eyechoirs's recent activity
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Comment on Which directors have a flawless filmography? in ~movies
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Comment on [Rant? Vent? Musing?] I've become a surprisingly judgemental semi-sober person in ~life
eyechoirs LinkI suspect that the core of this skepticism is not understanding just how diverse human brain chemistry is. It always astounds me how differently people can react to the same drugs. I've had plenty...But despite people and (liberal) society at large insisting that substances are how you gain clarity or essential perspective, I can't help but now feel skeptical that these substances are really doing anything of note.
I suspect that the core of this skepticism is not understanding just how diverse human brain chemistry is. It always astounds me how differently people can react to the same drugs. I've had plenty of recreational drug use in my past, so I've gotten to see the gamut of human/drug interactions, ranging from literally life destroying to literally life saving. It makes you realize that we are not all just minor variations on the same boilerplate human consciousness.
Take cannabis, for instance. I find that people tend to generally fall into one of three camps: 1) those for whom it causes strong euphoria and relief from boredom/negative emotions, and who may end up abusing it with daily use, ultimately becoming lazy and chronically cognitively impaired; 2) those for whom it mostly enhances focus, with some mood lift or anxiolysis, and who may also use it daily but in a seemingly sustainable way where they are more productive and emotionally balanced; and 3) those for whom it causes excruciating self-awareness, rumination, paranoia, etc. and who tend to either avoid using it or do so with trepidation. I've also seen a trend where after years of use, people in camps 1 and 2 transition (slowly or all at once) into camp 3 (I fall into this category).
It seems like you're skeptical of the existence of camp 2, but I assure you it's real. I know several people for whom daily cannabis use is specifically what enables them to function - to work passionately at jobs, to have healthy relationships, etc. Among celebrities, Seth Rogen and Snoop Dogg famously attribute their ability to thrive in the fast-paced entertainment industry to cannabis.
And of course, there are all manner of outliers. I knew someone in college who, even after smoking a tiny bit of cannabis, became a deranged, borderline-psychotic asshole (the way some people get when drunk) - and when he sobered up, he denied experiencing any sort of negative effect. Also, I am friends with twins who are both seemingly immune to cannabis - no matter how much they smoke, they deny any subjective effect from it, and show no objective impairments (no loss of eloquence, still able to perform complex tasks easily, etc.). Strangely, they still show physical effects like red eyes and dry mouth. I've always suspected they might have mutant cannabinoid receptors, for which THC would have a much lower binding affinity, without necessarily affecting endogenous cannabinoid function.
To bring it back to the topic of 'gaining clarity or essential perspective', it is a common experience in my friend group to have this experience with psychedelics and/or MDMA. I have personally used these drugs to resolve emotional and social problems that I experienced throughout my entire childhood. And in fact there is plenty of clinical evidence of using these drugs to treat anxiety, depression, and PTSD. But it is also entirely possible to have bad experiences with them, especially when they are not used in a controlled setting. And furthermore, they may rarely trigger psychosis in people who are susceptible. So it's entirely up to the individual whether the risks are worth it.
It sounds like you have a good grasp on what your mind needs to be healthy. And if that doesn't include drugs, more power to you. But you need to understand that people have taken the same honest self-appraisal and found drugs to be a part of a healthy regimen.
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Comment on Tech keeps stealing my life, and I want tips on how to make it stop doing that in ~tech
eyechoirs LinkI think the 'problem' you outlined is not even specific to software - it's something that occurs in any tool, invention, handiwork, organization, etc. that mankind has created. On a fundamental...I think the 'problem' you outlined is not even specific to software - it's something that occurs in any tool, invention, handiwork, organization, etc. that mankind has created. On a fundamental level, reality is complicated and chaotic and has its own set of rules that are orthogonal to human goals. There is not a single thing created by mankind that doesn't break on edge cases, fail to adapt to changing environment, or require maintenance (proportional to its complexity).
