I always figured it was Bari Weiss. Still do. She released an interview with Altman in May of 2023 and Sky was released in September 2023 as far as I know.
Given that connection, I think it's plausible. They have a similar voice and given Bari's experience in podcasting could be a sensible choice if OpenAI wanted Scarlett but couldn't make it happen.
One can make nutritious under $4/meal on organic WholeFood prices when sticking to raw materials, i.e. not prepared foods. Those with access to a yard in the right climates can improve on that with some garden beds (herbs & leafy greens have a good return). So I think that really depends on what you're purchasing at the store.
Fast food chains have the benefit of scale but they still have margins to make. That food is rarely healthy so you're also increasing your long term healthcare costs by going that route.
I believe that a major issue here is that many of the younger people in the US haven't gained the skills to cook for themselves. With those skills comes efficiency and the ability to reduce waste. For those working low wage jobs (of which I was for about a decade), time spent on cooking has a higher value than say a knowledge worker who can pick up some contract work on upwork.
I feel we've grown far too used to cheap food in the US. Particularly meat which relies on consolidation into large operations that require antibiotic use, cheap labor in poor conditions, and questionable practices in processing and livestock welfare. So yeah, perhaps that happy meal should cost more?
> One can make nutritious under $4/meal on organic WholeFood prices when sticking to raw materials, i.e. not prepared foods. Those with access to a yard in the right climates can improve on that with some garden beds (herbs & leafy greens have a good return)
I agree that cooking can be done cheaply, but I never recommend gardening as a way to get cheaper food. I say this as someone who gardens a lot and enjoys it.
Gardening is fun if you enjoy it, but it’s not a realistic option for lowering food prices. It’s definitely not a solution to high food prices. It’s a hobby.
But you’re right: Even shopping at Whole Foods in a HCOL area it’s trivially easy to prepare reasonably priced meals. I don’t understand what some of these commenters are buying with claims of $200 for “two small bags” of groceries. I don’t think I could accomplish that without loading up on expensive beef, cheeses, and seafood.
> Gardening is fun if you enjoy it, but it’s not a realistic option for lowering food prices. It’s definitely not a solution to high food prices. It’s a hobby.
Agreed, it's not a solution. But if one is buying rosemary, thyme, basil at the store those kinds of things are priced high and are very cost effective / low maintenance to grow. If one is really just getting by these aren't things to reach for but for a middle class family trying to save some money it's kind of a no brainer if they purchase them regularly.
It's the same for food prep. For some items the time to prepare doesn't offset the cost of buying the prepared item so you really only gain better nutrition or flavor. Other things, say granola, stock, dressings/sauces almost always give you a tastier, healthier product for cheaper.
As you mentioned in your other comment these kinds of things are skills that lower income families tend to have / gain. It just seems that it's becoming increasingly less common.
I wonder if it's a recent phenomenon starting with the millennials growing up in higher standard of living households where those skills weren't really needed as much and now they've gone and moved out into an economy that's far less forgiving.
As someone who grows some herbs in pots, the people being discussed on this thread aren’t going to get vapors usin a jar of dried herbs that will last for a while. Admittedly you really need fresh basil for certain things but never had enough luck growing it to do more than stick a leaf or two on something for an accent. And gardening sure doesn’t cure a not enough time to cook problem.
I think there's two groups being discussed in this thread.
The ones walking out of the grocery store with $200 in groceries that fit in two bags. And families with low wages. The former is more likely to benefit from growing herbs and leafy vegetables as they are more likely to use them. Dried herbs can be pretty expensive as well.
But yeah, I only had one sentence about gardening in my original comment. Didn't mean to emphasize that as a groundbreaking differentiator in saving money on food.
A peek at billboard 100 from 2004 might surprise you. Same themes, new style and production. That said the rise of trap, particulary the repetitve autotuned bars, certainly hasn't helped in the lyricism dept.
You'll of course find great talent in every generation. While I don't like the majority of the current top billboard there's some talent behind those tracks.
How deep are you digging that you can say most that is out there isn't good? I find this surprising. Or do you mean good as in to your liking? The amount of talent out there is kind of mind blowing to me.
