maegul

I only discovered the River Songs audio piece for the last few nights (it played just after sunset around the Yarra every day, bouncing sounds and singing around all the buildings around the Yarra) ... and I honestly really loved it, easily one of my favourite urban art pieces ever.

Otherwise, I felt like this round was somewhat underwhelming and underfunded from what I saw, which feels like a trend with these White Night / Rising things ... seems like they have a ~3 year lifetime before they just dwindle to being underwhelming? But I didn't really dig into this one or see much of it. I'd guess the works along the river put a constraint on this year? But still ...

Any thoughts? Is it something only central/inner dwellers tend to notice?

I never got around to watching it when it came out, and I think I'd completely missed the critical reception and box-office failure it received. Which saddened me to read after the watch, I have to say, as I was really happy to have watched it.

For those who don't know the film, I personally liked Roger Ebert's review (with whom I generally vibed). It was polarising, and genuinely confusing if you want to "understand" a film, while also potentially being vacuous and overwrought. I'm not going to say it was a good film or recommend it to people. If it's for you, you'll know. All I'll say is that it was, for me, a very good kind of film and generally well executed. Some ambitious film ideas and high level or broad concepts put to screen pretty full-throttle.

I haven't seen a film in this general category of viewing experience for a while (probably entirely on me). Last probably would have been 3000 Years of Longing and maybe Twin Peaks S3 (I count that as an 18 hr film), and then Aronofsky's The Fountain (to which Cloud Atlas is probably the closest sibling I can think of).

Without getting nostalgic about films or critical of the current era (I'm not on top of film enough to do that) ... I was certainly reminded that I need to revise my film/TV diet. It re-affirmed for me a sense that films are more powerful than TV and that this era of TV has been productionised in a way that seems to suck the art of it.

As for what the film was actually about, I think it's much like 2001 A Space Odyssey, it's both obvious and confused/inexplicable. I'm sure there's a whole technical breakdown one could read or endeavour to create oneself, but I'm happy to have watched it once and perhaps revisit it again later to try to pick up on all of the connections I'm guessing they wove through the film, in large part because I think that's in line with the spirit of the film which I'm happy to embrace.

Beyond all of that, but kinda connected I think, was to reminisce about the Wachowskis' career, where whatever their flaws, I think I prefer them making things to not ... there's a certain essence of good-hearted and ambitious geek-dom to their stuff that I'm just happy to watch (including Jupiter Ascending and Matrix 4).

For those who know Rick Beato, you may already have opinions one way or another. Generally I welcome his channel to YouTube.

He has been beating this AI and "computerised music" drum for a while though. I was grateful to see him join the dots between computerised music and AI just taking over: "a computer makes better computer music than a human".

It's a pattern I think I see in technological development. While for us or socially it may look like inflection points change everything, there is likely to be a continuous arc of technology that just happens to mean different things to us as it goes. Electrical technology for music -> electrical technological music ... was always a clear trajectory ... and that people are already accustomed to the hyper-polished "digital" sound of AI music because of the past 20 years just confirms that.

Nicely executed VFX experiment (they have a companion video on how they did this and what their motivation was, which is interesting if you're into VFX stuff).

Sounds like I'm trying to be controversial, but I'm really not. Nor a Luka hater (I'm a fan). I'm just thinking out loud here ...

It's just that watching the first two games of the finals, I can't shake the feeling that the Celtics make him look small. Not physically, but in terms of the power he has over the game, even though he's probably the best or top 2 of the players on the court.

It just feels like being 1 way and ball heavy is too often just too much of a weakness, especially while watching Brown, Jrue and Porzingis (and even Tatum managing his slump) be impactful all over the court in ways that connect together as a team.

Meanwhile Luka is too often getting frustrated with his shot not going down or not getting the call he wanted and clearly wanting to wait for the next offensive possession to have another go at his favourite moves (though being frustrated with his team makes sense, but TBF he's had some frustrating turn overs too).

Like, it feels like this finals could be the beginning of a story about Luka being this mercurial and prodigious offensive player that never wanted to (or could) take care of his weaknesses enough to get a ring.

