[bmuagpjw] prime waltz

consider the odd integers starting from 9.  bass drum hit if composite, snare drum if prime.  written in 6/4 time (or 6/8 time), beats 1 and 4 always have bass drum hits (integers 12n+9 and 12n+15 respectively, always divisible by 3 so always composite).

Pari/gp:

printbeat(x)=if(ispseudoprime(x), print1("*"), print1("."));

for(line=1, 64, for(half=0, 1, n=(line-1)*2+half+1; six=6*n; if(!half, printf("%3d %4d: ", line, six+3)); printbeat(six+3); printbeat(six+5); printbeat(six+7); if(half, print(), print1(" "))); if(0==line%8, print()))

first column is measure number.  second column is the starting integer of that measure, e.g., measure 1 is integers 9 11 13 15 17 19.  following that are 6 beats (3+3) of percussion with bass drum denoted with a period "." and snare drum denoted with an asterisk "*".

  1    9:  .** .**
  2   21:  .*. .**
  3   33:  ..* .**
  4   45:  .*. .*.
  5   57:  .** ..*
  6   69:  .** ..*
  7   81:  .*. .*.
  8   93:  ..* .**

  9  105:  .** .*.
 10  117:  ... ..*
 11  129:  .*. .**
 12  141:  ... .**
 13  153:  ..* ..*
 14  165:  .*. .*.
 15  177:  .** ...
 16  189:  .** .**

 17  201:  ... ..*
 18  213:  ... ..*
 19  225:  .** .*.
 20  237:  .** ...
 21  249:  .*. .*.
 22  261:  .*. .**
 23  273:  ..* .**
 24  285:  ... .*.

 25  297:  ... ..*
 26  309:  .** .*.
 27  321:  ... ..*
 28  333:  ..* ...
 29  345:  .** .*.
 30  357:  .*. ..*
 31  369:  ..* ..*
 32  381:  .*. .*.

 33  393:  ..* .*.
 34  405:  ..* ...
 35  417:  .** ...
 36  429:  .** ..*
 37  441:  .*. .*.
 38  453:  ..* .**
 39  465:  .*. ...
 40  477:  .*. ..*

 41  489:  .*. ..*
 42  501:  .*. .*.
 43  513:  ... .**
 44  525:  ... ...
 45  537:  ..* ..*
 46  549:  ... .*.
 47  561:  .*. .**
 48  573:  ..* ...

 49  585:  .*. .*.
 50  597:  .** ..*
 51  609:  ..* .**
 52  621:  ... ..*
 53  633:  ... .**
 54  645:  .*. .*.
 55  657:  .** ...
 56  669:  ..* .*.

 57  681:  .*. ..*
 58  693:  ... .*.
 59  705:  ..* ...
 60  717:  .*. ..*
 61  729:  ..* ..*
 62  741:  .*. ..*
 63  753:  ..* .*.
 64  765:  ..* .*.

you could have measure 0, a pickup bar, of just 2 or 3 beats (primes 3 5 7).

vaguely similar to the "binary cheer" from MIT.  stomp and clap.

the classic boom-chick-chick boom-chick-chick waltz rhythm -- corresponding to the maximum number of primes possible in a 6/4 measure -- happens in measure 1 (integers 9 11 13 15 17 19), measure 16 (integers 189 191 193 195 197 199), measure 156 (integers 1869...), measure 271 (integers 3249...), measure 471 (integers 5649...), measure 786 (integers 9429...), and is conjectured to continue to happen infinitely often (generalization of the twin prime conjecture).

c=0; for(i=0, +oo, n=12*i; if(isprime(n+11) && isprime(n+13) && isprime(n+17) && isprime(n+19), print(i+1," ",n+9); c+=1; if(c>100, break)))

no primes occur in measure 44 (integers 525 527 529 531 533 535, divisible by 5 17 23 3 13 5 respectively, part of a record prime gap between 523 and 541), measure 95 (integers 1137..., part of a record prime gap between 1129 and 1151), measure 111 (integers 1329...), measure 112 (integers 1341...) (which is two such measures in a row, part of the record prime gap between 1327 and 1361), and it is easy to prove (in contrast to the twin prime conjecture) that such empty measures occur infinitely often.  in such measures, accent beat 1 to distinguish among the otherwise identical bass drum hits.

or, replace bass drum on any beats other than 1 and 4 with a rest.

previously: on rhythm, depicting primes modulo n visually, and as musical pitches.

