Friday Ephemera
Giant wearable woollen cat heads. (h/t, Darleen) || Feeding goldfinches. || Pigeon movie database. || Packaging of note. || Now there’s an empowered lady. || Snowfall in Rome. || The council at work. || A caption seems in order. || Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain. || Today’s word is optics. || True. || “Let me check your feet.” || “I check our numbers at the end of every week.” || Don’t give them the secret of fire. || Today’s other word is metaphor. || When your offices are mistaken for something else. (h/t, Julia) || Meanwhile, in academia. || The museum of obsolete media. (h/t, Things) || She does this better than you do. || And finally, in specialist news, “For a small number of individuals, farting isn’t just a taboo by-product of human digestion—it’s the primary focus of their sex lives.”
Yesterday’s word was optics too.
She does this better than you do.
Um. See, also, hoop dance.
The council at work.
I think that’s *all* councils at work.
True.
Now being looked at for laughing on train.
Morning, all.
Cunning.
Via dicentra.
A caption seems in order.
‘Nature takes its course’.
Art.
You may need a barf bag.
Douglas Murray in the USA:
“Hi! Is your mask edible? Are you a rock to lie on? Can I kiss you? Who’s your friend”? Hey, there are MORE of you!”
https://twitter.com/fluffsociety/status/974072743552483328?s=21
Don’t give them the secret of fire.
I think I must have been about ten years old when I was given an anthology of “Action Stories For Boys” or some such for my birthday and I read and re-read “Leiningen Versus The Ants“, which never failed to scare me witless.
It’s a gas!
True.
Funny how it seems.
‘Nature takes its course’.
Not entirely unrelated:
Any takers, ladies?
A Guardian fashion spread.
Who the hell would pay those prices?
I much preferred the optics from the Moon video.
Any takers, ladies?
My word! It’s like James Spader was given Warwick Davis’ role in Willow.
Re: 96k 24bit remasters – I am semi-reliably informed by some guy I don’t know on facebook that the human ear can only pick up frequencies at a much narrower range than 96khz (no more than 20khz?), so the idea that you’re really hearing a purer sound is mostly bollocks. It may be a placebo effect, or it may be that they’ve remixed it so it sounds better anyway (why most comparisons of remasters to originals are apples to oranges), or it may be that recording and/or working with digital sound at 96khz causes less digital distortion which might creep into the audible range when the file is compressed.
I don’t know, it’s all a bit above my pay grade, but my general opinion is that it’s just snake oil.
It’s like James Spader was given Warwick Davis’ role in Willow.
See, now you’ve just ruined The Blacklist for me.
How’s that working out for you, HuffPost?
David, I thought the person holding the sign was female. ☺️
See, now you’ve just ruined The Blacklist for me.
Oh, come now. There’s 30 or 40 things that should have thoroughly ruined it for you long before I came along. Not even a credit note for you, mon ami.
There’s 30 or 40 things that should have thoroughly ruined it for you long before I came along.
Heh. It’s true, the actress who plays Liz isn’t good, and the guy who played Tom was equally unconvincing. And Ressler is just dull. Navabi and Aram are okay, but the whole thing rests on Reddington. Oh, and I’m still trying to figure out why Harold never seems to have any lights on in his office.
It’s my only vice.
What?
Oh come on, it was worth a shot.
Ooh. Avengers: Infinity War.
See, now you’ve just ruined The Blacklist for me.
I’m in the middle of Season Three. At this point, replacing James Spader with Warwick Davis could only improve things.
The actress who plays Liz isn’t good, and the guy who played Tom was equally unconvincing. And Ressler is just dull. Navabi and Aram are okay, but the whole thing rests on Reddington.
I’m still trying to figure out if Tom is being CGI post-processed or if he just naturally has freakishly large anime eyes.
The Navabi-Aram thing was fun to watch for a bit, but they can’t seem to decide if they want to do something realistic or a pandering-to-the-shippers fairy tale. My biggest problem with the show at this point is that Liz is the Mary Sue-est of Mary Sues to come down the pipe in a long while, and it’s getting increasingly tiresome. I’m kind of hoping all of Season Three will end up being her dying hallucination.
Off topic, even for an Ephemera post:
A few years ago, either David or one of us readers posted a link to a Spectator article that required registration to access it. Registration was free, so I signed up. Ever since then, I’ve been getting regular emails touting the highlights of the latest issue (and Spectator Money, Spectator Arts, etc). Over this time, I’ve noticed something disconcerting, and I wondered if it were just me being a “colonial” and being “triggered”. Does anyone else get a sense of smug, self-satisfied condescension from them?