I'm not calling it or anything ... it's just what I'm coming away from the first two games with ... in part because while the Celtics (especially with Porzingis in) are the better team I don't think they've played well and have still made it look clearly one-sided while it doesn't feel like Luka is a miraculous hero who just needs some help.

I feel like Hot Fuzz and Edgar Wright appreciation in youtube cinema critic or analysis videos are basically a meme by now (eg Every Frame a Painting did one 10 years ago ... shit I'm getting old) ...

but I'm a fan, so give me another serving any day.

Also this had things I didn't know about.

Some of the visual/directing references they dig out (and simply demonstrate through video comparison) are had no idea about (however accurate/intentional they are).

And I had no idea that Hot Fuzz is in many ways basically a remake/perfection of an indy short film Wright made as a late teen ("Dead Right" (1993), which has no wikipedia page, but seems to be up on youtube)

and yea ... I hate the guy's voice too ... still they're the only one I've seen keeping up the "serious video essay" format well and I appreciate that a lot TBH

I'm sure this will get clarified in the release notes for 19.4, and I'm probably annoyingly jumping the gun ... I'm just curious.

Otherwise, I find it cool to see this feature come out!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16562180

I'd certainly seen this exoplanet somewhere in my mainstream news world somewhere ... so nice to see a breakdown here from "Dr Becky" about how the science isn't so clear cut.

Anyone else able to provide insight on what the possible outcomes of the newly acquired data will be?

EDIT: what's with the downvotes? Genuinely confused ... is there some rule/culture against youtube videos or something?

I'd certainly seen this exoplanet somewhere in my mainstream news world somewhere ... so nice to see a breakdown here from "Dr Becky" about how the science isn't so clear cut.

Anyone else able to provide insight on what the possible outcomes of the newly acquired data will be?

Seeing more "cake days" pop up lately, it seems we're approaching (or in) the 1 yr anniversary of the Reddit migration.

It's kinda sweet actually that we all get this reminder of it with the pickup in "cakedays".

It reminds of my seeing the wave happen. I was on lemmy before the migration (not a flex, I joined mastodon in the twitter migration and explored the other fediverse platforms around looking for a reddit/forum alternative) ... and followed a bunch of communities over on my mastodon account. Early last year many of these communities were fairly quiet (or at least quieter than now) and so I didn't really see any of them in my mastodon feed. I'd actually forgotten that I'd followed them. I'd heard word about the API stuff over on Reddit, but I knew something was happening when I started seeing more and more posts in my masto feed that confused me ... it wasn't clear where they were coming from. Double checking I'd see that they came from lemmy communities I'd forgotten about ... and I realised I was seeing lemmy literally come alive!

All these cakedays are kinda the same thing ... a sort of internet equivalent of a weather event or season.

A nice comment in a forum thread (extracted below, but also see the shorter more facetious version below that) about references and their lifetimes in structs. Here is a link to the full thread over on users.rust-lang.org

I feel like I needed to hear or read this, and I feel like this sort of clarification is not put front and centre enough in rust learning material (as others in the thread say too). "The Book" certainly doesn't seem interested in clarifying perspectives like this.

The Comment

Other languages use term "reference" for storing things "by reference" or just referencing any object anywhere in general. It's not like that in Rust.

What Rust calls "reference" is a much more specific thing, that is no so general-purpose. It has a narrower, restrictive usage. Rust references are more like read-only or write-exclusive locks. They make their target unmovable and immutable for entire duration of their existence. They can't exist on their own, only as a counterpart of an owned value.

References in structs also make the whole struct itself temporary, and everything that touches that struct becomes temporary and tied to the scope of the borrowed value that started it.

If these restrictions (that cause you fight with the borrow checker) aren't what you want to achieve, then you don't want temporary references.

99% of the time when you need to store something "by reference", Box (or Arc or String or PathBuf or Vec or some other owned type) is the right answer.

Note that &T and Box<T> have identical representation in memory — a pointer. They differ by ownership.

In Short

From here

You're not allowed to use references in structs until you think Rust is easy. They're the evil-hardmode of Rust that will ruin your day.

😉

Use Box or Arc to store things in structs "by reference". Temporary borrows don't do what you think they do.