I feel the higher people are in the social hierarchy, the more they see themselves as a special case and above the law. Which I guess is at least somewhat true, going by the news.

Lol I guess I just like blathering

Well I had a bad experience, which made me research the history of the party I was in, and its predecessors, and the underlying ideology; and I found leninism and its branches (ML, trotskyism, maoism, etc) hold as a core tenet that there is a small group of people (the vanguard) who must have absolute uncontested authority over all others and must eliminate all contestation. Regardless of whether you believe that ideology by itself is justifiable, it has historically been used over and over as a rhetorical hammer to justify and fortify the power of power-hungry individuals (this is also true of other marxist branches, even beginning with Marx himself). I learnt “co-secretary” means supreme leader, “materialism” means trust me bro, “democratic centralism” means shut the fuck up, and “petty-bourgeois” means you are a bad person regardless of your actual deeds or social situation.

I also realized that the party sociology was deeply divided, with the upper ranks being political science graduates who were planning a career within the system while the lower ranks thought they were fighting against the system. Votes were a masquerade in which the upper ranks decided what the best outcome would be before discussing how it could be passed — there was absolutely no belief in any “collective wisdom”, only shepherds looking to guide their flock. None of this is part of leninist doctrine, but the social split and patriarchal outlook absolutely were characteristic of Lenin’s party — and is it a wonder that technocrats who look down on the common people would be attracted to an ideology that promotes there being a small cadre of very smart people who should yield absolute power over the rest of them?

All this sounds a bit naive of me; I sort of knew about this stuff before joining, but I didn’t really think it could happen to me, you know? I thought 1920s USSR had little in common with my life, and I just wanted to support some leftist organization that had at least some bite and radical character. I wouldn’t have though it necessary to read all these books and articles on the subject beforehand. Probably had I read them before, I wouldn’t really have grokked them anyway.

So yes I do believe at the very least leninism is fundamentally rotten. Revolutionary leninist parties turn into sects, electoral leninist parties turn into alternate career paths for the social-conscious lower managerial class. I also regard marxism as a mere historical artifact due to its keystone (materialist dialectics) being pseudoscience that can be used to claim or explain anything and glaring omissions in its social analysis. I do think “post-marxist” thought can be very interesting though; that is, thought that is in line with marxist lineage but deconstructing parts of the marxist orthodoxy.

And I wouldn’t write off a person based on the organization they find themselves in, since many people just want to help and find themselves in one organization or another based on luck. I’m sure many left-anarchists are assholes but I don’t think we’ll ever see a dictatorship that uses left-anarchism as its ideological underpinnings, for obvious reasons.

I used to say this stuff about needing to come together and all. Then I worked with people who called themselves “comrades” until it became obvious I’d been used by awful people who wanted power and who saw hurting others as an unfortunate necessity or even a perk of the job. Then I started paying attention.

It’s not a matter of historical grudges, it’s a question of who we’re propping into power. Arguably less important than avoiding fascism but still very much worth some discusssion.

Ah je me suis mal exprimé alors, je ne cherche pas à dire que le SM58 est nul, mais plutôt à dire qu’il y a beaucoup de materiel tout à fait accessible au point qu’on le considère comme “mauvais” qui est en fait de très bonne qualité. Mais c’était sans doute un mauvais exemple.

J’enregistre des trucs chez moi mais je suis pas du tout expert donc n’hésitez pas à me corriger.

C’est normal que le rayon informatique n’y connaisse pas grand-chose ce sont des besoins assez spécifiques. Je pense que tu peux tout à fait aller dans un magasin de musique, tous ceux que je connais n’ont pas du tout que du matériel de compétition mais aussi des gammes débutants et intermédiaires qui représentent en fait la majorité de leur activité, très peu de leurs clients sont ingénieurs du son haha.

Un truc encourageant c’est que des chansons tout à fait professionnelles sont enregistrées sur du “mauvais” matériel, par exemple tout studio de l’espace de répète miteux au studio de luxe aura un SM58 sous la main. Rehab d’Amy Winehouse utilise un seul micro pour enregistrer toute la batterie, Pumped Up Kicks c’est “juste” la démo que le musicien a enregistré chez lui, Chuck Schuldiner a enregistré plusieurs albums de Death avec une Boss DS-1 et un Marshall Valvestate soit du matériel au mieux milieu de gamme, etc.

Pour apprendre l’enregistrement tu peux regarder le grand guide d’Audiofanzine c’est vraiment sympa pour les débutants comme nous. Un autre truc un peu bête, c’est cool de lire le manuel de l’équipement, pour les micros par exemple c’est facile de mal s’en servir. Il ya de bons youtubeurs, j’aime bien Signals Music Studio qui est très accessible ; aussi la chaine d’Ola Englund est certes un peu vulgaire et centrée metal, mais il parle pas mal d’aspects un peu passés sous silence d’enregistrement, par exemple il va enregistrer le même ampli avec différent micros dans différentes positions. Il y a sans doute le même genre de sources sur les styles de musiques qui t’intéressent.

