AMA: Radio Call-in Hour

[radio414 903]

7 hours ago, Yui said:

You can make one bot on Discord. What does it do?

I’d want a bot with its own little room in each server that it’s in that when you post in there, it responds using some sort of machine learning that grows more and more human over time. There’d need be some sort of human oversight, obviously, because the internet is a terrible place (remember when Microsoft introduced a twitter bot and she became a neo-nazi in, like, a day?), but yeah. Because we’re in imagination-land, though, and because modern computing is improving all the time, why not ask for a little more?

I’m not asking for, like, self-awareness or anything like that. But I do want to imagine that the bot eventually becomes really good at carrying conversations in a sort of Chinese room-styled way to perceived intelligence. Because once that happens, you could put two of the bots together in a single room, set them to respond every minute (as an example, any increment of time will do) to the most recent message, and watch them play off of each other until someone resets the seed with a new comment.

I think that would be fun, to come in on a long string of mostly congruent sentences with the occasional nonsense in there. In a final burst of imaginative spirit, though, I imagine these idealized bots would also start playing off each other in a way undetectable to their human observers. Maybe the whitespace varies between words and the machines pick up on that. Maybe it’s some indeterminable code. But because it’s only known to these two bots, when the server disappears, so too will their secret messages to each other.

(inspiration taken from The Jacquard Game by Catherynne M. Valente as part of her Invisible Games series. The website for it is no longer up but you can read it all here)

Edited November 8, 2019 by radio414

[radio414 903]

fine i'll join the top x things thing super late whatever

let's go with four. ask me my top four (4) things

or anything else, really. this is an ama thread, after all

[yui 574]

What's your favorite language that you can't speak?

[radio414 903]

3 minutes ago, Yui said:

What's your favorite language that you can't speak?

Well, I guess I said I'd do top four, so here's four.

4) Klingon. I went through a conlang phase as a teen that didn't lead to much, but I did get to go to a talk by the guy who created Klingon so that was pretty cool. Not much of a trek fan otherwise, that's why it's number four.

3) German. Not for any particular reason, mind, but I like the words from it that English has borrowed so learning it might lead me to know more of them.

2) Do programming languages count? I'm going to say they count. I don't have a specific one I'd like to learn, but I'd like to have more than just some perfunctory MatLab knowledge.

1) Cantonese. I took some Mandarin classes as a kid (I've forgotten most of it) but a good portion of my dad's family speaks the language so I think it'd be nice to have. Also dim sum restaurants.

[Sethera 290]

What topic could you spend hours talking about and why?

Also top four favorite foods.

And oh, oh, top four favorite cookies.

Edited February 4, 2020 by Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd

[radio414 903]

16 minutes ago, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd said:

What topic could you spend hours talking about and why?

For a while, it was Magic: the Gathering lore. Well, it was a lot of things Magic related but the lore was the where a friend of mine said, "You know, if we ever wanted to distract you from something, we could just say, 'So how 'bout that Magic story?' and you'd be off." This isn't true anymore for a couple reasons, mostly that I stopped paying attention to the story just after War of the Spark (the last thing I remember the internet arguing about was why Chandra and Nissa were no longer together (or why Chandra was basically not  bi/pan anymore (She likes big strong men like Gideon now! (oh wow is this a paragraph chain)))) but also that, well, I've kind of weaned myself off of Magic for now. Not that I don't still enjoy playing it when I do, mind, just that I play less so I don't talk about it as much.

I guess now it's movies? Like, I'm distinctly aware that I'm in danger of becoming "that" (oooh scarequotes) sort of filmgoer, the kind that treats the A24 production logo as a seal of quality and scoffs at the mainstream among other stereotypes, but I do really enjoy the filmgoing experience and I have a couple pretty good theaters near me that I like to support. I like to think of movies as a kind of equalizer; You don't see (or at least I haven't seen) people say "Oh, I don't watch movies" in the same way that someone might say, "Oh, I don't play video games" or even "Oh, I don't really read much" and everyone has some sort of favorite. I try to play my side of those conversations like a recommendation list. "You like documentaries, huh? You should check out The Proposal (2019)!", for example, in an effort to get whoever I'm talking with to at least kind of guide the conversation before I splooge all over them.

