In the 70's you had the likes of Bob Dylan, 80's with U2, 90's with maybe Public Enemy. But lately there does not seem to be any artists out with popular protest music. Is what I am seeing real? If so, what has happened?
The mainstream pop music scene is largely (but not entirely) devoid of authenticity, and you need authenticity to make protest music. Mostly what gets made is optimized for commercialization rather than actual communication.
To a degree, this has always been true. Even in the days when protest music got mainstream attention, most of the music wasn't of that sort. I do think it's much worse now, though.
However, there is a lot more protest music being made than you may think. You just have to look past the big names and -- even better -- go see small artists performing live.
There are quite a few protest bands but they don't have the level of popularity as Rage against the machine, Bob Dylan or Public Enemy. Pop music is more of a commodity now.
I see Billy Bragg had something to share on FB about recent events as do many older artists.
Maybe you saw what happened at Glastonbury this year with Kneecap and Bob Vylan.
Personally I enjoy Idles, I went to see them last year and they had good energy and try to be politically active while spreading "the love".
One of my all time favourite bands New Model Army are still going and releasing music. I don't think they ever made it big after effectively being cancelled before it was popular releasing the single 51st State of America.
You getting old, so you only get to know mainstream artists, and indies cannot get popular because of how the internet centralizes things, and avoids making indies have real world experiences together and gain traction.
> indies cannot get popular because of how the internet centralizes things
Are you joking? Some mainstream artists got their start on YouTube. Many indie artists perform there and have followings, and that is just one potential site to share your work. Sure, to become a household name you gotta grow from there and it is a tough road, but the ability to put out your music is crazy stronger today than in days of yore. I think you have an overly high bar set for what it means to "get popular"
The long tail says we're not at the mercy of radio; we're still allowed to listen to the ones you know. I went to a certain CSNY song the other day and the comment section was full of people from 2026.
It's not popular in your bubble. Protest-music still exists, it sometimes even gains some attention, but they can't compete with all the big professional feelgood-products and the social-slop. And I assume, the platforms have now more political filters, making it even harder to spread. Political content seems to have significantly dried up on certain platforms, since the orange king reigns.
Hank Sr. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgHId2tg6dU
Hank Jr. - MAGA (at least he done sung "cold cold ground", bless his heart)
Hank iii - trying to sit between two chairs? (props the assjack on the fence?)
"Wordcel" sounds awfully like "stochastic parrot"? (says someone who's been trying and failing for months to get LLMs to rotate shapes. At least some of them have a good "sense of humour")
I still want to get some shape rotating done this week, so I'll put off descending into Hank Jr. et. al. for another few days. Thanks; "mighty white" of you!
Facilis descensus Averno:
Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est.
EDIT: according to "Google AI", Cowboy Carter (millions) massively outsold MAGA rap (10's of thousands).
(but that last vid doesn't have so many views; maybe it was even too MAGA for MAGA?)
then again, in light of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46644795 maybe it'd be more effective to address the concerns of the centre right and centre left, than to bother with trolling the far right?
missouri, I believe (Midland, TX, is the closest I'd know)
Not sure RtC is well-coded for those who wear "Curious George" ball caps*, but they might well be as welcoming as they advertise. I'd envision these 2 more likely at a Willy [Nelson] show?
-The church revisits their Ordnung every six months or so to see if it needs updating
-The more conservative the affiliation, for instance, the more likely the teenagers are to smoke, drink, listen to music, and even engage in the traditional practice of bed courtship or “bundling”
GoogAI says that "REPL interactions can be viewed as traces in a monoid trace algebra, where the quantale helps characterise the behaviour of timed processes over time"
Skimming over its citation, it seems that they may have confused "REPL" with "Replication"?
Could the pun in "Trace" be enjoyed?
How would you strengthen this divination?
(Chengyu via Hiroyuki Nishimura:
Pause roofing switch nails)
Not Anabaptist (she had to be bribed to attend her confirmation* :), but we probably do live more {low-tech, at the mercy of agriculture} than the median HNer?
Wouldn't call it viable yet, but I had a stupid grin at the notion of "unintentional self-trolling" (compare with the earlier self-joke discussions that I had no emo-reaction to)
Fucking hell la HN!!
