And now, Prohyas sings you a commercialtimes!
Some Resistance hacker apparently thought it would be cute to create a remote link to our on board computers and program the PA systems to play “Rebel Rebel” on infinite loop. Took us a while to notice, though. Hux has David Bowie playing on that thing, like, 90% of the time.
Hux knows what’s good. <3 <3
Can We Please Get Reunion Sign? (or Never Doubt My MST3k Fandom!)
MST3k is one of two shows (the other is Star Trek) that having knowledge of my fandom for the show helps explain everything about me. Among the obvious years of laughs, MST3k is responsible for three things:
1. My broad and shockingly-erudite sense of humor,
2. My steel-willed ability to suffer through ANY film,
3. My inexplicable attraction to short, red robots (the less said about that the better, probably).
Nobody said #AllLivesMatter until we said #BlackLivesMatter Nobody said #HeterosexualPrideDay until we had #GayPride Nobody wants #WhiteHistoryMonth until its #BlackHistoryMonth Nobody mentions #MensRights until we talk about #Feminism
This shows me that you don’t actually care about these things, you just want all the “minorities” to shut up so the status quo never changes.
One Problem with Reading Rap Lyrics without Listening to the Music
This is something I’ve been meaning to write for like six years now, but I never got around to it till now. Ages ago, some dude over at New York Magazine wrote an article reviewing Yale’s Anthology of Rap. Notably, he read it all without ever having heard any of the songs, and didn’t listen to any until after he’d read the whole book.
Probably everyone who’s listened to music, rap or otherwise, would realize beforehand that this guy reading rap lyrics without listening to the music would produce incongruous results (as it did): him liking certain songs after simply reading the lyrics and disregarding others, and then changing his mind entirely after actually hearing them. There are a couple obvious reasons why this is: The music adds something that can’t be described by words, the performance of the rapper is different from the reading voice in one’s head, etc. But even apart from that I knew this was going to be problematic for a reason that I haven’t seen mentioned: Our writing system is inadequate.
Even though a lot of poetry is meant to be read aloud, much of it that’s studied in the Western canon was written at a time when writing existed, so the writers were quite conscious of the fact that their poetry would be read on the page (even if their work was private, it’s not like Emily Dickinson was about to go out and do live poetry readings), which can be a bit constraining. Lots of poets have done some pretty awesome things with the space on the page (see this one by Roger McGough), but the writer knows that most people are going to see it, rather than hear it.
Music is the opposite. Certainly not all, but a good number of music artists are imagining people listening to their music exclusively, not reading books of their lyrics—and certainly not in the order lyrics then music. The sound is primary, meaning that how these things look on a page is immaterial.
This causes two problems for someone reading lyrics without music: (1) there’s no official way to transcribe lyrics (the more complex the song, the more problematic writing the lyrics down becomes); and (2) in the other direction, writing is one dimensional (ignoring time), whereas music is two dimensional.
When you’re reading a book or a poem (doesn’t matter what), they’re going to references or allusions to other stuff, whether it’s “high art” literary references, or pop culture references. Those references will be in the text though (the words on the page), otherwise they’re not there (how could they be?). Lyrics can do the same thing in a song, but so can the music. Simple example is the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love”, which starts out with the trumpets playing the opening bars of “La Marseillaise” (also finishes up with a short reference to “She Loves You”, but that you could, theoretically, pick up from the lyrics). The trumpet part is purely instrumental, so how are lyrics going to catch that? They’re not.
Now let’s move to rap, where things just explode. I’m going to focus on one of my favorite Tupac songs “Keep Ya Head Up”. (Brief note that Tupac, who died 20 years ago this September, was a controversial figure; Wikipedia article on him is here.) The very moment this song starts there’s a musical reference that’s lost since it has nothing to do with the lyrics. The song samples Zapp’s “Be Alright”, which is thematically appropriate. The lyrics aren’t as complex as “Keep Ya Head Up”, but the idea is that at least some people hearing Tupac’s song will know “Be Alright” and will remember the lyrics, which will kind of set the tone. This is reinforced by using the verse of the Five Stairsteps’ “O-o-h Child” as the chorus. If you know the original song, the song that samples it becomes fuller, as you get the full context. You might recognize it if the lyrics were written down, but you have to hear it to realize it’s a direct reference to the song.
And that’s just the musical samples. Going back to the first problem, here’s a section of “Keep Ya Head Up” with all the words simply written down:
I remember Marvin Gaye used to sing to me. He had me feeling like black was the thing to be.
