Oh hey there. It's been a while. Been busy doing my own things, listening and discovering more music in my quest to find that platonic, archetypal piece that is in my head waiting to get out, and maybe even attempting (gasp) to try my hand at composing a thing or two myself. As someone whose knowledge of music is all informal, taken from bits and pieces at my own leisure, I doubt I have anything more interesting to say that coffee hasn't already said. The passion in enjoying something like this, however, and not just music, but anything, is admirable as all hell and deserves a badge. Passionate people who are passionate about things are cool. I really dig Shostakovich's music myself. His 5th symphony is a great one. A lot of shostakovich's music is really colored by the area and time he was living in, and you can feel it in the anger that coffee mentions in his post. My favorite Shostakovich piece has to actually be his Second Symphony, which doesn't seem as popular as most of his others, and is a piece even he disliked, but I managed to find some beauty in it, especially in the latter half. If anyone likes angry, ferocious pieces, I would heavily recommend Gavriil Popov's 1st Symphony. It's sad he got soviet folks angry, causing him to be more conservative in his composing. That explosion at 5:18... Potent stuff there. Here's something on Popov: http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/09/the_popov_disco.html
Thinking of a piece that gets me as passionate as coffee here seems like a fun idea, so I'll try that. I would say Erik Satie's Le Fils Des Etoiles is a piece that speaks to me: I feel as though there's a secret in this piece that careful study will unravel. It feels alien and otherworldly to me, almost as if it it is out of place in history. Here's an orchestrated version arranged by Toru Takemitsu: For whatever reason, when I think of pieces that get me passionate, I also feel compelled to post this piece: Scriabin in general gets me excited. How many other composers have the courage to write a piece to signal the end of the world? And of course he had to die before finishing it... They always die before finishing it!
Oh hey there. I haven't been on in a while (mostly busy with real life stuff), but I'm always up to share some classical music I love to others. If piano pieces are what you want, OftenBen, here are a few pieces that I absolutely love: Ravel - Miroirs no. 3: Un barque sur l'ocean: This is a wonderful piece by ravel in a series of piano pieces, all of which are good, but this one is my favorite of the bunch. It's calm, melodic, meditative and very oceanic if I do say so myself. A wonderful piece by one of my favorite composers. Ravel - Piano Concerto for the Left Hand As a lefty, it is almost an obligation to post this wonderful piece by Ravel. Would you believe this piece was composed for famous Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's brother? Didn't even know he had a brother before discovering this piece! Paul Wittgenstein lost his hand in a war but still wanted to play piano, so he got Ravel to write this piece for him. Unfortunately Ravel was incredibly displeased at Paul when he performed it, because Paul decided to change a few things in the piece to make it more palatable to his musical tastes. This is a wonderful, heroic sounding piece, just like Paul. Alexander Scriabin - Piano Sonata no. 5 I've listened to a lot of versions of this piece, but Sultanov imo does it best. When I first listened to this I felt as if I was listening to some cosmic otherworldly music. Really amazing stuff here. Simeon Ten Holt - Canto Ostinato Got two hours? This piece is really something beautiful. Whenever I listen to this piece it's like my mind wanders through medieval labyrinths. It's a very minimal, meditative and almost transformative piece. My favorite part of the entire piece has to be section 88. A very dark and lonely sounding, but beautiful part. Unfortunately this isn't my favorite version, but it's the only one on youtube. The one I first listened to, and is my favorite, takes it much faster and spends more time repeating 88 quite a bit. Kasputin - Piano Sonata no. 8 This piece is very jazzy. Kasputin is a perfect blend of jazz and classical that is really worth a listen if you like either genre. Valentin Silvestrov - Last Love Silvestrov is a wonderful Ukrainian composer. His sixth symphony is one of my favorite symphonies of all time, but this isn't about symphonies, lol. This piece in particular is terrible. Yeah right; It's stunningly beautiful. As is this piece by him: He's well worth a listen to, but be forewarned, he is a modern composer. Other pieces by him might be a bit more inaccessible for those who dislike modern music, but if you give him a shot, I think you'll grow to like it. Try this piece: Walter Abendroth - Piano Concerto The stuff you find on youtube, I tell ya. I don't know much of anything about this guy, but I found this when randomly listening to obscure composers on youtube and really like