Things are interesting and I must Scream

This is a thread in which anyone may come in and full force rant about something that you find interesting. I can promise at minimum Validation and Attention from me for each thing posted (timelines not promised) and possibly other people provided they're interested. Expect me to use it.

 

This is a good thread, thank you!! I intend to use it RIGHT NOW. Unfortunately it's easiest for me if I have a jumping-off point but I WILL SCREAM REGARDLESS.

OKAY SO. THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS. Brooklyn-based alternative/college/nerd/weird-ass rock band fronted by two guys named John (John Linnell and John Flansburgh, backed by Dan Miller, Danny Weinkauf, and Marty Beller). Absurdly prolific. Best band in the world. Anyone who has talked to me for more than five minutes is probably aware of these basic facts about the band.

But what's really interesting to me right now is the way they count their studio albums.

Now, officially, they have 20 studio albums (15 regular albums and 5 children's albums). The thing is, they have two other albums (that I can think of off the top of my head--I'm very tired rn and might be blanking) that I, personally, would count as studio albums. This is because one (Album Raises New And Troubling Questions) is essentially a full-fledged album with almost entirely unreleased-elsewhere material despite officially being a compilation, whereas all the material on the other (Cast Your Pod To The Wind) was never released elsewhere outside of the (tragically defunct) TMBG podcast--they have an officially-counted-as-a-studio-album album (Phone Power) that's just as much a compilation as that one (consisting of most of the tracks from Dial-A-Song Direct 2015 that weren't already from the previous album, Glean).

Dial-A-Song, incidentally, is a really fascinating thing in terms of their releases, and also in general. Basically, when the band was getting started in the 80s, the Johns (who, at the time, were the only band members--their first album with a backing band was John Henry, released in 1994, which is the best album of all time) got an answering machine on which they'd play new songs--a huge number of which were never officially released. (This is not to say they cannot be found, obviously and if you want me to hook you up with some files lmk.) The ones that did see releases on albums or EPs were rerecorded, and often substantially changed in various ways; you could argue that they were demos of a sort. For example, here's the Dial-A-Song version of Ana Ng:


And here's the album release, from their 1988 sophomore album, Lincoln:


In 2015, the service, which had long been defunct, was temporarily brought back as Dial-A-Song Direct--this time it was free regardless of the caller's location, along with the added bonus of a fairly affordable ($30 for the whole year) subscription service through which actual MP3s of the songs could be released. (Yay internet!) The band took a "hiatus" after that--after releasing a song a week, all throughout 2015--but it's worth noting that by "hiatus" I mean "they only released a handful of new songs in 2016 and 2017," which I'm pretty sure is a normal length of time between releases for most bands? And now, in 2018, they're doing it again (although they haven't been doing it every week, since they realized that was a bit much even for a band as absurdly and consistently prolific as them--they took a break of about a month, but they released another one just the other day, so IT'S BACK BABY)!

I'm sorry that this is super incoherent but just. TMBG is FASCINATING and a fantastic band okay.

 

That IS really interesting. I'm like. Hyperfocused on the fact they released a SONG EVERY WEEK FOR A WHOLE FUCKING YEAR HOLY FUCK HOW

 

lois mcmaster bujold's chalion series is blowing my mind right now i'm so excited with new iteration i read

• there are gods who are very much real and sometimes mess around with humanity to get shit done for strange godly reasons
• there's 5 gods: mother, father, son, daughter, and bastard
• most people never interact with the gods, and people who do tend to have a tenuous relationship with it. being god-touched is usually immensely stressful. like, yay! i get to be a pawn for a literal god who i can't fathom, who wants to use me for some purpose i probably don't understand, and i might die because i'm being asked to do dangerous things
• people tend to slot themselves into camps of gods based on gender and age. maidens go for the Daughter, mothers to the Mother, etc. misfits to the Bastard
  • except most of the time when the gods interact with people directly it's mismatched! a maiden is chosen by the Son, a widow is chosen by the Bastard
    • the widow-bastard one was so fucking fun because she started with the Mother and basically swore off the gods altogether after a bad experience. she was like. "fuck the gods. fuck you. never again." then the Bastard is like "hey? can we talk? got a favor to ask" and shes like "LMAO NOT THIS SHIT AGAIN, DIE" and hes like "listen let me sweeten the pot lemme help u lemme show u how we're working together here..."
    • that book is really fucking great. i could rant about it for a very long time
• the five gods are really fucking cool
• i just got to a part where these characters interact with the Son and the author keeps describing it in these awesome ways. like, the words he speaks feel branded inside of their heads forever, one of them psychically can't stop crying even just recounting the encounter. and the way the Son talks, you can tell that he experiences things on such a grander and stranger scale than we can comprehend, which is so cool
• there's also some really cool in-world attempts at explaining the gods using the science that they have. it gives me a lovecraft feel. they have some idea of what the gods are, and it's almost explainable, but there's still so much missing, and it's tied up in weird magic that we don't understand. but god. it's so cool.