Now, it's natural to be frustrated by all this. In fact I'd say it's part of the human condition to run up against what I think of as 'the bureaucracy of existence'. I think Franz Kafka does a great job capturing this frustration - he gets a reputation for his commentary on literal bureaucracies, but I think he was ultimately more interested in the metaphorical bureaucracies - i.e. the futile complexity of social organization and the general living of daily life. The main theme of his writing basically amounts to 'what are the rules?'. If Kafka were born in the 90's, he probably would have written about software and other technology.
My point in saying all this is that assigning blame related to this problem should always be fraught with moral considerations. There are certainly situations where, despite the universal quality of these problems, people can be blamed. I think most examples of this boil down to the nature of contracts. If I buy a tool from you, it is a contract where 1) I give you money, and 2) you give me a tool which performs X, Y, and Z properly. There may also be a literal contract (what we'd call a warranty) but there is also a sort of moral contract, is my stipulation. If the tool does not perform as advertised, you are in breach of this contract and my upset is justified. Obviously nothing is perfect, and I try to be cool-headed with the my appraisal of a tool's performance. If my toaster oven breaks after using it for 15 years, I tend to think 'it's a miracle it managed to work for so long!' even if I could view it as a contract violation. But then, there are more obvious or even outright malicious cases.
Let's look at your spreadsheet problem. What is the nature of your contract with LibreOffice? To my understanding, it is free, open source software. If you didn't pay for it, what expectations can you justifiably have about its performance?
I'd like to challenge something in particular you said - "all I know is, someone has stolen 2 hours of my life from me". To me, this seems like a ridiculous statement. If I spent 2 hours building a sandcastle and then the ocean sweeps it away, would I say that 'someone has stolen 2 hours of my life'? On an existential level, software is just as much a complicated, chaotic part of reality as the merciless encroachment of the ocean. And unless I'm mistaken, you do not seem to have any sort of moral contract with someone to fix the problem for you. In fact, saying that LibreOffice is obligated to fix this kind of problem is sort of an attempt to steal 2 hours of someone else's life (and perhaps more than 2 hours, given the complexity of software design).
I don't mean to make you sound selfish, but ultimately I think at least some of your problem is attitude. It doesn't help that we live in a world saturated with technology, which tends to make these kinds of frustrations especially frequent. But the more you want to accomplish, the more you will have to deal with petty inefficiencies, failures, and such. It's not anyone's fault - it's just the way reality is. Kafka struggled to make sense of how to live in such a reality. We all struggle with it, consciously or not.
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Comment on Experiences with psychedelics? in ~life
eyechoirs Link ParentMy experiences with it were merely okay. It never really seemed to have the intense euphoria of MDMA or mephedrone, and while it did increase empathy, it never pushed me into that state of...My experiences with it were merely okay. It never really seemed to have the intense euphoria of MDMA or mephedrone, and while it did increase empathy, it never pushed me into that state of extreme, joyous talkativeness and bonding that other empathogens did. I actually felt kind of moody and quiet on methylone, even sad at times, though not intensely sad - more like a bittersweet, nostalgic sadness that the drug was somehow also consoling me about, if that makes sense. None of this ended up being particularly therapeutic, though perhaps my prior use of MDMA had done all the good empathogens would do for me, at that point.
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Comment on Experiences with psychedelics? in ~life
eyechoirs Link ParentI think PCP gets kind of an undeserved bad rap. Most of the hazard in using it comes down to 1) it's illegal but not widely used, meaning it's hard to find high quality, unadulterated PCP, and 2)...I think PCP gets kind of an undeserved bad rap. Most of the hazard in using it comes down to 1) it's illegal but not widely used, meaning it's hard to find high quality, unadulterated PCP, and 2) people generally don't understand how to actually dose it - it's often dissolved in something, and a cigarette or joint is dipped in the solution, but this is so inexact that it's easy to do way too much by accident. Doing way too much PCP is likely a recipe for disaster, but frankly, so is doing too much LSD.
I think the attractive thing about ketamine is that if you do so much that you enter a state of temporary psychosis, the drug also basically renders your immobile. It's hard to assault your neighbor and drive into the side of a 7-Eleven when gravity feels like it's operating at 10x the intensity. K-holes have a whole different set of dangers, of course. But I think in comparable doses, PCP isn't much more likely than ketamine to cause actual insanity. It's actually pretty warm and relaxing, I found, maybe even moreso than ketamine. You just have to be responsible with it.
