U de Recife

Thank you for your comment and for bringing in some sanity.

I’m a former cellist, who has been trained in the western cannon, and you’re absolutely right.

Music is music. The so-called classical tradition is just hyped up musical culture from the rich and powerful European elite of those days.

There’s nothing in it more special or high minded except for the fact that it was a learned tradition. It was especially cultivated to cater to those who were wealthy enough to actually pay for the privilege of having music played to them whenever they feel like listening to it.

I’m over-simplifying, but that’s pretty much the gist of it. In the 19th century, and with industrialization, more and more people came to have their own pianos at home, so they too could have music at home whenever they felt like listening. Guys like Brahms made a huge buck back in the day catering to this new public.

The point being that classical music is just a fancy name for that music tradition which, as you correctly pointed out, is a white European thing used to assert a supposed intellectual dominance over other peoples and their own cultures.

Remember, music is music. There’s nothing inherently good about classical European music. Actually, if you hear that tradition thoroughly enough (I did), you’ll quickly find out that some of it is actually really badly written, even by the so-called great (I’m looking at you, Beethoven, and your Op. 91, Wellington’s Victory “Battle Symphony” – what a piece of crap!).

tl;dr Classical music is indeed a politically charged term with nasty political implications. As a musical tradition, it is indeed over-hyped and made up to be something bigger than it actually is.

Are they good? What tracks do you recommend?

Paris, Texas. Yeah, from the movie.

Same here. Pinch zooming is now my best friend though.

Great reference. Thanks for that. I’m reading it right now and it’s pretty good!

Don’t get me started. The thesis, antithesis, synthesis is Hegelian only in the sense that Marx was a leftist Hegelian. For that historical dialectical movement is actually a Marxists’ material reinterpretation of Hegel’s teleology of the Absolute.

Yes, you could argue that Marx is simply Hegel under a different guise, and that thesis, antithesis, synthesis is just an explicit reformulation of Hegel’s ontological dialectics. But then you might as well say that the whole western contemporary philosophical tradition is in some sense Hegelian as every known philosopher since has been trying to overcome Hegel. Which, in some sense, is true.

In any case, this will only prove the Hegelian fanboy point: aufhebung, bitches!

For life. That is. If you’re non-Hegelian.

Otherwise you become a kind of know-it-all as anything and everything that is raised for or against your Hegelian Weltanschauung is necessarily ontologically subsumed into the historically inherently determined dialectical self-manifesting and self-fulfilling recognition of one’s own liberty which is nothing other than the unavoidable individual instantiation of the greater collective coming to terms conscience of the Absolute. Aufhebung, bitches!

Well, he gave two of them away.

I would say you’re actually witnessing the very real phenomenon of language-drift. Languages evolve for a billion reasons, but there’s no right or wrong state of language.

That’s why we distinguish between language, dialect, idiolect, sociolect. Each bearer of language is also a producer of language. Their version is just theirs, in whatever many ways that makes that version unique.

(Check linguistics to better understand this process of language-drifting )

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Documentary.

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”
Source: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hélder_Câmara

Hélder Pessoa Câmara (7 February 1909 – 27 August 1999) was a Brazilian Catholic archbishop. A self-identified socialist, he was the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, serving from 1964 to 1985, during the military dictatorship in Brazil.

You’re not wrong. Why would you? Either works or not. You said it yourself, it’s work-related. The rest you could probably work around them if sufficiently motivated.

Sorry if I mistake your intention. If that’s the case, it’s just me making a wrong guess.

You’re probably misreading this.

I authored THE NAME. If you prefer, I’m the name-giver, the author in this sense.

Linus is the namer and the creator of that kernel.

As creator he is by right allowed to name his creation whatever he likes. Just like me, as the cat ‘entity creator as a pet’ am allowed to name it whatever I like.

No outsiders input required. You get now what I mean by author?

Whatever your reply may be, let me thank you already for engaging. It’s nice to be pressured to explain something in simpler, more accessible terms.

Thanks for the necessary XKCD. First time reading that one.

Well, to be honest, I won’t be THAT guy, nor am I crazy to bring back the rotary disk.

Thanks!

And no, I’m not serious. Just reminding that technology, like everything else, changes.

But I loved that project! Made me smile thinking how creative people are.

Maybe you’ll like it more under this new guise: I named my cat Goofyball. But since Linnaeus named the species Felis catus, you remind me that my cat’s name should ackchyually be Felis catus/Goofyball. To which I reply, very appropriately, ‘it’s MY cat’. So Goofyball it is.

Understand now the authority argument? Authority in the sense of authorial, having an author.

I’ve been using it for more than 20 years, but I still love when someone pulls the GNU/Linux card.

To me it feels like reading an old plaque in Latin. It reminds me of an important past that shouldn’t be forgotten.

The rotary disc on phones!

Philosophically, the premise is flawed. Best life… according to whom?

I mean, the best life for a slug or a fly won’t cut it for you. I can imagine a fly being born in such conditions that from that fly’s perspective it would be ‘the best life’ imaginable… for a fly.

There’s this passage from Roger Crisp’s Mill on Utilitarianism, where he proposes this thought experiment. There one reads:

“You are a soul in heaven waiting to be allocated a life on Earth. It is late Friday afternoon, and you watch anxiously as the supply of available lives dwindles. When your turn comes, the angel in charge offers you a choice between two lives, that of the composer Joseph Haydn and that of an oyster. Besides composing some wonderful music and influencing the evolution of the symphony, Haydn will meet with success and honour in his own lifetime, be cheerful and popular, travel and gain much enjoyment from field sports. The oyster’s life is far less exciting. Though this is rather a sophisticated oyster, its life will consist only of mild sensual pleasure, rather like that experienced by humans when floating very drunk in a warm bath. When you request the life of Haydn, the angel sighs, ‘I’ll never get rid of this oyster life. It’s been hanging around for ages. Look, I’ll offer you a special deal. Haydn will die at the age of seventy-seven. But I’ll make the oyster life as long as you like…’”

So, a pig or Haydn? A fly or your own life right now?

Not being open source is the great… sin for me. Note taking is an investment in the future, and betting on a closed source platform is a big no no—for me, that is.

I know the content is safe in Obsidian, since it’s just Markdown files. But the workflow? Not so much.

And I know the developers behind Obsidian have their reasons to close source it. Nothing against that. But since that’s their way, it’s not my way.