June 22, 2020

35. Nick Cave's Meow Mix Murder Ballads

1 hour 12 minutes

Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Erica is @yerrikTRB on Twitter, and is thinking about birds

Dan is @danlwarren on Twitter, and is at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (https://www.oist.jp/). His soundcloud is https://soundcloud.com/danwarren. He is writing music for Hypnospace Outlaw https://store.steampowered.com/app/844590/Hypnospace_Outlaw/

Topics:

1:58 The unreliable narrator in songwriting and/or songs where the POV character is a jerk

We all hope Ben Folds is an unreliable narrator in his song “Brick.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt5EHAqhR1c

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Murder Ballads https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmzP977za2bJ8gj8pVmOxSCBNcVZjGy6D

Moby Dick is bad https://medium.com/@jayshams/moby-dick-is-not-a-novel-e19e41fec946

George Michael was maybe not that into monogamy https://www.songfacts.com/facts/george-michael/i-want-your-sex

15:20 No one should live in this city (whatever city you're in edition)

Chitras flies and things that sting you https://indacampo.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/why-you-should-never-fall-asleep-in-your-hammock-at-twilight-in-panama/

Too much water all at once, monsoon edition https://www.kold.com/video/2019/07/31/watch-people-rescued-stranded-vehicle-tucson/

https://www.kgun9.com/weather/monsoon

The cheese guy in Okinawa fills in for a clear lack of cheese http://thecheeseguyinokinawa.com/about-us/

Richard Lenski breeds 69,000 generations of E. coli (not yeast) https://twitter.com/relenski/status/993671677748838400

http://myxo.css.msu.edu/

38:51 Toddlers have incredible memories and if you put something somewhere once because you were lazy they'll remember it goes there forever

https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/04/childrens-memories-toddlers-remember-better-than-you-think.html

Here’s the AI spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vRPiprOaC3HsCf5Tuum8bRfzYUiKLRqJmbOoC-32JorNdfyTiRRsR7Ea5eWtvsWzuxo8bjOxCG84dAg/pubhtml

AI evolves an organism that is tall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-wIZuAA3EY

43:20 Kaz asks: You guys talked about simulating people's voices, and I'd like to point out that there's been a lot of progress in this area. Take a look here for some examples: https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/speaker_adaptation

That Obama thing is called Son of Strelka, Son of God. There’s a Youtube playlist here where four of the nine chapters are illustrated/animated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Any38uNUelM&list=PLw-jIvFxpgIDIlxOnvHr9rN_2TUv87Ju_

The album can be downloaded here: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Dan_Warren/Son_of_Strelka_Son_of_God

The Trump thing is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGYeTmHHZQM

Evolution Control Committee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DX4nsobHW8

Negativland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6gPSSYxex0

Cassetteboy is one of the most active and well-known people doing this stuff nowadays: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI87PRgIKks

55:48 ANTS

Acromyrmex versicolor on the AntWiki https://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Acromyrmex_versicolor

Walter Tschinkel’s aluminum ant colony casts https://www.core77.com/posts/23607/walter-tschinkels-aluminum-casts-of-ant-colonies-reveals-insect-architecture-23607

Strangely named ant reproductive strategies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170217095939.htm

1:03:39 Pokemon Stay (the opposite of Pokemon Go): what's happening to outdoorsy AR games these days.

https://pokemongolive.com/en/post/

https://nianticlabs.com/blog/stay-safe/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/35114072073932236/

http://www.birderslibrary.com/images/excerpts/kaufman_advanced_birding/empid_plate.jpg

https://ebird.org/news/confusing-flycatchers

https://www.thespruce.com/flycatcher-identification-tips-3859843

Microtopics:

Staying inside and definitely being totally sane.

Being on the Hypnospace Outlaw soundtrack but not being Seepage.

Driving people away from you and writing songs about how they're gone.

Betraying the concept of music by putting it in advertising.

Singing about the fish you're going to eat.

Listening to music for a decade before realizing it's horrifying.

Being deeply obsessed with an art form others explicitly disregard.

An eight year old singing a pop song about sex.

Assuming that a song written in the first person is autobiographical.