3-MeO-PCP, on the other hand, is actually kind of dangerous. It has none of the warmth and mildly sedating trippiness of PCP - it is more of a stimulant in some ways, but has a habit of causing amnesia, complete physical anesthesia and a striking loss of sanity at even moderate doses. It's pretty fun if you can handle the risks - I remember one time I took some in the middle of a cold winter night and went out for a walk. It was well below freezing but I hardly felt cold at all (though I dimly noticed that my body was still shivering). The darkness and utter lack of people in what was often a busy part of town gave me the profound feeling that I was walking through an abandoned movie set. Everything looked 'hollow' - every building seemed like just a facade hiding a big empty space, every car seemed like it was probably just an empty metal chassis. At one point I saw people walking in the distance, and I was almost certain that they knew exactly who I was and were specifically put there to observe me and/or to give the environment a certain verisimilitude (one which I had seen through immediately).
Of course, at the same time, I had enough insight to recognize that these thoughts were, of course, not even remotely true. All of these errant, temporary beliefs were the effect of a drug and had no bearing on consensus reality. And knowing what I do about psychiatry, I recognized a resemblance to the typical thoughts and beliefs of a psychotic person. Fortunately, I seem to be very resistant to psychosis - despite using drugs like this one, plenty of psychedelics, and frankly a drastically unhealthy overuse of amphetamines, I have never experienced a real psychosis, nothing that lasted past the duration of the drugs themselves. I imagine not everyone would be so lucky, though.
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Comment on Experiences with psychedelics? in ~life
eyechoirs (edited )Link ParentThat's quite an impressive list. I was also into the "research chemical" scene for a while, back in the day, though I didn't try quite as extreme a variety: 1P-LSD 2C-E 2C-I 4-AcO-DMT 4-HO-EPT...That's quite an impressive list. I was also into the "research chemical" scene for a while, back in the day, though I didn't try quite as extreme a variety:
1P-LSD
2C-E
2C-I
4-AcO-DMT
4-HO-EPT
4-HO-MET
5-MeO-DALT
5-MeO-MiPT
AL-LAD
Hawaiian Baby Woodrose (LSA)
LSD
Psilocybin Mushrooms (4-PO-DMT)MDMA
Mephedrone
Methylone2-Oxo-PCE
3-MeO-PCP
Dextromethorphan
Deschloroketamine
Ketamine
Memantine
Nitrous Oxide
PCPSeparately, I don't know that I'd necessarily consider dissociatives like ketamine or methoxetamine to be psychedelic, really - their effects are extremely distinct from the classical psychedelics. Same with serotonergic stimulants like MDMA. Which isn't to say they can't also be very valuable, therapeutic experiences.
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Comment on Tildes Minecraft Survival - Final day scheduled for July 17th in ~games
eyechoirs Link ParentDouble-wielded diamond swords? For me? Lol thanks for adding me! Sad I can't play MC anymore but glad I got to play when I did.Double-wielded diamond swords? For me? Lol thanks for adding me! Sad I can't play MC anymore but glad I got to play when I did.
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Comment on The second Tildes Short Story Exchange is now open to submissions! (June-July 2025 edition) in ~creative
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Comment on The second Tildes Short Story Exchange is now open to submissions! (June-July 2025 edition) in ~creative
eyechoirs (edited )LinkTitle: 'Tonight's Guest' Author: eyechoirs Word count: 3233 Genre(s): Literary Fiction; Satire Expected feedback: Any general/big picture feedback. Should your story be on the EPUB? Yes Additional...Title: 'Tonight's Guest'
Author: eyechoirs
Word count: 3233
Genre(s): Literary Fiction; Satire
Expected feedback: Any general/big picture feedback.
Should your story be on the EPUB? Yes
Additional note to community: I wrote this a few years ago and got around to a 'final cut' edit a few months ago. So I probably won't edit any further, at this point, but I am curious about whether the story has its intended impact.