 

Oooh this sounds really cool. I'm always interested when people can describe things that really go a long way to show what it feels like to experience something that we ourselves cannot. How does the author do it?

 

Rongorongo is really neat. It's a series of glyphs native to Easter Island possibly made by the Rapa Nui. We've sadly yet to be able to decode it. Which makes sense. The class of people who could read it was rather small and they died off when the Portuguese showed up reputedly. We also don't know if it is actually writing or proto-writing, though most seem to subscribe to the idea that it is proto-writing.

If it is proto-writing we are sadly likely forever fucked in terms of knowing that it says.

 

Is that because if it were proto-writing it would have evolved and become whatever it did with no reason to keep records of it? Or is there some other reason?

 

It's because as proto-writing it has no exact correspondences to the spoken language and some of the tablets might even only have been understood by specific individuals. If it is actual written language we have a better chance at it because then we have one-to-ones with the spoken language. Unfortunately, even then we can't decide if it is a syllabic or logographic script and we don't have much knowledge of Old Rapanui language, which is what the script would have to represent given times.

 

Sounds like we're pretty fucked either way then.

 

Yep! Which is very sad. Very, very sad.

but wow we still have evidence of this really neat thing and people just keep studying it and working at it

 

That makes me think of Mersenne Primes. Which are prime numbers of the form (2^n)-1. We've been searching for them since literally ancient Greece. There's only fifty total that have been found. We've been searching for literally millennia and we only know of FIFTY, the most recent one discovered was just last year. It's (2^77,232,917)-1. So think about that for a minute. There are only 48 other primes between (2^77,232,917)-1 and (2^2)-1 that have this same form. AND STILL WE SEARCH

 

I decided to be a curious little shit. I calculated how many digits that is in (2^77,232,917)-1. There are (provided the site I used for reference is correct, 23,249,425 digits in the number (2^77,232,917)-1. Let me repeat. There are TWENTY THREE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED FORTY NINE THOUSAND, FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINE DIGITS in the expansion of (2^77,232,917)-1. And note, when I say digits, I mean digits as in there are 8 digits in the number 77,232,917. I don't think any of us can really even comprehend how fucking big of a number with 23,249,425 digits is and YET it was proven to be a prime number.

 

I have no words beyond holy shit. That's fuckmassive as hell!

I admittedly know very little about math (my math level is, uh...probably around high school algebra tbh), but damn. That's super fascinating!

 

Also, belated, but I know, right?? They've recorded at least 800+ songs in their 36-year career (they formed in 1982, though their first album wasn't released until 1986--it's also worth noting that they've shown no signs of stopping, and that the coming hiatus is just a little break for them to relax a bit before jumping back into recording absurd amounts of tasty jams), which is just...how. How are they so fucking prolific???

(Not that I'm complaining, obviously...they spoil us fans so much! <3)

 

Oh damn, that IS really interesting! I know it's unlikely to be decoded, but I really hope it is someday. That would be so rad.

 

Regarding TMBG- How are people supposed to listen to all those songs??

 

Okay, dark confession: while I own pretty much everything they've ever released, I haven't listened to Literally Every Song (most of them, yes, but not all). Someday I will, but that's more of a goal than a promise, if that makes sense. :P

Although in my case it's more that listening to new things is a slight spoon drain, and I'm also Very Lazy and kind of overly attached to certain songs, which I'll listen to on loop for hours on end. #spergproblems

It's probably easiest to start with the studio albums. :P

 

Fun Pokemon fact: if there were a Pokemon that existed that were simultaneously every type, it would only have one weakness. Rock.

