What are you reading, watching and listening to? - All languages

[Man in Space]

King Crimson – “Starless”

[rotting bones]

Reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle again.

Playing Tametsi on Steam. Tametsi is a freeform Minesweeper:

Screenshot 2024-02-13 115845.png (46.15 KiB) Viewed 3574 times

[rotting bones]

When I was growing up, I sometimes heard from some people that Serious, Intellectual, "High" Culture is Good, and Cheap Mass Entertainment is Bad. And how could you tell one from the other? Well, one of the surest telltale signs was supposedly the use of spectacular special effects. If a movie had a lot of spectacular special effects, you knew that it was worthless trash, with zero cultural value or intellectual merit.

And then I ended up reading the play that, traditionally, was basically the canonical example of Serious, Intellectual, "High" Culture in Germany... ...and basically on every other page of the printed version, there was an opportunity for the stage technicians of the early 19th century to show off their special effects.

Goethe was Shakespeare's biggest fan, especially of Hamlet's broodiness. IIRC Shakespeare did use considerable amounts of stage spectacle. If Faust is meant to be a Hamlet-ier Hamlet, that might be his excuse. His later novels Wilhelm Meister's Apprentice and Elective Affinities are indeed quite dry. These were meant to be a departure from his earlier Sturm und Drang period (i.e. The Sorrows of Young Werther), which he came to see as embarrassing youthful dramarama.

Wilhelm Meister's Apprentice does have a lot of drama embedded in it (literally madwomen and Shakespearean poetry), but life has a way of smudging it all together with the passage of time. The novel opens with Goethe making fun of pompous idealism.

Elective Affinities is a romantic entanglement modeled on a chemical reaction, and it's just as formal in structure. Honestly, I'm not clear on why the characters act the way they do, though Goethe might have gotten the idea of two couples exchanging partners from Shakespeare's idea of "comedy". Small kindnesses can indeed cause a shift in affection. I'm not sure I buy Goethe's attempt to depict this phenomenon, especially in the timeframe shown in the novel. Who knows? Maybe Goethe's depiction is more realistic than my expectations from fiction. Goethe sounds like the kind of person who would have experience with love triangles, and I don't.

IIRC the reticence of modern art critics to celebrate flashiness stems from them finding all joy and meaningfulness to be in bad taste after WWII, the Holocaust and the assorted tragedies of the 20th century.

PS. It could be that Goethe started Faust as a youthful work, and so he finished it in the same spirit.

[Raphael]

Just finished the Netflix Jimmy Savile documentary. Grim stuff. Extremely grim stuff.

[Raphael]

Just read a hilarious short thread on Bluesky about buildings in specific places that were designed, used, or evaluated by people from specific other places.

Examples included a library design intended for the tropics, allowing for airflow from lower floors to upper floors to reduce the need for air conditioning, which ended up being used in Massachusetts, where it led to strong cold winds blowing through the building. And a university campus designed by Californian architects, with many open spaces and opportunities to spend a lot of time outside, that was built in Saskatchewan.

[Ares Land]

I really liked Dune: Part Two. Conlangs are apparently required in SF movies now a lot of the dialogue is either in Chakobsa(?) -- a Fremen language anyway or the Harkonnen language.
The obligatory 'riding the worm' scene was incredibly well done. I'm really stunned by the depiction of the Harkonnen world (there's more than a nod to the Giger/Jodorowsky 70s concept but plenty of cool ideas besides) -- plus Feyd Rautha is really nightmarish. I should perhaps warn that the movie is pretty violent and very scary in parts.

In some ways it's better than the original novel:

More: show

I like how Chani gets something to do and opinions of her own! Having her be, essentially, Paul's conscience works great -- sort of like Kay in The Godfather.
Villeneuve makes it very clear that the ending is tragic, and that Paul is not a hero at this point, way more effectively than Herbert did.

One thing I missed a bit is the ecology/terraforming part -- while that was one of the more interesting parts of the book, I get that it wouldn't translate well to the screen though.

Many people disliked Christophe Walken as the Emperor, but I think he did very well. The idea of the Emperor as a defeated old man throughout works very well.

[Raphael]

Ares Land, you're reminding me of this, which I found on social media:

6bfaf0a33d315395.jpg (119.4 KiB) Viewed 3483 times

[rotting bones]

The audiobook of Third Eye by Felicia Day is pretty funny.

PS. It's similar to Good Omens.

[Ares Land]

Ares Land, you're reminding me of this, which I found on social media:

Wonderful!

[hwhatting]

Ares Land, you're reminding me of this, which I found on social media:

Wonderful!

Yes, that hilarious! Now we know that spice is White Russian

[fusijui]

It wasn't that good really, but I'm still charmed by the National Lampoon's version of "Dune", which was set on the dessert planet, covered in endless pure sugar, and our protagonist's fated role was to lead the faithful to the appetizers and entrees that they had been denied for untold generations.

[rotting bones]

As a long time Holmes fan, Moriarty: The Devil's Game on Audible blew my mind. It's not highbrow entertainment or anything, but it's a lot of fun.

[Zju]

Azteca - God of the Sacred Cave

[conlangernoob]

Understanding Power - Noam Chomsky

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Mysteries of Udolpho — Ann Radcliffe

[Raphael]

Yesterday, I watched a wildlife documentary about the courtship displays of various species of tropical birds - Dancing With The Birds - which was, oddly enough, the first thing I found on Netflix in a few weeks that I watched all the way to the end.

[rotting bones]

I read Thus Spake Zarathustra again. I liked it much better now than when I read it as a teenager. I even liked the symbolism. This book really is the Antichristian bible. I think, like Nietzsche, my misanthropy has made me completely uninterested in finding points of agreement with the opinions humans actually hold.

Also, I think Nietzsche, in a way, might have answered my question about how saying yes relates to the Will to Power where he says that the soul first becomes a camel, then a lion, then a child.

[Ares Land]

I read Thus Spake Zarathustra again. I liked it much better now than when I read it as a teenager. I even liked the symbolism. This book really is the Antichristian bible. I think, like Nietzsche, my misanthropy has made me completely uninterested in finding points of agreement with the opinions humans actually hold.

Also, I think Nietzsche, in a way, might have answered my question about how saying yes relates to the Will to Power where he says that the soul first becomes a camel, then a lion, then a child.

I definitely should re-read. I loved that book as a teenager.

[rotting bones]

A new book that attempts to explain the geometric intuitions behind deep learning: https://udlbook.github.io/udlbook/ Quote: "The book is neither terribly theoretical (there are no proofs) nor extremely practical (there is almost no code). The goal is to explain the underlying ideas; after consuming this volume, the reader will be able to apply deep learning to novel situations where there is no existing recipe for success."

The Nebula and Hugo winners Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution and Nettle & Bone both look interesting so far.

---

Videos:

The Goddess of Everything Else: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbwp4PbWYzw

Corporate Open Source is dead? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNcBk6cwim8

The Satanic Temple is a Nazi organization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lV8GLQtOTs

Common descent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNQPQkV3nhw

I'm not sure how fungal computing would be useful when we know what the algorithms are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mIWo6dgTmI https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp ... cdow&tag=1

Bats get a fever every time they fly, apparently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYFRLEQBDpc

Orientalism in music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR511iAedYU

Why economists think housing is expensive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMDNehHKu7c

New parallel programming language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCOQmKTFzYY

PS. Mucha & Xenomorph's Dream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQN5SFFr2Jw

[Travis B.]

The Pragmatic Programmer - While to the experienced programmer a lot of it seems like common sense, it is an excellent book, and for people like myself it is a good reminder of all the stuff that we should be doing but are not doing enough.