Writing a song about cheating on your wife and everybody assuming you're endorsing it so you write a last verse that's like "/s"

The last verse of "I Want Your Sex" being about how George Michael doesn't really want your sex.

Putting together a choreographed dance routine to "I Want Your Sex" at summer camp.

Whether Dad Jr. has anything to say about it.

An angry crowd proclaiming that Jesus is a slut.

The Robert Browning poem where he evidently thought "twat" is an item of nun's clothing and rhymes with "bat."

Describing the white whale as obsidian and ebony because you don't have the internet and can't look up what obsidian means.

A beautiful desert with amazing food where you have scorpions in your house.

A microwasp stinging your hand leaving a patch of cell death that lasts for almost a year.

The dirt being impossible to dig in so there are no storm drains and when the monsoon comes the water rises up to your windshield.

The front door's doorknob being too hot to touch in the summer.

The process of getting into a car when it's 118 degrees outside.

Sedona being much more livable than most of Arizona because it's in the mountains.

Growing up in Oklahoma where it's incredibly hot during the day and cools down two degrees at night.

Going tide pooling where there are dozens of species of snail that

A subtropical jungle with stunningly beautiful coral reefs where all the wildlife is lethal.

Going tide pooling where dozens of species of cone snails are extremely interested in your death.

A fish that looks like a rock in a stream that will kill you if you step on it.

Encountering a dozen lethally venomous animals every time you go to the beach.

Living in the Bay Area where we have programmers.

Resenting programmers but getting along with them really well.

Getting a tech job and having to practice your self-compassion.

Repping the city in the world with the biggest economic disparity.

The power company shutting your power off because they can't be bothered to keep the lines clear of trees.

Discerning the different kinds of plants that are burning in a brushfire by smell.

Being performatively off-put by brushfire smoke that smells different from brushfire smoke in your hometown.

Cheese scarcity in Okinawa.

Whether or not you're allowed to bring suitcases full of cheese into Japan.

If Gandalf really liked cheese.

The Scottish guy who sells cheese in Okinawa for $100 per kilogram.

Long grain rice connoisseurs in Japan importing basmati from California.

Being unable to export farming and food preparation processes because your are getting assistance from local microbiomes.

Japanese laws restricting rice imports so they don't corrupt the local rice microbes, but they don't give a shit about the cheese.

RNA sequencing the brine from a batch of pickles that turned out really well.

Celebrating the 69,000th generation of your yeast culture by posting "nice" on Twitter.

Toddlers learning a lesson far too well.

Telling each other stories from the spreadsheet of all the ways machine learning has failed.

Breaking land speed records by falling over really fast.

Reassembling Barack Obama's audiobook into a story about a demigod with the head of a dog who recreates the world after the apocalypse.

Reality now being more ridiculous than your satire from four years ago.

Spending a lot of time trying to identify birds.

The basis for discussion of whether something is something or isn't something else.

Convincing the people with the money that your field of study will eventually help somebody some day.

The growing sense in the world that maybe not all progress is good and maybe we should skip out on some knowledge.

The number of lines of code it takes to destroy society.

Doing science because there is a trust that some day someone will want to know your results.

Wanting a place to have a conversation about anything other than Elon Musk's kids name.

Starting a podcast and never talking about anything depressing.

Trying to transplant your neighbor's leafcutter ants into your own yard because you are a field biologist who can't go outside.

Being waylaid by ant stings because you are allergic to wasps.

Ants biting you with their mandibles, but only to hang on so they can sting you like wasps because they're technically in the wasp family.

Ants being around long after humans are gone.

Filling an ant colony with lead because humans will get more value out of a model of an ant colony than the ants get out of being alive.

Filling an ant colony with jello and having a tasty dessert.

Ending up in an ant lab and doing ant things.

Studying the effects of climate change on Pokemon.

The exchange rate between Pokecoins and Bitcoins.

Coordinating Pokemon Go raids on Nextdoor.

Asking Pokemon Go players if they're registered to vote and they answer that they're doing a raid when that doesn't tell you whether or not they're registered to vote at all.

Trying to avoid the Audubon society losers at the ornithology conference.

Birds permitting you to identify them even though they could easily fly away.

Support Topic Lords

...more

View all episodes

By Jim Stormdancer

4.8

1212 ratings