This mostly an assessment at scale. By volume, irrespective of genre, and even accounting for subjectivity, most of the material that gets published isn’t very good.
That being said, I generally don’t agree with conclusions like “culture is frozen”. You are correct that there is _more_ high quality material available than ever before. The challenge is just that it’s harder than ever to find it.
I think many here are missing the point being made. Of course there are stylistic differences between some groups of artists. The thing is that they probably aren't coded by skin color let alone period location etc, so of course it will bleed. Playing some swing and expecting it to continue to stay within very blurry racial lines is unrealistic, silly, and maybe irresponsible for a recommendation algorithm.
As it's been said, there are better methods of discovery for this purpose. In your example, I'm sure there are Spotify playlists for Italian disco that have been curated.
Music is absolutely not getting worse unless you're only considering top charting music which is such a small fraction of what's out there. Even then it's highly subjective and behind almost every one of those songs or albums is a handful of brilliant writers, producers and session musicians you probably never heard of.
I'd say it's never been better. Music is more accessible which means more folks get exposed to it earlier and in more variety and in turn we get more musicians.
Of course, it's extremely subjective, but how about naming a few artists who have appeared in the last few years that you think make better music and are more talented musicians than those who came before?
There's a tremendous amount of talent in contemporary music. Comparing musician against musician is silly.
Some of these have been around longer than others.
Jacob Collier, Vulfpeck, Cool Sounds, Sylvie, Bobbing, Abigail Lapell, Big Theif, Tank and the Bangas, Richard Houghten, Kurt Vile, Thundercat, Little Simz, Nora Brown, Barrie, Dominique Dumont, Lusine, Cory Wong, Billy Strings, DoomCannon, Cory Henry, Mark Lettieri, Nate Smith, Yussef Dayes, Yumi Zouma, limperatrice, Slow Pulp, Vetiver, Bibio, Altin Gun, King Gizzard, Julian Lage.
I could go on.. give me an artist you like or a genre and I could likely find you new music.
Let me preface by saying I listen to a lot of genres, but that jazz & funk is not my "main expertise".
Of course there's no denying we have lots of creative and talented new musicians, but very seldom do I think they beat "the greats", or are even on par. Usually they feel more like knockoffs, and I find I'd rather go back and listen to the original instead.
I'm not familiar with these artists, but I had a listen to about 20 of them, and I will say that I can hear where a lot of them got their inspiration from, but they (not all of them) feel lightweight compared to artists from back in the day.
In these genres I'd much rather listen to the following artists than any of the ones you mentioned:
Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Townes Van Zandt, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Isley Brothers, Johnny Cash, Coltrane, Gillespie, Miles Davis.
"Nate Smith" in particular sounds so much like your stereotypical modern artist. Everything from the production, melodies, his voice and vocal chain sounds like at least 20 other artists. Very uninspired in my humble opinion. This is what we can expect AI to produce.
I think you may have found a different Nate Smith than the one goosejuice was referencing. They were likely referring to the drummer named Nate Smith (he's collaborated with at least one of the groups mentioned).
The guy has a lot of interesting work, but I think the thing that blew me away the most is the composition 'Warble'. If memory serves, that's the piece where he explored 64th note and dotted 32nd note displacements in order to mimic J Dilla's 'wonky' swing. I've tried capturing the Dilla swing; it's nearly impossible to do on the drums without sounding like you don't know how to play the instrument. Nate Smith, on the other hand, makes it sound fantastic.
Of course they were inspired by existing artists and by a greater set of them! This is central to my argument that music is only going to get better with greater exposure.
Those are all great artists you listed but to attempt to quantify that they are any more talented or creative than contemporaries is a silly exercise. It's art.
This is a small list of random artists that I've listened to over the past few years. Jacob Collier is a perfect example of exceptional generational talent who not only is technically mind blowing but also incredibly original. I bet every one of those artists you listed would say the same about him (if they haven't passed of course).
Nate Smith likewise would be welcomed as the drummer in any one of those bands. Did you listen to the right Nate Smith?
