zazen

Here's my problem with Star Wars. Take this scene, which is near the start of Episode 4/New Hope: Now this is brilliant and hilarious cinema, especially for a film made in 1977. The two robots look cool. The dialogue is hilarious because C3PO is the only one of the two we can actually understand, so you get the sortof hi jinx you get with a ventriloquist when the puppet whispers in their ear and you only hear one side of the conversation - "dont get technical with me!". Bonus points for comedy because C3PO is basically a comedy butler type character. BUT its is completely crap universe building. Why the fuck would you have a sentient robot that can't talk. We find out later the fucker can even fly. But for some reason they couldn't stretch to giving it the ability to output speech. Great cinema, crap sci-fi universe building.

Using this as an excuse to post this hilarious Ableton 10 shred (watch with sound on) So many of the the sound choices to fit the visuals are spot on, this is a masterpiece

I've got a question - you know there's plenty of "two blokes that make electronic music" duos - autechre, boc, orbital, plaid, mouse on mars, etc Are there any female duos that make electronic music? (and I guess that means not singing)

For some reason, since I first heard of them 20 years ago I thought pan sonic were a female duo. Must have mixed them up with someone else. (are there any female electronica duos? like, two females that make electronic music together a-la autechre or boc but neither of them do vocals?)

"Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky is an amazing piece of sci-fi. It was published back in 2015 when it won the Arthur C Clarke award and just last week the series (of three books) won a Hugo It deals with generation ships, geoengineering, uplift of other species. The FT review said "tackles big themes—gods, messiahs, artificial intelligence, alienness—with brio." which is also a good way of summing it up. I'd never read the guys stuff before so I didn't know what to expect but it was so tense and interesting and so well crafted. The book has perhaps the most satisfying use of a "Chekhov's gun" plot point that I've ever seen. I was always really into Iain M Banks and, to me, Adrian Tchaikovsky, while different, seems to be in the same vein. Same sort of confidence - takes on big dark crazy ideas and nails them. The other two books in the series are also really good, although all three books are deliberately quite different. So there you go, "Children of Time", starting to become one of the most acclaimed sci-fi novels of the last decade.

re: the hospital: both stories seem possible to me: (a) that IDF did it or (b) that hamas accidentally did it and then blamed it on the IDF. and the whole confusion over it is an example of modern information warfare. Will we ever get a clear narrative on what happened to the hospital or will both sides continue to build their story? We're going to have to get used to information warfare. (makes me think of climate change - even when we're all underwater or half the world is wrecked the arguments about it still wont end, denialists will still be saying its sunspots or some shit) So you might feel that the internet has made everything worse, but actually thinking back to 9-11 and the second Iraq war I think there is a wider spectrum of views being disseminated than there was 20 years ago and as a result things are playing out differently. Like there's two sides to the modern 'social media during a world crisis' coin: - cameras everywhere, quick reporting, lots of viewpoints getting wide exposure - fake footage, misleading messages, any possible confusion is capitalised upon for maximum leverage BUT both sides have to operate in that environment, e.g. I think the IDF is having to be more careful (or at least try and appear to be more careful) that they would have 20 years ago. so many cameras now. And hamas brutality from two weeks ago was exposed much more than perhaps they expected due to cameras everwhere. And for us, sitting safely thousands of miles away, a confusing barrage of conflicting information to deal with. But perhaps thats more realistic? Perhaps we've got too used to complicated world events being neatly packaged up and explained to us. We gotta do more homework these days.

My thoughts exactly

esaruoho, just gotta say my kids love "Strateface" and we all dance to that track at least once a week : )

Don't know who this guy is but he seems to understand the situation and have some nuance

re: amount of armed conflict now compared to previously: the 70s and 80s were way worse. but (as an environmentalist) the coming squeeze on resources (food, water, survivable land) in the next few decades might kick things off. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-world-region

