty melodies with hooks. If you have a desire for experimental and innovative shit, you should look somewhere else. It's poppy braindance, if you will. ?

Completely forgot I already pre-ordered this! I hope I like the stuff that thumbass thinks is a bit bland. At least, as I enjoyed their previous work. ?

@headplastic Not sure of this helps, but when you say "IDM as popular music" I associated this immediately with the crossovers happening roughly 10 years ago in hip hop/r&b. Where artists sampled other underground artists (Kanye sampling Aphex). Timbaland and co were borrowing beats and techniques from all over the place and applying it to popular music. Going back further, to the nineties and early 2000, you have crossover stuff like Bjork and Madonna even. I'd mention the trip hop stuff also. Like Massive Attack and Portishead, and the likes. More recently John Frusciante moving over from rock towards IDM is also interesting. And I want to put Trent Reznor there as well. Also stuff like Underworld, Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk. It's not really IDM anymore, I guess, but it's typically electronic music moving into the domain of popular music. That's what I personally consider as IDM leaking over to "popular music". It's all about crossing over certain barriers. Either by sampling underground stuff directly. By being influenced. Or by Aphex Twin and the likes being played on MTV in the nineties. My guess is that currently, you could argue that music in the charts is influenced in terms of the production techniques. Music nowadays tends to be built on a grid using software. This has been heavily explored in IDM space, I'd argue. Although not uniquely. Side note: to me, as a thesis this appears to be a bit too broad a subject though. I'd put more focus on a single artist and the connection with popular music. Kraftwerk would be a good example, I guess.

Yeah couple of good tracks on there. Broad spectrum and Nu perspective in particular are my favs. Nu perspective starts of simple but ends up having a bit of an SAW feel to it when the melodies drop. Lovely!

Thx! True, you weren't arguing that. Wasn't specifically thinking of you when I wrote that. My bad. I thought Auxien did though. Maybe I misunderstood. That first link does show it's a bit more complicated. There's a distinction between foreign intelligence and domestic. And yesterdays event was purely domestic. So, I think my point still stands.

Hi noob here. But long time reader. I'm a bit confused. As far as I can tell, those agencies are only allowed access to data of US citizens *if* there's a reasonable cause. If people expect the FBI and the likes to be *on top of this*, like some have, people are basically saying they should be allowed to access all that data without any particular cause. I've seen plenty people in the past around here arguing against these types of surveillance practices. And rightly so. But the consequence is that FBI/etc can only knock on Twitters/Facebooks door *after* the event, or at least with specific evidence on specific individuals. We've been through the nonsense with the FBI and all trying to figure out what the Ruskies were doing in Trumps building in 2015. We've seen the procedures. Criticism about the lack of police people present at the capitol yesterday, I'm all for. But expecting the FBI to identify and prevent people who may go to some protest (ending up as attempted coup), that's just counter to all anti-surveillance arguments. That's just silly, imo. (way to go for a first post! making friends is what i do best! )