
Alien Signals - gala8y
https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/alien-signals/
======
akamoonknight
This isn't exactly the same, and isn't a new thought, but is at least
tangentially related. One of my memories is around finding my dad's record
collection and seeing the music he and my mom would listen to. There weren't
any mind-blowing secrets, but it felt like a window into a world I didn't know
about before and somehow was a slightly formative experience. I don't know
what that experience looks like in a world with subscription services where
there's nothing to be stumbled upon by others. There's fewer bookshelves or
movie collections to leaf through at a friends house everything is guarded by
a password and hidden away, there's less opportunity to stumble across that
secret hidden collection and that feels like a little bit of a loss to me.
Probably just me getting older and complaining about the good ole days though
haha.

~~~
karmelapple
Great point! We stayed at an Airbnb about a year ago, and part of the fun was
seeing the record collection they had, along with a record player we could
use. We queued up Jolene by Dolly Parton, some live Allman Brothers Band, Meet
the Beatles... it was a great reminder of the experience, and also a way to
get to know the host’s musical tastes.

Is there some equivalent where I could say, “Here’s what I listen to the most”
? Seems like some kind of fun little utility opportunity... maybe even just a
publicly-shared playlist of top-played songs / albums?

~~~
JKCalhoun
I never followed through: had the idea to make my own "TV channel" at home
with various ripped DVD movies, television. Maybe "Twilight Zone" on Friday
night at 9:00 PM followed by an old horror film. It would be always "serving"
in real time, unable to be paused or queued up. You "tuned in" if there was
something you wanted to watch. No binge-watching: wait until next Friday for
the next episode.

This was my idea for raising my kids with "TV" but not TV if you know what I
mean. No crap, no commercials.

Would still be fun to do. And now I am inspired to try a "radio station". You
know there is a ton of "old time radio" on archive.org. CBS Radio Mystery Hour
on Saturday night? (Wouldn't want to compete with Twilight Zone's Friday night
spot.)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Not quite what you're describing but...

DI.FM does streaming only, no queuing or making your own ay lists.

A subscription comes with full access to their Jazz and Rock sites too. Well
over 100 channels.

Not affiliated in any way, just a happy long term customer.

------
beaner
I remember there used to be this old AM late night coast-to-coast radio show
that had the strangest topics sometimes. I only occasionally tuned in by
accident on the hours-long drive back to college from home. It was always when
it was dark and the highway was empty and endless yellow highway street lights
were all you could see.

It was like an x-files for radio. It was the first time I'd heard of Bob
Lazar. It was mysterious and inquisitive and something you fell into
unexpectedly.

Wish I remembered what it was called. I feel like that sense of mystery and
discovery is hard to replicate today. Everything's at your fingertips.

~~~
Galaxity
Literally "Coast to Coast AM"! The host was named Art Bell. The show is still
on the radio with the host George Noory.

The show is a bit different now, I don't listen to it often so I could be
wrong but it seems to me that Art Bell always had a bit of a smirk or wryness,
while Noory just comes across completely serious. Also with Art Bell it was
simpler times, with the more entertaining aliens and cryptozoids and MiB. Now
there is a lot more of the modern political deep state/Q/child trafficking
stuff. Religious fundamentalism always showed up a lot in the "conspiracy
theory" world. Before it would be things like how aliens are actually angels
or something and signs of the rapture. Now you regularly hear guests talking
about how God chose a certain person to clear out the demonic deep state, so
there's a more disturbing undercurrent.

~~~
strictnein
Yeah, Art Bell played it very differently. I believe one day he even mentioned
that he was actually quite a skeptic about all of this stuff.

