{"id":255689,"date":"2023-06-07T09:28:03","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T13:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=255689"},"modified":"2023-06-07T09:28:03","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T13:28:03","slug":"the-band-that-got-paid-for-not-making-any-sound-at-all-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2023\/06\/07\/the-band-that-got-paid-for-not-making-any-sound-at-all-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The band that got paid for not making any sound at all"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Dan Lewis: “You\u2019ve almost certainly never heard of the band Vulfpeck. They\u2019re a Los Angeles-based funk band. It\u2019s hard to make a living releasing songs (or any media) to a small audience, since Spotify pays about $0.007 per song play to independent artists. So if your song gets 100,000 plays in a year? That\u2019ll earn $700 or about two bucks a day. But in the early part of 2014, Vulfpeck came up with a plan<\/a>, starting with a brand new album. The album, called Sleepify, is ten songs in total and each song is just over 30 seconds. And each track is silent. The band realized that Spotify paid out that seven-tenths of a cent every time a listener played one of the band\u2019s songs, so long as the listener played at least 30 seconds of the song. The song itself didn\u2019t matter.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What it’s like to have synesthesia, where numbers and letters are different colours<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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From Meera Khare at Open Mind magazine: “My consciousness is a constant stream of color. Whether I\u2019m reading, texting a friend, or doing math homework, every letter or number I see comes swathed in its own characteristic hue. My 7\u2019s are forest green, L\u2019s are orange, and both A\u2019s and 4\u2019s are hot pink. Growing up, I did not realize my experience was atypical until I read A Mango Shaped Space<\/em>. The book tells the story of 13-year old Mia Winchell, who experiences synesthesia<\/a>, a mingling of the senses. The book described my experience perfectly except for one thing \u2013 my colors were different. Since then, I\u2019ve wondered what gives every synesthete their own unique associations; why does the K look lavender to me, but blue for someone else? (Editorial note<\/em>: This one interested me in particular because my wife has synesthesia)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

A psychedelic drug that doesn’t cause hallucinations could help cure Parkinson’s<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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From Columbia University: “Ariadne is a psychedelic drug that was studied by the pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers, but research on the drug was abandoned in the 1970s. In early unpublished trials, the drug was reported to have had wide-ranging effects. These include remission of symptoms in people with schizophrenia and people with Parkinson\u2019s disease and improved cognition in older subjects<\/a>. A new paper uses data from past clinical trials, and outlines a hypothesis for how Ariadne and other similar compounds manage to exert clinical effects without hallucinations. The article also reports on a test run that was conducted on a mouse that carried all of the major hallmarks of Parkinson\u2019s disease, whose symptoms were rapidly corrected.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A solar-powered clock made of Lego will keep time for millions of years<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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From Jason Kottke: “Brick Technology built a solar-powered Lego clock that will keep time for a billion years. It’s got various displays in the style of an astronomical clock so you can keep track of seconds, hours, months, centuries, and even galactical years (the amount of time the Sun takes to orbit the center of the galaxy). The clock is powered by solar energy, and tilts throughout the day to keep facing the sun. The obvious thing<\/a> that sprung to mind watching this was The Clock of the Long Now, a 10,000-year clock being constructed inside a mountain in West Texas. But I also thought of Arthur Ganson’s Machine With Concrete, which utilizes extreme gear ratios to turn an input of 200 rpm into a gear that turns only once every 2 trillion years.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story behind director David Lynch\u2019s long lost Star Trek: TNG pilot<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Damien Walter writes: “As his screen adaption of DUNE was undergoing final post-production special effects, David Lynch was approached by Paramount as the hot new scifi director to helm the studios upcoming Star Trek : The Next Generation. Lynch\u2019s 3 h 17 minute pilot episode was screened to a select audience of Paramount executives, major advertisers and committed fans of the original Star Trek in early 1984<\/a>. The executive producer in charge of the production was fired the same day. Lynch\u2019s choice to have every line of dialogue recorded then reversed at half speed via tape-to-tape was defended by some as \u201cclassic Lynch\u201d. The only documentary evidence of it\u2019s existence are a small collection of hard-to-find stills harvested from a Betamax bootleg.” (Editorial note<\/em>: For the record, some of the commenters on Reddit think this<\/a> is a hoax)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Longevity enthusiasts want to create their own independent state<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Jessica Hamzelu for the MIT Technology Review: “I\u2019m in Montenegro for a gathering of longevity enthusiasts, people interested in extending human life through various biotechnology approaches. One attendee, with whom I ended up sharing a cross-border taxi ride, told me half of his luggage was \u201csupplements and powders.\u201d Everyone is super friendly, and the sense of optimism is palpable. Everyone I speak to is confident we\u2019ll be able to find<\/a> a way to slow or reverse aging. And they have a bold plan to speed up progress, including perhaps even establishing an independent state. Aging is \u201cmorally bad,\u201d they argue, and it\u2019s a problem that needs to be solved. They see existing regulations as roadblocks to progress and call for a different approach.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bee hummingbird is two inches long and can fly at 48 kilometres per hour<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

via the Journal of Art in Society on Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Dan Lewis: “You\u2019ve almost certainly never heard of the band Vulfpeck. They\u2019re a Los Angeles-based funk band. It\u2019s hard to make a living releasing songs (or any media) to a small audience, since Spotify pays about $0.007 per song play to independent artists. So if your song gets 100,000 plays in a year? That\u2019ll … <\/p>\n

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