That’s one way of writing it down. Here’s probably how it’d be written down as a traditional poetic stanza:
I remember Marvin Gaye Used to sing to me, He had me feeling like black Was the thing to be.
Neither of those written transcriptions tells you how the lyrics are rapped, though. Because something that Tupac does in this song (and others) is he develops mini rhyme/metrical schemes. He does it by doing one line in a particular way, and then following it up with another line where some of the lyrics are done in exactly the same way. We have no way to convey that in writing; no convention. Here’s one way you might do it:
I remember Marvin Gaye Used to sing to me He had me feeling like black was the thing to be.
That gives you a much better idea of what the lyrics actually sound like when you hear them. In fact, you could even go further and do this:
I remember MAR-vin GAYE Used to SING to ME He had me feeling like black was the THING to BE.
Only thing that’d be missing is a light emphasis on “black”, but not as heavy as the end of the lines. You can hear these lines specifically here and see if this conveys the sound of it a little better.
But like I said, it’s not like you can isolate one pattern and figure it’ll be the same for the rest of the song. Here’s another sample from the beginning:
And if he tells you you ain’t nothing, don’t be-LIEVE ‘im. And if he can’t learn to love you, you should LEAVE ‘im.
You can hear it here. Probably one of the more recognizable bits is this one a few lines later:
And since we all CAME from a woman, Got our NAME from a woman, And our GAME from a…woman,
I wonder why we TAKE from our women, Why we RAPE our women, Do we HATE our…women?
I think it’s time to KILL for our women, Time to HEAL our women, Be REAL to our women.
You can hear this section here. Something also lost in the orthography is that Tupac’s pronunciation of “kill” makes it a perfect rhyme with “heal” and “real”. (Also, for that second stanza, I hope the linguists reading this post appreciate the near rhymes with each of English’s voiceless stops!)
The idea is to show with the bolding and all-caps that something is happening with the lyrics that is different from the usual way the words are read/rapped/sung. It’s also important to know that if these bolded phrases are units, they all have the same weight, regardless of syllable count. Notice the first three above are all five syllables, but three of the next six are four syllables. It might not work in a poem that’s read silently, but it works perfectly in the song (the listener never questions it—or even necessarily notices it), so a reader needs to know that.
The point is that the written word can give you the lyrics verbatim—and extra reference material can tell you who Marvin Gaye is, if you don’t know, and why he might be mentioned in the song; it can give you the full history of Tupac Shakur; it can even list the songs that are sampled and give you their full lyrics. But our writing system really doesn’t handle prosody well. It doesn’t capture intonational well. Punctuation approximates it kind of okay, if you assume standard conversational speech is being transcribed, but singing? Performance? It’s simply not equal to the task. True, I gave it a go here, but remember: Someone can invent a system using roman characters or whatever else, but it doesn’t mean anything if no reader knows what it’s supposed to be encoding. There’s no surefire method of conveying the intonation and pacing of a phrase.
Of course, the cool thing about living in the 21st century is there’s no reason on Earth any student should be studying rap lyrics without actually listening to the song. And unless society collapses, I imagine it will only get easier to integrate media as technology improves. So I really don’t think there’s any danger of someone teaching rap lyrics from a book to students in a bubble. But if you’ve ever wondered why if you look at the lyrics to a song they seem simplistic, or weird, or sometimes even silly, this is why. A full transcription of the lyrics is not the same as the performance because we developed our writing systems to encode the meaning of our speech, rather than the full character of the speech itself.
I once wrote a linguistic analysis paper on the differences between mainstream and nerdcore rap lyrics. If I ever get the chance to update it, I’m going to keep all of this in mind.
Anonymous asked:
Hello! I'm a computing student and I spent a large portion of this year learning about the construction of computer based languages, mostly their grammars. Obviously for computing the designed languages (as opposed to those that grow naturally) generally have very robust and specific grammars and usable vocabulary. My question is: When designing spoken languages, do you make it's grammar robust and constrained, or is it less so allowing for change over time?
I think all languages have usable vocabulary, but beyond that, the difference between programming “languages” (which are not languages in the common sense of the word) and human languages is human languages can employ multiple strategies to solve the same problem, e.g.:
They can also be totally ambiguous or vague, and that’s fine. Human languages are much more flexible than programming languages. They can be overly precise, and yet also frustratingly imprecise. Also weird. Ever thought about the expression “for good”? As in “No, I left that job for good”. How’s that a licit prepositional phrase? And how does it mean what it means? Why can’t you replace “good” with some similar word and get the same meaning? “Gone for kind”? “Dead for pleasant”? And the funny thing is the exact same expression with the exact same meaning is present in Middle Egyptian. Weird.
