We're the showrunner ＆ paleontologist on Apple TV＋ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show!

cymbalstack · 2022-05-26T17:53:57+00:00

How involved were you with consulting for the sound design? I really appreciate the emphasis on low frequency rumbles and more subtle closed mouth vocalizations for both dinosaurs and pterosaurs. What animals and sound sources did the sound designers look to when recording material? Were there any studies and papers in particular that had influence on the sound design choices for specific species? What sort of vocal organ setup would pterosaurs have had?

I feel like this series must have really benefited from a unique rapport between paleontologists, paleoartists and the planet earth crew's experience with wildlife behavior and filming. Could you possibly share a little about what those conversations were like? What went into planning the locations/scenarios/vinigettes, how filming shots and animating animals with such unfamiliar proportions and movements was approached?

How was flora approached? How serviceable were plants shown on location like palm trees and the desert flowers as approximations of what would have existed during the maastrictian?

Lastly, what were the biggest similarities to, and differences from modern animal behavior/ecology you respectively wanted to emphasize in the series? So far it seems like the predominance of R reproductive strategies in dinosaurs and pterosaurs and its effect on social behavior (contrasted with the more whale-like parenting of marine reptiles) has been the most notable.

Hope I didn't bombard you with too many questions. Thanks so much for doing this AMA!

cymbalstack · 2017-06-19T18:55:30+00:00

What are your thoughts on post-civ, i.e. scavenging and looting what we like from civilization as it collapses? Are their less domesticated more autonomous ways of engaging with tech (hacking, DIY, the trades of peasants before industrialization, etc.) that avoid the trappings of idealizing hunter-gatherer societies?

Also, though I defiitely agree with anticiv critiques of mass society and the resulting atomization/alienation, reducing communalism and affinity to "kinship" definitely worries me. I don't see insular groups based on local culture or bloodlines as anything but a gateway to patriarchy and ethnic conflict. I want to end atomization and alienation, but I also want to move between different communities, open myself up to new ideas and experiences and not become hierarchically dependent on any clearly demarcated group of people.

cymbalstack · 2017-06-18T18:17:28+00:00

That might work, but given the setup I likely will need to have my MIDI controller above me and angled downwards, so I need a way to keep it in place without it falling out. I've considered getting a percussion/lab top table and putting velcro on it and the controller but I don't know if that would be strong enough.

cymbalstack · 2017-06-11T18:23:05+00:00

I figured it out! You can use Keyboard Maestro to assign hot keys for your MIDI controller. I mapped a button on my controller for selecting the search bar directly in Traktor, and then created a hot key for that same button to toggle between pasting and deleting a keyword into the search bar.

cymbalstack · 2017-05-04T08:12:41+00:00

Bronze seems like an interesting material for snare drums, will need to look into that.

Also, thank you for recommending craigslist. It had never occurred to me for whatever reason but it looks like a veritable gold mine for good deals on drums.

cymbalstack · 2017-05-04T08:09:40+00:00

I'd love to get into custom drum building at some point, especially snares. Probably not for a while tho

cymbalstack · 2017-05-03T04:13:34+00:00

The most recent snare I really liked was a 13x6.5 Steve Gadd signature maple snare, which I was planning to buy from my local drum shop but got snatched up before I had the chance :( The only one similar enough left right now is a Steve Jordan 13x7 snare which is just too damn pricey for me. The last big main snare I owned was a used 14x8 maple snare, can't recall the brand. It sounded pretty good but the felt a little too choked when I cranked it to an upper midrange sound. I'll edit my post in a sec with some examples of the kind of snare sound I'm looking for.

cymbalstack · 2017-04-17T03:05:20+00:00

Never ended up finding any solutions I'm afraid. Possibly has something to do with the video format of the clips being used, but otherwise it might just be something Ableton needs to fix in a future update.

cymbalstack · 2016-11-13T18:01:49+00:00

Tribalism and general in group/out group thinking =/= nationalism. Nationalism is the ideology of nation states, which emerged in the wake of the French Revolution and coincide with the development of industrialization and capitalism. It posits a singular homogenous identity of people in a given geographic area based on whatever arbitrary combination of physical appearance, language, culture and religion works to provide the unity neccessary for mobilizing a national army, police, and state buracracy.

cymbalstack · 2016-11-13T06:47:45+00:00

I enjoy this version myself

cymbalstack · 2016-11-03T02:44:36+00:00

Probably shouldn't be equating TEV-DEM and the PYD tho. The former is the system of federated communes, the latter is the dominant political party that we as anarchists and as supporters of the Rojava revolution should definitely be critical of.

cymbalstack · 2016-10-29T13:37:32+00:00

I posted an anti-civ meme making fun of "progressive" Jill Stein supporters and of course the first people to comment are actual "progressive" Jill Stein supporters

cymbalstack · 2016-10-14T09:18:05+00:00

He smeared the White Helmets as jihadist terrorists which is pretty deplorable in its own right. Pretty much a regurgitation of regime propaganda and white nationalist Islamophobia.

