It doesn't matter what is "straightforward", it matters what is true.
Kirk was being criticised by Ms. Rachel, who used a section of Leviticus ("love thy neighbour") to push back on Kirk's assertion of homosexuality as a sin. Kirk's response to Ms. Rachel was that merely a few sections later, the same Leviticus says that gays should be stoned to death.
That's a way for him to win an argument over the Bible's view on homosexuality, not a way for him to endorse the notion that gays should be stoned to death.
(And most importantly, literalists assert that that laws of Leviticus were repealed by Jesus, so even if he were a literalist Christian, the straightforward interpretation is that he does not endorse stoning gays, since Jesus repealed that law)
To be honest, I apologise if the following appears a bit terse; I’m just really frustrated with what you’ve said and this is the best I can describe why that’s the case (without watering it down)
We don’t need to step back and work out the fundamental nature of sex and gender in order to have a functional conversation about them.
I don’t need to provide a definition of a chair before I can tell you that ones with three legs are more stable (“but what is a chair? what is the exact definition? aren’t some of them tables? aren’t some three legged chairs less stable?”). We just don’t have to do this. Do you do it for chairs? Or just gender? Why? Does it help feminism or trans rights to interrupt a conversation about male mental health with a semantic rabbit hole?
As for your second paragraph, there very much are studies showing the correlation being described, and they’re very easy to find. It would have been far more constructive to actually ask rather than suggest it’s an “assumption” — or even better, to research it yourself.
> I quit social media many years ago and to answer the question: No, I just watch Youtube. If I could stop watching Youtube, I'm totally sure I'd finally be able to read books again /s
You /s, but when I quit the internet completely, I did become a voracious reader of books. I also spent hours practicing piano. And I went to bed on time.
Like you I also have diagnosed and untreated ADHD. But at this point it feels like it's a misdiagnosis and I'm simply incompatible with the internet.
This is a very strong, explicit statement in response to someone using the term rather casually. Can you explain why you are so sure?
I do think you need to define 'comprehension' in order to be certain. A statement fitting the form of "it doesn't comprehend, it just X" is incomplete, because it fails to explain why X is not a valid instance of comprehension.
TV use was higher in the 2000s than it was in the 1980s/1990s. TV viewing hours steadily rose from 1949 until finally peaking in 2010.[1]
But when TV finally peaked in 2010, did overall screen time go down? No. It kept going up.[2] Obviously, this is when the masses went all-in on smartphones, social media, and the internet.
Screen usage basically never went down. It has only gone up.
So I only see anyone getting tired of smartphones and actually using them less if they've found something more addictive to replace them.
> I was surprised because I always considered them to be the worst physical medium for music.
That's a big part of why they're cool.
Imperfection is beautiful. We feel this intuitively when it comes to loving someone, or when it comes to impressionistic art. It really is the same thing with music.
I believe the typical response is that you can simulate that imperfection on digital media... but cassette lovers would argue this is tantamount to putting a photograph through a 'Da Vinci' filter in Photoshop. It's missing the point. There's more to music than what it sounds like. Where it came from, what you did to play it, these are all part of the experience. The context of a piece of a media, the means by which you listen to it, where it came from -- these change how the music feels, even if there is no difference in how it sounds.
Back when vinyl or cassettes were the only option, sure, the response is "screw your romanticism". But now that we have perfect digital media always available, there is romance in getting to choose something fragile and imperfect and precious. People like that feeling.
Yes, it's absolutely the case for Lennon and McCartney, since they didn't give rough ideas to George Martin to fill in; they specifically wrote the exact melodies for half the instruments involved and exactly how to play them.
You could argue that Harrison and Starr always deserved some of the writing credit, since they often determined their parts, and I wouldn't actually disagree with that -- though Lennon and McCartney were kinda control freaks, so I'm not sure how much leeway was actually given. When they started bringing in extra instruments, again, there is arguably some extra credit to be given to Martin and others, but Lennon and McCartney were still strongly directing what was to be played.
For what it's worth -- and this is going to get me hated even more than my popstar-skepticism -- I don't really like the Beatles that much. But it's transparent that they did more than Taylor Swift because they were specifically and precisely writing the melodies for the instruments being played.
Charli XCX was around before PC Music, but the sound she is known for and became famous for originated from PC Music. The fact that she delivered a bit of "minor popstar" cred to them is fine, but the key to my point is that they determined the sound that made her iconic.
Sophie was an example. I didn't see it necessary to talk about all the artists involved in PC Music to make the point that the producers on the label pioneered the sound.
Look at the credits for her albums. She had producers and writers credited on every single song. This IS a lot of help. You're acting like she just did a couple of collabs with AG Cook and that's it. She had many different people helping her on the actual composition and production of every single song.