Anyway, the two entities are quite different, and as a conlanger, I work to create languages that appear human (or natural), meaning I try to create the ambiguities, vagaries, and weirdness of natural languages. It’s a totally different endeavor from what programmers do when creating programming languages.
Reblogging for David’s excellent use of gif... and excellent explanation. But mostly excellent use of gif.
I Didn’t Choose The Fandom Life…
A motion poster designed by Risa Rodil, animated by Jonny Eveson
A little while back I asked Risa if I could take one of her posters and animate it in 3D. We both settled on this design, a great piece of typography, with enough other fun animatable bits to warrant making the design move.
I had so much fun making this! Figuring out how each element animates to correlate with the particular fandom.
Thanks again to Risa for trusting me with her work like this. You can watch the whole animation in HD on Vimeo below:
-Jonny
I can’t stop watching this. SO SO COOL! I’m such a huge fan of Jonny’s work and to see my work brought to life in his hands is beyond amazing! Thank you, Jonny! I’m so glad we did this!
The linguist in me just cringes every time I’m reminded of this. Successful shipper names actually follow some pretty regular, predictable rules. Obviously, the ship name should be “Monotov.” Honestly, Shore Leave.
You know you might think that, but from the standpoint of someone who pays attention to All The Ships, well… Let me use Fairy Tail as an example. Gray x Juvia is called Gruvia, but Natsu x Lucy is called NaLu. Gajeel x Levy is called both GaLe and Gajevy, with which is more frequently used being dependent on where you look. Gajeel x Juvia, rare jewel that it is, is sometimes called Gavia and sometimes Gajuvia.
And wtf is the name for Starlight Glimmer x Trixie in MLP? You’ve got me. I would like to assume Trixstar, because it makes the intent clear AND sounds close to “trickster” which would be perfect. But of course, no. People have used Startrix, Triximmer, Strixie, Glimmertrix… If there’s one that’s actually caught on I haven’t seen it.
Hell, from fandom to fandom, shippers don’t even agree on the best way TO name ships. In fandoms like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, you get things like Puzzleshipping and Peaceshipping and Rivalshipping. In others, you get portmanteaus that don’t even follow a singular convention. Occasionally, you get title ships, like I KNOW we’re not the only fandom that does that though I’ve got another on the tip of my tongue and can’t quiiiite place at the moment. But yeah. Then you get Venture Bros where “Monarch a Trois” has caught on beautifully but fans can’t agree on whether it’s “DocBrock” or “Brusty” or there might even be a few other options out there.
In short, “Molostro” is still a little out there (Molstroso would be better), but there are definitely no set-in-stone rules.
You might think that, but from the standpoint of someone who pays attention to All The Linguistics, especially when it delves into geek-specific communication since that’s what caused me to spend 4 years and an obscene amount of money getting a degree in shit like this, well... There are very few “set-in-stone” rules in linguistics because language is a human invention and humans are very messy and very creative and very stubborn. So I can say a rule like “English does not contain the consonant cluster ‘mp’ at the start of words” because as of this moment that is the case. There are no words that start with the combo ‘mp.’ HOWEVER, if a group of English speakers tomorrow coined words like “mponto” or “mpelongrio” or “mpabmende” and they were useful and gained widespread acceptance, then my “rule” would no longer apply. (Note: I mean original words coined by English speakers to be used as English words. Loan words are slightly different.) Linguists rarely deal in absolutes, but we sure as fuck can spot trends. And there is actual academic literature and discourse on said noticed trends. This article right here is probably the best breakdown for people who care.