1 hour ago, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd said:

Also top four favorite foods.

4) PB&J Sandwich on Wheat. My childhood lunch growing up, and I have a lot of nostalgia for it.

3) Fried Rice. This was my grandfather's "perfect" dish, as in, he'd spent so long refining his recipe that all we could do was struggle to replicate it. I don't think there was anything special or out of the ordinary about it, just the exact ratios of rice, egg, onions, etcetera.

2) Shrimp & Grits. I don't cook super often just for myself, but when I do, this is one of my go-tos. Super good, except for the one time I mixed up my box of grits with a box of oats. Not a mistake I'll repeat anytime soon, let me tell you.

1) Sushi. Any kind, really. I know there's a difference between the professionally hand-crafted kind and the store-bought varieties, and it's not like I can't tell the difference, but really, as long as the fish doesn't make me sick, it's all valid.

[Thar 502]

If you could throw your hat at any Mario enemy to possess them, which one would you be?

[radio414 903]

7 hours ago, Thar said:

If you could throw your hat at any Mario enemy to possess them, which one would you be?

I haven't actually played Odyssey, so I don't have, like, an exact list of all the enemies or anything, but I do remember the marketing including a literal, actual dinosaur and a lot of the Mario canon pales to a literal, actual dinosaur in my mind so I guess that's your answer. Maybe a Magikoopa because magic, but still...

Dinosaur.

[Sethera 290]

Since you're radio, and all about music, I was curious. What's the most annoying noise for you? And on that line, the most annoying song?

And while we're still on the same line, what was the most boring song for you to listen through? Did you listen through it the whole way, and if so, why?

To extend the line a bit, what was the longest song you've listened to? It may or may not also be the most boring song you've listened to.

[radio414 903]

Oh wow a threefer. Or, I guess, if you count all the follow-ups, that's, like, a six-or-seven-fer. I guess let's go one line at a time.

10 hours ago, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd said:

Since you're radio, and all about music, I was curious. What's the most annoying noise for you? And on that line, the most annoying song?

The most annoying noise to me is, well, "nails on a chalkboard" is the classic simile, but what I really hate is the sound of an eraser on a chalkboard. It gives me goosebumps, and not the nice ASMR kind (also I don't really get ASMR so). This is compounded by the fact that, not only is this sound more common than nails, but there's also a texture to the sound that I can't really describe over text. It's the worst.

The preamble to the song question, though, is where I listen to new music, and it mostly comes from twitch.tv/Kathleen_LRR, who runs an every Saturday pirate-radio music stream. She puts together a playlist of some new music she's gathered from, say Pitchfork or The Quietus and then some viewers suggest things and it amounts to twenty-or-so new songs a week that I listen to. There aren't any vods, so you're just going to have to tune in 21:30 Pacific (again, on Saturdays -- I'm actually tuning in right now as I type this) for that if you're interested, but the point is, with so many new songs, I've developed a pretty broad taste. Even things that would be outside the streamer's taste, I'm generally like, "Yeah, that wasn't bad" at worst. Even things that are artistically dissonant like the alarm clock at the beginning of Pere Ubu's Non-Alignment Pact or the flatline at the end of Mr. Bungle's Pink Cigarrette are things I've gotten used to over just, like, one or two listens. I guess poorly produced wobble-bass in the middle of a dubstep drop could make my ears bleed, but I don't have, like, a specific example of that. And even that is something I've gotten used to on occasion.

The "memetically" annoying songs, too, are things I don't see a mood towards. Never Gonna Give You Up (yes that is a link, yes it goes where you think it goes) is more a banger than people who just think of it as a meme realize, for example, but more broadly, there's a sort of melodramatic charm to most of the songs that become memes. Something like Let It Go might be an outlier in this instance given how engineered it was to be the power ballad and smash hit of Frozen, but I somehow avoided the backlash to that specific song so it still holds a place in my heart.