Links: PDF or EPUB -
Comment on Removed Reddit post: "ChatGPT drove my friends wife into psychosis, tore family apart... now I'm seeing hundreds of people participating in the same activity. " in ~tech
eyechoirs Link ParentThis reminds me of a Nietzsche quote - 'Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.' I think there's a big difference between...I truly hope you are right. Personally, I just don't think it's normal that a convict can manage to become president if most of the people who voted for him are sane. That's just one item in the endless stream of things that in my mind should not have happened / be happening if most of the people approving of it are sane.
This reminds me of a Nietzsche quote - 'Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.' I think there's a big difference between individual, organic, psychotic insanity, and the collective insanity of a society burdened by misinformation and all sorts of other 'perverse incentive'-type problems. It's important to remember that this latter type of insanity comprises individuals who are not strictly insane. They might be foolish, corrupt, intellectually lazy, whatever - but to call them insane absolves them of responsibility to a certain degree, and more importantly tends to make it seem impossible to dissuade them from their technically-delusional beliefs.
I think the Gaza genocide is an interesting example. Certainly, misinformation that leads to false beliefs is a common and perhaps necessary component of getting society to approve a genocide (as happened during the Holocaust, and is currently happening in Gaza). But is delusion actually necessary to be racist, to hate a group of people so much you want to kill them?
I think if you asked one of these racists, they'd first give you some false statements to prove their beliefs. But if you argue well enough, I think you'll drill down to the fundamental, underlying motivation - they just don't like those people. There's no reason for it; it can't be delusional because it's not based on belief. Human beings are hard-wired to hate, we've been having vicious tribal battles for as long as our species has existed. Hell, even chimpanzees commit mass slaughter against rival tribes. The concept of delusion comes into play only as we try to reconcile these feelings with our modern concept of morality, and we are forced to use false beliefs in order to justify hate and murder. But you have to understand that this step of the process is not automatic, organic, inevitable, the way that insanity is. It's something we can shine a spotlight on and prevent, using good ol' human reason. Society is making it hard to accomplish this, but it's fundamentally different from insanity the way most people conceptualize it.
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Comment on What is a non-problematic word that you avoid using? in ~talk
eyechoirs Link'Nauseous'. Originally, the word actually meant 'causing nausea', not 'feeling nausea' - for instance, you might have encountered 'a nauseous smell' as you enter a public restroom. I think this...'Nauseous'.
Originally, the word actually meant 'causing nausea', not 'feeling nausea' - for instance, you might have encountered 'a nauseous smell' as you enter a public restroom. I think this meaning is more fitting for a word which, to me, sounds particularly nauseous, with its sickly-soft post-alveolar fricative 'sh' sound. It's even more nauseous when certain people pronounce this as a voiced fricative, 'zh'.
I'll still use 'nauseous' to convey its original meaning, which more or less amounts to avoiding it - it's much more common for me to use the word 'nauseated', which is what people who use the word 'nauseous' typically ought to be using. It's such a useful distinction, and I'm sad English speakers no longer tend to observe it.
Also, fun fact, the etymology of 'nausea' comes from the Greek word 'naus' meaning ship, on which one might feel nauseated due to seasickness. This makes 'nausea' and 'nautical' a linguistic doublet.
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Comment on Removed Reddit post: "ChatGPT drove my friends wife into psychosis, tore family apart... now I'm seeing hundreds of people participating in the same activity. " in ~tech
eyechoirs Link ParentWhere did you get 'half the population' from? Only 25% of the US population voted for Trump (it seems like this is the benchmark for delusional thinking that we're both using, anyway), but a big...I mean, if half of the population is in this state, who is going to have the time and patience to help each of them out of it? Will the other half need to become professional therapists? I agree that it isn't as bad as clinical psychosis but from what I've seen, it's still really, really bad. Bad enough to mess up the world economy in a matter of months.