I don't know, maybe you're just not hearing what I'm hearing. Watch Cory Henry on Snarky's Lingus. Jacob Collier do his recent crowd work with the NSO. Cory Wong talk about Vulfpeck and their MSG show and never rehearsing. Hiromi and Tank and the Bangas on NPR's tiny desks. I'd say Abigail Lapell adds tremendously to the folk of the era you are referencing.
Watered down is just not how I'd describe any of the musicians I listed
Show me someone great who when you go to their inspiration you can't find they themselves very much creating watered down versions of their inspirations.
You seem hyper focused on comparing all that you hear to what you already know you like. If you really want to appreciate new music, cut it out. You're introducing bias at the outset. If you approach a new artist as if their work is isolated, and give it some time to settle in, I think you'll be surprised.
At the risk of just mouthing off my favorites, there are a lot of genres today are the best they've ever been. The post-punk revival out of the UK is great. The "chambery" Black Country, New Road and the "mathy" Black Midi are some of the best we've seen and there are other exceptional talents in that scene. Noisy-shoegazy-indie rock is also a great scene right now with artists like Jane Remover and Mitski releasing what will be important albums for ages to come.
Note, Mitski debuted in 2013 but most of the strongest records over the past few years, from hip-hop, pop to experimental rock to metal, seems to be by artists or individual who've been making music for around a decade-ish roughly. Maybe this disqualifies the whole lot and you're trying to highlight some weakness in the debuts of the past few years. If so, maybe you should wait a decade? If not, I can assert that some of the most talented artists of history are making music today. By any metric.
I could spend hours writing a response to this. I am mid 30 and my style of music changes with every season I am not within trends but most songs I enjoy most are not older than 3 or 4 years. Not all of them are well known.
Even something established like Punk reached new heights with more modern approaches (ex. Sleaford mods, Team Scheisse in German)
I think music is very subjective still but new music never stopped to impress me.
I just discovered Team Scheisse a week ago (they are from city!) and now I come across them on HN, what a coincidence (obviously this might be the Baader-Meinhof-Phenomenon at play but since they are a comparatively small band I would say the effect is rather small)!
FWIW most of the top charting music of the 90s, 80s and so on were also "worse" and have mostly been forgotten. Few songs remain popular or regain popularity. A lot of chart hits are really just springboarding off "you had to be there" cultural moments or experiences or simply a general "vibe" that are fleeting and trivial enough not to stick around even in nostalgia.
As an extreme example, I'd argue the popularity of David Hasselhoff's I've been looking for freedom in Germany is almost entirely a result of "retconning" (if not fabricating) its supposed popularity at the time of its original release. It would have probably been forgotten entirely if it hadn't been rediscovered "ironically" in the context of ridiculous claims about its influence on the fall of the Berlin Wall. Heck, I remember owning a casette of the album as a kid only because "it's the guy from Knight Rider". For adult women his claim to fame was co-starring alongside Pamela Anderson in Baywatch as one of the few men regularly appearing bare-chested on daytime television - I'd say his musical talents played a very small role in his original popularity and it's telling nobody remembers any other songs than the one he performed on a TV show. He was never considered good, he was just a familiar face (and body) and made a catchy tune.
> Music is absolutely not getting worse unless you're only considering top charting music which is such a small fraction of what's out there.
But there's a crucial difference between what's out there and what people are listening to. There's a lot of obscure stuff that not many people are listening to. Whereas the top charting music is what millions of people are listening to. It matters a lot what's getting marketed, what the majority of people are exposed to.
Unfortunately, very few repliers are addressing the first point that I made in my comment: "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music."
Musicians are more discoverable than ever. Unlike in the past it doesn't matter nearly as much what's getting marketing/ gets air play at the top of the charts, because if you have a desire to find music that you like you just have to try and it's all there for free with an Internet connection.
If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because of what's being produced.
> it's all there for free with an Internet connection
The "Internet" is just hand waving. The internet is massive. Almost everything is available on the internet, but that's a problem, not a solution. Sometimes it's like finding a needle in a haystack.
> If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because of what's being produced.