There are other examples there, but that's derailing the question again. Anyway, once we've dismissed the "songs with weird noises in them" and "songs that get/got overplayed," I guess all we're left with are the repetitive songs. Baby Shark, for example. But I've gotten more enjoyment out of Baby Shark than I have annoyance, even if some of that is the schadenfreude of other people listening, so I don't think that counts either.

As an anechdote to sort of round out that particular question, a little bit after I heard John Mullaney's Salt and Pepper Diner comedy routine (if you're not willing to listen the setup is that he set a jukebox to play Tom Jones' What's New Pussycat twenty times in a diner jukebox), I decided to go through with listening to the whole playlist Mullaney describes. And the result? I mean, I didn't go insane or anything. In fact, I really just tuned it out after the first few repeats. And that's a pretty bombastic song to tune out.

I guess I just have musical Stockholm Syndrome.

10 hours ago, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd said:

And while we're still on the same line, what was the most boring song for you to listen through? Did you listen through it the whole way, and if so, why?

Speaking of inflicting quote-unquote bad music on others, you're talking to someone who performed John Cage's 4'33" at two different talent shows.

The thing about "boring songs," though, is that I really just don't remember them. I could tell you about this track on the Tokyo Flashback-Psychadelic Speed Freaks compilation album I listened too recently that I didn't like because it was a lot of chaotic noise and wailing, but that album has, like, twenty songs and averages five or six minutes a song so I'm not going to go digging back to find it. I could tell you how I tried to listen to noise music once and how that didn't do anything for me, but I'm not going to go digging for links there either.

Another anechdote I'll share, though, is this moment from Cow's music thread where I would submit these almost-but-not-quite ambient/electronic songs and Cow would be like, "that was a lot of intro and no other part of the song" which meant it just did its thing for six-ish minutes and then faded out. Which I like. It makes good music to do other things to (though in retrospect, reviewing music, no matter how casually, is not something you want to be "doing other things to"). So that's not really going to bore me either. I'll listen to Justice's Planisphere and Fuck Button's Surf Solar as much as I like and be happy about it.

If we're talking long songs, though, and to callback to John Cage, he does have Organ²/ASLSP, where ASLSP here means "As Slow As Possible". There's a project that wants to make it last 639 years, and if you're anything like me, you don't have that kind of time. It's kind of a joke answer, but it's the only thing close to an actual answer I've got.

EDIT: Oh, actually, now that I think about it some more, when I was nine-ish my parents took my sister and I to see a touring production of Cats. I haven't gone back and listened to any of the music (and have continued to avoid it since the movie came out because... well, because cats) but I remember being bored out of my skull for however long that musical is so pick a song from that I guess.

10 hours ago, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd said:

To extend the line a bit, what was the longest song you've listened to? It may or may not also be the most boring song you've listened to.

I haven't listened to Organ²/ASLSP all the way through, so I'll ignore that one.

I mentioned a couple long songs up above, but also whenever I dip my toe into classical (I like to pretend I'm cultured even though I'm definitely not), I find these really long songs, so probably one of those. Yes, I know those are composed of multiple movements, but, like, Planisphere is technically four songs in its EP, but nobody -- especially me -- cares about any of that. The Surprise Symphony is, like, twenty minutes long, though, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Longer compositions exist but I can't name any especially long ones off the top of my head (again, definitely not cultured).

The most recent long song I listened to in that vein (not longest, but maybe "longest-adjacent") is Tartini's Violin "Devil's Trill" Sonata in G minor. And there's also a thirty-minute version of Garcia Peoples' One Step Behind if classical isn't your speed. Plus those other two songs I mentioned above (though I know for a fact you've already listened to one of them). There's a whole variety of options out there if you're interested in looking for long things to listen to.

