Cover me with chocolate

A lot of music fans despise covers. They can ruin a good song, but so can the artist, really. The video above is an example of a great cover, in my opinion. A weird re-imagining of a terrible, but unforgettably catchy tune. It's the whole reason I love covers. No matter what you think of a song, a lot of them will get stuck in your head and never really leave. I remember a ton of cheesy 80's hits, because the music shows always started after the cartoons. But everybody remembers a lot of terrible stuff. Essentially that's all you really want out of music in everyday life, something recognisable. And the great thing about the cover is that it also gives you something new, not always good, but often.





In case you have no idea what this is covering:

Singular fun

This singularity idea is gaining ground, but it's a bit optimistic. Everybody who's used technology recently, knows that better technology is no guarantee for better information. Even a computer better than the human brain will face that problem. How to deal with all the nonsense. It's a bit like when they cloned that sheep. It became horribly mundane and absurd quite quickly. What if we make an artificial intelligence and it's crazy or kind of stupid, or just a huge jerk. I don't mean in the sci-fi standby kind of way of a supercomputer running amok, but more in this kind of way:



Here's a terrible vision of future knowledge ghetto's for AI workers, courtesy of economics, science of depressing visions of the future.

If you have fans, they probably want you to have a gay love affair

Yes, there are an enormous amount of stories about Kirk and Spock's gay relationship, and there have been for years. Everything that gets sufficiently popular gets it's own cabinet of horrors where horrible writers try to mangle maxims and end up indulging whatever perverse desire they have. It's only because of the internet that everyone can see it. Also surprising is how much of it isn't terrible, a handful for each franchise, but still. That's pretty amazing if you consider that the only requisite is a medium command of a language and a familiarity with the franchise. There is one profoundly weird thing in all this, aside from the wildly varying levels of quality, most fanfiction writers are women. The theories range from higher female interest in motivations, doubts, etc. to men's more visual thought processes, leading to fanvideos, etc. But I think it's because women are just much more perverse, and that's what it takes to make it.

Oprah finds it difficult to relate, for once

This is one of the weirdest things I've seen in a long time. I never thought of Oprah Winfrey as a moralist except in a ridiculously twee way. But who could imagine she'd be this hard pressed not to condemn a porn star? I certainly expected better. It's just so odd to say her genuinely struggling with disapproval. Remember, this is a woman who managed to make Tom Cruise look human for five minutes and allows celebrities a platform for all their half thought out causes, whether it's estrogen injections or the ludicrous idea that vaccinations are responsible for the rise in autism. The rest of this show was no less hilarious. It really looks like Oprah got talked into this by someone, doesn't it?

The tangled web of production

I hadn't heard about the spider-man musical, but it seems like a fantastically stupid idea. With music by U2, no less. It was off, then on again apparently. It's also going to cost 52 million dollars. Which means it's going to have to be a huge success. If it can be done, though, the woman behind the Lion King is probably the one to do it. But U2? They haven't done anything interesting since the 90's. Actually, that might be a qualification. Musicals aren't exactly none for the quality of the music anymore. Ultimately, it should be about storytelling, it's not hip-hopera after all. Still, I just don't see it.

i'm not angry, I'm disappointed 7: the future is dead

This is the kind of presentation designed to scare the bejesus out of someone with limited analytical capabilities, i.e. why is everything going so fast? Because you haven't been paying attention, dummy. Also, most of these numbers are kind of suspect. I mean, the computational ability of the human brain is not something you can compare to a computer that easily (I thought they already did this in the 80's), 25% of high IQ indians does not mean that these people are going to take your job tomorrow, etc. The future is scarier than ever, but it will be in cute pictographs with a fatboy slim soundtrack. So, is everything going to change in the blink of an eye? Probably not. This is all information technology and it's consequences, after all, and human beings are the only part of the system that all of these things are for. The only real game changer is thinking in terms of AI, that might really give us a whole new world.

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End Theme week here: So, what have we learned? Governments are weaker in intent, but economically decisive and information-rich. Corporations are inordinately powerful and beholden to no ideals beyond profit, individuals are free, but groups are targets. The right wing is resurgent, the liberal left is the new center, which cannot hold. Academia is distracted and bickering. Technology is reshaping everything, but in a much more shallow way than everyone thought. Our culture is surrounded by quotes most of the time, except when it's trying, mostly failing to make a point. Everyone under 30 is going to have to participate in changing a global economy based on maximising profits at all costs into something sustainable for longer, solve the energy crisis, the fresh water crisis, rising populations, all while maintaining social justice, personal freedoms and rights, hindered by religious and social conflicts, an unstable and highly volatile international political situation, ineffective, but paranoid and cynical governments and obscenely powerful corporations. The only hope is an extreme appeal to intelligence, reason and personal responsibility. We'll probably make it, but at what cost?