I’m still trying to figure out if Tom is being CGI post-processed or if he just naturally has freakishly large anime eyes.
Heh. Don’t worry, he [ SPOILERS ] doesn’t survive season five. We actually watch the thing – while drinking, obviously – in the hope that Liz will bite the dust, leaving Red to team up with Navabi and Aram.
Yes, it’s a guilty pleasure and I’ll thank you not to judge me.
twinkletoes42069,
…or it may be that recording and/or working with digital sound at 96khz causes less digital distortion which might creep into the audible range when the file is compressed.
That’s the theory, at any rate. The “less distortion in the audible range” concept is also used (touted?) in designing hi-fi speakers that reproduce frequencies beyond normal human range.
“That’s the theory, at any rate.”
The theory needs double-blind tests. But the last ones I read about failed embarrassingly for the golden-ear autiophile experts: When they knew what equipment was playing their music, they confidently identified the expensive audiophile CD players as giving far better sound. But when neither they nor the testers knew at any moment what equipment was being used, their golden ears failed utterly.
David, I thought the person holding the sign was female.
Sorry, she has Schroedinger’s gender: You cannot know until she tells you.
Yes, it’s a guilty pleasure and I’ll thank you not to judge me.
I’ve seen all of Hart of Dixie. And I was sober at the time.
when neither they nor the testers knew at any moment what equipment was being used, their golden ears failed utterly.
I recall a test done in the 1980’s where someone skeptical of high-fi audio claims demonstrated that audiophiles could not tell the difference between signal carried by the finest gold-plated speaker wire, and a coat hanger he straightened out and jammed into the connectors.
And I was sober at the time.
Oh, I couldn’t watch it without a fortifying beverage. As you say, Liz is badly cast and poorly written, and has always been the obvious weak link of the show. I’m actually surprised the producers pushed on with same actress and character. (As The Other Half says, “I don’t believe she’s an actress, let alone an FBI agent.”) The show has teased us, at least twice, with what seemed to be her final moments, only for her to recover the following week, thereby dashing our hopes. But despite its faults, which are numerous, it does have odd moments of charm, largely due to Spader and some faintly surreal scenarios.
and a coat hanger he straightened out and jammed into the connectors
That must have been humiliating. 🙂
Correction: “Sorry, xe has Schroedinger’s gender: You cannot know until xe tells you.”
Liz is badly cast and poorly written
We used to placed bets on how long after exclaiming: “But after this we are done!” it would take her to change her mind.
Re: 96k 24bit remasters – I am semi-reliably informed by some guy I don’t know on facebook that the human ear can only pick up frequencies at a much narrower range than 96khz (no more than 20khz?), so the idea that you’re really hearing a purer sound is mostly bollocks. It may be a placebo effect, or it may be that they’ve remixed it so it sounds better anyway (why most comparisons of remasters to originals are apples to oranges), or it may be that recording and/or working with digital sound at 96khz causes less digital distortion which might creep into the audible range when the file is compressed.
I don’t know, it’s all a bit above my pay grade, but my general opinion is that it’s just snake oil..
Some fallacies like to creep into that common progression – usually between the purported limits of amplitude sensitivity and bollocks – and usually end with flat charges of snake oil, they being technically as unfounded as the purported snake oilers themselves. The 96/24 phenomenon has nothing to do with audible range in terms of a 96kHz extremity but instead in subtleties like audible air, space, grain, and various subtler electronic artifacts in the reproduction of digital media.
The “less distortion in the audible range” concept is also used (touted?) in designing hi-fi speakers that reproduce frequencies beyond normal human range.
Speakers that reproduce an extra high octave – which certainly is beyond the commonly held limits of human hearing – also positively affect the phasing of frequencies within human range. However, in practice 40kHz reproduction is significantly less audible than is a simply lower distortion speaker. Other, more fundamental driver behaviors and the underlying speaker design are more important, especially the design. Class for class, we hear how the thing is designed and executed more than the sacred cow of frequency response.
The theory needs double-blind tests. But the last ones I read about failed embarrassingly for the golden-ear autiophile experts: When they knew what equipment was playing their music, they confidently identified the expensive audiophile CD players as giving far better sound. But when neither they nor the testers knew at any moment what equipment was being used, their golden ears failed utterly.
That old saw gets passed audio circles around a lot, typically by folks with axes to grind more than music to enjoy. Two problems with it. Double-blind work has the 1) interesting property of reducing virtually all audio to similarly dismal results because it 2) violates the way we absorb a musical event, which ironically, is by not actually listening. We relax and we take in a far longer perspective in far more open-minded, perceptive, visual states then when we’re challenged and forced to produce a particular result. In one scenario you simply must taste a dozen “notes’ in what turns out to be a bottle of $15 Vintage Ordinaire; in another you enjoy the heck out of a fine dinner over the entire course of an evening.
