Ask a musician how they want their music listened to, and you’ll get an answer like “lossless FLACs over a $5,000 stereo system with a Filipino houseboy giving you a foot massage.”

Of course, the average person will listen to it on torrented 128kb/s mp3s on $19.95 headphones while watching porn and playing a videogame and texting on two different phones. That’s the world we live in now, and it isn’t going away.

This is a new and untested ecosystem for music, and I wonder how it’s affecting what sort of music gets listened to. Theory: music that you can listen to with 5% of your brain is selected for. Elaborate, subtle, and detailed music is selected against.

It would perhaps shift the tonal centers of popular music towards frequencies that are easy to filter out. Some frequency ranges – like around 10khz – have a harsh, grating quality: “look at me” kinds of frequencies. Easily ignorable music would probably dial back those frequencies and boost the soft, low 300hz bass and the clean, sparkling 12khz highs. I’ve heard it said that Bose speakers do exactly that: and their supposed pleasant sound comes from a pretty lopsided response spectrum: emphasising nice frequencies, and killing harsh ones.

What about song lengths? Here’s a graph I found about the average song length per year, but I mistrust it. They just dumped all the songs from MusicBrainz’ database into it, but aren’t some songs more popular than others? Why include a bunch of 30 second grindcore songs that nobody listens to in your data? Someone should find a way to calculate the average length of #1 singles. An ideal length of 3:20 is something I’ve heard before, although I don’t know how true it is.

Another thing is that a lot of radio stations actually speed up their music by 1% or 2% – for a more upbeat feel and so they’ve got room for more precious ads.

But to add epicycles, there’s likely other trends running counter to simpler, dumber music. Digital media also allows you to do things like easily skip to a certain point to hear it again, or look things up on the internet so you can REALLY find out what “Puff the Magic Dragon”‘s about. We’re at the mercy of radio DJs no more, and that should encourage more variety.

Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I’m afraid. – HAL 9000

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could do. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice. — La Rochefoucauld

The water a cow laps turns into milk; the water a snake licks changes into poison. — Zen saying

The most dangerous form of transportation, by passenger-mile, is the bed. — #micronations

I knew that if I lived long enough, something like this would happen. — George Bernard Shaw’s epitaph

What are the marks of a sick culture? It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn’t the whole population. — Robert A. Heinlein

A college student once asked the Lubavitcher Rebbe what is his job. The Rebbe gestured to the ceiling of his room and replied: “Do you see that light bulb? It is connected by wires to a power plant that powers the whole of Brooklyn. And that plant is connected to turbo-generators at Niagara Falls that power the whole of New York State and more. Every one of us is a light bulb wired in to an infinitely powerful generator. But the room may still be dark, because the connection has yet to be made. The job of a rebbe is to take your hand in the dark room and help it find the switch.”

I like the word `indolence.’ it makes my laziness seem classy. — Bern Williams

Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it might be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it. — Lemony Snicket

(Note: your care mutual fund is likely to suffer critical shortfalls of care. Written for a specific audience).

The world’s biggest bodybuilding show has come and gone, and like always, the Mr Olympia contest seems curiously next to the controversy and drama. Two quick rules: a) everything in bodybuilding sucks except the bodybuilders, and b) complaining about sports is more fun than following sports. There were events in 2015 that we’ll be chewing over for a long time.

Phil Heath won a fairly uncontroversial victory. Shawn Rhoden was the only one who seemed to be pushing him, but when they turned around, it was all over from the back. Phil’s thickness and fullness just stole the show, and his structural issues (narrow clavicles etc) don’t seem to be holding him back at all. I noticed that one judge had him in second place in the prejudging. By the night show, all five had him in first.

The biggest story was Phil’s missing arch-rival: where is Kai Greene? Over the past few weeks he’s ended a long-lived contract with Musclemeds, launched his own company, failed to sign the contract for the contest, lost his chance at a near-guaranteed second place finish, and has released a nine minute video literally crying about it< all/a>. If you hear people saying he was “banned” from the contest, piss on them. He has not been banned. He did not sign the contract, and that’s the only reason he was not at the Olympia this year. Here’s IFBB promoter Robin Chang’s account of Kai Greene’s failure to put a signature on a piece of paper. Frankly, nothing about this story makes any sense, and although I have some theories I think we need more to go on.

Kai’s non-appearance left the door open for someone else to move up to number 2, and that someone else proved to be…Dexter Jackson. As a rule, he looks better in videos than photos. I don’t think anybody predicted this – Dexter is 46 and seemed to be a permanent fixture in the 4th-6th spot. I don’t know about this decision: his condition and proportions are great, but he’s fundamentally a pretty small guy in the lineup. Dexter is great…but top 2 great? My opinion vacillates.

Otherwise there’s just little storylines popping up and resolving themselves. Big Ramy was being touted as the heaviest bodybuilder ever to set foot on the Olympia stage…DIDN’T FUCKING HELP, DID IT? Enjoy your fifth place, you waterlogged Egyptian. I say this with the expectation that he will be a top-level threat once he figures out how to diet properly. The guy’s just overwhelmingly massive, and not necessarily in a good way. The cuts and details you want to see just aren’t there.

The big positive surprises of the show were Will Bonac and Dallas McCarver (who is just 24 years old). A lot of fullness and pop in both of them, and plenty of potential to shunt their way up the ranks. I’m concerned that Bonac keeps getting lost in the lineup – on his own, he’s pretty much flawless. Dennis Wolf and Branch Warren did their usual “ugly as fuck but still tough to beat” acts. Roelly Winklaar could have placed higher – he’s another one who keeps getting overlooked. Steve Kuclo had no business stepping on stage that weekend – does he even diet for shows these days?

In any case, the circus is over, and now these depleted athletes can partake in some bread.