Humor Random Comments Thread

[kamaz]

but if the listeners didn't listen to songs so "dumb", we wouldn't have labels promoting songs even "dumber".

Not really, because if the same company (e.g. TimeWarner) ultimately owns both a record label (e.g. Warner Music) and a media networks (Turner), then the latter ultimately becomes the advertising arm of the former, and will shove whatever the label produces down the viewer's throats to drive sales. The label, on the other hand, is motivated to drive its own costs down by producing more and more crap because it will sell anyway.

I've had a small enlightenment when someone has pointed out to me (many years ago, in the era of CDs) that there is absolutely no reason while a Britney Spears CD should be more expensive than a classical music CD, given that the latter requires significantly more people to record and produce. Heck, [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightwish"]a niche metal band[/ame] can even afford to hire [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Philharmonic_Orchestra"]a world class symphonic orchestra[/ame] to record parts of an album with a total production cost of mere EUR 250K. I doubt that recording Britney's opus magnum, ...Baby one more time costed more than that, but it was being shoved down everyone's ears for the better part of 1999/2000 as if it was something which costed millions to produce and had to be sold at all costs...

Ultimately, when the same party controls both the production and the media, then the free market no longer works, because you can use the media to create demand for your product.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Looks extremely shopped... :shifty:

:hmm: Yes. A movie about landing on Mars? Must be a HOAX.

Where did the huge flying saucer go that used to be above that skyline in the first picture?

Still there. Time has gone on since then and they now use cloaking devices. You only see them as huge, hollow, static clouds when warm moist air blows over their saucer's cold skin. I've seen them!

 

[Andy44]

Go onto youtube and look up "Britney Spears no autotune" to see just how awful the pop music industry really is these days and what kind of garbage they are foisting upon the younger listeners who don't know the difference and aren't being presented with real talent.

---------- Post added at 10:06 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:55 AM ----------

Went hiking in Griffith Park earlier. Los Angeles has an awesome skyline.

I love Griffith Observatory. When I travel to LA on business I always try to find time to visit it. I shot these photos on a Diana toy film camera a few years ago and printed them in my dark room. I wanted to capture the 1930s Art Deco retro-future look of the place.

This is a sculpture to the great astronomers, I believe the ones shown in this view are Newton and Kepler.

This is one of the two telescope domes.

This is one of the telescopes, basically a museum piece these days. The other one is still doing astronomy and is closed to the public.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Furthermore, aliens shouldn't sing...

 

[Quick_Nick]

I found California's missing water

 

[Quick_Nick]

The game theory legend John Nash has died alongside his wife.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32865248

 

[Urwumpe]

The game theory legend John Nash has died alongside his wife.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32865248

Tragic... and that just days after receiving the Abel prize in Oslo.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

I found California's missing water
View attachment 13730

Yup. SOMEONE sold it to pay for their precious high-speed rail line... :dry:

 

[Urwumpe]

Happy Towel Day Everyone!

 

[jedidia]

Towel day? I thought it was pentecost...

 

[Andy44]

Towel day? I thought it was pentecost...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towel_Day

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

 

[MattBaker]

I thought it was pentecost...

If you're outside Israel it's still penteco...oh, that pentecost, not Shavuot.:lol:

 

[Quick_Nick]

Towel Day, Geek Pride Day, Memorial Day, (day after) Pentecost, and many other things including the anniversary of Kennedy's moon goal.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU1oB8sGyYM&"]We Remember - YouTube[/ame]

 

[jedidia]

juxtapose that song with footage of modern drone warfare instead and it suddenly becomes wrong on each and every level... :shifty:

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations, that we have forgotten, as a people, the cost of a free and undivided Republic. ~John A. Logan

 

[Pipcard]

How many people here think my "new" username is pronounced "my-koo singularity" instead of "mee-koo singularity" like it's supposed to be?

Because I've already been on several Twitch channels where the streamer would see my name and pronounce it like the former instead of the latter. And I'd have to politely correct them in the chat.

 

[kamaz]

Go onto youtube and look up "Britney Spears no autotune" to see just how awful the pop music industry really is these days and what kind of garbage they are foisting upon the younger listeners who don't know the difference and aren't being presented with real talent.

Oh man. That was... brutal. And I thought that Madonna back in 1985 was bad:

The quality has really taken a nose dive.

I near some ear bleach:

 

[Andy44]

I've had a small enlightenment when someone has pointed out to me (many years ago, in the era of CDs) that there is absolutely no reason while a Britney Spears CD should be more expensive than a classical music CD, given that the latter requires significantly more people to record and produce.

Actually, demand is what drives price, not how many musicians and engineers you had to pay. And, sad as it is, Spears sells a lot more CDs than any classical music group, even as she's faded from where she was a few years ago.

 

[kamaz]

Actually, demand is what drives price, not how many musicians and engineers you had to pay. And, sad as it is, Spears sells a lot more CDs than any classical music group, even as she's faded from where she was a few years ago.

Classical music is quite specific, because, let's face it, there is no real difference between a performance of the same piece by Wiener Philharmoniker and Simphonia Varsovia. Since the classical catalog is closed, sales tend to split across more orchestras.

That said, I took liberty of loading Britney's sales numbers into Excel, and it looks like she is decaying exponentially: