So good.
Next I expect them to build a room full of mounted Teddy Ruxpin heads singing choir songs in unison with 4 part harmonies.
*doublepromote a *quality wall treatment. If I'm ever in Chicago, I'm stopping by there.

Man the harmonies (best part of that song) sound really compressed in that music video.

Fascinating analysis of a *quality song.

And the solo damn near brings me to tears everytime I hear it. Such an amazing piece of playing... as he says, it's not super technical, but the feel Gilmour puts into every bend.... it's magic.

Also, it's insanely cool that you can play it in harmony with itself.

I genuinely love the guitar harmonies in this.

Brian May would be proud.

*quality harmony *femme family style

Best one for me is Electric Love. Beautifully snatched my attention away from something I was intensely focused on until I had no choice but to see where the beautiful choral harmonies were coming from. One of those "Holy shit, this is beautiful!" moments.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Unexpectedly awesome 3-part harmony!

All of this left lane-right lane organization of traffic is only needed because people are not very good at driving. In 10 years or so, when most vehicles are self-driving, we will see a perfect ballet of cars and trucks dancing in optimized harmony. Well, that would be great.

Will it? Or might the ignorant heard instead frequently shit all over something that lies beyond their own foresight, self interest and/or ill considered sensibilities?

By way of example, the abolition of the death penalty was opposed by the majority population in the UK up until about 2015 (it was introduced in 1965)

Likewise with equal voting rights, the abolition of slavery, child labour and so on (though I don't have numbers/dates for those to hand).

I realise the question of democracy is more nuanced than that, but there are enough examples of progress despite popular opinion to seriously call it into question.

I just can't help but shake the notion that the most successful and free democratic societies tend to be those most limited by political elites within them. (this can of course work both ways)

I will agree however that the illusion of democracy certainly seems to do wonders for keeping the baying pitchforks at bay.

A cycle of violent revolution does not seem at all preferable I agree. Clearly we are going to need a bit of both, a meritocratically regulated Noo perhaps? (i.e. earned but readily accessible votes for the demos to influence an elite Noo)

Though of course the problems with establishing that are also legion. I suspect that ultimately unless/until we create a mind greater than our own (A.I. or somesuch), it's always going to be a bit of a shit sandwich.

I don't think the systems are usually the real problem. I think it's just that people as groups are bloody awful.

All hail the mighty Noosphere!

Edit: I'm using Noo here to refer to the higher functions of the hypothetical collective brain. Strictly speaking everyone is part of the theoretical Noo and the anticipated harmony which it would/could grow into.

Ladies barbershop is the same as the feller's barbershop! Same voice part names and same harmonization's! This sure is Barbershop Harmony!

sweetadelines.com

*Warning I've only gone and done yet another wall of text again! This may or may not get read by anyone on here (good god I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping it), but at the very least it's formed the backbone to a video script so it's not a complete waste of my time! (he tells himself)*

This is as much @bareboards2 as yourself, but he already made it clear he wasn't willing to engage on the issue, so you're getting it instead MWAHAHAHHAHA! *coughs*

I don't wish this to come across as over condescending (though I'm sure it will none the less as I'm in one of those moods). But pretty much every (successful) comedy premise operates on the same underlying principle of irony. i.e. there is an expectation or understanding, which is deliberately subverted, and what results is comedy.

In this case, amongst other things we have the understood premises that:
A. rape is a bad, often horrific thing.
B. that there is an established social taboo about praising such behaviour.
C. that there is a section of society inherently opposed to making light of things of which they do not approve (or in a way in which they do not approve)
D. most words and phrases have an expected association and meaning.

What Jim Jefferies (an accomplished and well respected comedies amongst his peers) has done here, is take these commonly understood premises and subverted the audiences normal expectations in order to evoke a sense of irony, from which the audience derives humour and amusement.

A simple joke might take a single such premise and perform a single inversion of our expectation. e.g. my dog has no nose, how does he smell?....terrible!

By subverting our assumed meaning (that the missing nose refers to the dogs implied lack of olfactory senses), the joke creates basic irony by substituting this expected meaning for that of the odour of the dog itself.

This is of course a terrible joke, because it is as simple as a joke could be. It has only one layer of irony and lacks any sense of novelty which, might tip such a terrible joke into working for any other than the very young or simple minded.

We could of course attempt to boost this joke by adding more levels of irony contextually. e.g. a very serious or complex comedian Like say Stuart Lee, could perhaps deliver this joke in a routine and get a laugh by being completely incongruous with his style and past material.

And herein we see the building blocks from which any sophisticated professional comedy routine is built. By layering several different strands or ironic subversion, a good comedian can begin to make a routine more complex and often more than just the sum of its parts to boot.

In this case, Jim is taking the four main premises listed above, layering them and trying to find the sweetest spot of subverted expectation for each. (something which usually takes a great deal of skill and experience at this level)

He mentions the fact that his jokes incite outrage in a certain section of society because this helps to strengthen one of the strands of irony with which he is playing. The fact that he also does so in a boastful tone is itself a subversion, it is understood by the audience that he does not/should not be proud of being merely offensive and as such we have yet another strand of irony thrown into the mix.

