So you want to generate interesting melodies.

1. Make a file called 1235.txt containing, one per line, all 24 unique permutations of the elements 1 2 3 5.

2. Cp 1235.txt to D.txt

3. Use sed to convert the numbers in D.txt to notes. Now you have 24 permutations of the major tetrachord in D.
4. Play them each. If it sounds like it increases tension, mark the beginning of that cell in 1235.txt with a +. If it sounds like it decreases tension, mark with a -.

Now those 24 melodic cells are divided into two groups: tension increasers and resolvers.
5. Rinse and repeat for all 12 keys.

You now have 13 plaintext files, filled with stuff like + 1 2 5 3 and - D E F# A
6. Figuratively roll dice to decide, given a +/- cell, what the next cell should be.

33% chance a + follows a +, etc.

Now you're outputting a stream of dynamic tensions: ++-+++-+-+---+ etc
7. Already this sounds good. It's got tension and release baked right into it.

Zero AI, it's literally just some plaintext files.

8. Return to step 6, except add in a separate dice roll for whether the next cell is to stay on the same scale, or move an interval above.
9. Now a cell like E D A F# has a chance to be followed by a tension-increasing cell a tritone higher. Or a tension resolving cell one chromatic step lower:

E D A F#
G# C# E D#

Etc.
10. Now the magic part: do the exact same thing you just did, except with those above pairs of cells instead of individual cells. Listen, mark as +/- if they increase or decrease tension.
And voila. Without any AI, not a single bit of fancy machine learning involved, literally just plaintext files and a text editor and utilities like rand and shuf, you're generating complex melodic lines with dynamic tension and release. Just a bunch of dice under the hood.
You can get fancier. Make a d.a.txt where you gsub the fifth to a flatted fifth, and toss that into the mix. Make a d.b.txt where you toss in a wild flatted seventh instead of a second. Add it to the mix.
You can, literally using just plaintext and rolling imaginary dice, generate basically infinite melodies that sound interesting, that have a dynamic flow that randomly selecting individual notes does not.
This is what I'm playing with at the moment.

Try it. Like it? Reward my incredible laziness.

https://t.co/aHjAaZYHrw

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The US immigration act of 1907 signed by Teddy Roosevelt: ableist as hell. https://t.co/ficeXOImo5


One theory for why the Spanish flu was so unusually lethal for young people:

They hadn't lived through the previous flu pandemic of 1889-1890 (https://t.co/OiDZYtdbWx) that killed about 1 million people. And thus had no carryover immunity.

It's suspected that the 1889 pandemic was not influenza, but a coronavirus.

The 1889 virus spread rapidly, killing mostly the elderly.

The 1889 virus was the first truly modern pandemic: people knew about germs, it spread via trains, it spread at the speed of modern transportation and commerce
An interesting thing about carp is that they can go into anoxic hibernation and switch to an anaerobic metabolism based on converting glycogen to ethanol.

The waste ethanol is diffused out the gills

https://t.co/V3D1umHf04

Carp can switch over to an anaerobic metabolism and quietly exhale booze until the situation gets better.

They basically evolved the same metabolic pathway as yeast, independently.

In theory, if you spent a few thousand years breeding carp for it, you could use them to make booze.

They'd be enormous, almost entirely glycogen deposits with a fish added as an afterthought.

The really interesting thing about anaerobic carp, is that they can go 4-5 months without oxygen by relying on liver glycogen.

You, a human, have only about 100 grams of glycogen in your liver, about 400 more grams in your skeletal muscles. Call it 500 grams total.

In humans, glycogen is also burned for energy. This is where the marathon runner's bonk comes from: you only have about 2,000 calories worth, and running a marathon burns those 2,000 calories.
So I've mentioned the sharpie test and the tueller drill.

Another reason you are dead within 1.5 seconds of encountering your first fast zombie, is adrenaline.


Most people who get attacked with a knife and survive to talk about it, say they never even knew a knife was there.

Or that they'd been stabbed, until after the fact.

In many cases, they think they'd just been punched, and are completely surprised

One reason the adage is "the winner is the one who dies in the ambulance, not the gutter," is because it's entirely possible to receive a fatal wound, not realize it, and then inflict a fatal wound on the other guy without *him* realizing it.

A dozen times within 30 seconds.

The marker drill teaches how you *will* get cut, fatally, without realizing it.

In full adrenaline freakout, this is even more pronounced.

More from Culture

I woke up this morning to hundreds of notifications from this tweet, which is literally just a quote from a book I am giving away tonight.

The level of vitriol in the replies is a new experience for me on here. I love Twitter, but this is the dark side of it.

Thread...


First, this quote is from a book which examines castes and slavery throughout history. Obviously Wilkerson isn’t claiming slavery was invented by America.

She says, “Slavery IN THIS LAND...” wasn’t happenstance. American chattel slavery was purposefully crafted and carried out.

That’s not a “hot take” or a fringe opinion. It’s a fact with which any reputable historian or scholar agrees.

Second, this is a perfect example of how nefarious folks operate here on Twitter...

J*mes Linds*y, P*ter Bogh*ssian and others like them purposefully misrepresent something (or just outright ignore what it actually says as they do in this case) and then feed it to their large, angry following so they will attack.


The attacks are rarely about ideas or beliefs, because purposefully misrepresenting someone’s argument prevents that from happening. Instead, the attacks are directed at the person.

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Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details):
https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.