Serdar Yegulalp's Blog, page 137
June 24, 2016
Signal Vs. Noise Dept.
It wasn't my idea, honest. I've spent several days of the last week traveling for work, and when I wasn't actually working, or sitting in an airplane seat (doing work there as well), I was sleeping (and still on East Coast time, no less). But it's not like I don't have anything to say about all that's been going on — it's just that most of what I could say is redundant, and that I find it's best to listen rather than talk when times get turbulent.
June 17, 2016
Goin' West Dept.
Long couple of weeks, lots going on. Mostly trying to make progress onAlways Outnumbered, Never Outgunned,and ran into several examples of what I call "street-level problems" with a manuscript.
June 13, 2016
Power Inc. Vol. 1 + Vol. 2 (Tackhead)
Tackhead's career has been so diverse and difficult to document properly that I'm not surprised one has to hunt and peck so much. That doesn't make it any the harder to do, though. There's the albums, but they're scattered across a number of different labels, sometimes sporting varying credits — "Gary Clail's Tackhead Sound System" or individual members like Keith Leblanc — rather than Tackhead proper. There's the early 12" singles, but they too are scarce, and also sometimes sport an entirel...
June 8, 2016
Background Task Dept.
Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"
Without soundingtooself-con...
May 30, 2016
Aoi no Ue (J��ji Yuasa)
I'm drawn to specific record labels the way some people are drawn to specific cuisines or specific neighborhoods. If you say the words "Stax" or "Motown", you can communicate with those single words a whole flavor of music. Japan's long been a hotbed of indie labels catering to amazingly specific and narrow tastes — e.g., Hideo Ike'ezumi's P.S.F. label, immortal forever for having brought us the likes of Keiji Haino and Fushitsusha.
Now I'm delving — slowly — into the treasure trove that is E...
May 24, 2016
Push My Envelope Dept.
Which Rock Star Will Historians of the Future Remember? - The New York Times
... the definition of transgressive is shifting. Its no longer appropriate to dismiss disco as superficial. More and more, we recognize how disco latently pushed gay, urban culture into white suburbia, which is a more meaningful transgression than going on a British TV talk show and swearing at the host.
My take is that "transgressive" is always relative to what you're pushing against, and even then it's a moving t...
May 20, 2016
Outside The Cocoon Dept.
In re a comment about the new Clooney/Roberts/Foster flickMoney Monster:
Three Sentences About the Cocoon | Mother Jones
Back in the day, plenty of screenwriters and film directors came from working-class backgrounds. Today they all have degrees from the USC film school and live in Silver Lake. They get their news from Variety and the LA Times, not drive-time radio and People. In this cocoon, the working class is something to make money from via transparently condescending TV shows, not real...
May 19, 2016
Bigger Fish To Fry Dept.
It's generally a bad idea to tell someone their choice of struggle is a waste of time, and that they should do something More Important. By way of Orac:
... there will always be issues more important or more impactful than what any of us does, with rare exceptions. Pointing to them and using them to denigrate someones efforts as pointless, which, make no mistake,...
May 18, 2016
Kill 'Em All And Let George Sort 'Em Out Dept.
Game of Thrones author says not killing off major characters is 'cheating' | Polygon
"We've all read this story a million times when a bunch of heroes set out on adventure and it's the hero and his best friend and his girlfriend and they go through amazing hair-raising adventures and none of them die," Martin told the magazine. "The only ones who die are extras."
My objection here is to the way GRRM doesn't seem to think framing or selection matters in storytelling, or that it's nave, or so...
May 10, 2016
You Are Not Your F***ing Khakis Dept.
Meditation for Success? | Hardcore Zen
Selling meditation as a key to success destroys meditation. If your meditation is directed at achieving goals, youre only strengthening that part of you which is forever unsatisfied, forever seeking outside approval, forever chasing after money and power. Youve discovered an even more effective way to ensure that youll never be happy, never be balanced, never have any kind of peace.
Brad is specifically chafed about the way meditation is now being sold...