it. Perhaps it's not Tchaikovsky, but I found it nice enough in any case. Granados - Valses Poeticos Very melodic and beautiful waltzes. Theodor Adorno - Piano Piece A very interesting dream-like piece. Debussy - Images I: Reflets dans l'eau Debussy is another favorite of mine, and this piece in particular is a favorite of mine. The first piece of his I ever listened to was his suite Bergamasque: Which is very beautiful and contains the famous Clair de Lune, which you've probably heard somewhere else before in a movie or game or maybe mentioned by someone in a book. A very beautiful piece. Steve Reich - Piano Counterpoint A beautiful minimalistic piece. Minimalism might not be for everyone, but this piece, among others by him, are really something great. Watching the work slowly alter, evolve and change is really something that's a treat to my ears. His Music for 18 Musiciansis also a minimalist masterpiece, albeit not entirely piano, though it plays an important part in the piece in any case: My favorite part has to be his section IIIA The piano is performed by Reich himself, btw. ...I think that's enough for now. I could go on, but I think that's enough piano tunes and places to search for more piano tunes... Well, actually, one more: Camille Saint Saens - The Swan The piano is mostly in the background compared to the violin that just tugs at your heartstrings, but I think it still belongs here. It's a very beautiful piece.
I could never get it to work. One time I thought I got it to work and changed all of my friends to cats, but then I realized if I were really lucid dreaming I would have done other things than change my friends into cats. Other times I could tell I was dreaming thanks to the lightswitch trick, but I couldn't go farther than the acknowledgement that I was dreaming. I couldn't actually do anything. I tried with something that I thought was simple: Changing the color of a room. My dreams usually take place in the night time for some reason, so I thought I could change between morning and night, but that never worked. I could also never fly in a dream. Sometimes the lightswitch trick doesn't even work. One time I remember dreaming that the lightswitch was broken instead of realizing that I'm in a dream world. The fingers trick doesn't work as well. I try pulling my fingers, but they don't extend like others say they should, so it oftentimes makes me think I'm awake when I'm not. I suppose the best tip I know of is to keep a dream diary. Not just for lucid dreaming, but also to keep track of your dreams, since some really interesting shit happens in dreams. I can't even begin to explain what goes on in some of my dreams. It's amazing what stuff your mind can come up with. All the other tricks tend to not work for me that well, but I guess it's like anything else; If you really want something and work for it, you'll get it. If you spend time thinking and trying to lucid dream, you'll get it.
It really was something amazing. It was a time when I think everyone was caught off guard and people felt like they could freely air out their long-held grievances with the way things were going. It had supporters the likes of Judith Butler, Lemony Snicket, and I personally will never forget this one by composer Philip Glass: In those times you could really figure out who to look up to.
Interesting manga. Truthfully there's something about your review (Is it your review?) that could use more work, although I can't quite put my finger on just what it is. But it's nice that you picked what seems like an obscure manga out of everything else you could have done. I never heard of it, but you got me interested with the topics you mentioned.
The music in this movie was really something amazing, as is expected from Joe Hisaishi: Some really great stuff here. This was my first experience with a Miyazaki/Ghibli film, and rewatching it made me appreciate it more. I should probably get on watching the rest of his stuff sometime soon.
As for prompts... 1. I think it's actually pretty good as a kid's movie all around. You have a clear set of people to root for and the show says its piece simply and beautifully enough for a kid to understand. I think kids can appreciate the setting and it just has a very whimsical feel (Even the music exhudes this wonderland feel to it) even with some of heavier imagery and stuff. 2. I don't think so. There are right and wrong people though, the people being in harmony with nature being painted as right. My takeaway from this film is: Take care of nature or else nature will take care of you! Also, I really dig the design of the Ohms. Japan just has a knack for creating cool looking creatures.
Really shows how things can get blown up from misunderstandings on the 'net. If this was someone smaller time than Colbert and someone more malicious was bent on causing some harm, a lot of lives and careers could be ruined from misunderstandings and the media picking up anything that smells of the smallest amount of controversy for coverage, views and so on.
