Marvellously beautiful TED talk

[youtubehd]xMj_P_6H69g[/youtubehd]

amanda fucking palmer

fuck amanda palmer

fuck ted

http://www.prefixmag.com/news/amanda-palmer-cant-afford-to-pay-her-backup-band/69017/

Saw this one recently:

http://youtu.be/Ks-_Mh1QhMc

Quite interesting.

Amanda Palmer is awesome. I liked her project with Jason Webley, but I pretty much enjoy whatever Webley does... dude is the most genuine musician I've ever met.

That Amy Cuddy talk is pretty interesting too, I had to watch that for a public speaking course. What's your deal Lopez? TED too mainstream for you?

waiting for steve albini's ted talk

  On 4/2/2013 at 1:42 AM, zaphod said:

waiting for steve albini's ted talk

They're still arranging for a completely analog taping. Even if that's figured out there's the issue of microphone placement.

  On 4/2/2013 at 1:29 AM, dr lopez said:

fuck amanda palmer

 

fuck ted

  On 4/2/2013 at 5:07 AM, Hoodie said:

 

  On 4/2/2013 at 1:29 AM, dr lopez said:

fuck amanda palmer

 

fuck ted

i fucked ted.

---

But seriously, these ted talks are getting ridiculous, they are turning more into cheesy motivational speeches rather than talks about technology and science, etc.

They semi-banned Graham Hancock;s talk but they allow this useless bullshit, who cares about this woman, i dont even know what the hell she is talking about or what she is trying to get to (her point has been made before by a million other people we get it) and her eyebrows freak me out.

these talks seem to exist solely to get reposted on reddit or facebook by the same people who post inspirational quotes. i feel like i'm reading a business book about managing by not managing or some nonsense.

That Graham Hancock shit was ridiculous and tons of people are writing off ted lately it seems, but I still find interesting talks on there from time to time. Like this one from last week: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_anderson_your_brain_is_more_than_a_bag_of_chemicals.html

  On 4/2/2013 at 5:15 AM, Joseph said:

 

  On 4/2/2013 at 5:07 AM, Hoodie said:

 

  On 4/2/2013 at 1:29 AM, dr lopez said:

fuck amanda palmer

 

fuck ted

kinda...well yeah actually

First and foremost, I don't care for her music.

That aside, her take on artistry. It took a lot for me to get past "after attending an outstanding liberal arts college, I became a street performer!" and keep watching. It's the complete opposite of pop star and rock n' roll bullshit, and that's great and all, but that's true for thousands if not millions of other musicians. She doesn't make remarkable music. There are other insanely artsy, theatrical musicians like her, artists like Gorgol Bordello and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and they're far more interesting.

A lot of her talk was positive, but I can't get over her overall attitude. She comes off as pretentious, self-righteous, and unintentionally egotistical. It's inherently condescending to musicians who have 9 to 5 jobs and literally have to make their art a hobby they sacrifice time to make or underprivileged musicians who play gigs and hell, do street art, because that's the only fucking chance they'll have to get their art out and make a living. Instead she's still an art student who can't take criticism. She raised 1.2 million dollars to make an album and asked for touring musicians to play for free "to participate and enjoy the happiness she gives them." She considers that "giving back." Fuck that. I still agree with Albini.

  Quote

I have no fundamental problem with either asking your fans to pay you to make your record or go on tour or play for free in your band or gather at a mud pit downstate and sell meth and blowjobs to each other. I wouldn't stoop to doing any of them myself, but horses for courses. The reason I don't appeal to other people in this manner is that all those things can easily pay for themselves, and I value self-sufficiency and independence, even (or especially) from an audience.

 

If your position is that you aren't able to figure out how to do that, that you are forced by your ignorance into pleading for donations and charity work, you are then publicly admitting you are an idiot, and demonstrably not as good at your profession as Jandek, Moondog, GG Allin, every band ever to go on tour without a slush fund or the kids who play on buckets downtown.

 

Pretty much everybody on earth has a threshold for how much to indulge an idiot who doesn't know how to conduct herself, and I think Ms Palmer has found her audience's threshold.

  On 4/2/2013 at 5:40 AM, zaphod said:

these talks seem to exist solely to get reposted on reddit or facebook by the same people who post inspirational quotes. i feel like i'm reading a business book about managing by not managing or some nonsense.

yep, they just seem like glorified time-wasters with very little substance to me. Perhaps they used to be better. I guess there are worse things on the internet, like child porn.

  On 4/2/2013 at 5:40 AM, zaphod said:

these talks seem to exist solely to get reposted on reddit or facebook by the same people who post inspirational quotes. i feel like i'm reading a business book about managing by not managing or some nonsense.

That's why this stuff is so popular in places like reddit, no one there has any social skills so they are amazed and stupefied by simple things like body language etc. Didn't watch the videos btw, I've seen about a dozen ted talks and they were all a waste of time.