[lhcbianh] twice fun

having fun is inherently enjoyable.  then, having fun, especially in circumstances with adversity, also signals good mental health, high self-qi.

maybe having fun isn't ever inherently enjoyable: maybe it's this signaling that's only ever being enjoyed.  would it be as much fun if you were alone and couldn't tell anyone?

what things require adversity to be fun?  it wouldn't be as fun if the adversity were removed.

possible examples: scary amusement park rides, horror movies.

hazing.

previously similar: validation is fun.

future post: sex is fun.

[nbejauna] Lovers' Waltz cadenza

The Lover's Waltz by Jay Ungar and Molly Mason has a brief cadenza before its final note.  could the cadenza be expanded?

dancing to a non-rhythmic cadenza requires significant departure from basic waltz.

[pjzxklze] racism of requiring COVID-19 vaccination

among those who are choosing not to be vaccinated against COVID-19 (future post mcbkqach) are those who belong to groups that have long been historically mistreated by the government.  they don't trust the government in general, so they don't trust government propaganda encouraging vaccination.

expand government to mean "government and mainstream society" because the latter has also long been complicit in the mistreatment.

among the groups who have long been so historically mistreated by government and mainstream society are African-Americans.  their mistreatment and cause for distrust of government includes things like the Tuskegee Experiment as well as their much more recent history of being murdered by government police (Black Lives Matter).

news reports indicate African-Americans have significantly lower COVID-19 vaccination rates than whites, with one of the main reasons being this distrust, as reflected in interviews.  (note: other reasons include lack of easy access to vaccination sites, not having flexibility in life to deal with the day or two of incapacitation after each dose.)

rebuilding the trust is a topic for another day.  (perhaps we avoid thinking about how to rebuild trust because of how frighteningly difficult the task (probably) is.  after we (ever) decide to start, it might take centuries to complete, reflecting the centuries of mistreatment over which the trust was lost.  it therefore might take centuries to achieve a vaccination rate high enough for herd immunity.  this is how we pay for our sins.)

instead, we focus on something here and now: the rise of events and venues requiring proof of vaccination to participate or enter ("please provide a picture of your vaccination card"), and the accompanying rise of hatred toward those who refuse to be vaccinated.

in the context of African-Americans refusing vaccination as described above, this translates to barriers to entry for African-Americans, and hatred toward them.

this is how institutional racism plays out.

we hypothesize that this is how racism, systemic racism, and institutional racism have always played out.  it's never just "I hate you for the color of your skin", "I exclude you for the color of your skin", or "I reject the notion that all men are created equal".  it's always something more complicated: "I hate you, exclude you, reject you for your behavior", "something more urgent is on the line: public safety, life or death of people I care about, the ability for me and people I care about to live normal lives".  (think about how the pandemic has affected education and courtship: think of the children.)

we often look back on racism in history and wonder, how could people be so horrible?  this time, let's record why.

if you are promulgating policies requiring proof of vaccination, record your thoughts and reasoning.  if you are hating on the anti-vaxxers, record your thoughts and reasoning.  and remember, this is for posterity, so [please] be honest.

is it ignorance?  "I was unaware that African-Americans distrust the government."

is it willful ignorance?  "I do not care to know or understand what is going inside the minds of people resisting vaccination."

is it "us" versus "not one of us"?  "the people resisting vaccination seem foreign to us, so excluding them from our community is fine."  excluding the unvaccinated, "the unclean", "the wrong kind of people", African-Americans, might make your (primarily white) event more attractive, so there is perverse incentive to implement vaccination-required-for-entry policies, and to keep them in place as long as possible.

"it seemed like a good idea at the time."

how should COVID-19 vaccination policies be formulated to lessen institutional racism?  explicit sunset clauses might help, but there remain devilish details.