We still listen to his old Ghost to Ghost episodes on Halloween. Some of the
caller's stories were pretty boring, but some were downright chilling.

~~~
nefitty
I think the contemporary podcast Mysterious Universe has solidly taken the
torch from Art Bell. They always seem to sincerely dance with subjects while
occasionally throwing a wink your way. Their storytelling skills are
phenomenal.

------
na85
When I was a kid in the 90s we had two old walky-talkies, the kind that
predated the digital FRS systems you can buy today. They were the size of a
brick, took 9x AA batteries and the antenna was a solid 3 feet long when fully
extended.

We used to use them to play cops and robbers, but late at night in the summer,
if you fiddled with the squelch settings and the antenna length (and I assume
when the ionosphere was cooperating) I could pick up what in hindsight must
have been some kind of numbers station.

It was a male voice repeating a bunch of nonsensical phrases, most of which
have faded from memory except for something about having Buffalo Soldiers and
then the recording would end with the phrase "I just got downnnnn" where the
word "down" was drawn out in some kind of strange electronic vocal fry, like a
tape recorder running out of batteries. After that it would loop back to the
beginning.

This was in southwestern Ontario in the summer of 1996, maybe 97, and it
thoroughly creeped me out. I've always wanted to figure out what it was.

Alien signals indeed.

~~~
Johnythree
[https://www.numbers-stations.com/articles/numbers-
stations-l...](https://www.numbers-stations.com/articles/numbers-stations-
listener-starter-guide/)

------
01100011
The internet has made so many of my youthful amazements obsolete. I don't
think kids who have been exposed to high speed internet and youtube would find
much interest in exploring HF radio signals or using an acoustic modem to talk
to people on the other side of the world.

That said, the internet has a whole new dark underbelly. If I were young again
and granted the "get out of jail with a slap on the wrist" card again, I'd be
poking at open ports and using an SDR to probe security weaknesses in modern
RF systems. Getting strange music at Tower Records or from anarchist
collectives out of zines has given way to youtube and a thousand other
outlets. The effort may be less but there is still a world to get lost in.

There was a lot of magic in the old days, but it's still there in other ways
now. Maybe the biggest danger is the end of boredom and the torrent of on-
demand dopamine surrounding kids of today.

~~~
mathw
I'm not sure it's the end of boredom. Kids still get bored, even with all this
stuff at their fingertips. I suspect the act of consumption itself becomes
boring, even discovering new things can be boring, and you have to shift
somewhere else. Maybe it's one reason why there are so many kids (and adults)
on the internet creating content of their own. If consumption is boring...
make your own stuff?

------
bentona
Listening to Hearts of Space as a child was my first experience with
"experimental" music - definitely formative.

You can still listen to it online:
[https://v4.hos.com/home](https://v4.hos.com/home)

~~~
eigenhombre
Great link! I have a cassette of HoS I recorded off public radio in the 1990s
and still listen to (perhaps an alien signal for someone down the road who can
still get ahold of the alien technology required to play it). Glad to know
they still have a presence online... (the announcer on my cassette suggests
you look up HoS on The Well or on Gopherspace -- more obsolete(?) alien
technologies...).

------
strictnein
Another place to find "alien signals" back in the day were in comic book shops
and card shops (those that sold various sports cards).

They'd almost always have sections of weird periodicals that were made by
completely unknown people. We used to share them at school, full of
inappropriate content that would probably get kids expelled these days. Also
things like the Anarchist Cookbook (and similar collections) which felt
extremely illegal at the time, but you can pick it up on Amazon now.

I remember one that was dedicated to gruesome crime scene photos and detailed
descriptions of horrific crimes. Half the pictures looked like photocopies of
photocopies, which is far less jarring than what you can find online these
days.

------
scottlocklin
There's all kinds of things which would blow kids minds if they were exposed
to it. A friend of mine who grew up and was (mis)educated in Berkeley was
mind-blown by the old BBC art history documentary Civilization.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxEJn7dWY60](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxEJn7dWY60)

There's a whole lot of British material from the early era of color TV which
makes most of what is watched today look like the low-IQ childish rubbish
(albeit with high production values) it actually is. Compare BBC 1979 "Tinker
Tailor Soldier Spy" with, I dunno, anything made in the last 10 years.

------
bjackman
I like to listen to foreign radio stations on
[http://radio.garden](http://radio.garden). They speak languages I don't
understand and (once you find a good station) play music I'll never hear
again.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
Thanks a lot for that link. I just browsed throug a few stations in Siberia
located hundreds of kilometers away from anything and it is quite an
experience to imagine these places through a radio.

------
PavleMiha
I would say that some of the recommendation engines for media services have
this feeling. Walking home late at night, sometimes it feels like Spotify
recommends a supernaturally appropriate song, a little gift from the robo-
gods.