Guys into turning hifi into a competition generally prevail in showing one and all that that’s all they’ve done while the rest of us go off exploring – through Kind of Blue or Sketches. It’s funny how hifi is reserved for this kind of abuse, fairly uniquely among human experience for pleasure. Great audio ultimately isn’t an aural experience, either. It’s a far more involved sensory foray involving a historical time machine. Get it really right and you’re not hearing Miles. You’re there, watching Miles.
I recall a test done in the 1980’s where someone skeptical of high-fi audio claims demonstrated that audiophiles could not tell the difference between signal carried by the finest gold-plated speaker wire, and a coat hanger he straightened out and jammed into the connectors.
To wit. Meanwhile, the better audio scientists in the world generally work alone – either in geographic or experimental isolation or both – and yet consistently arrive at highly similar findings. Among them is the accepted empirically-founded view that extremely low reactance audio cables have the least sonic signature, an eminently logical view. The tip of that spear is held by ultra-fine silver monofilaments suspended in air dielectrics and the language to describe the non-sound of them is remarkably, even shockingly consistent. This is not to say snake oil doesn’t exist; it does and it appears whenever there are dollars to be duped.
Two problems with it. Double-blind work has the 1) interesting property of reducing virtually all audio to similarly dismal results because it 2) violates the way we absorb a musical event, which ironically, is by not actually listening. We relax and we take in a far longer perspective in far more open-minded, perceptive, visual states then when we’re challenged and forced to produce a particular result. In one scenario you simply must taste a dozen “notes’ in what turns out to be a bottle of $15 Vintage Ordinaire; in another you enjoy the heck out of a fine dinner over the entire course of an evening.
There is absolutely no reason a double-blind test cannot be done in which an entire performance is played many times, each time by one of two randomly selected music systems, and the audiophile scores each performance for quality.
“Giant wearable woollen cat heads.”
Ethical!
“Stanford students demand Apple help them stop using their cell phones so much”
Just give me the best part of $1000 every autumn, instead of Apple, and before long you won’t be using an iPhone at all. Surefire cure. Guaranteed. Also works for Macbooks.
“The museum of obsolete media.”
If you enjoy that, you’ll like this guy.
“And finally, in specialist news, ‘For a small number of individuals, farting isn’t just a taboo by-product of human digestion—it’s the primary focus of their sex lives.’”
Have they no sense of smell? I’m serious; I kind of get their explanations for it – kind of – but… the pong… no. Just no.
“A Guardian fashion spread.”
Somebody, somewhere, is clearly trying to see how far they can push a gullible public, quite possibly for a bet. (I’m convinced that this is also what’s going on at BMW’s MINI design department. It’s the only rational explanation.)
“Re: 96k 24bit remasters”
Explanation, demonstration. (As far as I remember; I’m not going to watch the whole thing again to remind myself exactly what’s in each one. Point is, yes, 96k/24-bit is snake oil. For final distribution, at least; it has some benefits in editing.)
If you enjoy that, you’ll like this guy.
Stuffed away under the bed or in a closet somewhere, beneath a layer of dust, there’s one of these.
Ah, the Nineties.
There is absolutely no reason a double-blind test cannot be done in which an entire performance is played many times, each time by one of two randomly selected music systems, and the audiophile scores each performance for quality.
There is absolutely no reason to conduct a double-blind test in which an entire performance is played many times, each time by one of two randomly selected music systems, with the audiophile scoring each performance for quality if the purpose is to replace simple, subjective, serial testing of one system or of one component in it by a reasonably perceptive listener. No other similar field expects such a presumption of odd, , conditioned, “scientific” rigor and in fact, no good audiophiles have expressed valid reason to question their own findings here than in, say, dining, drinking, or driving, among scores of other pursuits.
Put another way, without exception the finest, most authentic-sounding systems I’ve experienced in decades are assembled by this method while the objectivist camp meanwhile assemble loud, electronic-sounding hifi that either they express no perceptions about or that evidently never really please them anyway.
Point is, yes, 96k/24-bit is snake oil.