Whoa, this surprised the heck out of me. I actually wouldn't mind using this. EDIT: Oh okay. I see the problem here. That is some magical font right there.This is quoted text. Zounds!
I gotta admit, from the getgo I was a bit skeptical just how they were going to incorporate Linux into the survival strategy bit, but that was actually pretty neat. I'm even more surprised this is the first time I've seen this video. Pretty neat.
I don't have any name suggestions of my own, but this just reminded me of something: AshShields is a hubskier here and he wrote a book where the main characters ran a Coffe Shop named Remedy Coffee. I dunno if that's the name for your shop and your dreams with it, but I just thought of this when I saw this thread in my feed. Other than that,.. Lesse... Morning Glory, Chrysanthemum Coffee, Coffee Cat. Sol Cafe, Luna Cafe. Those are what I could come up with. I'm not good with names!
This interesting animation by Don Hertzfeldt, called "Everything will be OK" It's the first part in a trilogy that really sticks with you after watching it.
Nausicaa is a good one. Watched it a couple of months ago for the first time, but might as well watch it again for the hell of it.
Been meaning to read this since this was apparently a paper funded by the Japanese government, and also because I would say mecha anime is a big love of mine. Glad to see it's finally translated.
EDIT: Well, I read it and must say it's a great read into the history of mecha anime and its influence on anime in addition to the outside factors that influenced it. Unfortunately Chapter 3 isn't translated, and from the list of works in the list at the end it seems there is quite a good amount missing. Overall a great little read; Hope the third chapter gets translated soon.
Now you've got me going through the entire library of pillows songs to figure out which one I liked the most. Probably Please Mr. Lostman, Funny Bunny, Crazy Sunshine, HYBRID RAINBOW, Last Dinosaur, and The Future is Now. Well, that's more than one. Okay, One Life. There; one song. I really like that one.
I dunno what to call it so I'll just use a vague term: "the system" these days has these kinds of problem, I've noticed. I'm talking more than just schools and tests here. I notice this in all aspects of life, like, say, buying from Wal-Mart instead of a mom and pop store. They're set up so that no matter what you're always potentially hurting someone. If you opt out you can potentially hurt teachers and schools. If you stay in... You still hurt them by participating in a system that you don't believe in, and if you believe it's best for your children's educational well-being to opt out, you're obviously hurting them as well. Maybe that's why we find the trolley problem so compelling: Many choices in our lives in the systems we live in have similar kind of scenarios. The trolley problem is also set up so that it always has one "lesser of two evils" choice that people think we should lean towards, like in this instance the choice of letting the kids stay to help the teachers and schools, which would correspond to killing one dude to save five on the other side of the tracks. Or not; I dunno. Maybe I'm just being stupid and comparing things that shouldn't be compared.
Speedreading from my experiences only work with certain kinds of books. I think they would be good for autobiographies, biographies and (though I haven't tested it yet) maybe histories. I have a feeling histories would work. I've had a book by H.G. Wells called The Outline of History that seems interesting enough (And huge to boot at around a thousand or so pages). Maybe once this app gets working again I'll give it a shot with that, though I notice in the book he uses a lot of pictures, so that may be a bad idea. Maybe finally finishing Plutarch's Lives might be a better test. Or maybe stop procrastinating and finish Typee. When it comes to fiction or other kinds of nonfiction, I often find speed reading methods rather useless. I read this book a while back: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4667/4667-h/4667-h.htm through speed reading, I think at around 500 to 600 wpm and can still recall many details about it. I guess as a kind of proof: I think the dude was an idiot for marrying women while still being married to his first wife, no matter how terrible of a wife she might have been. I don't remember if she was the one who had held back from divorce or not, but it took him long enough to finally divorce her as well, nearly being killed by his son. I also felt sorry for one of the other woman who was basically given a biblical style punishment for falling in love with this dude. Times were mad cray back then. There. Now you have to read the book to see if I'm bullshitting or not. Or look up a summary somewhere. Meanwhile I speed read Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently and don't remember much of the book, if anything. And I also read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol that way and all I remember is "Dead as a doornail". So that's what leads me to believe fiction while speedreading isn't good, at least for me. So yeah, that's my opinion on speed reading books.