[aokyfrwo] 3 terrible people

1. a man sexually harasses a woman.
2. the woman responds with kindness.
3. a third person calls the woman a slut for doing so.

who has committed the most evil?

note: the argument why #2 might be considered evil, and why #3 might be justified so not evil, is that, in responding with kindness, the woman encourages and excuses the man for behaving that way, and the man thus enabled will go on to similarly harm others.

what is the best way to prevent badness?

understanding the mechanisms that cause #1 would be helpful, but it seems to be taboo.

disincentivizing kindness with punishment is sad, but (cynically) that seems to be where society is generally headed: normalizing cruelty.

inspired by an anecdote from a woman feeling safe at a venue because of the lack of the third type of person, not the lack of the first type, who were present.

[vvxzpztp] gatekeeping balance

an organization which restricts membership too much will die from lack of members.

an organization which is too lax in restricting membership will die from internal strife among members.  perhaps members leave because they don't want to be part of an organization that would have as a member someone they don't like.

it is already a tricky balancing act.  but it is actually even more difficult:

the distribution of characteristics of applicants changes over time, so membership criteria must in turn adapt to avoid the two bad outcomes above.

the distribution of characteristics of applicants may change due to truly exogenous reasons, or due to competition with other organizations competing for the same applicants.  this is game theory, because your organization's membership decisions may influence the existence and behavior of competitors.

as an alternative to changing membership criteria, an organization can also internally change to avoid the bad two outcomes above: adapt to function effectively with fewer members, or deploy mechanisms to prevent internal conflict.

many gatekeeping mechanisms such as those in courtship or employment probably attempt to measure self-qi.  however, the distribution of self-qi among applicants might change over time, so rituals and procedures for measuring and filtering by applicants' self-qi must change to match.  along with that, applicants are all the time trying to game the system, trying to fool measurements of self-qi.

[ujbosgui] White Trash Lives Matter

Black people:  Hey white people!  Stop trying to help us directly, because every time you do, you end up actually making things worse for us.  [Note: not all black people share this sentiment.]  Instead, here's a radical idea for you.  White people, go help white people instead, in particular, your "worst" white people: your trailer trash, your People of Walmart, your rednecks.  Get their standard of living up so that they can afford to live not in a trailer, to shop not at Walmart, to be economically desirable enough to have mating prospects beyond family and livestock.  Because if you can fix society so that that large mass of white people is better off, it's highly likely many black people will also be able to enjoy those social reforms.

White people:  Yuck.  Those white people, we do not want to help.

Yoda:  That... is why you fail.

Inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr., who recognized that the difficulties faced by poor whites are often very similar to the difficulties faced by blacks, though unfortunately I've lost the source.

The idea is humorously illustrated by Tom Hanks on Black Jeopardy on Saturday Night Live.

[ckdxvjuu] Collaborative DNA art project

The number of humans alive right now is of the same order of magnitude as the number of base pairs in the human genome.

Design a massive collaborative art project that has each person doing something specific corresponding to a short segment of DNA they've been assigned, and then all the pieces done by the millions or billions of participants gets assembled into a whole.  Actually into 23 large components corresponding to the chromosomes.  Actually 24 because X and Y are different.

One idea: 4 different dance moves corresponding to the nucleotides.  Everyone films their dance segment.  Inspired by zweifacher, which has 2 types of moves, pivot and waltz.  We could easily deal with the shortage by doing 2 zweifacher moves per base pair.  We'd also have to compose the music having the proper rhythm.

Easy coast swing: basic (in open position), inside turn, outside turn, waist slide.  Though this set lacks the symmetry of the complementary pairs.

Maybe something involving role switching: switching roles and doing the moves in reverse order results in the other DNA strand.

Maybe do something that takes advantage of the built-in error detection of the two stands.

Any mapping will have to deal with many segments of DNA being very repetitive.

Which human's genome?  Probably the reference genome.  How should we deal with gaps?

[gotlzbrz] Fortnite dances as parody

We consider a legal defense for Fortnite that its dances are not copyright infringement because they are parody.

When Congress made dance choreography copyrightable in 1976, they definitely had in mind things like ballet choreography.  We therefore consider, what if Fortnite had instead provided copyrighted ballet choreography as a dance that characters in the game can do to celebrate killing their opponents?

It seems to me this would be pretty obviously a parody of ballet, poking fun at choreographed dance by putting it in a situation in which it is incongruous.  Therefore, such use would be fair use and not copyright infringement.

