Trivia that matter
Grim:
The good argument in favor of billionaires — trillionaires, now — is that one person can make a decision about how to deploy substantial capital in efficient ways that a government, a corporation, or a committee can never. Musk is building space rockets and tunneling equipment that could build a Mars colony because he wants to, not because of fiduciary duty or because spreadsheets suggest it is wise. We are lucky that the world’s richest man loves Buck Rogers rather than Karl Marx.
Today’s chemistry lesson, courtesy of the McGarrigles.
A query about “armchair paleontology” in the Halupedia led circuitously to an entry about Auguste Dubois-Lacroix (b. 1842, Paris; d. 1907, Pont-de-Chéruy), “an individual whose primary professional skill was the avoidance of notice.”
… a highly unremarkable civil servant whose posthumous notoriety arose from the ADLB, a complex and ultimately unsuccessful initiative he spearheaded during his tenure at the Ministry of Applied Obfuscation.1
… The stated objective of the ADLB was to enhance the clarity and efficacy of government communications by making them deliberately more difficult to understand. The underlying philosophy, according to contemporary documents attributed to Lacroix, was that true administrative efficiency lay in preventing unauthorized comprehension.
… Under Lacroix’s direction, the ADLB developed a series of groundbreaking techniques. These included the systematic introduction of non-sequiturs, the invention of new verb conjugations requiring three or more preceding subordinate clauses for correct interpretation, and the mandatory inclusion of obscure references to the Catalogues of Unnecessary Objects. The notorious Protocol of Ten Thousand Delays, a prime example of ADLB’s methodology, became legendary.
An inquiry about the flying armadillos of west Texas led quickly to the Archives of Misplaced Endeavors, the Project to Quantify the Weight of Apathy, and the Ministry of Futility Studies. Further research touched on the Treaty of the Fourth Dimensions Annexation, Viking Pineapple Relocations circa 975 CE, the Society for the Advancement of Spurious Mathematics, Chronometric Discontinuity, and many more remarkably obscure topics.
So it seems that not only can AI assemble listenable songs, realistic photographs and incalculable reams of prose of many kinds, it is capable of passable satire as well. (The entire prompt for the top illustration was “Ministry of Applied Obfuscation.” GPT added all the verbiage, not me.) I still prefer the scholarship of Will Cuppy, Alan Coren and Henry Beard, but as an occasional satirist myself, I find Halupedia disquietingly competent. Has AI developed a sense of humor?
Something to annoy Andy Edwards. VDGG epitomized all that was dark, dramatic and pretentious about prog rock. I like them anyway, though I wish Peter Hammill had sung in a language other than English so I could better ignore the lyrics.
Another Winfield fingerstyle winner.
Time for some Klezmer.
Devon Eriksen (via Nicholas):
Heinlein was one of the 20th century’s greatest authors, if not THE greatest, and he was also the 20th century’s greatest philosopher and it’s not even close.
Is this defensible? I’ve read an immense amount of science fiction but little Heinlein2, and what Heinlein I have read didn’t particularly impress me. Are there depths to Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress that are missing in what I have read?
Update from Robbo: “I’d have sent Evelyn Waugh, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Portis, and Plum Wodehouse into the lists, but I’m not sure what the rules of engagement are.”
Some twelve tone-lite from Ron Jarzombek. This track — I hesitate to call it a “tune” — is constructed from four suspended chords that combined include all twelve tones.
Something a bit different today: a look Yunchan Lim’s Chopin Etudes and the changing styles of Chopin playing over the years.
Something to annoy all the NBCs at Severian’s place.
Time for some accordion music. This polka might be a bit tricky to dance to.
The visuals are false advertising: Ann Heymann’s wire-strung harp sounds very different than the nylon-stung ones pictured in the video.
A bit of psychedelia from 1968.
Heron’s backing band on this tune was “Tommy and the Bijoux.” For months after I first heard this I looked for more of their music. Later I discovered that I had most of their records in my library already, and possibly you do, too.
The music of the “Touhou Project” series of video games has inspired an astonishing amount of fan music in nearly every style. Here’s a suite of Touhou music arranged for masked string quartet.
I’ve been getting a surprising amount of traffic here recently. There have been over 3,000 visits here this month, 149 yesterday alone. Nowadays they come from all over, but for a while I had an enormous following in China. It was not so long ago that daily my daily traffic was in the low two digits, sometimes the low single digits. I suppose I should be excited, but I suspect that the vast majority of visitors here are machines, not people. So, please let me know if you’re an actual human being or something else.
A tune by Yoko Kanno, sung by Akino Arai.
Andy “Thunderclap” Newman may have played the piano as if he wore boxing gloves, but here Williams Albright and Bolcom put something a little more forceful on the pianist’s hands.
I wanted to post something from Switched-On Bach, but W. Carlos doesn’t want it on YouTube. We’ll have to make do with this homage. The third movement is here; it begins with the two chords that constitute the second movement.