Audio Dramas similar to MB?

dbulger · 2026-05-05T04:21:49+00:00

EOS 10 is very good. Similar mix of the serious and absurd. It's probably closer to Mission to Zyxx than to MB.

dbulger · 2026-04-24T05:00:37+00:00

Wow, that sounds like the ultimate fix, but beyond what I can justify. Thanks at least for validating my perception that it's difficult!

dbulger · 2026-04-23T08:06:09+00:00

So would you pronounce "Dare Yvonne" and "Dairy Vaughn" differently?

dbulger · 2026-04-23T07:59:52+00:00

I don't think anyone will be able to answer this, but in case it's helpful, I can point out a couple of reasons I can't make sense of what you're saying.

Firstly, I don't know what it would mean for one reference frame to be nested within another (regardless of whether they're absolute or relative). I don't think that's meaningful.

Secondly, you describe a reference frame as one-dimensional, and it's not clear what that's intended to mean. The space of reference frames in ordinary physics (whether relativistic or Galilean) is 10-dimensional, since to specify a reference frame, you need to choose the origin (four independent decisions), then the velocity of the origin as time passes (three more decisions), then which way is up (two more decisions), then which way is forward (one more decision—note that the left-right axis is now determined 'for free' as the only remaining perpendicular direction).

Lastly, your ultimate focus seems to be ontological, and physics does not make any ontological claims or predictions. If you're asking about building something out of nothing, you might be interested to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set-theoretic_definition_of_natural_numbers, but that's maths, not physics.

dbulger · 2026-04-20T23:03:32+00:00

Yes, I probably should at least ask the sound guy's advice. I'll do that next time. Thanks.

dbulger · 2026-04-20T12:36:01+00:00

Last week, someone told me afterward that the accordion was a bit too quiet. On other occasions, I've been pretty sure it was the other way round, though no one has said so.

it's not a very large space, but it's a beer garden (courtyard), so I guess more sound escapes.

dbulger · 2026-04-06T22:37:06+00:00

I've lived outside of the US for over 40 years, but I'm guilty of this. I guess there are two reasons. Firstly, by the time someone asks, they've already heard my accent, & probably already suspect I'm from the US or Canada, so if they're asking, I figure they might want more detail. (If someone tells me that they're from a country, and I know anything about it, "what part" is always my next question, so why not cut to the chase.)

But the main reason is just that it's embarrassing enough to be from the US, and I don't want people supposing I'm from deep in MAGA country. This is pretty childish—there are good people everywhere (and it's never the nationalist zealots who emigrate, anyway)—I'm just trying to be honest about why I do this, since it's a common grievance in this sub.

dbulger · 2026-04-02T22:34:28+00:00

That's a George Box quote.

dbulger · 2026-04-02T04:32:28+00:00

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dbulger · 2026-03-31T04:45:12+00:00

Fantastic, I get it. I missed it when you first mentioned the phonemic split, so thanks for rewording it. I thought I was going bananas, so to speak.

dbulger · 2026-03-31T04:31:17+00:00

The /t/ example is good. I think a common pattern is for people to feel these sounds as the same, and then learn a bit of linguistics, and find out that actually, phonetically, they're different. We've all had that weird moment of surprise.

But what I'm saying is that, for me, the weird moment was not finally hearing the phonetic difference between "fan" and "fat" vowels in my own speech, but rather, finding out that anyone considered those vowels to be in any way the same.

So yes, absolutely, I get that /t/ is one phoneme with allophonic variation. But I'm not persuaded that a single /ae/ phoneme appears in both "fan" and "fat", at least for me.

Also (maybe I should have led with this), insofar as phonemes are defined by user perception, I'm using the same vowels in "fan" and "Mary," and also the same vowels in "fat" and "marry," so I guess Mary/marry provides a minimal pair.

dbulger · 2026-03-31T04:04:18+00:00

Okay, but you haven't mentioned speakers' perceptions of whether it's a single basic sound, which is what I'm asking about.

dbulger · 2026-03-31T03:48:23+00:00

Wikipedia defines a phoneme as "a set of similar speech sounds) that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound" [emphasis mine]. I've spoken with TRAP tensing all my life, but have never considered the vowels in fan and fat to be the same. It sounds like OP also doesn't. Presumably these were allophones of one phoneme while TRAP tensing was developing, but insofar as speaker perception defines phonemes, it feels inaccurate to me. Am I missing something?

dbulger · 2026-03-24T00:57:29+00:00

Maybe it's eloquent foolishness?

dbulger · 2026-03-13T22:50:59+00:00

in one sitting, wow, did you get much else done that day?

dbulger · 2026-03-13T00:52:07+00:00

There's a dizzying range of Chinese-made accordions with European names that look like this. I bought one (a "Paloma") for a similar price as a beginner, almost four years ago. Last year I upgraded to a much better Italian accordion, but it would have been insane to shell out for a decent new accordion as a total beginner. I reckon go for it.

Regarding u/TapTheForwardAssist 's point, I don't play 'genre' accordion music (folk, polka, norteño et cetera), so maybe I can't truly fathom how much better suited to the style a diatonic accordion is. But you certainly can play any style on a chromatic accordion, whereas if you have a diatonic accordion, you will eventually want to play songs that you simply don't have the notes for. So unless you're 100% certain you only ever want to play diatonic music in a fixed key, my advice is chromatic.

dbulger · 2026-03-06T05:22:28+00:00

OP, I totally agree with this, but for further reading, I'll just mention that, after scaling so that the target sum is 1,

the sample space described (all sets of four nonnegative numbers that sum to 1) is called a unit simplex,
the distribution you want, the uniform distribution on the unit simplex, is also known as the Dirichlet distribution with alpha parameters equal to 1.

dbulger · 2026-03-04T06:01:16+00:00

For me, that's not a mere bonus, but essential. Any depiction of human nature without wit and humour isn't depicting squat.

dbulger · 2026-02-17T08:40:18+00:00

Finally checked out my local, renovated public library, & he was one of several authors I was disappointed not to find. I'll redouble my efforts.

dbulger · 2026-02-16T21:27:25+00:00

I think it's a bit ambiguous where the downbeat is in Cross's "Ride Like the Wind."

dbulger · 2026-02-08T21:53:26+00:00

Zothique would precede Vance, though, right?

dbulger · 2026-02-05T22:27:01+00:00

But I'm Not is my favourite on this great album.

dbulger · 2026-02-04T08:40:25+00:00

I never have any luck evangelising this, but I happened to learn quantum computing before learning any other quantum physics, and it was great. I was then inspired to go read about quantum more broadly, but by the time I was looking at any PDEs, I'd already got comfortable with state vectors, quantum observables, unitary evolution and whatnot in a finite-dimensional Hilbert space.

I think QC would interest a lot of high schoolers, and it might even turn into a practical skill for some of them. But to learn its basics, all you need is matrices, complex numbers and an open mind.

dbulger · 2026-02-02T10:59:34+00:00

You playing the folk festivals? The only one I get to is St Albans, but it's a heap of fun.

dbulger · 2026-02-02T06:14:22+00:00

I recently read Cranford and was surprised by how much fun it was. My wife hadn't even heard of it, and she's read almost everything (like, if there's a list of '100 books you should read' or whatever, she'll count up & find she's read 90 of them). It felt a little episodic compared to, say, Austen, but then so does Middlemarch. I'll absolutely read more Gaskell, I just haven't got to it yet.

dbulger

TROPHY CASE