Random Thought Thread

bluemax_1 said:
Well…

When I was in college, the gal I was with said, “Hey, we should volunteer for the Usher Corp.”. “The what?”

The University had an auditorium that brought in all sorts of shows. The ushers that helped direct patrons to their seats were all student volunteers. The perk was getting to see the shows for free. Oh, ok. Sure.

Saw everything from Riverdance, to Jesus Christ:Superstar, Cats, Man of La Mancha etc.

The auditorium was also booked for some local HS graduations and other events.

One particular HS… 🙄

Everything from fistfights, someone trying to shove another person’s head through the gap between the stairs. And these were the parents and family members. Not the students.

Ever seen two grannies trying to fight each other with canes/walking sticks? One person even tried swinging their walker. Hmmm… if you can pick up a walker and swing it, are you really disabled?

Some of the fights, I gathered, were between people/families that had some kind of prior beef with each other, but more than one of the arguments and fights happened because one group/family decided that they didn’t particularly like the seating position their tickets were for, so they simply decided, “We’ll just go take those seats over there”, then refused to move when the people with tickets for those seats arrived (and the other group, rather than find an usher or Area Manager and go, “Excuse me, these are our tickets. Is this the right row? I think some folks might be mistaken, and are in the seats we were assigned to”, decided to take matters into their own hands).

And yes, some of those fights also apparently began because someone felt ‘disrespected’.🙄
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Wow, some people really are special. Glad you weren't caught in the middle.

Nathan the Machinist said:
Nate's random thought for the morning:

Jo is downstairs listening to country pop tripe. I can hear it upstairs now.

At first I was like, this music really isn't very good. Musically. But you know what? After listening to it for a little while I've come to realize that the lyrics are pretty bad too.
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Lyrics and music might be bad, but I'll bet you have a new, unexpected desire to buy a Chevy Truck and drink a cool Bud Light.

 
Nathan the Machinist said:
I mean

If you're going to use that much auto-tune why even use a human voice at all?

The music and musicmanship is very formulaic, why even use people to do it?

This entire job could be done, better, by AI. Not even one of the new AIs, one of the older shitty ones
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There's actually an AI band called velvet sundown on spotify that had over a million listeners. The band's creators came clean about it being AI recently, so the number of listeners may have dropped.

Pretty weird to think about. Scary if you really contemplate what the potential implications/ramifications are for a while.
 
Fun fact:

My dog Jack, which is a shepherd retriever mix bitch, is named after Jack Lancaster.

His name was Ibby Jack Lancaster

He ran the shop where I went to school and, as a backhanded compliment I have named every dog I've ever had, Iggy, Ziggy, Zack, and Jack, after him.

He has no idea
 
oldmanwilly said:
Wow, some people really are special. Glad you weren't caught in the middle.
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Well, actually… I kind of was.

Scheduling for the shows and events was via sign up sheet. You signed up for the events on the roster for that semester, and the Area Managers (paid student positions, managing groups of the ushers in each seating section), would look at the schedules and try to schedule everyone fairly.

As one might assume, popular shows like Cats had plenty of signups, while some events would have far fewer signups.

The Area Managers (my GF became one, as did I, as the Area Managers graduated out), would look at the schedules, and try to be fair, so everyone who signed up for the big shows would have the opportunity to work and watch them at least once. They also would give preference to people who were willing to work both popular and less popular events.

After working as an usher for the first graduation for that HS, the Area Managers later said, “OK, we’ll schedule you for all the good shows you sign up for, but you HAVE to work the ### ###### graduation every year”.

I said, “Yeah, after seeing that, I figured I’d volunteer myself for those”.

Having a really loud ‘command voice’ helps. Having years of martial arts and physical/strength training also helps. In this particular case, Japanese Jujitsu and Judo was generally more helpful than Muay Thai and Sanda.

*** the Area Manager positions were applied for from people who’d worked as ushers, and final selection was from the current Area Managers voting based on applicants observed performance while working with them as ushers. They again told me the same thing, “Well, it was a close vote, but we decided to pick you. You have to work that high school’s graduation, though”. 😅

*** the majority of the Usher Corp and the Area Managers tended to be either Arts majors, or the kind of people who like Broadway shows, and I think the ratio was 5:1 female. Surprised that more regular guys and jocks didn’t figure this out, and volunteer 😅
 
bluemax_1 said:
Well…

When I was in college, the gal I was with said, “Hey, we should volunteer for the Usher Corp.”. “The what?”

The University had an auditorium that brought in all sorts of shows. The ushers that helped direct patrons to their seats were all student volunteers. The perk was getting to see the shows for free. Oh, ok. Sure.

Saw everything from Riverdance, to Jesus Christ:Superstar, Cats, Man of La Mancha etc.

The auditorium was also booked for some local HS graduations and other events.

One particular HS… 🙄

Everything from fistfights, someone trying to shove another person’s head through the gap between the stairs. And these were the parents and family members. Not the students.

Ever seen two grannies trying to fight each other with canes/walking sticks? One person even tried swinging their walker. Hmmm… if you can pick up a walker and swing it, are you really disabled?

Some of the fights, I gathered, were between people/families that had some kind of prior beef with each other, but more than one of the arguments and fights happened because one group/family decided that they didn’t particularly like the seating position their tickets were for, so they simply decided, “We’ll just go take those seats over there”, then refused to move when the people with tickets for those seats arrived (and the other group, rather than find an usher or Area Manager and go, “Excuse me, these are our tickets. Is this the right row? I think some folks might be mistaken, and are in the seats we were assigned to”, decided to take matters into their own hands).

And yes, some of those fights also apparently began because someone felt ‘disrespected’.🙄
Click to expand...
I do believe those families are now staging their fights on Carnival Cruise Line ships.
 
Modern mainstream music is all programmed and tweaked to match a very narrow set of parameters. The industry studied what sold and what didn’t and selected and/or manipulated the output to match that narrow set of parameters. Kind of like what modern industrial farming did to crops. Now it’s all highly palatable but essentially empty of nutrients.
AI can do the same things that the music industry did, only faster and likely better. From now on, you’ll need to spend effort to find new music made by actual humans and avoid anything that is promoted by the industry.
 
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