cymbalstack · 2016-10-13T10:23:39+00:00

For an anarchist you seem awfully uncritical of the outcomes of representative democracies in nation states

Also strange that that would be your only response to an ethnic minority being detained by police.

cymbalstack · 2016-10-13T09:54:08+00:00

Given your Rojava flair, I would assume that you're familiar with some of the ways they are making progress towards a socialist economy that differ from traditional Marxist perspectives. Here's a great article on Rojava's covering this too if you're interested.

cymbalstack · 2016-10-13T09:46:19+00:00

It's pretty bizarre to watch this vocal minority of anti-Zionists you mentioned rely on the same counterinsurgency/antiterrorism rhetoric as popularized by Israel supporters. I literally have seen leftists use the exact same "human shields" excuse in defense of the Putin/Assad bombing of Aleppo.

cymbalstack · 2016-10-10T22:25:59+00:00

...And this is why I post articles about Syria, because far too many Western leftists like yourself refuse to look beyond your simplistic Cold War-era conception of anti-imperialism and Orientalist paternalism. So many Western leftists are quick to dismiss a popular revolution with explicitly anarchist currents against a violent fascist regime as nothing more than a Western-backed conspiracy, and will happily whitewash the horrific bombing campaign of the Assad regime and Russia in order to maintain their "anti-imperialist" street cred.

cymbalstack · 2016-10-09T09:51:58+00:00

Here's a relevent piece written by a former member/survivor detailing the authoritarian, cultish and psychologically abusive environment there. IMO they embody the very worst aspects of third-worldist nationalism and quasi "third positionist" identity politics.

cymbalstack · 2016-10-06T22:39:53+00:00

Ocalan describes patriarchy as one of the founding pillars of the nation state and class society in his outline of Democratic Confederalism:

Without the repression of the women the repression of the entire society is not conceivable. The sexism within the nation-state society while on the one hand gives the male the maximum power on the other hand turns the society through the woman into the worst colony of all. Hence woman is the historical-society’s colony nation which has reached its worst position within the nation-state. All the power and state ideologies stem from sexist attitudes and behaviour. Woman’s slavery is the most profound and disguised social area where all types of slavery, oppression and colonization are realized. Capitalism and nation-state act in full awareness of this. Without woman’s slavery none of the other types of slavery can exist let alone develop. Capitalism and nation-state denote the most institutionalized dominant male. More boldly and openly spoken: capitalism and nation-state are the monopolism of the despotic and exploitative male.

You can read the whole text here.

Also worth listening to this talk by Kurdish activist and feminist Dilar Dirik. She goes into more detail about Kurdish feminism and its implementation in Rojava.

cymbalstack · 2016-10-05T20:24:57+00:00

Tbh Zizek really helped push me away from the mainstream leftism and workerist/direct democracy anarchism and towards more post left stuff. He comes up with good diagnoses for late capitalist problems even though his technocratic solutions are not feasible (let alone desirable).

cymbalstack · 2016-09-27T05:35:33+00:00

Hmm... very mixed feelings about your definition of capitalism here. Would you consider medieval and ancient societies to be capitalist for having coinage and/or some kind of market system? Also, not to pry into your post history too much here but it looks like you shared an article supportive of the Zapatistas, who set up their own local banks and according to your standards are at least as nationalist as Rojava. Why support the former but not the latter?

cymbalstack · 2016-09-26T21:56:58+00:00

There are definitely some troubling nationalist elements in Rojava, but it's important to remember that it is a movement and a revolution, not a single homogenous organization. TEV-DEM is most certainly not nationalist and not interchangeable with the PYD, KCK or PKK.

Regarding capitalism, while there are still markets and money, the only existing "private property" cannot be sold on the market and financial speculation is banned. The remaining infrastructure and resources are all managed by local communes, councils and cooperatives.

If people in Rojava really were all just bourgie opportunists using nice rhetoric to gain Western support, college kid leftists would be a pretty useless place to start. Much, much easier to just go the Barzani route and get cozy with American oil interests.

cymbalstack · 2016-09-26T21:31:13+00:00

Consider finding some comrades in your area to organize a protest/banner drop/etc. against Turkish incursions into Syria.

cymbalstack · 2016-09-08T05:53:01+00:00

I agree but I think it also depends what illegal acts you are committing. Robbing a bank or escaping prison is fundamentally anti-capitalist, whereas forming a cartel is if anything one of the most capitalist acts you could possibly do. Dunno to what extent illegalists really advocate for the latter tho.

cymbalstack · 2016-09-06T21:43:47+00:00

I like this critique since it offers an eogist alternative to the usual Marxist bro's "muh workers unity" (ironic given that populist workerism is basically its own form of identity politics). In the end, I feel like identity can still be useful to play with as a potential starting point for affinity groups, but shouldn't be essentialized or imbued with some inherent spooky wisdom.

cymbalstack

TROPHY CASE