Edited March 1, 2020 by radio414
CATS

[Sethera 290]

I'm trying to figure out what you mean by the eraser on a chalkboard thing, because the only things I can think of are those rectangular erasers that are also sometimes used on dry-erase boards. From what I remember, they don't really make much of a sound, more of a soft, sliding kind of sound if anything, which I don't find annoying at all. Then again, I might be confusing it with the sound it makes on a dry-erase board. Also, that alarm clock noise sounded like torture to me, just saying. Everybody I know that's heard Baby Shark hates it, but I listened to it just now and didn't find it that annoying. Maybe if I heard it over and over again...

Also the Salt and Pepper Diner comedy routine was comedy gold.

I didn't think about it, but it makes sense you wouldn't remember too many of the boring songs. I do recognize one of the "boring songs," or at least I recognized the picture they used in the youtube video from when I was going through my video-watching binge. I'm like you, too, where I like listening to music that's good for doing other things to. And yeah, classical is full of really long songs, but what I like about them is that they're not usually "boring" songs. They're the kind of thing you can just listen to as is and let it soak in, and suddenly you realize a couple hours have passed.

But what I'm getting from this, is, just like a radio, you can tune into all different kinds of music. That's pretty cool.

[radio414 903]

Can't believe I missed one but fortunately it gives me a chance to respond to a non-question so there's that. The question first, though:

On 2/3/2020 at 11:22 PM, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd said:

And oh, oh, top four favorite cookies.

This was a difficult one because it was a Christmas tradition for my family (okay mostly my mom but everyone else helped (or "helped")) to make all kinds of cookies but I guess I can narrow it down to four:

4) Girl Scout Tagalongs. A semi-controversial pick, from what I understand. The internet, in it's effort to be as "unique" (scarequotes mine) as possible, has, from what I've seen, divided between Girl Scout Cookies being the best things ever or overpriced garbage funding a garbage institution, and of course it is only in extremes. But my aunt gets me a bunch every year so I have positive associations and the peanut butter and chocolate "Tagalong" buiscuts are the best ones they have (frozen Thin Mints are a close second) so I'm putting those here.

3) Chocolate Chip. The classic, but it's a classic for a reason, and despite the aforementioned tradition fading away as everyone got older, these are the ones that still get made every year. Not really much more to say about them, really.

2) Springerles. Speaking of tradition this is, like, actual recipe-passed-from-mother-to-daughter-type stuff. You said you bake a lot in your AMA, so I assume you know what these are, but in case you don't, they're these square (or ours were square) German biscuits that are firm and thick and have little designs stamped on them. The ones I remember had just a hint of sweetness which means I didn't always like them but now I really do. There's also a little bit of a "forbidden fruit" aspect to them for me because we were always welcome to have the other cookies we (mom) made but mom would only let us have a few of these.

1) Macarons. These count as cookies, right? I'm not French and Google says they're "confections" but I'm saying they count. Not something we made but something we were always excited to have, On the rare occasion I do get to have one, no matter the quality (I'm not a cookie or confection connoisseur), it's always difficult not to just stick the whole thing in my mouth.

21 hours ago, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd said:

I'm trying to figure out what you mean by the eraser on a chalkboard thing, because the only things I can think of are those rectangular erasers that are also sometimes used on dry-erase boards.

No, you got it.

I mean, I'm not saying I'm not crazy when it comes to this specific sound. And I don't make a big deal of it to anyone when it happens because I know it's a silly thing to be bothered by, but that doesn't mean it doesn't still happen.

The one way I can try to describe or explain it is that I've never liked the sensasion of erasing a chalkboard either (like, the physical action of doing so); the feeling of the eraser brush going over the board feels weird to me. So I may just have gotten those two feelings conflated in some way but that's why. It also doesn't help that I was taught in school on dry-erase boards so chalkboards were a bit more foreign to me growing up.

[LordCowCow 840]

Top 3 live action movies?

Top 3 animated movies?

[radio414 903]

9 minutes ago, LordCowCow said:

Top 3 live action movies?

Top 3 animated movies?

pretty sure i made this a top four sort of place

This is going to have a lot of recency bias because while I have started "seriously" watching movies (scare quotes mandatory), I only really started to do so around 2015 and I definitely have not caught up on the backlog of good (or at least acclaimed) movies that I've missed. I didn't see Gone With the Wind until late last year, for example.

