wish i had a bit going where whenever i said “the prophecy” like three of my friends would repeat “the prophecy” in different tones while squinting into the distance and rubbing their chins like sages deep in thought. i would also do this for them, im a team player
okay, so, be me, 27 years old at the time, an adult by any definition in the world
be me at the los angeles zoo, one of my very favorite places in the world, because i love animals. i am immedietly 8 years old when presented with a little creature. i can’t help it.
okay, wait, go back. we must establish two things for this to hit right
first:
the year before, i’d gone to the san diego zoo with my aunt and grandma and! they let you feed giraffes there!!
how wonderful a world and how wonderful a life, where for $10 I can hand feed a giant creature three crispy biscuits. i go “i am feeding the giraffes right now” and go in line to buy the biscuits and return moments later triumphant, 3 biscuits in my grasp
“oh good!” my grandmother says, “one for each of us!”
“yes,” i say, despondent, “one for each of us.”
i wanted to feed all three to the giraffes myself but since i am an actual adult and not a child i do not say this and share the biscuits
second:
my friend group echoes. a lot
someone tells a story and ends it with “and that’s what happened!” and the rest of us will repeat “and that’s what happened!”
often in unison. and it’s constant, all the time, even to little stuff. often said in the tone of “they don’t even have dental”
ok, so we’re back at the los angeles zoo. they have opened the giraffe feeding
i am not going to be thwarted again
my two friends (K and M) get in line to feed them and i go to buy the biscuits. i return with nine biscuits because i am going to give the giraffes three biscuits myself and i do not want to hear a word of protest. i am being fair. i am being equitable. i am sharing. no one can judge me
“wow!” says K. “that’s a lot of biscuits!”
“the cult provides,” i say generously, handing over their share, because what is a friend group if not a small cult
and then, automatically, in unison, like they have so many times before and thinking nothing of what exactly they’re saying, M and K reply, “the cult provides”
two different people in line turn to stare at us while we all blink at each other and then M nervously shouts, “we are definitely not in a cult!” which sounds like something someone who is in a cult might say
and ever since it’s been a running bit where one person says “the cult ____” and everyone echoes it as seriously as possible, no matter where we are or who we’re around
which is to say, OP, that you could be living the dream if your friends weren’t cowards
Electron microscope video of a needle on a vinyl record.
H O W
like you can tell me all you want how the sound is stored in the grooves but fucking H O W
HOW DOES THAT GET INTO THE NEEDLE
HOW ARE THE VIBRATIONS TURNED INTO MUSIC THAT YOU CAN HEAR???
H O W
The vibrations aren’t “turned into” music, they are music. When vibrations occur inside your inner ear, your brain processes this as sound.
The grooves in a record are an analogy for these vibrations, a method of remembering them so that they can be recreated later on.
Put your hand on a speaker while loud music is playing and you’ll feel the vibrations. Those are exactly the same vibrations happening inside your ear when you hear the music.
But how do you capture that?
Take a surface that vibrates strongly when a sound is played, like the skin of a drumhead for example. Connect that surface to a little tool - when sound causes the surface to vibrate, the tool digs a little bit into some wax, leaving behind a pattern that matches - in proportion - the vibrations of the surface caused by the sound. This is your analogy (hence: analog music).
Now, when there’s no sound playing, you run that little tool back over the pattern. This causes the skin to vibrate again, this time in response to the tool running over the pattern instead of because of an external sound. The vibrations should match, proportionally, the original vibrations of the music.. and thus these new vibrations, if you were to amplify them, would be a recreation or “recording” of the original music.
That’s oversimplified of course and things have changed a lot since the days of wax, but that is very basically how the process of recording music worked at first, and the general idea of how sound gets from a groove in a record into your brain.
(reblogging for Disparition commentary)
Thank you Science side of tumblr
I hugely appreciate people taking to the time explain stuff like this, as it helps put an end to the “wow, science is magic!” trope that’s become far too common.
“fanfiction,” as a concept, only exists because of intellectual property. at the end of the day, it’s just fiction. some of it is great, some of it sucks ass. sometimes, it can reveal something damning about the author—prejudices, biases, whether or not they think cats should be left indoors, how they feel about offshore tax evasion, whatever. that’s the nature of fiction. this is not news to anyone who’s ever opened a book
what’s truly unique about fanfiction is that it’s anonymous and free with a barrier to entry that ants wouldn’t notice climbing. also, it’s amateur by necessity; barring a few notable exceptions, nobody expects their gaudy slash fiction to win them an award or make them a million dollars. this crock pot of internet fuckery lends itself to two things—a monumental diversity of skill level and buck wild nasty behavior
fanfiction is neither god’s gift to all man kind nor an incurable blight. it’s just a thing. that exists. it’s neither defenseless nor indefensible. it can be harmful, helpful, or benign. more importantly, it’s not going anywhere, so i wish we’d stop arguing about whether or not it’s “legitimate” and talk about what’s actually happening with it instead