I often thought that as well, but at the same time I also think it's a bit funny considering how the reason all this shit is happening is because the article that was taken out pretty much proves a conspiracy theory that the government has been taking part in this shilling business all over internet communities.
And Snowden and the NSA is something that I often heard mentioned before by conspiracy theorists, that they are monitoring everything, only to have skeptics hand wave and dimissively say "No one is interested in your porn habits", when in fact, they were:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html
And it just continues to get worse as the leaks go on.
I still don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but I remember arguing with my parents who harbored a belief that perhaps the government wasn't all too innocent in 9/11. Nowadays I'm not too keen to argue as hotly as I once did before, even if I still believe the Government doesn't have anything to do with 9/11.
I'm not so hot to defend America in any general sense anymore as I was back in the days. The NSA massive surveillance thing kinda was the last straw for me personally.
I was very tempted to do that with Mein Kampf. Very tempted. Usually I try to avoid reading something that would make me do that, but I decided to try to give it a shot.
Depends. Right now I've been at Herman Melville's Typee for a couple of months now. I could read Ulysses faster than I'm reading Typee. Before starting that I was reading Murakami's Norweigan Wood and went through that in a couple of days, and during the interim I read a work entitled "A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings", which is a badass title btw, by Knut Hamsum, which was pretty decent, although the contents weren't as badass as the title. I read that in two-ish days. It's not that Typee is a bad book (It's a good book) but sometimes there are books you just read in a sitting no matter the page number then there are books that you make excuses to avoid reading, not out of hatred or anything but just that other things start looking more interesting. Typee is in the latter category. Ulysses the first time took me a few months, but every other rereading gets faster and faster, only slowing down to annotate my book with all of the references. That's really the nasty part of Ulysses: It doesn't end when you finish it, because now you got all these shitton of references that you have to research because they actually are interesting. Joyce you motherfucker. I love you. I can't wait for June to do it aaaaaallllllllllll over again. People should give up on books if they feel they should give up on them. I've had this argument before. I'm more or less of the camp of always finishing a book I read, after reading and watching movies that I wasn't too big into and then by the end I was left with my foot in my mouth (Eraserhead!). But it doesn't matter. There are more books in the world than we have time to read them, and everyone has different reactions to books. I don't think the great books are the end all be all just because a lot of people like Dante and reference him. Maybe they like them, but someone who doesn't shouldn't really have to sit through it just because others did. Find what you like and enjoy. I read Mein Kampf once. That was perhaps the only book I never finished and never will finish. I had a hundred pages to go and I just could not go any longer. I barely remember anything except a lot of frustration at trying to read the book for more than a few minutes. It might have been the translation but I hear from many that the translation doesn't matter. Hitler could not write for shit. I still have the book. I often second-guess myself at times and wonder if maybe now if I read it it'll be different, but I know. I know. I should probably finish Typee. I only have about a hundred pages to go. That in theory takes perhaps about two hours for me. Less than that even. But every time I say that and then try to read it I am faced with the incontrovertible truth of Hofstadter's law. Reading as an achievement? ...I never cared about it. I only started to read because I was faced with a kind of crisis where I decided I wanted to change myself. I started reading anything I could get my hands on. Found out about many authors and Project Gutenberg. Found out about the Western Canon and enjoyed a lot of stuff from there, while also still enjoying things out of the canon and just read anything that sounds interesting to me. I mean, in a way I read Ulysses every year just to say that I do, but also because I genuinely enjoy that book. Wanting challenges and goals to achieve isn't wrong, but don't make it all that matters. Enjoy yourself.
I would have wished to have shoveled more snow.
There's something quite poignant about a parrot in captivity that decides to pluck out all of its feathers. Really sad how most of these birds are beautiful, but unwanted. People say they want a parrot and then don't follow through. Just an impulse commitment that can severely harm the poor bird. Pretty good documentary on the lives of domestic parrots.
It does. I like works like that (And hate it when people don't value something because it doesn't make you feel good), but I suppose like you said, I just clump it all together under "beautiful", knowing the distinction between the words beautiful and pretty. I suppose maybe beautiful isn't the best word for it either since it leads to that kind of misunderstanding.I don't always look for artistic experiences that will leave me feeling good about what I've just experienced, if that makes sense.
