Discovering new music was always an act of revolution for me. When I was 5, it was in my parents’ house, sitting near a stack of records I wasn’t allowed to touch, waiting for whatever was next on the turntable, whether it was Stevie Wonder’s Music of My Mind or the O’Jays’ Ship Ahoy. The record went around; that was a revolution. When I was 15, it was sneaking Prince songs onto my Walkman as I practiced drums in the basement, pretending that I was listening to something less scandalous. The cassette reels spun around; that was a revolution. When I was 25, it was walking back to the van after opening for the Pharcyde but getting drawn back to the club by a woozy, witchy beat that turned out to be J Dilla. I turned around; that was another revolution.

There were, of course, less dramatic ways of finding music. Digging in the crates. Staying up all night with a transistor radio. Eavesdropping on conversations in high school. Those were offline revolutions, unwired; it’s just the way the old world worked. Then digital music arrived and again turned everything around. The iPod happened. Playlists happened. Pandora happened. YouTube happened. Spotify happened. SoundCloud happened. Shazam happened. I couldn’t believe them when I saw them. I couldn’t believe them when I heard them. But they are here, and they are changing everything about our relationship with music.

via Questlove on How to Find Music You’ll Fall in Love With | Underwire | Wired.com.

[Really, really interesting. It’s so damn hard to see our own blind spots. Anyone have thoughts about this? -egg]

It seems to me that many nonbelievers have forgotten—or never knew—what it is like to suffer an unhappy collision with scientific rationality. We are open to good evidence and sound argument as a matter of principle, and are generally willing to follow wherever they may lead. Certain of us have made careers out of bemoaning the failure of religious people to adopt this same attitude.

However, I recently stumbled upon an example of secular intransigence that may give readers a sense of how religious people feel when their beliefs are criticized. It’s not a perfect analogy, as you will see, but the rigorous research I’ve conducted at dinner parties suggests that it is worth thinking about. We can call the phenomenon “the fireplace delusion.”

via The Fireplace Delusion : : Sam Harris.

[Really thoughtful critique by Ramez Naam, author of a couple of really fantastic recent sci fi novels (_Nexus_ and _Crux_). I think he misses some stuff — notably that a digital intelligence may have some important abilities that wetware brains lack, like the ability to instantly recall all of human knowledge — but he’s got some solid arguments, and the claim that intelligence design has a non-linear difficulty slope is really thought-provoking. I do think he puts too much emphasis on the mathematical/etymological metaphor; I don’t think most serious thinkers have ever actually thought that the Singularity would be a true mathematical singularity, ie would achieve an infinite slope. -egg]

Are we headed for a Singularity? Is it imminent?

I write relatively near-future science fiction that features neural implants, brain-to-brain communication, and uploaded brains. I also teach at a place called Singularity University. So people naturally assume that I believe in the notion of a Singularity and that one is on the horizon, perhaps in my lifetime.

I think it’s more complex than that, however, and depends in part on one’s definition of the word. The word Singularity has gone through something of a shift in definition over the last few years, weakening its meaning. But regardless of which definition you use, there are good reasons to think that it’s not on the immediate horizon.

via The Singularity Is Further Than It Appears – Charlie’s Diary.

[I’ve gotten behind on my blogging, but these are some of the most interesting articles I’ve read in the last week or two. -egg]

A Journey to the End of the World (of Minecraft) : The New Yorker

On March 28, 2011, a man who calls himself Kurt J. Mac loaded a new game of Minecraft. As the landscape filled in around his character, Mac surveyed the blocky,…

The Champion Barack Obama: How Black America talks to the White House (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

Last week The New Yorker ran a lengthy profile of Barack Obama, by David Remnick, in which you can hear the president’s opinions on everything from marijuana legalization to war to racism. Obama is as thoughtful as ever, and I expect that admiration for his thoughtfulness will grow as the ages pile upon us. I have tried to get my head around what he represents. Two years ago, I would have said that whatever America’s roots in white supremacy, the election of a black president is a real thing, worthy of celebration, a sign of actual progress. I would have pointed out that you should not expect a black head of state in any other Western country any time soon, and that this stands as singular accolade in the long American democratic tradition. Today, I’m less certain about national accolades. I’m not really sure that a writer—whose whole task is the attempt to see clearly—can afford such attachments.

Far From Home (National Geographic)

In today’s hyperconnected world, many developing countries find that their most lucrative export is people. The foreign workers and their families must grapple with an inevitable trade-off: emotional loss for material gain.