Where did you get 'half the population' from? Only 25% of the US population voted for Trump (it seems like this is the benchmark for delusional thinking that we're both using, anyway), but a big proportion of these people aren't slavish Trump devotees, but rather disaffected, mostly apolitical midwits, who unthinkingly subscribe to the vague notion that Republicans are supposed to be good for the economy. Is that a delusion? Technically yes, but I hope you can agree that these people don't need professional or pseudo-professional therapy. If anything, they need to see Trump fuck up the US economy badly over the next couple of years. No amount of misinformation, LLM or otherwise, will be able to paper over that issue for this mostly-sane subset of people.
You disagree that so many people could be affected but I see people every day on r/ChatGPT who speak of their LLM having emotions, being their friend, being a better therapist than any human therapist could ever be, feeling connected to it, etc. Some say it's clearly conscious and get very worked up about the fact that saying so goes against the current rules (GPT will not entertain the user saying that to it). There are a lot of these people and they behave similarly to those on r/Conservative when called into question. Not equally aggressive, yet, but this phenomenon is very new still so they probably have some degree of social shame holding them back, for now.
Couple of counterpoints here - 'seeing people every day' may ultimately be a tiny but vocal minority in the grand scheme of things. The actual loonies have a tendency to seem more prevalent than they actually are.
Second, some amount of personification is probably inevitable, but may not indicate psychosis. I refer to my laptop as 'complaining about video rendering' but that doesn't mean I actually think it's capable of complaining in the true sense of that word. Likewise, even if people believe abstractly that LLMs are conscious - betraying a poor understanding of consciousness, admittedly a complex subject - it does not necessarily mean they are willing to swallow more obviously spurious technobabble like you'd see in these purported cases of LLM induced psychosis.
I also kind of doubt shame holds any of these people back on their true beliefs. There isn't exactly a lot of shame on the anonymous internet. I feel like you may be exaggerating the extent of delusional thinking at play there.
I don't know if mass delusion on this scale is just the acceptable new normal for Americans now, but I'm over here in Europe watching this, and I'm still as bothered by it as I have ever been.
Mass delusion in the manner it's occuring here has always been normal throughout human history. Religion has typically taken on that role (regardless of your personal views on specific religions, they can't all be true). But aside from the small minority of the truly mentally ill, people can always be reasoned with, though sometimes it takes the real and painful consequences of socially-acceptable delusions to provide a helping hand. I'm not saying all this isn't a problem. It may even be a big problem. But the doomer attitude that it's a sea change beyond all prior reckoning gets in the way of the one thing that will obviously help - connecting with those around us and trying to re-establish a consensus reality.
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Comment on Google's new AI video tool floods internet with real-looking clips in ~tech
eyechoirs LinkI don't know that much about image generation AI, but the other day I was trying to think through how you would confirm the authenticity of video if AI video tools like this become widespread......I don't know that much about image generation AI, but the other day I was trying to think through how you would confirm the authenticity of video if AI video tools like this become widespread...
One idea I had for recording confirmably authentic video of something would be to set up multiple cameras at different angles. I think it would be pretty immediately apparent if two videos of, say, a person talking and gesturing, didn't match each other - spatial perception of human bodies and faces is something that humans are particularly good at. And it strikes me as a difficult task to not just generate a realistic video but multiple realistic videos of the same event that are all spatially coherent with each other.
But like I said, I'm not an expert on the topic and maybe someone who is could weigh in on this.
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Comment on Removed Reddit post: "ChatGPT drove my friends wife into psychosis, tore family apart... now I'm seeing hundreds of people participating in the same activity. " in ~tech
eyechoirs Link ParentI agree it is concerning, but since the new, LLM-associated phenomena are on a continuum with the prior human-only dynamic, I think that we can at least build off the strategies we have for...I agree it is concerning, but since the new, LLM-associated phenomena are on a continuum with the prior human-only dynamic, I think that we can at least build off the strategies we have for combating misinformation, and for cases of actual psychosis, doing psychiatric interventions.