This, of course, is not to mention how vague the categories are. With such a large set, whittling down to four each has proven difficult. Like, ask me again tomorrow and if I didn't look at these lists, I'd probably have a new set of movies, or at least a radically different order. I have made Top X lists in the past, but it's always been "of this year" or "that were nominated for something" or "directed by so-and-so"

And yes, I recognize the hypocrisy of inviting top four suggestions, talking about how much I like talking about movies, and then poo-pooing the first time someone wants to indulge me. Let's give it our best shot.

Live-Action Movies

4) Madeline's Madeline, directed by Josephine Decker

3) Upstream Color, dir. Shane Carruth

2) Good Time, dir. Josh and Ben Safdie

1) The Handmaiden, dir. Park Chan-Wook

Animated Movies

4) World of Tomorrow Episode 2: The Burden of Other People's Thoughts, dir. Don Hertzfeldt

3) Kiki's Delivery Service, dir. Hayao Miyazaki

2) Anomalisa, dir. Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson

1) Millennium Actress, dir. Satoshi Kon

---

I can and have written whole essays on these films but I'm on my phone so maybe later.

Also, another thing I do when making Top X lists is try to add a little variety to them, like "mainstream" vs not (again, scare quotes mandatory) or whatever because I'd rather these be read as recommendations that authoritative fact (something I touched on when talking about films answering Sethera's first question). There's a whole variety of things to choose here if you do decide to check any of these out and there's a bunch more where that came from if you need more things to watch.

[LordCowCow 840]

Top 4 Disney songs?

[radio414 903]

On 3/17/2020 at 10:33 PM, LordCowCow said:

Top 4 Disney songs?

I could be pedantic and choose something like, I dunno, Duel of the Fates or even one of a couple Queen songs given that they were in Disney movies but you alluded to the animated canon in a conversation earlier so that's what I'll be working with. Gonna leave the Fantasia songs out of this; I trust this isn't exactly a controversial stance. I'm also leaving out the Eurobeat versions, but I did want to mention them because did you know there are eurobeat versions? There are some bangers on there.

4) Everybody Wants To Be A Cat, from The Aristocats, but only when the Asian caricature cat's part is yeeted into the sun. So basically the first and last thirds of it. Which I guess is a testament to how catchy the rest of the song is that I'm putting it on this list. It was basically stuck in my head for, like, a decade after only seeing the movie once or twice, so that's why it's here. When I actually went back to watch the scene... yeah a lot of it isn't okay. Fortunately, there's at least one electro swing cover that doesn't have it so I listen to those more than the orignal these days.

3) Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, from Mary Poppins. A short one and more a novelty than anything else but there's a memetic ubiquity about it that gives it a certain charm. In my experience, as soon as I say the word people tend to get right into the rest of the chorus, which has to count for something, I think.

2) A Friend Like Me, from Aladdin. Admittedly, a lot of this is carried by the animation accompanying it (and I could probably do a whole essay on how the live-action version tries to replicate it (with success depending on the viewer, I suppose)), but it's still a banger that introduces Williams' energy to the movie and I can't imagine anything (or anyone) else doing the job.

1) Hellfire, from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I had to keep it down to just one villain song, and this is that one. Not much needs to be said about it, I think. So good I made a version of it for Yugioh Skies. It goes a long way to develop Claude Frollo's character, but it also serves to firmly establish him as someone who cannot be reasoned with or brought to redemption except by an act of God, something neither the movie nor its source material provides.

Edited August 10, 2020 by radio414

[LordCowCow 840]

Rank the 5 flavors of food

Sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami (savory)

[radio414 903]

1 hour ago, LordCowCow said:

Rank the 5 flavors of food

Sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami (savory)

what about the other tastes? But I'll humor the question all the same.

5) Bitter. It's not, like, an aversion or anything, but I've also never been one for coffee or other things classically described as bitter so it gets the bottom slot.

4) Sour. I did have an aversion to this as a kid, and refused to have lemon drops or warheads or poorly-sweetened lemonade for that reason. Though I'm all for it now.