Robert Henke on Lasers, Structure, and Musical Choices; Intuition and Limitations

Give Robert Henke [Monolake, Ableton cofounder] a computer, some lasers, and some time to make his own tools as well as his own music, and wonderful things result. In a new video [linked and excerpted here], he gives a master class not so much in technology as the philosophy of using that technology.

Our Dangerous Budget and What to Do About It

The budget battles have never been quite what they’ve seemed, and the new bipartisan agreement is not a victory of bipartisan reason. Despite all of the budget turmoil over the past five years, the long-term trajectory of the US budget has remained remarkably and dangerously unaltered. With this new agreement, the US takes another step toward a diminished future.

GOING THE DISTANCE: On and off the road with Barack Obama.

[Excellent profile by the New Yorker’s David Remnick of where Barack Obama is now, and what his priorities for the remainder of the term are likely to be.]

[This is extremely intriguing. -egg]

As a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996, Amit Sahai was fascinated by the strange notion of a “zero-knowledge” proof, a type of mathematical protocol for convincing someone that something is true without revealing any details of why it is true. As Sahai mulled over this counterintuitive concept, it led him to consider an even more daring notion: What if it were possible to mask the inner workings not just of a proof, but of a computer program, so that people could use the program without being able to figure out how it worked?

[…]

As Sahai pondered program obfuscation, however, he and several colleagues quickly realized that its potential far surpassed any specific applications. If a program obfuscator could be created, it could solve many of the problems that have driven cryptography for the past 40 years — problems about how to conduct secure interactions with people at, say, the other end of an Internet connection, whom you may not know or trust.

[…]

Then, on July 20, 2013, Sahai and five co-authors posted a paper on the Cryptology ePrint Archive demonstrating a candidate protocol for a kind of obfuscation known as “indistinguishability obfuscation.” Two days later, Sahai and one of his co-authors, Brent Waters, of the University of Texas, Austin, posted a second paper that suggested, together with the first paper, that this somewhat arcane form of obfuscation may possess much of the power cryptographers have dreamed of.

via Cryptography Breakthrough Could Make Software Unhackable – Wired Science.

The globe is facing a “tidal wave” of cancer, and restrictions on alcohol and sugar need to be considered, say World Health Organization scientists.

It predicts the number of cancer cases will reach 24 million a year by 2035, but half could be prevented.

[…]

Meanwhile, a survey of 2,046 people in the UK by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) suggested 49% do not know that diet increases the risk of developing cancer.

via BBC News – Cancer ‘tidal wave’ on horizon, warns WHO.

[So beautiful! -egg]

I’m really enjoying this illustration project by French graphic designer and illustrator DZO who covered nearly every inch of these river stones and a found skull with his wildly imaginative illustrations. If you’ve never seen DZO’s work you can take a deep dive here or follow him on Instagram. (via Behance)

via Stones & Bones: Illustrations on Rocks and Skulls by DZO | Colossal.

[Oh, this is just bloody gorgeous. -egg]

Created by mixed media artist Anila Quayyum Agha, this elaborately carved cube with an embedded light source projects a dazzling pattern of shadows onto the surrounding gallery walls. Titled Intersections, the installation is made from large panels of laser-cut wood meant to emulate the geometrical patters found in Islamic sacred spaces. Agha shares:

via Intersections: An Ornately Carved Wood Cube Projects Shadows onto Gallery Walls | Colossal.

[Pitchfork is very, very impressed with the new Sun Kil Moon album. I definitely like what I’ve heard so far (which isn’t much). -egg]

Sun Kil Moon: Benji | Album Reviews | Pitchfork.

Over the years I’ve looked at a number of books on hunting, fishing, and foraging, but this turns out to be my favorite. The first sentence: “We live in an edible world.”

There is good info on things like aging game birds, gutting and skinning a deer, even how to get started hunting. Or how to net herring — an annual ritual in NorCal. For the boatless, this can be practiced from shore with a cast net, 5-gallon bucket, and hip boots. Onto harvesting clams, rock crabs, rock fish. How to kill eels with salt (almost impossible otherwise), manzanita cider, madrone bark tea. Making sausage from wild boar, eating squirrels, (there’s a bluegrass song, “Why Would Anyone Eat Beef When They Can Have squirrel?”), and recipes for everything.

via Cool Tools – Hunt, Gather, Cook.