megmogandog

Wow, I hadn't heard about the fraud in 2024, which I looked up in response to your comment. That's troubling to say the least.

Bias, though, is going to be inevitable and the Hugos are going to represent the taste of the Worldcon voters. It seems like overall there's been a happy confluence for awhile now between their taste and general sf taste.

I've discovered three of my favorite contemporary sf authors through recent Hugos: Ann Leckie, Arkady Martine, and Tamsyn Muir. I've read other recent nominees where I was unmoved or even questioned their inclusion.

I've also read a decent selection of historical winners, by no means exhaustive or even the majority, and the worst was without a doubt Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer.

The loss of color is concerning, but something I find interesting is the image the author chooses to illustrate Loos' quote, "We have achieved plain, undecorated simplicity." I would argue the building pictured falls short of this goal in important ways. A lot of contemporary architecture lacks the modernist commitment to flat planes, pure volumes, etc. and adds lazy and useless decorative/textural elements. The building pictured would look better if it was less adorned! (But even better with some color)

The ugliness of the contemporary world isn't a result of modernism, but rather neoliberal indifference to beauty.

Yes, this understanding would mean the 12-bar blues and blues music in general are an extremely dissonant form as they use the dominant seven chords as tonics.

How many people consider the blues dissonant?

It reminds me of my first counterpoint assignment. "Fourths aren't dissonant" I said, and it came back covered in red marks

I tried to learn LilyPond once but it was a bit too arcane for my taste. Now I use MuseScore, WYSIWYG notation program which is a lot more intuitive (and, like LilyPond, also released under the GPL).

I write relatively simple music, though, mostly lead sheets. I always imagined LilyPond would shine in more complex scoring situations.

I'm curious why you would want 4K in this case? I was over at a family member's place and threw on an episode of TNG to kill time. I was trying to figure out why everything looked so cheap: Picard's uniform, other costumes, the alien makeup. It was because they'd increased the definition past what the sets, costumes, and makeup were designed for. Personally I prefer the fuzzy look which appears more 'realistic' to me.

I share your experience and would like to make an unsolicited recommendation of a recent movie that's stuck with me more than anything else I've seen in the last few years: First Reformed. Give it a shot!

I think I could've phrased my comment better.

I'm not assuming the constants can be changed; axiomatically, they cannot, because they're fundamental constants of the universe. I'm also not assuming that some agent was around to do the tuning. In its basic form 'fine tuning' just means that if one of the values were even slightly different we wouldn't have anything like the universe we see today, including life. The values of the constants appear as if they were tuned.

It's interesting you bring up evolution, because before that theory came about intelligent design was a reasonable assumption in trying to explain how well-adapted organisms seemed to be to their environments. It was as if someone had designed them for their roles! As it turns out the theory of evolution satisfactorily explains why organisms exhibit the appearance of design.

In a similar way the fundamental constants exhibit the appearance of having been precisely set. It's hard to imagine a scientific theory getting 'behind' the constants the way evolution was able to get 'behind' the appearance of organisms...

Which fine tuning arguments are you referring to?

As I understand it, 'fine tuning' is simply a fact of the universe: that the fundamental constants have values that allow for the emergence of complexity, and that even slight changes to those values would lead to homogeneous and featureless universe. I don't have the physics background to demonstrate this for myself, but I believe it.

To then reason from that fact to the existence of a multiverse or the existence of God is an extra step that one need not take, but not taking either of those steps doesn't invalidate the appearance that the fundamental constants of the universe were fine tuned for the production of complexity/life.

It's a fantastic game, I had a blast playing through it twice, first 'unspoiled', then following a guide to get all the characters.

I wish there were more JRPGs that took such a maximalist approach to how many playable characters you get

Yes, quite contrary to my expectations. The phrase isn't even used outside of the title. I always knew it only as a Dune reference; was the actual spice trade ever described in such terms?

Watched a bit of the demo video. Maybe I'm not the target audience but is this kind of an emacs approach to the terminal, in the sense of trying to put every possible graphical function into a TUI? For me at least the charm of TUIs is their graphical and functional simplicity, and if I wanted complex animations and layering and whatever all else that is I would look elsewhere... still cool though

Look at the issues discussed: gender roles, race/immigration. Conservative means traditional gender roles, immigration as a negative/threat. Liberal means the opposite. For me at least that's comprehensible and unambiguous outside the US as well

My favorite thing about this link was seeing that the letter Y evolved from a bird hieroglyph! 𓅱𓅱𓅱 (your unicode support may vary)

My personal worst experience of this was Philip K. Dick's Time out of Joint; since then I only read the blurbs after I'm finished.