  On 4/2/2013 at 1:42 AM, zaphod said:

waiting for steve albini's ted talk

steve albini who snubbed idm? Fuck him. Dudes who play guitars and think that it is "better" or "harder" or "more pure" than electronic music...

i was referring to the quote posted a few posts up, where he addresses palmer's idiocy in appealing to fans to pay for her to indulge her artistic whims. i don't always agree with albini and his take on electronic music is basically as ignorant as you can get, but he talks sense occasionally.

also this woman is currently married to neil gaiman, so i have basically no sympathy for her money woes.

  On 4/2/2013 at 6:32 AM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

 

  On 4/2/2013 at 1:42 AM, zaphod said:

waiting for steve albini's ted talk

 

steve albini who snubbed idm? Fuck him. Dudes who play guitars and think that it is "better" or "harder" or "more pure" than electronic music...

  On 4/2/2013 at 6:34 AM, zaphod said:

i was referring to the quote posted a few posts up, where he addresses palmer's idiocy in appealing to fans to pay for her to indulge her artistic whims. i don't always agree with albini and his take on electronic music is basically as ignorant as you can get, but he talks sense occasionally.

 

also this woman is currently married to neil gaiman, so i have basically no sympathy for her money woes.

Albini is a very knowledgeable and talented musician, engineer and journalist but he's also very stubborn and abrasive. I don't think he has moments as uninformed annoying as say, Henry Rollins' infamous "shitty rave music" rant though, the more you read and listen to Albini in his interviews the more you realize he's listened to and informed about things beyond his niche of analog recorded indie rock, even if he doesn't advocate or support them. He's almost always in the headlines for the most controversial of his statements. Him doing a Ted talk would be a bit pointless when he penned infamous articles like this one years ago.

As for Amanda Palmer, I was quite harsh earlier - most of my rant is targeted on how much I didn't like much of her TED talk's underlying tone or her general presence, no ill will on her or her fans though. She's not untalented, I just personally find her annoying. Overall, I didn't disagree with her fundamental conclusion, I'm instead unconvinced of her personal argument regarding this topic.

  On 4/2/2013 at 1:34 AM, Braintree said:

Saw this one recently:

 

[media]http://youtu.be/Ks-_Mh1QhMc[/media]

 

Quite interesting.

Pretty moving part from 16mins on. It's her personal story which hits the spot, in my case.

There was an interesting article in the New Yorker where they profiled some dude going through the rigorous rehearsal process behind developing a TED talk and how they aim to maximize that standing ovation moment.

Now it's time to say FUCK THE NEW YORKER.

We are all powerless pity creatures when it comes to the brute force of neuro-marketing techniques. FUCK PEOPLE!

I don't agree that asking for a donation in retrun for a performance or an album is a bad thing, is still a fair exchange if the other party is satisfied with what they got in return, even if all they are after is a little ego padding. How do you think busking works ? What about all those crowd funding sites that have popped up in the last couple of years, that's a similar deal isn't it.

Still though i don't like the vibe off this woman if like someone said she, was asking local musicians to play for free when she was getting paid. That's just cuntly.

--

As to why TED talks have died. Heh, maybe it's for the same reason that places like io9 have died. I won't go any further into that, for reputations sake.

  On 4/2/2013 at 6:20 AM, Rabid said:

 

  On 4/2/2013 at 5:40 AM, zaphod said:

these talks seem to exist solely to get reposted on reddit or facebook by the same people who post inspirational quotes. i feel like i'm reading a business book about managing by not managing or some nonsense.

 

That's why this stuff is so popular in places like reddit, no one there has any social skills so they are amazed and stupefied by simple things like body language etc. Didn't watch the videos btw, I've seen about a dozen ted talks and they were all a waste of time.

there are plenty of really good, really interesting TED talks in the archives. Most of them are primarily from the era before TED exploded on the net (which I personally think was the result of the 2006 TED conference, which included Jeff Han's revolutionary-at-the-time talk on touch interfaces and Ken Robinson's talk on school killing creativity) and the ubiquity of TEDx (of which I've attended a couple at my school, and while there were some interesting talks, there was nothing truly revolutionary). The level of quality is probably inversely correlated with the spread of popularity.

Anyways, Bobby McFerrin's "talk" is one of the better ones related to music.

http://www.ted.com/talks/bobby_mcferrin_hacks_your_brain_with_music.html

Hans Rosling's talk on stats is amazing:

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

Freeman Dyson's talk on looking for life is wonderfully inspiring:

http://www.ted.com/talks/freeman_dyson_says_let_s_look_for_life_in_the_outer_solar_system.html

Dan Ariely's talk on decision making is intriguing:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html

search around, there are some seriously great talks on the site.

This is still my favorite Ted Talk:

"Fuck it!"