Does this mean that these rules will show up absolutely 100% of the time? No. Because language and humans very rarely work like that. The phenomenon of blended names being used in this way is a pretty new field of study within onomastics (the study of names). But it has finally been around just long enough for certain trends to start to emerge. And as things go on, these trends will probably grow more noticeable. Or one day humans will decide that blending names was a stupid idea and execute everyone who ever did it. Who the fuck knows? Humans are weird. My joke (yeah, joke) was that Shore Leave was too much of a dabbler in this sort of thing to recognize the trend. Shore Leave is not one of the more obviously geeky characters, neither does he (as far as we know) have any background in onomastics or linguistics. So of course he’d come up with the silly name that probably wouldn’t catch on. Whereas, “Monotov,” fits all of the trends we’ve so far been able to note PERFECTLY, and as such has a far greater chance of catching on among any group who would give the slightest shit about a ship name of these two people. And even among linguists, there can be disagreement about which names might best fit both established trends and personal aesthetics. Shit, me and David Peterson (@dedalvs) spent a few hours one night debating the appropriate theoretical ship name for two characters from The 100 and never came up with a clear consensus as there were at least two variants that worked well within the framework. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter. You can make a joke about one of the sillier aspects of your own field of study and yet find yourself losing sleep over writing ridiculous, seemingly angry responses to people online at 2 in the fucking morning even though you’re not really angry and aren’t mad at anyone and just want to inform the world that this weird bit of academia exists and to maybe prove to yourself that 4 years of university wasn’t a complete fucking waste of time.
See what I meant about humans being messy and stubborn?
Thoughts...
You know how they always say 30 mins is the perfect nap length?
Do they mean 30 mins of sleep? or like, lay down, set the timer for 30 mins and maybe sleep for 10-15?
If it’s a full 30 min, do you actually lay down for 45 mins or an hour depending on how long it takes you to fall asleep?
I always laugh when people think I can control my sleep to any degree. “Just go take a 20 minute nap.” Well, yeah, but I don’t actually own a device that can monitor my brain waves and set an alarm for 20 minutes after whenever the hell I fall asleep. True story: The other day, I decided to lie down for a nap. I had 2 1/2 hours before I had to be awake to go somewhere. So I set my alarm for the time I absolutely had to be awake, and settled in to sleep. After a long time of lying there with my eyes closed waiting for sleep to come, I finally felt myself starting to drift off. I thought, “Good. I can probably get at least an hour.” ... And that’s the exact moment my alarm went off.
I feel you, my friend. People who say stuff like that obviously have some magical control over their ability to sleep that is not granted to mere mortals like you and me. :P
That time Picard summed up living in a capitalist society perfectly.
The linguist in me just cringes every time I’m reminded of this. Successful shipper names actually follow some pretty regular, predictable rules. Obviously, the ship name should be “Monotov.” Honestly, Shore Leave.
How many tattoos so you have at this point, Wil? Thinking of getting any more?
I have more than you have seen, and I plan to get more.
In which Wil drops the sexiest bit of info I think he ever has. Shut up! I like geeks with tattoos!
Somebody stop Jared Leto
It really bothers me that Joker has such a narrow definition of pie, honestly. All pies are amazing, Joker. They should all be represented.
I don’t subscribe to the notion that suffering is somehow ennobling; it sucks.
John Green (source)
John Green is a treasure of the human species, honestly. I cannot thank him enough for his videos on pain.
Made some new motivational posters for the break room today:
What do you think?
ST-3V3 killing it over here, yo!
iammarcwithac-deactivated201910
ALL* Marc With a C albums are pay-what-you-want again (which includes paying nothing, if you want). Everything. Unicorns Get More Bacon? That concept album about the squid? The early lo-fi stuff about ladies wearing glasses? The live album with all of the stories about candy and answering machines? It’s all there, and it’s desperate for your ears. Please listen, enjoy, and share your favorites! You can get it all athttps://marcwithac.bandcamp.com/
(* - all except charity releases, photo credit: Emmit Dobbyn)
If you’ve never had the pleasure of owning any of Marc’s music, now is your chance! It is all excellent stuff. Ferret approved. Go forth and get tunes!
I cannot tell you how happy I am to know that at least @glamdamnit and I seem to be on the EXACT same page with the whole “Vision trying to be people” thing. It’s not even that big a part of the movie, honestly, and it pretty much has nothing at all to do with the plot. But holy fuck do I want an entire movie of Vision trying to do people things. No, wait! A TV series. No! A TV series that later gets a movie… and also has tie-in novels… and a video game or some shit. I would play the hell out of “Cooking with Vision” honestly.
“The Vision Trying To Be People Show” Episode 1 - 20 minutes of Vision watching cute cat videos on youtube Episode 2 - An incresingly frustrated Tony trying to get Vision to understand the concept of a bathing suit. Episode 3 - Somehow Vision gets stuck caring for a baby. This shit writes itself.
I think the show should officially be titled “Vision Thinks He’s People.”