On its face, obviously higher resolution cannot be snake oil – objectivity expects that everything is audible; the question is to what degree and/or to whom. Such declarative presumptions about perception, especially another’s, are hardly scientific and yet they are consistently part and parcel of the projecting, putative, “objectivist” class of audio expert wielding the assumed science. Given their real results, to what positive effect one has to wonder…
My mother (RIP) played the cello. For whatever reason, I have found that even expensive audio setups have difficulty in reproducing the sound and presence of a cello correctly to my ear. After a great deal of trial-and-error, listening to other people’s systems, and lots of time of high-end retailers’ “listening rooms”, I found a setup that makes a cello sound genuinely lifelike to me. As a bonus, other string instruments sound beautiful, jazz, pop and rock music all sound great, and movie soundtracks sound far better than any “multiplex” surround sound. The gear would be considered obsolete by most younger people, and sniffed at by my-system-cost-more-than-yours “audiophiles”, but I am happy enough with it that, after 25 years of service, I had the amplifier, pre-amp and speakers refurbished, rather than replace them.
The museum of obsolete media.
Back in the good old days, you could discuss tip penetration without being referred to HR.
I found a setup that makes a cello sound genuinely lifelike to me. As a bonus, other string instruments sound beautiful, jazz, pop and rock music all sound great, and movie soundtracks sound far better than any “multiplex” surround sound. The gear would be considered obsolete by most younger people, and sniffed at by my-system-cost-more-than-yours “audiophiles”, but I am happy enough with it
Cool. In the end, that’s the only legitimate test: Does it sound good.
There is absolutely no reason to conduct a double-blind test in which an entire performance is played many times…
There is no need to conduct such a test in order to please yourself, but there such a need if you want to credibly claim that the $15,000 CD player and $40,000-per-channel amplifiers are actually and significantly better.
Some years ago, French experts who dismissed American wine as “clearly” inferior, were asked to participate in a double-blind wine tasting. When they did know which wines were French they found them superior, but when the did not they found many of the American wines to be of equal or greater quality.
You can’t make this sh*t up:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/03/the-reductio-ad-absurdum-of-diversity.php
“This is the kind of absurdity you get when you prioritize skin color over merit,” he said.
In a time where sexism and racism, in their individual and institutional forms, are recognized and called out, those of us in positions of power and privilege – be it through whiteness, maleness, middle-class position, heterosexual-normativity, ability, or Christianity – must slow down, reflect, and listen to those who have been subject to systematic silencing, exploitation, marginalization, and exclusion.
Based on our Sisters of St. Joseph heritage and our deep commitment to social justice, in all its forms, my note today is specifically about our obligation, commitment, and responsibility to make room for everyone at the table.
And people are paying $47,000 annual tuition for this bullsh*t? Amazing…
And in U.S. college basketball, the “wokest” take yet: Too many walk-ons are white. Pull quote:
The walk-ons — players who don’t receive athletic scholarships, pay their own tuition, room and board and do the dirty work in practice, all in exchange for a small role in big-time basketball.
It’s an outrage, of course, and thus, we must destroy even that small role because. . .reasons which are too nonsensical to be believed.
There is no need to conduct such a test in order to please yourself, but there such a need if you want to credibly claim that the $15,000 CD player and $40,000-per-channel amplifiers are actually and significantly better.
Correction: to be given credibility by the equivalent of the art’s unhappy social justice warriors, whose projections and forcings they demand account for all experience and comprise ethical standing at large.
You lodge an assertion for which I’m afraid there is little or no confirmation. I don’t doubt your upshot on practical terms – that confirmation can be spotty or that fraud can exist – but that opinion is logically and functionally detached from the insisted, universal efficacy of AB testing audio which remains problematic.
Some years ago, French experts who dismissed American wine as “clearly” inferior, were asked to participate in a double-blind wine tasting. When they did know which wines were French they found them superior, but when the did not they found many of the American wines to be of equal or greater quality.
Sure, and the first experience with a new phenomenon can indeed change minds. But the dismal outcomes of audio experienced under the demands of AB zealots has become its own correlation and is commonly the inverse of your example, where presumed outcomes fall to widely correlated perceived real differences among individual, unassociated testers who later compare notes. To their aim, the most authentic, organic, realistic sound reproduction on earth is not only repeatable, it’s predictable and typically rejects forced AB testing competitions and breast-beatings in favor of simple serial experimentation as a matter of course. The results, as they say, speak for themselves.
AB testing for audio is a theoretical abstract that poorly correlates with real listening for sensory and intellectual pleasure. It does, however, correlate well with the aims of those whose aim is to reduce the art to a lower common denominator, which it also does fairly uniquely among real human experience. This, however, is expected to stand just on its face.
You may test for placebo where medical outcome determines validity. However, professionals in fields logically show that testing for subjective experience typically violates the purported goal. That A simply must/cannot equal B according to C is an assumption or an assertion.