Here's an article about one of the recent Grammy winners: "Billie Eilish's Grammy hit features a surprising Australian sound"

The story about how Eilish and her brother sampled a pedestrian crossing signal is interesting enough - but you have to watch the embedded video, where the SMH people use the same signal to make their own backing track to an Aussie classic!

I make no promises for quality, I'm really just pushing what can be done with a Pixel 3XL cell phone camera, access to Adobe Lightroom, and a surprisingly gorgeous foggy day. This ties into the "No-Money Fun Ideas" thread.

These images have been lightly edited towards what my eyes saw - most camera sensors would have trouble with color accuracy under the conditions these shots were taken.

Winter 2020

Please feel free to criticize and inform me on what I could do better.

These photographs are published for your enjoyment under the Creative Commons Share-Alike license.

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.

If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this week?

It's been a while since we've had a thread like this and our active users have cycled around a bit (plus there's a lot of dead links in the old threads), so who here is on the fediverse?

Connecting with some more people from here sounds nice :)

I'll preface this by saying this post is birthed out of a small argument I'm having on Reddit, but the topic seems like a worthwhile one. (And I'm not getting much other than downvotes for a counterargument over there!)

The initial question is whether or not the death of someone who is very old (95 years or more) should be considered tragic. Some things to consider:

1. The overall health and condition of the person.

• Are they in constant state of suffering?

2. The wishes of the person.

• Do they actively wish to be dead? This might not even be out of suffering. Some people, as they get to be quite old, are just bored of their lives or want this stage to be over. Anecdotally, my great-grandmother was this way from the ages of 90 and onward. (She quite famously would greet cashiers with "I want to die.")

3. Are they still active?

• Do they still find meaning in what they are doing? For example, David Attenborough is 93 years old and is still a big presence on the world stage. Despite his great age, if he were to die, his work would still be ‘cut short.’

4. The circumstances by which they die.

• Was it sudden, or did it take a long time? Was it painful? Was it violent?

This list is not exhaustive. I welcome suggestions for what should be added to it.

There is also how we define tragedy. In general terms, it typically just alludes to an event that causes great suffering and distress. I think this is the definition that we are more concerned with. Alternatively, there is the theatrical definition of tragedy, which is more tied to the leading character suffering some major downfall at the end of the narrative. While we could construe the death of someone in real life this way, it seems to be a bit of a stretch as most of us do not live out our lives in three-act structures with a clear climax and finale. (I’m going to rule out this definition now, if not just for the sake of argument.)

Balancing all of these thoughts, I think the crux of where disagreement lies is in how we feel about death for the deceased versus our own selfish desires. Bringing this back to my anecdote, about twenty years ago, my great-grandmother passed at the age of 94. She spent at least the last 5 years of her life pleading to God to finally take her. Her health was fine. She lived in her house, alone, fully capable of maintaining it (and herself). In fact, in the year prior to her death, she was so physically active that she painted all 200 feet of her white picket fence! By all means, she was not physically suffering. She just simply wanted to go.

Then she did. I think the group consensus was something akin to, “Well, I guess she finally got what she wanted. I’m going to miss her.” It was a feeling of simultaneously being happy for her and grief for ourselves.

To which, does this make for a tragedy?

Some might call it splitting hairs, but what I am arguing is that the death itself was not tragic. What is tragic is our loss of the ability to interact with that person and the feelings of grief that follow. I cannot help but feel these are ultimately separate things that we have such a difficult time reconciling. Part of life is death, and as long as we revere life, we must also revere the last part of it. If we did this better, we might have an easier time accepting things like medical-assistance-in-dying. It is for this reason that I say, death, by default, does not necessitate tragedy.

However while death is not necessarily tragic, I do think there are a multitude of conditions that would make death sufficiently tragic. Looking back at my list above, the death of a young healthy person would be considered tragic. Suppose someone was violently beheaded; this could be considered tragic. Even suppose that the 93-year-old David Attenborough passed away, I would think his death to be tragic as he wanted to offer more to the world.

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough. What are your thoughts?

(For the previous two semi-finals, it didn't occure to me that the Danish national selection is also named Melodi Grand Prix, so from now on I'll be adding the country to the title.)

Last night was the third semi-final of the Norwegian national selection (Melodi Grand Prix). This year there are 5 semi-finals, one for each region of the country, plus five songs that automatically qualify for the grand final.

Last night four songs from Middle Norway competed for a spot in the grand final:

Alexandry - Pink Jacket

Kristin Husøy - Pray For Me

Sie Gubba - Kjære Du

Thomas Løseth - Vertigo

The qualifier was Kristin Husøy with her song Pray For Me, which will face 9 other songs in the grand final on the 15th of February. One of the automatic qualifiers were also presented during the show:

Akuvi - Som Du Er

Previous semi-finals:

Semi-final 1 (Southern Norway) - songs and results

Semi-final 2 (Eastern Norway) - songs and results

edit:

Found a better video of Sie Gubba.

In honour of Australia Day, here's my favourite Australia-themed song.

About 40 years ago, the Australian government ran competitions and surveys to decide what our national anthem should be. It was a 10-year process, in fits and starts, but in 1984 they finally announced "Advance Australia Fair" as the new anthem to replace "God Save The Queen" (which is now used only as the royal anthem).

"I Am Australian" hadn't been written back then. It was written in 1987, just prior to our Bicentennial celebrations in 1988. If a similar competition/survey was run now, "I Am Australian" would be one of the top contenders for our new national anthem. It's a very popular song.

I don't relate to "Advance Australia Fair" at all. But "I Am Australian" makes me emotional every time I hear it. It might not be our official national anthem, but it's my anthem for this country.

Here's:

• A studio recorded version, complete with lyrics.

• A live performance, performed in 2000.

I am, you are, we are Australian.