I've been vaguely wondering about this for years. In 1995 RDJ was interviewed by NME magazine and had this to say: See the interview here: https://lannerchronicle.wordpress.com/2020/09/26/aphex-twin-nme-18th-march-1995/ Now, with the utmost respect to RDJs talent, was he just talking out of his arse here? Because surely 20+ years later, if he had written secret pop songs that had got into the Top 40 we would know about it? (for americans: Top 40 was/is the UK singles chart) So I hereby ask watmm - can we identify what secret 1995-ish pop songs he might be talking about? Surely we could identify his sound signature if it was there? Or was it all a load of bollocks? Because lets face it, he has been known to talk bollocks in interviews, especially in that era

Hmm I suppose the article meant destabilise but its an article about thwarting the normalisation deal between Saidi Arabia and Isreal, so maybe denormalise is a reference to that. Or maybe its just a typo

This bit of analysis in the Guardian was interesting: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/08/hamas-attack-has-abruptly-altered-the-picture-for-middle-east-diplomacy Basically that Iran is making this all kick off to make it impossible for Saudi Arabia and Israel to get too friendly And if so thats just depressing - you've got a really fucked up situation being stoked and meddled from all different sides while the normal peope on the ground suffer terribly.

(and by Kayfabe, I mean, the things everyone pretends everyone might do but no-one actually does) I bought a Pokemon Booster pack for my kid and on the back it has the addresses of the USA and European Pokemon companies and there's a little note that says "Retain these addresses for your records" Who the fuck is going to do that? We've all got smoke detectors in our houses. Great, they save lives etc. But Official advice is to go and press the button to test that they are still working once a week. Once a fucking week. Who the fuck is doing that? How many people actually have a calendar reminder to go and test their smoke alarms once a week? Probably hardly anyone. But it costs the guy at the fire brigade nothing to make that the official advice even though they know no-one is going to follow it and then ultimately we're all left with the slight nagging feeling that we should be testing our smoke alarms more than we do. And what bugs me is the misaligned incentives, where someone can 'recommend' you do something without having to account for the millions of other things you've already been recommended to do, because making modern life make sense isn't their problem, so they recommend something and then we've just got another thing on the stack that probably isn't actually worth doing that often when you look at it in context of the cost/benefit of balancing the time of your whole fucking life. But they've recommended it anyway. You know all that flatpack furniture in your house? You're supposed to check regularly that all assembly fastenings are properly tightened and retighten when necessary. So we're then stuck in this modern kayfabe where we're supposed to get 8 hours sleep a night and drink 4 litres of water and excercise and take time to relax and clean our home and work and maintain friendships and read newspapers and check the attic for leaks and check the car oil and the check your tyre pressure before any significant journey. Agree to the EULA. Not stick cotton buds/q-tips in your ears.

The Stone Tape is a spooky old BBC film from the 70s that I am familiar with via this meme about video game development:

welcome back, re-read the rules

oh yes Hiszekeny is great, I'd forgotten that one

guys, guys, check this out: In 2005 I bought VS 'Defluxion' from Bleep (labelled as Untitled 7", originally dated 2001 ) and it was a reallly chilled track and I've always loved it and I was coming to post it in this thread as an example of Venetian Snares doing something chill and low key for a change. But then I find the youtube link and on youtube its a completely different track and its all breakcore?? This is not the Defluxion I bought in 2005: But I bought my track from Bleep, this isn't some Limewire labelling fuckup. The mp3 still has the bleep tags. But the version on Bleep today is also breakcore. So Bleep must have sent me a track by someone completely different 18 years ago labelled as Venetian Snares and ever since its been my favourite snares track. So can someone ID this please, who is this? Extract: Not Defluxion Apparently.mp3 edit: Thanks cern, looks like the Bleep tombola actually gave me o9 - No Delay For Days

This place has survived for 25 years thanks to papa. Papa knows what he's doing. Closing this thread as the first annual meme-only festival has now finished

lol. Some of VS album covers were way too edgy for me. I liked HCCBU and Rossz. This Elgar remix track is a masterpiece, even if it is a bit "obvious": I remember that when VS was at his peak frequency of releasing albums, there were lots of arguments here, about whether he was really any good or was he just mashing random stuff together. Was he doing really complex time signatures, or was he just taking the piss? In retrospect he was clearly very good. I remember there was much controversy as to whether VS should become a "featured artist" here. Eventually papa relented and created the subforum, but then had to shut it down .... due to a request from Mr Aaron Funk himself. That was pretty funny.