I also strongly disagree that LLM-induced psychosis would affect an "equally large demographic" as people affected by right-wing misinformation. It seems like the phenomenon reported in the original Reddit post was a case of true, organic psychosis, not a societally-driven conspiracy theory-type of delusion - the quasi-spiritual 'nature of true reality' theme, as well as the person's all-consuming obsession with it are the most salient indicators, though I guess we don't know the whole story... In any case, the lifetime prevalence of psychosis is only 3%, so I feel there's probably a hard limit on how many people could be affected by LLM in this way. It can certainly trigger psychosis in susceptible individuals, but someone who is susceptible to psychosis is very likely to be triggered by some event over the course of their entire lives.
Misinformation driven delusions are still a problem, and I agree with you about the scope of that problem. But these people are not psychotic, they are still generally in touch with reality, which should be a heartening notion. You can't argue someone out of a psychosis, but with time, patience, and the right attitude you can argue someone out of misinformed, conspiratorial beliefs. I have personally managed to accomplish that with someone; it's not easy, and it's a tall order to do it on the scale of our whole society, but it's at least possible.
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Comment on Removed Reddit post: "ChatGPT drove my friends wife into psychosis, tore family apart... now I'm seeing hundreds of people participating in the same activity. " in ~tech
eyechoirs LinkThis is definitely creepy, and the people who develop LLMs, as well as society at large, insofar as we are constantly readjusting to the presence of LLMs in our daily lives, will probably need to...This is definitely creepy, and the people who develop LLMs, as well as society at large, insofar as we are constantly readjusting to the presence of LLMs in our daily lives, will probably need to take this type of dynamic into account. But there's one thing that tempers my concerns - this dynamic is not new; people have been reinforcing each other's delusions in a very similar way, especially since the advent of the internet.
A few people have already brought up conspiracy theories as an example of widespread, self-reinforcing delusions. There's something to this, though I would argue that conspiracy theories don't meet the criteria for psychosis - conspiracy theorists sound insane when they're discussing conspiracies, but if you change the topic of conversation to baseball or cooking or music or something, most of them will re-enter consensus reality. Obviously not every psychosis presents the same way, but in general it results in a global deficit in cognition, as well as a range of other symptoms such as disorganized speech, apathy, lack of emotion, etc.
So, the etiology of conspiracy theories is probably more societal than biological (though biology likely plays a role in susceptibility to this type of thinking). The DSM even exempts delusions from the diagnostic picture of psychosis if they are "widely accepted within a cultural or subcultural context". The greater concern here, with these LLM-induced psychoses, is that they are not merely societal but true biological psychoses that happen to be triggered by LLMs.
But there's another example I want to mention - the phenomenon of "gang stalking". I'd assert that most people who get wrapped up in this delusion truly are psychotic - it's something that consumes their entire lives; no matter where they go, what they do, who they talk to, the events are their lives are liable to relate to this primary paranoid delusion about being harassed by unknown assailants. The Wikipedia page cites a 2016 NYT article which claims that more than 10,000 people are involved in online communities about gang stalking - you can see for yourself the subreddit for gang stalking far exceeds that number, and it would be kind of fascinating to read into some of these people's delusions, if it weren't so tragic.
But the critical thing is that mutual reinforcement of delusions is happening here without the need for LLMs at all. It's a completely organic, human-only phenomenon that has been happening for decades. Certainly LLMs may trigger or reinforce a new range of delusions among the psychotic, and may increase the magnitude of the problem, but what helps me sleep at night is that these are all a matter of degree. The particular dynamic underlying LLM-induced psychosis is not a truly new phenomenon.
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Comment on Removed Reddit post: "ChatGPT drove my friends wife into psychosis, tore family apart... now I'm seeing hundreds of people participating in the same activity. " in ~tech
eyechoirs Link ParentWhat about if someone uses a LLM to learn about climate change (let's assume that the LLM delivers truly factual information about on this topic), then gets depressed about the future suffering of...What about if someone uses a LLM to learn about climate change (let's assume that the LLM delivers truly factual information about on this topic), then gets depressed about the future suffering of the human race and kills themself as a result? I think this clearly meets your "any reason at all to believe the LLM contributed to their demise" criterion - but only to the same extent that reading about climate change from an authoritative human source would. Seems kind of unfair.