If a dance is serious enough (like ballet) for its choreography to be considered copyrightable, then its incongruous use in a work like Fortnite is parody.

If a dance is not serious, then it is a social dance, so not copyrightable according to the law.

[kucqpbml] Grammy waltzes?

Have any waltzes won Grammy awards?  Nominated?  It is a time signature for which composers still compose popular music.

[eskwontp] Mass shootings within sports

It's surprising that there aren't more mass shootings among sports players targeting each other.  Within sports are a disproportionately high number of people who are very competitive, "jacked up", "win at any cost".  Some of those people might have reasons (even valid reasons) to come to believe that "the system" of the sport is institutionally stacked against against them: compare this to similar motivations articulated by other mass shooters, e.g., upset that the courtship system is stacked against them.

The combination of factors leading to mass murder won't all occur all that frequently, but if they do occur, it seems they should occur more frequently among sports players than in society at large, because ultracompetitive.  But this seems not occuring.  Why not?

We hypothesize a mechanism:

Participation in sports is voluntary.  Therefore, mass shooters are preferentially volunteering not to play or volunteering to stop playing a sport long before their mass shooting tendencies kick in.  What is the mechanism of exclusion?  Who else is it excluding?  Do we see the mechanism elsewhere?

Sports are physically and mentally taxing.  They are especially psychologically taxing at the beginning because you also spend a lot of time losing.  To survive these challenges and not choose to "voluntarily" leave, one needs mental fortitude, i.e., high self-qi.  We put "voluntarily" in scare quotes because, under this model, your fate was predetermined by your self-qi level at the start; there was only an illusion of free will in your voluntary decision to leave.

These barriers, this process, eliminates early the mass shooters, who are characterized by low self-qi.  Only with low self-qi does frustration boil over into destructive action, though we haven't elaborated very much on this mechanism.

One more aspect of sports:  If you show up, you have to participate, so become subjected to its mental and physical demands.  You can't be a sports player without playing.  This idea is also seen and articulated in one of the Principles of Burning Man, and in Fight Club.

What other activities have this pattern?  Easy to voluntarily leave, or choose to not show up.  Participation required.  Mentally or psychologically taxing, especially toward the beginning, but it doesn't ever completely let up.  This culls away the mass shooters before they start shooting.

We notice the pattern in social partner dancing.  We may elaborate more on this in a future post.

[mkthxboj] Dance cipher

We sketch out some ideas for designing a block cipher inspired by moves used in contra dance.

Each person keeps track of one number in their memory, maybe as little as 1 bit of memory.  During the "swing" move, two people meet, tell each other their current number, then compute new numbers to remember based on their old numbers, some relatively simple function computable with mental arithmetic.  (This is a nice example of SIMD parallel computation done by humans.)  It might need to be a invertible function for decryption to be possible (unless part of a larger structure like a Feistel network).

Everything else is permutations of the dancers causing different people to meet, causing mixing.  Various contra dance and contra dance inspired moves available as permutations:

Standard progression: ONEs move one couple down the hall, TWOs up.

Horizontal movement: align the grid of dancers as horizontal sets across the hall and do any of these permutation moves. A simpler variation might only have the couples out at the top execute a horizontal permutation.

Whole set take hands in giant oval and turn the oval.  Traditionally the oval eventually turns back the same amount, but break tradition to allow mixing of distant dancers.  Practically, turning the oval by a constant and consistent amount might be tricky.

Pull by right pull by left around the whole set (grand right left).  Again, seeking mixing with distant dancers.  Not following this move by its inverse (as would be traditionally done) will break up couples: this is a mixer.

Different sets do different permutations.  Maybe one set does oval for 10 counts followed by 6 counts of something else that doesn't travel (e.g., swing), while another set does 8 and 8.  Because dancers move horizontally between sets, they will need to pay attention to where they are to know what to do.

Or, a similar effect as different sets doing different moves could accomplished by simply having sets of different lengths.  When combined with the possibility of horizontal sets, the grid of dancers needs to start out convex, e.g., house-shaped pentagon with the ground at the top of the hall.

The need for these permutations causing mixing with initially distant dancers was inspired by how the rho step of Keccak specifies different bit rotation amounts (triangular numbers) depending on the position of the word within the 5x5 matrix.