Just imagine the holiday specials: - Halloween: Vision worries that the children of Earth have all become costumed villains that the Avengers will have to fight. Debates the ethics of trying to recruit the hero-themed children to their side before a bemused Tony stops him. - Christmas: Vision mistakenly believes that humans are trying to combat climate change through the sympathetic magic of bringing fake snow and greenery into their homes. Also thinks humans are convinced of the divinity of every baby. - St. Patrick’s Day: Vision helpfully presents a very inebriated Tony with an extensive family tree proving that the Starks are in no way Irish. Tony laughs before vomiting on Vision’s new green sweater vest. Seriously. This shit does, in fact, write itself.
So, thanks to @ladyofdecember‘s posts, TIL that American Dad is still airing new episodes. This is a shock as I pride myself on keeping up with Seth MacFarlane’s stuff specifically and Fox animation in general. The reason I’ve missed it is that I’m never home on Sunday nights (RPG night, baby!) and the DVR is always recording other things, so I catch up on Fox animated stuff the next day on Hulu. Except… Hulu only goes up through season 9. They’re now on season 13. Fox.com doesn’t have the show streaming either. WTF? I will never understand why corporations want to spend a shit ton of money producing a show/film/whatever and then make it so bloody difficult for people to watch it. This was more understandable under old technology. You’d have to ship physical media oversees and find people with the tech to air it, etc. But now? Stick that shit online, put some ads on it, and enjoy having more watchers. Also, stop country-locking that shit. There’s no fucking reason for it. OMG, the state of old media really pisses me off. TL;DR - Does anyone know how I can watch the more recent seasons of American Dad that Fox seems to not want me to even know exist? EDIT: Seems TBS has the show now. Since literally no one I know watches TBS, it’s not shocking I’ve missed this. Anyway, still looking for a way to watch the show. DOUBLE EDIT: Ok, thanks to @uozlulu pointing out the TBS thing, it seems the TBS website has a few back episodes online. It’s not the full run, but it’s a start. Thanks, Tumblr!
Yeah, Fox lost the rights and Seth pulled the show to move to TBS for more creative freedom with it, less censorship, which is awesome. Trust me, they’re getting away with a lot of stuff now.
That’s actually why I haven’t seen the show like the last two years or so. I’ve never had cable so we rely on hulu and netflix for TV watching. I finally got on amazon video and bought the TBS seasons to catch up all in one weekend, thus my obsession now with it.
We should totally geek out about it… whenever you catch up 🤓
Good for Seth. I mean after Family Guy was renewed, Fox did treat Seth better than pretty much any other creator, but they still suck. I’m glad TBS is treating him even better. The only downside is that even for someone who spends so much time following media, I was shocked that TBS was producing an original show that wasn’t Conan or Sam Bee’s new thing. TBS is “the rerun channel” as far as I’m concerned. But still, I’m glad to hear they’re treating him well. And while I know your interests and mine are totally different here, I like geeking out about Seth’s stuff. I like Seth. I know many people don’t, but I absolutely adore the man. (Yeah, whatever. Fight me, assholes.) But don’t expect me to have as many feels about Steve/Snot, although I respect the hell out of yours. :D
Finalizer Fun Fact: Captain Phasma only used some of Emperor Palpatine’s old yacht to make her armor.
She used the rest to make a shiny race car bed. Vroom vroom.
So, thanks to @ladyofdecember‘s posts, TIL that American Dad is still airing new episodes. This is a shock as I pride myself on keeping up with Seth MacFarlane’s stuff specifically and Fox animation in general. The reason I’ve missed it is that I’m never home on Sunday nights (RPG night, baby!) and the DVR is always recording other things, so I catch up on Fox animated stuff the next day on Hulu. Except... Hulu only goes up through season 9. They’re now on season 13. Fox.com doesn’t have the show streaming either. WTF? I will never understand why corporations want to spend a shit ton of money producing a show/film/whatever and then make it so bloody difficult for people to watch it. This was more understandable under old technology. You’d have to ship physical media oversees and find people with the tech to air it, etc. But now? Stick that shit online, put some ads on it, and enjoy having more watchers. Also, stop country-locking that shit. There’s no fucking reason for it. OMG, the state of old media really pisses me off. TL;DR - Does anyone know how I can watch the more recent seasons of American Dad that Fox seems to not want me to even know exist? EDIT: Seems TBS has the show now. Since literally no one I know watches TBS, it’s not shocking I’ve missed this. Anyway, still looking for a way to watch the show. DOUBLE EDIT: Ok, thanks to @uozlulu pointing out the TBS thing, it seems the TBS website has a few back episodes online. It’s not the full run, but it’s a start. Thanks, Tumblr!