3) Salty. I probably eat more salt than I should but nobody else has ever been like, "Hey radio you eat more salt than you should" so maybe not.

2) Savory. I don't have a one-liner about umami but I do like the word so it earns the number two slot.

1) Sweet, because I have a sweet tooth. Fairly self-explanatory, I think.

[LordCowCow 840]

If you were given 1000 dollars right now and told you had to go to Amazon and spend it within 2 hours what would you buy?

Can be general don't have to get specific and crunch the numbers

[radio414 903]

11 hours ago, LordCowCow said:

If you were given 1000 dollars right now and told you had to go to Amazon and spend it within 2 hours what would you buy?

Can be general don't have to get specific and crunch the numbers

First of all, I'm assuming the scenario involves times are not being what they are (that is, not just buying more foodstuffs and toilet paper). I'm also dropping the moral obligations to give to charity like these paladins did (I don't think I'd be moral enough to be a paladin anyway) and assuming that this is Jeff Bezos' own money so I don't feel like garbage giving money to Amazon. With all that being said...

I've been eyeing getting a Nintendo Switch for about as long as they've been out but, like, the cost and realism about my free time to use it has hindered that specific acquisition for equally as long. Remove both of those from the equation and Bob's your uncle I guess. It'd need some games too. I don't have any specific ones in mind but we'll say two random ones get added to the cart.

After that? I don't know. My current personal wishlist is mostly boardgames I'll probably never get to a table and rpg sourcebooks I'll probably never get to play. There are some (actual) books on there too, though -- Vladmir Nobokov's Pale Fire is the current standout there -- so those would be nice to have I guess.

Any remaining money would be spent on a vinyl record for my friend who likes vinyl records and a full-size snickers bar.

Edited March 31, 2020 by radio414

[LordCowCow 840]

Favorite candy?

[radio414 903]

2 minutes ago, LordCowCow said:

Favorite candy?

Fun unrelated fact about me: I used to live in New Zealand. I don't remember much of it because we moved back to the US when my sister was born but when my parents and I were there, my mom fell in love with these candy bars called Chocolate Fish. They're really simple, actually, just marshmallow covered in chocolate and shaped like a fish, but the one I did try once upon a time was pretty good as far as candy bars go. But they're impossible to find in America. And I know, not just because my mom told me, but because I wanted to get her some for Christmas and the only way I could was to find this Kiwi candy store's website and get them to ship internationally. They nearly got lost in customs!

Anyway, my favorite candy is Swedish Fish, which are entirely dissimilar except for the name, though the name is misleading for other reasons, first and foremost being that they're made in either Canada or Turkey these days.

[Comrade Duck 178]

Got any games that you used to hate on but now enjoy?

[radio414 903]

3 hours ago, Comrade Duck said:

Got any games that you used to hate on but now enjoy?

Feels like kind of a weird question 'cause I don't normally play games I had a bad experience with to push past their perceived inadequacies, but I guess I can see it in terms of, like, hard or even unfair games like I Wanna Be The Guy (there's a throwback for you) or even something more modern like Dark Souls. But as I think about it more, I do have one specific answer, and it is this:

Risk of Rain. The first one, I mean.

I picked it up back when I was in high school and the whole thing felt a little inscrutable at times? Like, some of the item descriptions make no sense, and that's just the start of it. I had no idea what the map layouts were nor did I have any impulse to find out, a lot of the enemies felt unfair, the timer always seemed to be moving too quickly. I just dropped the game after about a dozen hours and didn't look back.

I don't know why I started playing it again. I think I was just going through the old roguelikes I had in my Steam library just for kicks (FTL is fun too, but then again, I never hated that one) and booted it up. I still find some of the design choices kind of weird and its gameplay loop, once I found a rhythm of map progression and item acquisition that I liked, doesn't change beyond those first hours, I do like it much better now and will still do runs occasionally when I have a spare hour.

[yui 574]

What's a pun you've always wanted to drop on someone but could never find the window for it to happen naturally?