This is the point being refuted -- that the popstars are geniuses responsible for carrying the burden of their rise. It's mythology. The reality is that they bring performance skills and charisma to the table, some non-awful lyrical skill, and then the lion's share of actually making the music work is done by producers and writers. They would be nowhere without the producers. The producers would be nowhere without the popstars. But it's the most common poptimist mistake to confuse the popstar's charisma for the producer's mastery.
The operative word was "rough". They give a few hints; they're not painstakingly mapping out the melodies and chords for every instrument and determining what those instruments are, and how they sound.
If you're writing for a guitar and voice, then you've basically got a song, but pop music is built on sometimes hundreds of different instruments and effects.
What you're saying is a very common "poptimist" trope of the last decade or two. To say that, actually, these vocalists are highly intelligent and largely responsible for their own success.
Charli XCX, like nearly all popstars, was propped up by the producers and writers who shaped her sound and composed large parts of the music. Producers have been there the whole way. In particular, her blowing up was highly influenced by the stylistic direction, composition, production and sound engineering of people associated with the PC Music record label. The statement that she had good enough taste to have been around these people is rather unfair -- she was around artistic innovators like Sophie, yes, but THEY are the ones that pioneered the sound.
The most common refrain is that popstars often write their music. This is misleading: they write the lyrics, suggest a general vibe, and some rough melodies or chords. And even this is a stretch many times. They are not composing or producing the music in any larger sense, and this is the pivotal part of actually making music.
One famous exception that comes to mind is Grimes, who largely actually /makes/ her own music. She rarely seems to get credit for this.
This is not to say that vocalist popstars don't bring a lot to the table. They do. But what they bring to the table is incredible performance skill and charisma. I think poptimism has gone too far, to the point that we think the product was responsible for creating itself.
I'm personally a little frustrated with these music theory answers. Trust me folks, these answers are nearly impossible for a non-musician to understand (and even as a musician it's a bit impenetrable).
E minor gives you the exact same amount of options as C major. The options are just shuffled around a little bit. You literally get the same amount of notes in either, just a slightly different set. It isn't any more complex. Listeners aren't going to notice a difference, except one will probably sound happy and one will probably sound sad/angry. The "acceptance volume", to use the blog author's term, isn't any different.
At best, it can change things a little bit for some instruments. For example, with a vocalist, their voice can only go so high. They might be able to hit up to a high C, but not even higher up to an high E. If you're in C major, that's great, the vocalist's highest note (C) is the 'home note' which sounds great (playing a C in C Major makes the song sound like it's 'finished'). If you're E minor, the 'home note' is E, and as mentioned they wouldn't be able to hit that note. So you wouldn't really be able to 'finish' on a high note.
Ultimately, I doubt the author is a musician. It was a strange example to make their point.
> Chatbots [are] going to remain niche for quite some time.
> iPhone immediately caught on like wild fire.
> I'm not saying there won't be users, but it's a much smaller population.
The facts say you're wrong about this.
The adoption rate for the iPhone was slow. There were only 1.4 million iPhones sold in its first year,[1] whereas there were 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users in its first year.[2]
ChatGPT is not niche, and is not a 'much smaller population'. Right now it has 800 million weekly active users. That's how many iPhones were active in 2017. Are we to say that iPhones were a niche in 2017? It's how many smartphones in general were active at the start of 2012. Are we to say that smartphones were a niche in 2012?
Putting on a headset for the first time reminded me of using a computer for the first time. It was that paradigm-shifting.
The frustrating thing is, back when computers were "silly" and "not ready", the type of person you'd now find on Hacker News saw it as an exciting impetus to build a new world. With virtual reality, all I see is a collective eyeroll. It's honestly tragic. This is a burgeoning medium, a new form of art. For most of human history, people didn't get to experience that even once in their entire lifetime. And the response is cynicism.
The only explanation I have is that we are so inundated with stimulus, so overwhelmed with entertainment, that we no longer feel a drive to build a new form of it. We're all drugged up on social media, and can't see the potential of a new medium even when it's literally right in front of our faces.
"Transphobia" is not the same as "damaging societal perceptions of transgender people". My colleague is transphobic. He hasn't damaged societal perceptions of transgender people, because he doesn't have a massive platform. Charlie Kirk, who I agree is transphobic, went one step further and actually impacted large groups of people's beliefs.
Your assumption that I was minimizing the damage he did with my wording is the opposite of correct; I was using that wording to express that the damage he did was worse than simply being transphobic.
I do personally believe that Charlie Kirk has done some damage to societal perceptions of transgender people.
With that said, the person asked how Charlie's quote could stoke violence, and then you invented a significantly stronger, more inciteful quote (something Charlie didn't say) as an answer for why it stoked violence.
This is not a response that will convince people of your position. I'm not sure on the best way to do that, but I believe it starts by staying clear about what was actually said.