So what is the explanation for "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music", which again, you haven't addressed.
You shared a single infographic without a source, but taking it as fact I would take a guess that it's easier to discover old music now and there's more music to listen to thus flattening the curve.
I'm sorry that it's difficult for you to find what you like. My tastes are very broad and I find new artists every week just listening to Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube while working. My wife and I and our friends share music that we like with each other. We see live music and get exposed to openers we've never heard of.
> Unfortunately, very few repliers are addressing the first point that I made in my comment: "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music."
Seems very hard to accurately measure, could be that people don't know what was released in their decade but the stuff from the 80s is easy to pinpoint.
If you consider the top charting music and the typical fart noises uploaded to soundcloud which have 3 listens, yes it is worse.
If you're only considering your 25 favorite new songs out of tens of millions then sure, it's better. But also there is recency/novelty bias which counteracts and may overcome any past/nostalgia bias
In conclusion, if all you're doing is listening to music alone in your apartment then it's never been better. Until you step out into the real world and realize that, best-case scenario, everyone hates your music and everything that it represents. More likely they will be completely bored and indifferent.
The world's been hating my music tastes and telling me to turn stuff off since the 1980s. And then, ten years later they love it, and 10 years after that my ex-is bragging how she used to listen to it decades ago.
And definitely don't like things based on the real world, the real world is shit.
Plenty of people live in the woods. If we all lived in the woods everything would be fine! I'm sure our GDP wouldn't fall and no one would starve to death at all. Nope; Not a bit.
Why don't we all just wear VR headsets all day?
LOL enjoy your atomized Balkanized tower of Babel existence. If it has to be explained then you're consitutionally incapable of understanding it anyway.
I think you're thinking way to hard about this my friend. What part of seeing a local band at a bar or listening to family members make music leads you to bring up GDP and VR? Either you're completely misunderstanding this discussion or you're extremely out of touch.
What gave you the idea that I'm not interested in community and shared culture? That's precisely what I'm promoting. My point was that it doesn't matter what's popular in the mainstream.
This is no place for personal insults, so I'll call it here as this clearly isn't a genuine exchange.
>If you enjoy it and the musicians are making it what else is there?
LOL.
Also, a kiwi, a german, and an uzbek in a discord channel does not a community make. I'm talking about people playing banjo on their porch because that is what people do in their community and their region
Certainly not everyone is in the same place in their learning journey as you. Material on calc, at a university level, is typically going to focus on calc. Yes it is assumed that you have learned the fundamentals before taking that course.
I was in a similar situation as you. If you really want to learn it there's no substitute for skipping over the fundamentals. I did that and did fairly well but it's all long forgotten. Never use the stuff :)
So many people tell me this that it's become cliche at this point.
I find it demotivating, but unfortunately I have to press through, as there is literally no other way I'm going to gain entry to my university's bachelors program.
A part of me wonders if this kind of fundamental knowledge could be actually useful, similar to being able to cook your own food instead of takeaway.
Kind of like how "first principles" thinking can apparently lead to new discoveries because you're not just mimicking / re-using the same structures that were already built.
My experience certainly isn't representative! I just happen to build things where university level maths rarely comes up. Stats comes up more than anything and sadly only had to take one course in that area.
Since you bring up food. As a former professional baker it would also take me some time to make croissants professionally at the level I used to. At least for me personally, if I don't use it I lose it. But I can certainly pick up faster than someone seeing it for the first time if I needed to.
Along the way you'll pick up some intuition that you can use elsewhere that's hard to quantify. Outside of the loans I don't regret taking any of the maths required for my CS degree.
Personally, I found the calculus lifesaver by Adrian Baker to be helpful in my studies as someone that was missing some fundamentals
I’m a product manager and I use the concepts to read and understand new algos, research papers, etc. you’re right that you won’t be calculating (that builds problem solving) but grasping the principles will help you proceed to more advanced concepts in other fields
Given that connection, I think it's plausible. They have a similar voice and given Bari's experience in podcasting could be a sensible choice if OpenAI wanted Scarlett but couldn't make it happen.