twitter.com/disquiet: Silent Meals, Background Sounds, Robo-whispers

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually each Saturday, collating most of the tweets I made the past week at [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet), which I think of as my public notebook. Some tweets [pop up](https://disquiet.com/2021/11/12/alien-night-club/) in [expanded form](https://disquiet.com/2021/11/10/thumbs-up-to-youtube-dispensing-with-thumbs-down/) or [otherwise](https://disquiet.com/2021/11/09/unspeakable/) on Disquiet.com sooner. It’s personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud.

▰ I am here for your detailed exegesis of the two near-silent, attenuated meal scenes in *Billions* (Season 5, Episode 10: “Liberty”) and *Succession* (Season 3, Episode 4: “Meep-Meep”).

▰ I know it’s total absurd anthropomorphism to say my current laptop’s health decline has sped up significantly since I placed an order for its replacement, but my current laptop’s health decline has sped up significantly since I placed an order for its replacement. (I totally *Colossus: The Forbin Project*-ed myself.)

▰ My phone has a feature not listed on the manufacturer’s website. Tiny raindrops that fall on the screen have a vibrant, hyperreal, kaleidoscope quality to them.

▰ I reposted a Dean Stockwell monologue from *Battlestar Gallactica* on the occasion of his death: [“Way Beyond Electric Sheep.”](https://disquiet.com/2009/02/21/quote-of-the-week-stockwells-supernova/) After doing so, I remembered that I drew from the speech for a short article I wrote for the current nerd sequence by various writers (among them Annie Nocenti, Lucy Sante, Andrew Sempere, and Jessamyn West) at [hilobrow.com](https://www.hilobrow.com/tag/nerd-enthusiasm/), edited by the indefatigable Peggy Nelson. That’ll be out by end of the year.

▰ It says a lot about November 2016 that while everything I said in [this doorbell interview](https://48hills.org/2016/11/ding-dong-aesthetics/) with me (by Marke Bieschke, who [reposted](https://twitter.com/supermarke/status/1458497290042163203) it this week) makes sense to me, I actually barely remember it. Nice to revisit it. Being out and about more of late means I’ve been taking more doorbell photos, and getting back to writing about them.

▰ Listening to the background sounds or “Background Sounds,” as it’s a feature)
on my phone, specifically the “rain” one, and it sounds like I’m eating Pop Rocks while standing at the edge of a rushing river.

▰ “About 15% to 20% of concussions cause persistent sound-processing difficulties,” per Nina Kraus, neurobiology professor ([npr.org](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/11/05/1052508809/after-a-concussion-the-brain-may-no-longer-make-sense-of-sounds?fbclid=IwAR3LsiSG-YDLDOUizwbs-JvhzFdYHoPvMhCeZHLefqfCt8-KeZtOwuXeHlc)). “For those with lingering symptoms, she’s experimenting with something called rhythm therapy, which has its roots in dancing.”

▰ “It’s a VHS tape. It’s, like, full of YouTubes.”

Have I mentioned how much I love the series *City of Ghosts*? It’s on constant rotation at home. One week: “The art is what really makes it.” The next: “It’s the voices.” And then: “No, it’s the script.” And then: “It’s ’cause the show really gets Los Angeles.” And then: “It really gets friendship.” And on and on. So good!

“It’s a photocopier from, like, the 20th century.”

▰ Morning sounds, 7:39am, Friday: unidentifiable (by me) bird flying by, distant car revving up, person by all appearances talking to their dog as they pass by on the street below, ice crackling in coffee, plane overhead (then briefly viewable through the living room window)

▰ Sunset with headlight bleed on the sand from someone’s car in the parking lot, and it’s nice to be able to walk to the ocean and back at the end of the day. And this does have an Ed Ruscha vibe.

The most crazy thing about this photo is not that it is untouched, but that it is exactly what it looked like last night (at around 6pm) at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, here in San Francisco’s Richmond District. There’s no “cameras see things differently” going on here.

And this was 90 degrees (to the left, not temperature) and a few seconds after the previous photo:

▰ Get a prime seat for the greatest show on earth movers:

▰ Marking Britney Spears’ freedom from conservatorship with [the instrumental of “I’m a Slave 4 U,”](https://youtu.be/L1fVabTPy8w) production courtesy of Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams. White noise sand paper shuffle? Check. Robo-whisper chorus? Check. Sour Jolly Rancher synths? Check.

▰ Already lots of great music flowing in from musicians tackling the latest (515th consecutive weekly) Disquiet Junto music composition prompt. If you make music, join in at [disquiet.com/0515](http://disquiet.com/0515). The instructions are in 10 languages, so please share widely. The Junto music prompt instructions have been translated into all these languages:

Portuguese
Italian
Dutch
Polish
Spanish
Greek
Mandarin
German
French
English

No kidding.