Spoiler: Full resistance breakdown

Quadrouple damage taken from: Rock

Neutral damage taken from: Fire, Water, Flying, Fairy, Ice

Half damage taken from: Dark, Steel

One sixteenth damage taken from: Grass, Bug

Immune to: Fighting, Ghost, Dragon, Normal, Poison, Ground, Electric, Psychic

 

I've been too busy all week to post about this, and technically I still am, but here's something about absolute pitch that's really messing with me.

Spoiler: background info

Absolute pitch: The ability to name a tone without an external reference. People with absolute pitch, or absolute pitch possessors, (or AP possessors,) can tell if the note you play on the piano is a Gb or an A# without any clues. This ability is more commonly called "perfect pitch", and because 1) it's rare and 2) some famous musicians have had it (like Mozart, and maybe Mariah Carey?)...it has a certain mystique in pop culture. It doesn't really make you better at music or anything else, though. Autistic people and people who speak tonal languages are more likely to have it.

Relative pitch: The ability to name a tone when first given a reference tone. So like, I play a "C" for you on the piano, and I tell you "that was a C", and then I play you a "G", on the piano, and you say "oh, that was five tones up, so it must be a G". This is something all musicians generally need to learn how to do, and pretty much anyone who doesn't have amusia is capable of it.

Okay, so there's a thing where absolute pitch possessors are a lot better at naming pitches for sounds that come from musical instruments than for sounds that come from voices*. This is weird, since voiced sounds are generally just as musical as instrumental sounds...I mean, you've heard people sing before, right? Voices can carry a tune just as well as a violin can, right? And yet, if the tune is sung, it's harder for absolute pitch possessors to tell what notes are being played in it. The theory is that there's a specific "language-processing" mode in your brain that turns on in response to vocal sounds...and when that mode is turned on, the "pitch-processing" mode is turned off. Actually, I've seen that proposed as a theory for "why absolute pitch is so rare in humans"; we lost it in exchange for gaining language processing**.

Another thing, which I don't have a study for, but which I hope feels intuitively correct is...it's generally easier to remember things if you..."name" them in your head...right? Like. If you see a green car zoom past you in the street, but you don't think much about its color in particular, what are the chances that you're going to remember it was a "green" car when you talk about it next week? Not that high, right? But if, in the moment, you think "what's that green car doing barreling down the street like that"...you're a little more likely to remember that it was "green" in particular, probably. That might not be the best example, but I hope you personally have some experience of "forgetting a detail because you didn't think about it in the moment", or "remembering a detail because you did think about it in the moment", and that this makes sense.

...Anyway, here's the punchline of this post. People are apparently better at remembering melodies if they're sung than if they're played on a musical instrument. This applies equally for musicians and nonmusicians...and it applies equally to musicians with or without absolute pitch. So...even though people with absolute pitch have a harder time identifying the notes in a sung melody...they remember the melody itself better than they would if they had heard it played on an instrument where they could identify the notes.

Isn't that weird? I think it's weird.

(*I know that this linked paper is just one paper, with not that many views or citations, but...I swear I've seen this result in other papers before. Also, I think absolute pitch just isn't that big a field? I know of exactly One Dude who's published most of the really interesting absolute pitch papers this decade. Also...as An Person With Absolute Pitch, this is something that I have always experientially know is true for me personally. So...let's assume that this "voice disadvantage" effect is well-established.)

(**Pitch perception in animals is interesting, by the way. The general assumption is that most animals have absolute pitch, but not relative pitch, which I think is because of a result seen in songbirds, where they can't tell that you're playing the same melody if you play it with the pitch shifted up a little...but also, there's been ferrets who have demonstrated relative pitch ability, apparently...and like, why ferrets? What do ferrets evolutionarily need relative pitch for? Even if humans need relative pitch because it helps with language processing...why ferrets?)

 

OH HELL YES I HAVEN'T GOTTEN TO TALK ABOUT COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY IN A WHILE.
Give me a couple of days to get through with my finals and I will be SO happy to crack open my books and talk about this in more depth. For now though, I have seen and read this and I AGREE SHIT IS FUCKING WEIRD AND ALSO COOL. Also, I'm finding myself wondering if the more an animal has contact with humans, the more capable it is of relative pitch processing.