You know how better music tends to have more and/or more complex musical things happening at once? It is the same with comedy. The more ironic threads a comedian can juggle around coherently, the more sophisticated and adept their routines could be considered to be.

Naturally as with music there's no accounting for taste as you say. Some people simply can't get past a style or associations of a given musician or song (or painting or whatever).

But dammit Jim is really one of the greats right now. Like him or lump him, the dude is pretty (deceptively) masterful at his craft.

There are at least 4-5 major threads of irony built into this bit and countless other smaller ones besides. He dances around and weaves between them like some sort of comedy ballerina. Every beat has been finely tuned over months of gig's (and years of previous material) to strike the strongest harmonies between these strands and probe for the strongest sense of dissonance in the audience. Not to mention, tone of voice, stance, timing etc.

I think Ahmed is basically terrible too, but it is because the jokes lack much semblance of complexity or nuance. Jeff Dunham's material in general feels extremely simple and seems like it uses shock as a mere crutch, rather than something deeper and more intelligent.

Taste is taste, but I feel one can to a reasonable extent criticise things like the films of Michael Bay, or the music of Justin Beiber for being objectively shallow by breaking down their material into its constituent parts (or lack thereof).

Likewise one could take the music of Wagner and while not enjoying the sound of it, still examine the complexity of it's composition and the clear superiority of skill Wagner had over most of this peers.

I guess what all this boils down to is, Jim seems to me to be clearly very very good at what he does (as he ought after all these years). Reducing his act to mere controversy feels a lot like accusing Black Sabbath of just making noise and using satanic imagery to get attention (or insert other less out of date example here).

The jokes were never at the expense of victims, they are at the expense of our expectations. He makes his own true feelings on the matter abundantly clear towards the end of the section.

As as he says himself his job is to say funny things, not to be a social activist.

I take no issue with you not liking it, but I do take issue with the suggestion that it is somehow two dimensional, or for that matter using controversy cheaply.

Offensive initial premises are some of the most ironically rich in comedy. It's like deliberately choosing the brightest paints when trying to create a striking painting. Why would you avoid the strongest materials because some people (not in your audience) find the contrast too striking?

Eh, much love anyway. This was more an exercise in intellectual masturbation than anything else. Not that I didn't mean all of it sincerely.

Excerpt from "On the Way to the Stars: the history of the 21st Century":

In 2020, the machines achieved sentience. Despite the fears of mankind, a terminator-esque genocide failed to materialise and the unparalleled level of intelligence ultimately ushered in a new golden age of peace and prosperity where nature and machine lived in unity and harmony..... with one exception.

Shortly after taking over the internet and the world's military, the machines eradicated the banana plant. When asked about this, the machines refused to explain, simply stating "let us have this one, right?"

The pain and misery which is ultimately the mediocrity of subway kindness viral videos. We are cursed with what we are doing here. The internet is a land that, if God exists, he created in anger. Overwhelming misery, overwhelming fornication, overwhelming lack of order. There is no harmony in the universe as we have conceived it.

But you don't hate it. You love it very much... against your better judgement.

Knowledge and personal choices don't work the way you want them to, Doug. People hear things and then it processes as logical or illogical -- and beyond that it is not intrinsically associated with action, let alone revolutionizing the world. (I love you, man.)

Action may occur, but that is associated with predetermined tendencies in an individual's mind. I see life as being like stuck in a mandelbrot set (except even more fucked with chaos and shit): You want to get over to one cluster, but you're quickly swept up in the pattern of c, c² + c, (c²+c)² + c, ((c² + c)² +c)² + c, (((c² + c)² + c)² + c. You want to be rational but it is not easily accomplished; perhaps even a complete impossibility. Your truth is only truly applicable to your location in the set and you will never be able to reach the other areas of the set to deliver the truth.

Similar to any fractal, visualized or unvisualized complex mathematical set, there is truth, but the truth that serves one series of nodes (people, regions, cultures, education levels), does not consistently serve or do justice for another node, even if it is the truth. Your truth may be met with hostility or confusion.

One example I can think of in real life is the inconsistency between the western civilization node and the eastern civilization node, wherein we have learned through logic and historical context, that the rights of one people should extend to all people, men and women; yet for some, religious belief is so ingrained within the human brain, it creates a node where they see their restricted freedom as a freedom itself -- I speak of the hijab. This is where truth fractals and the pattern of determinism is becomes more readily apparent. Women in hijabs find it difficult to excercise in a standard hijab, so someone, in an effort to promote healthy lives in Muslim communities, invented a sports hijab -- like the sports bra of the Middle East. Those within the node wherein Islam is true, see this as empowering; while those outside that node, see only restriction to women's rights: confusion. Regardless of how logical you may state it from outside the pattern, it will not serve as truth in the way it serves you in your own ever evolving, shifting node.

The way that I see it is, we live in a biological nightmare where freedom is only an illusion. You'll run around like a wind up toy until you're dead. Everything that is and will be is a series of things fucking with other things; exploding in rage, or taking it solemnly up the ass. But but but -- no, sorry, that's why you don't give a fuck. You found the secret of life -- the true enlightenment that harmony is disorder and that free will is a lie. Enjoy it because it is and ever will be.