All the other contra dance moves (and sequences of moves) which are equivalent to the identity permutation can also be included for aesthetic purposes, e.g., flow.

The dance does not strictly repeat, maybe different global round constants called out on the fly and used in the swing computation.  Or, different rounds correspond to different dances, where people start the next dance exactly where they ended the previous dance.  You can't leave, though you can have a substitute to take your place.

[ewzsytrb] Artist caste

The people who make entertainment are often a very different group in society than those who consume entertainment, the latter usually more wealthy.  How do the creators know what to create, what will appeal to people whom they are very culturally different from?

Inspiration was African-Americans who performed jazz and blues, whose recordings were probably mostly purchased by whites.  Presumably the record producers bridged the gap, communicating to the composers and musicians what they believed would sell well.  Exactly how and what did they communicate?

[tiuahohk] Self-measuring self-qi

Huge amounts of courtship and employment screening are probably to measure someone's average self-qi.  Employment screening includes the education system and promotion decisions.

Consequently we expect, by game theory, much effort devoted to concealing and being deceptive about low self-qi.

However, one situation where deception shouldn't occur is if you want to measure your own self-qi, perhaps to avoid situations in which low self-qi will have bad consequences for you.  How can you measure your own self-qi or stress level?

A few starting points: are you tired?  Are you hangry?  Are you sick?

[zvetsujf] Contra dance panopticon

The contra dance style which has inactives standing along the sides and actives dancing between them resembles the panopticon prison.  Do they serve similar purposes, preventing bad behavior by making people feel watched?  What were the social circumstances surrounding the creation and popularity of that style?  What are the circumstances surrounding its decline?  Will it come back?

[vswediqc] Rationally not learning

Mastering a skill requires both instruction then opportunities to practice what you learned.  Hypothesize that people rationally choose not to attend instruction because they correctly estimate that they will not have adequate opportunities to practice afterward.

Of course, this is broadly applicable to dropping out of school, or choosing not to continue education.

Inspiration was partner dancing lessons.  The opportunity to practice, social dancing outside of lessons, may be quietly sinister: effective practice involves making mistakes, so you can only learn in practice if you dance with someone whom you are comfortable making mistakes with, someone who is comfortable with you making mistakes.  That feeling of comfort, the decisions and behavior that make people comfortable or not, are very personal, and so we hypothesize harshly reflect social boundaries such as class or race, and ultimately induces the class and racial makeup of a dance scene.

[tlompybm] Humans thinking like cats and dogs

Dog, thinking about their human owners: They feed me, care for me, provide me shelter.  They must be gods!

Cat: They feed me, care for me, provide me shelter.  I must be a god!

Both logics can be applied to relationships between humans.  What causes which people to think which way?  Both ways can be harmful.

[ehgrxcmb] Why can we dance?

Both dancing and playing musical instruments involve sequences of physical movements done with extremely high precision in time: rhythm.  Why, evolutionarily, are humans able to do this?

Three taps could convey a lot of information, the middle tap precisely timed between the others.

[mubpwdzz] Surround sound music venue

Compose music designed to be played with more than two speakers, more than stereo.  (Separating different frequencies into different speakers does not count.)  Of course, this has already been done.

At first "glance", this seems useless, because people only have two ears, so sound from any direction can be constructed by controlling what goes in each ear, for example with headphones.  However, it does make a difference when someone's head is moving while listening.  With headphones, the sound seems to move with the head, while with surround sound it stays in the same absolute direction.  We might imagine a VR like system which tracks the head and adjust sound to headphones but that is awkward.

Most easily applicable for this kind of sound is at a dance venue, where people will be moving around, their heads frequently changing orientation.

There remains the artistic challenge of what to do with the additional channels of sound.

[kaoyobsz] Surrounded by wonderful people

If you find yourself at an event, venue, or in an organization a surrounded by (what you perceive as) wonderful people, look for the mechanisms which kept out those who aren't wonderful.  These are often ugly institutionalized mechanisms.

Also, reflect on your reluctance to repeal or remove those mechanisms (and you can understand how similar such mechanisms persist).

Inspiration is from quite afar: in chess, the winner is the player who made the next-to-last mistake.  Corollary: analyze your victories critically.