Spritual: I'm an apatheist. Theists believe in a god, Atheists don't believe in a god, agnostics can be either, but say we can never truly know... And the apatheist just doesn't give a shit. God could come down and say "Yo, I'm god and I exist", and at the end of the day I still have to do what I have to do. Not like his existence being confirmed means I'll suddenly won't have to work anymore. I wouldn't change a single thing I'm doing if he existed regardless if I believed or not. He could exist. He could not exist. We could never know... But at the end of the day the question of God's existence matters little to my life and actions. I have the feeling I would have felt this way even back in more religious times. Personal beliefs: I dunno. I'm just here and am trying to not step on anyone's toes. My ideal life is to live quietly and peacefully, and die without making a big fuss. Political: I want as little to do with politics as possible. Enter when absolutely necessary and at your own peril. When you enter the game of politics, you don't come back unscathed. For what it's worth, most political tests pegged me as left-libertarian, and I almost always get chaotic neutral in those alignment tests, because that's totally related to politics in my brain.
Now that you mentioned youtube... I was bored one day and tried to search for an old video. I really wanted to see this video, so I kept on searching and searching, page after page, and obviously couldn't find it. It was almost certainly deleted... But what was more interesting was the results some 60 pages in. It was all playlists from other users after a certain amount of pages. I kept on searching and eventually hit a dead end, and wondered whether or not I really hit all the possible results. It was a semi-popular subject and I'm sure it should have had more results than what I got. I mean, youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html There has to have been more videos from my subject. So, I searched for "Pokemon", and decided to change the url to jump in a couple of hundred pages in and got this message: I guess that explained it. I wonder if that video I wanted to see WAS on youtube, but youtube decided that from my queries and history it got drowned out in 1000 other results that it thought I would have wanted. I kinda get worried about being filter bubbled and not seeing all the results. I wonder just how much gets ignored. I wonder if there is a video that has been uploaded that no one (aside from the uploader) has any chance of ever seeing because the algorithms always pick other results to show. I wonder if someone can abuse those algorithms to make it so you never see a video. I'm probably overthinking this I'm sure...100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
Sorry, YouTube does not serve more than 1000 results for any query. (You asked for results starting from 3300.)
I never heard of the term before. Thanks for posting it. Hrm... Interpreting it does seem more artistic, I have to agree there. And yet I feel as though mathematics is a kind of interpretation, one that assumes a kind of worldview that happens to be consistent and so on. But I guess if I were to rewrite my previous post, I would have probably changed it to factor in interpretation and intent. I suppose art is something human made, and as such descriptions really aren't art, and as such nature isn't art either, even if it's beautiful, but an artist who interprets it and creates a painting of it is art, even if his goal is to have it as accurate to reality as possible.
You know, there was a discussion on hacker news about this being censored by US news media, and a ton of people were pointing out some news media outlets in the US did report on it, albeit rather poorly, and it reminded me of something that's been bothering me. I haven't put much thought into this, so this might sound like gibberish or nonsense, so be prepared for that, but I think I'm noticing something going on with words and the way people use and abuse them. I guess the best way to explain it is through an example, that you can only say you live in a fascist society when you cannot say you are living in a fascist society. Simpe enough. ...But I think you CAN say that in any case. I think there was censorship going on, even if it wasn't censorship by the exact definition. It's like what Snowden is saying in the interview about the distinction between "spying" and "data collection", and how the NSA doesn't spy on anyone, but it certainly collects tons of data on everyone. It's not spying by the exact definition. I think there's this recent trend of troublesome words reviving themselves while we try to say those words are dead (There is no racism anymore, no slavery, etc.) and, I guess I want to say surpass... Transcend the limits of their definitions? It's like nonalcoholic beer. It's beer, except it's not beer. I know this probably makes no sense, but it's been bothering me.
Ka-BOOM: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/10599438/William-Shakespe... ....Well, granted the article writer himself doesn't believe he was a scientist, but apparently people have tried to put shakespeare and science together.