I didn't read the comment you're replying to as endorsing Meta's actions, but rather stating that it is the only thing you should expect given the current lack of regulation.

exactly what I thought as well, though I wasn't sure

I'm not saying they're awful, just that you're better off getting a reputable 20th century translation. Even a lot of the translations in the Complete Works you mention are getting on in years but it is the best complete edition...

A lot's happened in our understanding of Plato since Jowett's day

Where are you getting diminished 7th from? If you play the 3, the 5, the 7, and the 9 of E7 it's G# B D F#. At least in jazz we call that shape a "half-diminished" chord or "minor 7 flat 5", and it will stay that way no matter how you invert it or move the voices around between the hands. You'd only get a diminished seven if you flat the 9th to F natural (which actually often happens in jazz though not in the context presented).

The point I think you're missing is that the blog post isn't a music-theoretical presentation of what E7 is 'ontologically', it's a guide for what jazz pianists should play on that chord in an ensemble context. And in that context what's written here is very standard advice, since it's assumed the bassist will be playing the E. If there was no bassist, say if they were playing solo piano, a pianist will often play the E in the bass.

It's also clear from the way the article is written that they're already assuming some basic theoretical knowledge. It's never explained what notes are in an E7. If you don't know that, yes it will be confusing, but only because the article is not for you.

Overall I think the post would be very helpful for someone who knows the basics and is just getting starting playing with others.

I also like Fagles, but when I said this to a classicist she made a face

And Jowett's translations are explicitly not recommended for anyone trying to study Plato's thought, which is what most people read Plato for (the same goes for all public domain translations of philosophy). At least with outdated translations of literature you can argue for some kind of added value: people don't read Chapman's or Pope's Homer for their accuracy. But philosophy is another matter.

It reminds me of a friend in high school who convinced me that he grew scallions in his bathroom. It seemed weird but he described it in some detail, how the humidity from the shower is good for them, etc. Then when I believed him he said of course I don't do that, how could you think something so ridiculous. I don't and didn't feel like believing him in this context made me gullible for the same kinds of reasons you outline, why doubt something so inconsequential, communicated 'sincerely'?

The problem being that availability is a function of popularity and age. If you want something older that isn't a celebrated classic, it can be a lot more difficult to access...

I guess it would've been more honest to say "sorry to seem pedantic," because for me the comment was not mere pedantry (which I think of as hairsplitting for the sake of hairsplitting) but rather a matter of a fundamental distinction in moral philosophy (consequentialist vs. deontological ethics).

I mean, philosophy has a reputation for just that kind of hairsplitting but this seems to bear pretty directly on the basic ethical question of "What should I do?", one of the most important questions for humans to ask imo

Sorry to be pedantic, but the categorical imperative is not about reasoning from the consequences of an action if everyone did it. It's about testing whether it's even possible for you to will the maxim of your action as a universal law without contradiction, or to what extent your action respects the rational agency of other humans. You could make the Kant-inspired argument that taking a limited resource for your private enjoyment does deprive others of their agency, but it's not Kantian to say "it's wrong to take the fossils because then there will be no more fossils."

I'm aware of the context and took no offense when I read it; I asterisked it for 2023.

There's a lot of great stuff in this interview, but what really floored me was the question, after Miles had talked so much and so eloquently about race in America and his experiences, "Have you always been so sensitive about being a N**?" Like nothing Miles said entered the reporter's skull.

It's also interesting to see how much he talks about the importance of representation in the media. Given that's something we've only started to see change much in the last 10 years or so, I wonder how his remarks were received then. Would it have seemed totally out of left field, like 'what is this guy even talking about'?

And in this case the one posting it is some kind of antivaxxer or Covid denialist...

As others are mentioning, it would be nice to know what 'relatedness' means here, because a lot of words that seem like they'd be closely related are not, as calculated by the game

This would make sense, since the world is 'us/eu-centric' and has been for all of modern history.

It might not be for much longer though...