Or go take a look at the comments for those beats to study and relax to
streams on YouTube, young people seem to sit at home and think about how those
songs connect them with each other.

------
082349872349872
How to get alien signals today: browse art from a different culture. It
doesn't have to be high art. I'm fond of youtube videos.

The surface impressions are available immediately. All the references and set
dressings and context in the literature, however, slowly bubble up over time,
as you learn more about other works and the origin culture.

Delay, distance, and mystery.

(I had a friend in school who remarked that his mother watched exclusively
movies about "two people who love each other but can't marry because they have
different forehead dots." I often think about that phrase while watching non-
bollywood fare, asking myself how the director+team have communicated the
colours of the virtual dots.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF6W1XD25Dc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF6W1XD25Dc)

e.g. 2:08 marks the switch from V- to T-pronouns. As for the band's name, it's
ambiguous, and I still don't know which is the intended referent for native
speakers.)

------
totetsu
I remember the magic of sending away for and then getting a stack of Ubuntu
Warty Warthog install cds in the mail from Brazil. In all it's dirt brown
glory.

Listening to wfmu is a great source of altmusic these days. These shows among
others: \-
[https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/SN](https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/SN) \-
[https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/SF](https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/SF) \-
[https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/PM](https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/PM)

------
hoorayimhelping
I saw John Darnielle in a coffee shop in Durham, NC a few years ago. Me and a
coworker walked up to him and told him we loved the Mountain Goats. He said
thanks and immediately started talking about Durham and how great it was. He
talked about the vibe and the community and how weird a place it was. What a
really cool guy.

------
bdowling
The radio work of Joe Frank [0][1] often had a similar surreal and captivating
quality.

[0] [https://www.joefrank.com/](https://www.joefrank.com/)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Frank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Frank)

------
darepublic
I remember discovering reruns of coast to coast AM and listening to them while
driving around at two in the morning.

------
bonestamp2
The closest thing I can think of that emulates a similar feeling today is the
"group buy". Kids (of all ages) see new/interesting things online that aren't
mass produced and they can kickstart or otherwise pay for a spot on the
next/only run of this item.

------
rektide
I like the sense of seeking in the world that the author speaks to, that's how
it came out to me.

------
krebs_liebhaber
The radio - one of the last refuges of opaqueness - is still alive and well. I
recall tuning into a random station a few months ago and hearing some insane
industro-psychedelic drone-jazz (think Coil plays "Bitch's Brew").

------
scottrogowski
I love the very slowly changing hue of your site. It's very artistic. When I
started, it was a golden brown, by the time I reached the bottom, it was a
lime green. I thought I might be crazy until I spotted in in dev tools.

------
msla
I remember an alien signal from the Internet:

[https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.wobegon/c/1kGvHOu-
hEI](https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.wobegon/c/1kGvHOu-hEI)

> The safety and serenity of Alaska provided an atmosphere conducive to
> deprogramming, despite the pandemonium that ensued. Mark Phillips was the
> first man who not only did not abuse us, but cared for our welfare and well
> being.

rec.arts.wobegon Dec 28, 2001, 2:32:26 PM

That's a snippet of the Epilogue from "Trance-Formation of America" by Cathy
O'Brien, a book about how Cathy O'Brien is either a schizophrenic or acts like
one for publishers. It got spammed across Usenet right when I was into it the
most, reading alt.religion.scientology and alt.fan.cecil-adams and a few
others, so I got slapped across the face with it one night completely
unexpected. I've since come across stranger, such as the QAnon cult, but that
was my first taste of High Weirdness.

~~~
ydau
You might also enjoy “Ted the Caver”

[http://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/index.html](http://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/index.html)

~~~
Sosh101
That was great. Pity there's not more.

------
booleandilemma
Browsing shoutcast fm through winamp kinda gave me the experience I think the
author is talking about. There was some weird stuff on there.

I remember a station that played ambient music that was mixed with voice
recordings from nasa astronauts.

~~~
bityard
quite possibly this:
[https://somafm.com/spacestation/](https://somafm.com/spacestation/)

~~~
booleandilemma
Yep, you got it :)

------
joezydeco
So maybe the next time we all get hyped up for another Apple keynote we can
reflect on that sense of excitement, anticipation and - _holy shit is this
still possible?_ \- delayed gratification.