▰ Have a good weekend, folks. Got a heap to finish up. My just-arrived copy of Nina Kraus’ book Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World stares at me like a puppy waiting for work to end.

And I think I’m due a frozen yogurt. Anyhow, be well. Back on Twitter Monday.

Disquiet Junto Project 0515: Talking Cure

The Assignment: Write music for a psychotherapist's waiting room.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This week the Disquiet Junto project is available in 10 languages, including English. The translations were done by Pedro Figueiredo (Portuguese), Giacomo Fiore (Italian), Merlijn van Horssen (Dutch), Niki Korth and Elisabeth Ajtay (German), Łukasz Langa (Polish), Clémence de Montgolfier (French), Kamen Nedev (Spanish), Vassilis Poulantzas (Greek), and Van (Mandarin). And major thanks to Alexis Martinez Felix.

More about the group exhibition this is part of at [thebigconversationspace.org](https://www.thebigconversationspace.org/the-talking-cure/).

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, November 15, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 11, 2021.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0515: Talking Cure
The Assignment: Write music for a psychotherapist’s waiting room.

Step 1. Imagine that you are about to consult a therapist. You are sitting in the waiting room of his/her/their office.

Step 2. Picture some comfortable chairs, abstract artworks on the wall, and some large plants in the corners of the room. The perfect music for this moment is playing out of a high quality, vintage-looking speaker. You are ready for your appointment.

Step 3. Create a piece of music that you imagine hearing in this situation. The duration of the piece is up to you. If you are OK with your work potentially being excerpted, please license it with a CC license that permits derivative works (i.e., any CC license that does not include ND, “no derivative works”).

Background: Selected results from this assignment will be included in the soundtrack of an experimental video series The Talking Cure, currently being produced by visual artists The Big Conversation Space. The Talking Cure will be projected in the group exhibition The Real Show at the contemporary art museum CAC Brétigny, France from January through April 2022 and broadcast on YouTube. The video series will also feature the Disquiet Junto through interviews with Marc Weidenbaum and other Disquiet Junto participants and supporters. The Junto participants whose work is included will be credited by name in the videos.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0515” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0515” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0515-talking-cure/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0515-talking-cure/)

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, November 15, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 11, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track is up to you. Tracks selected for inclusion in the project soundtrack may be excerpted.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0515” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 515th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Talking Cure (The Assignment: Write music for a psychotherapist’s waiting room) — at: https://disquiet.com/0515/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: [https://disquiet.com/junto/](https://disquiet.com/junto/)

Subscribe to project announcements here: [https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/)

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0515-talking-cure/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0515-talking-cure/)

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.

Image credit: Lamont Hall, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. Waiting room, 1956. Public domain.

Continue reading “Disquiet Junto Project 0515: Talking Cure”

Thumbs Up to YouTube Dispensing with Thumbs Down

As discussed previously in "Speaking Privately to the Algorithm"

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

“YouTube has announced that it’ll be hiding public dislike counts on videos across its site, starting today,” reports Mitchell Clark in the Verge ([“YouTube gives dislikes the thumbs-down, hides public counts.”](https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773299/youtube-dislike-button-hide-public-count-numbers-small-creator-protection))

This is good. The dislike button on YouTube has long been a distraction. It usually takes the form to the viewer of something along the lines of “Who are the 3 people who disliked this versus the 840 who liked it?”

YouTube experimented with this move earlier in the year, as, also at the Verge, Ian Carlos Campbell reported, in a piece titled [“YouTube is experimenting with hiding dislikes to protect creators’ well-being.”](https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/30/22358992/youtube-hiding-dislikes-experiment-creator-review-bomb) I do think that article’s framing of the situation was mistaken, in that I don’t think it’s about “creators’ well-being,” at least not entirely.

I pushed for this back in 2019, in a piece titled [“Speaking Privately to the Algorithm,”](https://disquiet.com/2019/05/25/speaking-privately-to-the-algorithm/) where I asked, “What happens when we assume that always stating our opinion is in anyone’s best interest?”

I think it comes down to this, as I wrote at the time: The tools have trained us to let them know what we think, because it’s in our best interest (to train our flavor of the Algorithm). But is it in anyone else’s interest that you found the given musician’s music uninteresting?

And as for creators’ “well-being,” I’d wager that the dislikes count may actually go up, now that people won’t have any concern about a public reverberation of their rating. They’ll just click a down thumb as they do on Netflix and elsewhere, to register a personal preference, speaking personal truth to the Algorithm.