And regulatory fairness is actually pretty important here. You state that the end goal of this kind of regulation would be to incentivize the development of more responsible models, but onerous regulation only incentivizes the use of open source or black market LLMs, which are far less amenable to regulation anyway. The extreme edge case of the "onerous" approach would be banning LLMs outright, and it should hopefully be clear why that would fail.
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Comment on uKanDanZ - War Pigs (2025) in ~music
eyechoirs Link ParentI think the reason for labeling this 'jazz' becomes more apparent when you consider the route that Ethiopian music came to influence Western music in general - some of the first examples were...I think the reason for labeling this 'jazz' becomes more apparent when you consider the route that Ethiopian music came to influence Western music in general - some of the first examples were people like Mulatu Astatke, Hailu Mergia, etc., who during the early 1970s fused Ethiopian folk music with jazz (especially latin jazz), a style aptly known as 'Ethio jazz'. The particular sound of Ethiopian music - its use of unusual pentatonic scales, for instance - became associated with jazz, and as the genre spread, the jazz label stuck even if the music it influenced lost some of the qualities which originally defined it as jazz.
I've heard that there are 3 main qualities which define jazz - 1) a focus on improvisation and mutuality, where the players actively listen and acknowledge each other through the music; 2) swing rhythm; and 3) complex harmony that is often (but not exclusively) rooted in dominant chord tensions. Music that has all three of these qualities is definitely jazz - your standard stuff like John Coltrane, Bill Evans, pre-fusion Miles Davis, etc. Music that has two of these three qualities I think is also pretty clearly jazz, though usually there's a clear influence from other musical forms. Fusion jazz often does not have a swing rhythm, being more influenced by rock or funk, but still has the improvisation/mutuality and complex harmony. Then there's jazz subgenres that don't have much improvisation - stuff like pre-arranged big band swing jazz, or 'chamber jazz' compositions in the third stream style. But they keep the complex harmony and rhythmic looseness. And of course if you look at something like free jazz, it usually maintains the swing and improvisation of jazz, but the harmony might get into really atonal or otherwise unconventional stuff that breaks from the jazz paradigm.
Ethio jazz in its original form is much like latin jazz, which often substitutes the more rigid Afro-Cuban type of rhythmic architecture for swing - this should be apparent if you listen to some of Mulatu Astatke's hits. But there's still plenty of jazz harmonies and improvisation, and indeed there's plenty of modern Ethio jazz that follows this format. But I think the compatibility of this style with things like funk rock or psych rock eventually lead to a degradation of the music's harmonic elements. If you listen to uKanDanZ's usual stuff, it pretty much avoids jazz harmony in favor of simple rock chords alongside the usual Ethiopian pentatonic stuff, though improvisation is still a vital aspect. So, 1 out of 3 isn't really jazz, though you could probably still call it 'jazz adjacent'.
This distance from the original Ethio jazz is exacerbated in the linked song, which is a cover, so there's also no improvisation. But that's language for ya - meanings shift over time and no one is the wiser, and all of the sudden we're calling this jazz.
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Comment on Observation: Video links go unwatched in ~tech
eyechoirs Link Parenthttps://www.youtube.com/@ThePopDescriptivist/ Some of the videos will probably be intelligible to you without a theory background, but a lot of the ones where I start talking about functional...https://www.youtube.com/@ThePopDescriptivist/
Some of the videos will probably be intelligible to you without a theory background, but a lot of the ones where I start talking about functional harmony, well so help you god. I do recommend learning about functional harmony from the basics though, from some other resource; it's probably the most useful aspect of music theory for improvising, composing, etc.
And clarsach, huh? That's pretty unique. I've only seen one in person once... though I suppose it's popular in some places, just not where I've been, haha.
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Comment on Observation: Video links go unwatched in ~tech
eyechoirs Link ParentYeah, that's a big part of it. I think being able to listen to chords or melody as they're explained helps those lessons resonate. And separately, I think chord function charts are easier to...Yeah, that's a big part of it. I think being able to listen to chords or melody as they're explained helps those lessons resonate. And separately, I think chord function charts are easier to understand if they're (visually) built up one piece at a time, in tandem with the explanation, instead of the completed chart being shown from the start, which is typically how an essay/research paper would show that kind of thing.