-takes PG's "unintentional moderates"/Nietzsche's cold-shower to a whole new [tragi-comic] level?
-the unexpected dvote from PH or his loyalists felt like I'd unintentionally self-trolled myself
(There might be an upvote that I haven't accounted for..)
Upcoming fencing chengyu?
U: re: my best take on why the hypothetical JHC (compare w Hillel/Mahatma) wasn't on the spectrum-- however he might have been "enby" like PH says
just one of a torrent of mud here, tho this particular take could point us to the hidden gold?
U3: To what extent is the Swiss Inner Party, if it exists, NOT a team of rationalists? (I haven't tried answering my own Q yet, but it might be MUCH easier for me ;)
U4: at the risk of too many knobs [that you might have trouble merging], troll the centre-left and centre-right AT THE SAME TIME.
You know the famous "sweat saves blood, but brains save all" of that famous fennec
(Sorry Thucydides!!)
it's not the best source of trollings but I couldn't resist :)
U3: looks pretty rationalist to me so far. (otoh our proles recently voted for a 13th old age pension without first demanding an accounting of from where it would be paid) I especially like how the referendum process allows decoupling recognition of problems from attempts at their solution. Certainly being a small country (pace Tito?) helps avoid the temptation of monumentalism. see also https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvsimages/Cultural_Map_202...
IKEA: IK was Kamprad, who is EA? (aha, not who but what: Elmtaryd Agunnaryd)
Unix pipelines treat everything as a monoid of bytes; what if we could deal with (loopable) quantales of bytes instead?
(Ah yes dunno why I went for "Texan", not that I am even half-good at desouping the 2)
I was just thinking a few hours ago, that baby seems to be squalling for "quantales". Have you ever asked an LLM about it? I have (in relation to what I've been thinking hard about).. Did you find the answer useful? it's good I don't remember what it said, because it seems to be too adult (in name, if not concept), & I don't feel like I've ever made such a kid of myself.
I did algolia what you've written about it so far (2 hrs ago?). Hows the Kleene implementation? It should actually be immediately useful to me!! (And... You win!!)
The introduction of the cipher 0 or the group concept was general nonsense, too,
and for a thousand years or two mathematics was more or less stagnating,
because nobody was around to make such childish steps . . .
--Letter to R. Brown
PS: Ah but the whole point might be that rationalism don't need no inner party? (And, in CH, such decoupling falls out of a hat, there's no need for further "design work" on the process (in principle?)-- Thus.. is it really the kind of decoupling i thought I was talking about? It seems to be! But I can't ELI5! (Sincere question))
U: chart is flattering^W enlightening, quite. yep I saw that vid ~ march? last year
Another quick thought on JEER: if he'd only gone with "Sandworm" he could've been the God-Emperor of Dune?
The sea is still rising around the imp; that kernel has yet to be rubbed away... Will work harder on it, when I'm not yakking on HN :)
I did try a couple of LLMs but although they were useful in figuring out how to organise a writeup, they were just glazing when it came to developing the theory. A friend's recommendation of a topology book has actually been far more directly useful.
If we view the "inner party" as being Russell's farmer (instead of his chicken, to whom "more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful"), then, although the capital accrues via Matthew Effect, at least all residents can count on food, shelter, health care, and decent access to education. Our proles would be the cross-border workers, who sleep in a different country (and count on their unemployment stats during recessions) — and possibly EU people here on the freedom of movement agreement? (I know little about this agreement; it came about after I got here)
Controversial opinion - old pre-internet protests were mostly authentic and pursuing something good (whatever that meant in every case).
Today - they are mostly designed, sponsored and organized and about hating/suppressing the enemy side, virtue signaling, not achieving good and genuine self expression.
And those rare that are authentic (like current Iran revolution) are carefully and deliberately muted.
Such intentions can’t produce any great art for obvious reasons.
To a degree, this has always been true. Even in the days when protest music got mainstream attention, most of the music wasn't of that sort. I do think it's much worse now, though.
However, there is a lot more protest music being made than you may think. You just have to look past the big names and -- even better -- go see small artists performing live.