Getting seriously involved in changing someone else's life will incur major loss to your own. I'm speaking from several rounds of experience. It's not to be taken lightly and it's not an automatic moral duty. I would strongly argue that your duty is to make a full bodied effort to convince their family that their own is in mortal immediate crisis. If they don't respond to that after it's clearly and emphatically communicate then it's on them. Sadly your friend is almost certainly not going to seek out professional help unless someone intimately intervenes.

In particular, intergenerational dance events have died from our society.

I think you're on to something vitally important with this. I think about it often.

I just want to counter balanced this by sharing love ted chiang but cannot happily get through any p k dick and little Gibson either. I find Chiangs work hits me deeper on a conceptual level and perhaps it's that exact lightness of tone. I find Dick and Gibson too affected with gravitas and a vision of stylistic coolness that I do not share for me to enjoy them. But that is all purely subjective preference, they're both objectively fine writers

I wouldn't say PKD is gravitas. He is often funny and has a workingman prose. Gibson, yes. Though, I find his later works, like Peripheral, less stylized and serious.

can you share any pointers on where to get started with this, ie using game engine for artistic video generation?

i've seen it accomplished but never found any resources on how to achieve it.

Join VJ Union on FB or vjun.io and we help you . Been doing this for decades ;)

Unreal has a particle generator that is used sometimes in art videos.

Install and start programming, then art will come.

thanks you for this. The entire concept of AI alignment rests upon alignment of markets with social good, ie market regulation, a situation which is antithetical to neoliberalism. There is no alignment within neoliberal economies. As stated elsewhere, venture capitalism escaped the sandbox already.

Yep. The theory is that competition creates alignment, but we have trillion-dollar megacorps that openly boast about exploiting network effects and platform effects and last-mile dynamics and two-sided markets to avoid competition and nobody cares. It's completely fucked.

I am watching this with pretty intense interest. I've long been alarmed at the potential for this to happen to any artist who speaks out against a streaming platform.

Yes. Noise induced from club soundsystems, started in 2006 with multiple flare ups every few years after an exposure, even one last year. The reality is that my hearing loss is minimal, my hearing is significantly better than most people my age, when measured. It’s a psychological phenomenon, and I’ve learned, and relearned again, to completely ignore it. I live and sleep in silence, except when I read discussions like this, and “remember” my tinnitus for a moment. But I’ve proved to myself, time and time again, that i can happily live with it, and that belief becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

If you perceive it as dangerous threat, the brain amplifies it. If you perceive it as a neutral presence, the brain ignores it. Ive used pretty ridiculous imaginative tricks to convince my brain that it’s a benign presence, and it’s worked. Noise masking is vital for me in the early stages.

At it’s very worst it was loud enough to hear during a jet flight taking off and would mask normal conversation. Now I can meditate in a silent room and barely notice it. I don’t notice it when I lie down to sleep.

Not all tinnitus is psychological: I’ve also had somatic tinnitus, a very low throbbing hum in one ear. That was extremely challenging , and the tinnitus talk forum provided a theory and solution that worked. It was caused by jaw tension, solved by sleeping with a dental guard.

Honestly this popular rebuttal actually appears more inaccurate and quaint to me than the opinion it’s dismissing.

My teenage kid strongly feels that modern pop music is trash quality compared to previous decades, thinks that new “underground” music is poorly mimicking previous decades, and bemoans the lack of current scenes that she can participate in. It’s a bit sad watching her sift through 90s/00s music rather than dig into new music of her generation, but I can hear the problem when she plays me both the underground and pop stuff her friends are listening to. It’s tame.

There have been profound infrastructural changes to cultural production and distribution, lead by SV and VCs. These have served to massively boost stock valuations of centralising digital platforms. The music they produce is affected by these changes. The faux meta genre “hyperpop” even exploits this (boringly imo). It’s reassuring to believe the kids are alright but the problem is not the kids.

I want to summarize because I feel like it cant be repeated enough on this site:

The endless march of optimizing profits by investors who control an ever lopsided share of wealth destroys everything.

What you describe is pretty common - a segement of younger people preferring older music, typically the music of their parents generation. This is nothing new either, not every young person liked Elvis either.

I know. but what’s atypical is the tame-ness, the lack of energy and lack of community participation and shared experience in new music, and its sharp decline of perceived cultural value by the younger generation. I think the changing valuation and changing qualities are not wholly unrelated.

Was Gilbert O’Sullivan really that much better than Kenrick Lamar?

Not much to chew on there tbh

I have a lot of friends in the music industry since I used to work there until recently, both back end eg A&Rs and agents as well as artists. The common sentiment is that nothing new has happened in the last decade, everyone’s wondering why, and increasingly exasperated.

So okay, hip hop.. US trap has been largely in stasis since 2008/2010 (lex lugar era). Uk drill has been in stasis since 2017. Does 2023 Kendrick really sound much different to 2012 kendrick? Compare 2002 rap to 1992 rap.

As I said before - we have reached the end of history of music.

I’ve known several people who have been recruited into a particular death cult and they are/were very high performing individuals with very stable backgrounds ie strong social network with plenty of resources of all kinds. Confident upper middle class successful entrepreneur types. The attack vulnerability was simply some level of narcissism and desire to belong. These are universal human qualities.

You haven’t described accurately who is at risk from cults, at all. Think of the idea that every religion could be reasonably described as an established cult.

I almost switched careers to UX a couple of times because I obsess over usability of everything, digital & physical, have a flair for visual design, and am often told I’m highly empathetic.

I just couldn’t get over how full of shit the UX industry seemed to be. It seemed in thrall to itself, and vastly over-rating its own depth and complexity. Sorry for the negativity. I have huge undying respect for dedicated HCI research experts and massive admiration for talented visual designers. I just couldnt shake the impression that a lot of UX had become a blag, a methodology to sell to business like agile etc, and wasn’t on solid ground.

I’m not saying there’s any real insight in that but it was the opinion I formed and this article seems to give some degree of validation to it.

The idea of HCI research and usable product design still strike me as noble & important fields of endeavour. I’d hope if you’re a sceptical UX researcher then we’d be in some kind of understanding & agreement. I admire what it can be.

I feel this temptation on a daily basis.