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Comment on Observation: Video links go unwatched in ~tech
eyechoirs LinkI recently started making long-form (>10 min) videos on music theory for my YouTube channel, so I'm in a unique position to theorize about this trend. It's definitely true that some video content...I recently started making long-form (>10 min) videos on music theory for my YouTube channel, so I'm in a unique position to theorize about this trend.
It's definitely true that some video content niches are disappearing, but you'd have to expect that as technology, society, etc. evolve there would be some changes. As others have pointed out, short-form meme videos for low attention spans are ascendant right now, but I think there's also a growing niche for long-form, podcast-style videos. A lot of these are just '3 dudes in a room chatting' style content, which might reflect growing parasocial tendencies, but also I've seen some video essay deep dives on a particular subject (even those >1 hr in length) perform pretty well. Though perhaps some of this reflects my own viewing biases rather than broader trends.
With my own content, I'm trying to buck some of the ostensive issues people have with long-form content, especially that this type of video is boring/repetitive due to being padded out to meet a more monetizable length. My videos are generally 15-35 minutes long, but I pack them with as much content as possible. I talk as fast as I can, and rarely repeat myself for the sake of being didactic. I figure it is easier for people who can't keep up with fast-paced content to pause the video as needed, than for people who get bored with slow-paced content to somehow compensate for that.
I also take a no-frills, 'education, not entertainment' approach, which is probably bad for metrics, but is more in line with my personal values. You won't be able to get anything out of my videos unless you are willing to pay close attention. As video content migrates towards memes and other low-attention material, I feel like going the opposite direction might be able to find a small but consistent fanbase of people who are interesting in learning something instead of just passively wasting time. The topic of music theory is already geared towards learning, in some ways, so I try to make content that demands the viewer work to understand the subject, something incisive enough that it won't just be forgotten hours later.
Between the subject of music theory in general, and my particular approach to it, this is a small niche, but I am heartened by comments on some of my videos that express profound gratitude and fascination. But also I get comments (surprisingly often) that essentially say 'I don't understand any of this but I watched the whole video', and those are the best ones. I think there's a vitalizing effect to exploring content that is far, far beyond your level of understanding of a subject. Seeing how complex the whole thing is, which hopefully inspires you to make a real attempt to start understanding the basics, so that you can get to the expert stuff one day.
I'm surprised no one has brought up Alejandro Iñárritu. 21 Grams, Birdman, and Bardo are all-time great films, just absolute masterpieces (some people might disagree with me about Bardo, but you gotta admit it's at least wildly ambitious, with significant follow-through). Babel and Biutiful are also excellent, though a little more straightforward in terms of theme/tone and plot, respectively. I think The Revenant gets a lot of undeserved hate because it has such a single-minded aesthetic, and you could also probably argue that Leo didn't deserve Best Actor for his performance in it, per se. But it's still a very enjoyable movie, honestly - albeit something you have to kind of let soak in, rather than obsess over intellectually. And Amores Perros is also really good, but maybe a little rough around the edges due to it being Iñárritu's first film. All in all, maybe not 'flawless' exactly, but it's hard for me to imagine many similarly-sized filmographies are much better than this.
I guess another good candidate would be Satoshi Kon. It's kind of a cop out, because of his untimely death at only 46, meaning he only ever directed 4 movies. But they're all phenomenal - Perfect Blue (the cult classic psychological thriller), Millennium Actress (the poignant, meditative piece about aging and the meaning of life), Tokyo Godfathers (the heartwarming dark comedy slash social commentary), and Paprika (the psychological sci-fi romp that is by turns disturbing and hilarious). Also, the one series that he was a showrunner for, Paranoia Agent, is also excellent, kind of like Twin Peaks in Tokyo. Really sad that he never got to complete his magnum opus (Dreaming Machine - which remains unfinished to this day).