L’audio sous Linux est vraiment pas mal, de ce que j’en comprends il est même techniquement supérieur à la concurrence sur plusieurs aspects, mais malheureusement les constructeurs n’y prêtent pas trop d’attention car le marché est encore inférieur à Windows et Apple. L’important d’un point de vue software c’est d’être sur Pipewire (ce qui est le cas sur Ubuntu 24.04) et d’utiliser un noyau temps-réel (real time kernel) qui permet de ne pas avoir de pics de latence, mais peut-être que tu peux ne regarder que si c’est vraiment un problème.

Pour l’interface USB perso j’ai une Focusrite 2i2 2nd gen qui marche bien maiiis voilà la 3rd gen a réduit la compatibilité Linux :/ Je n’ai pas de recommandations précises malheureusement il faudra faire des recherches, en général si un modèle t’intéresse tu peux chercher des avis sur les forums audio Linux pour voir si les gens le trouvent bien. Un mot clé intéressant est “class compliant”, ça veut dire que ça marche tout seuls sans drivers, c’est top. Avoir deux entrées c’est intéressant pour par exemple chanter tout en jouant de la guitare ou bien avoir deux micros pour la même prise (pour une guitare acoustique ce serait typiquement un micro sur la rosace et un autre ailleurs)

Behringer c’est une marque low cost qui fait des produits souvent intéressants. C’est difficile d’avoir un bon équilibre entre prix et qualité en musique je trouve, je me suis souvent retrouvé à payer très cher des choses que je n’utilise pas ou inversement ne pas mettre le prix pour quelque chose où j’aurais du. Pour l’équipement de qualité, l’occasion est souvent intéressante car beaucoup de gens n’utilisent que peu leur matériel (j’utilise le bon coin ou audiofanzine mais il y a sans doute d’autres espaces). Un truc que je peux recommander c’est de mettre le prix sur les câbles, car c’est très relou de diagnostiquer des problèmes de câbles quand tu as envie de faire de la musique. Globalement j’ai l’impression que c’est bien de mettre de l’argent/effort sur des choses qui diminuent la frustration et facilitent la création plutôt que d’avoir un set-up théoriquement top mais en pratique super relou, mais c’est aussi que moi je me décourage très vite. Ah aussi si tu enregistres beaucoup de guitare acoustique ça peut être intéressant d’avoir un de ces porte-micros qui se fixe sur la guitare, car sinon c’est vraiment ennuyeux d’essayer de ne pas faire varier le positionnement du micro par rapport à la guitare. Si tu accroches ça peut aussi être intéressant dans un second temps d’envisager l’achat d’enceintes ou d’un casque de studio car ta capacité à maîtriser ta musique sera forcément limitée par ta capacité à l’entendre.

En logiciel j’ai l’impression qu’on outrepasse vite ce que sait faire Audacity, qui a toutefois l’avantage d’être très accessible et gratuit. Perso j’utilise REAPER qui marche bien sous Linux mais j’ai l’impression de n’utiliser qu’un cinquième du logiciel lol. Mais une fois que tu apprends les fonctions d’automatisation et d’intégration de plugins c’est vraiment difficile de s’en passer.

Si tu veux enregistrer de l’électrique la question se pose de qu’est-ce que tu veux faire dans la vraie vie et qu’est ce que tu veux simuler. Si tu met directement la guitare dans l’interface et que tu simules les effets (pédales ampli cab reverb etc) sur le PC, ça s’appelle Direct Input (DI), les avantage sont nombreux : ça ne fait pas de bruit donc tu peux enregistrer à 1h du mat, tu peux changer les effets à posteriori, tu contrôles toutes les variables dans le logiciel donc c’est facile de revenir des mois ou des années après, et les plugins de simulation coûtent beaucoup moins cher que les vrais (par exemple Neural Gojira c’est 150€, un 5150 III c’est 3000€). Par contre tu passes plus de temps à débugger des problèmes là où le vrai matos a tendance à juste marcher, et certains diront que la qualité du son est inférieure.

Read up on the Hague congress. Although wielding anti-authoritarian rhetoric, Marx de facto was authoritarian in his practice and used bureaucratic maneuvers to exclude the anarchists from the internationale. Punks are generally anarchists and therefore Marx wouldn’t be one.

Also read up on lumpenproletariat. Marx was ironically quite bourgeois in his outlook and values, he admired orderly industrial society and had very harsh words towards the underbelly of society — explicitly listing beggars, prostitutes, vagabonds and the like as degenerate and scum. Punks are very much constituted from these strata and therefore would be despised by Marx.

Marx would perhaps be appalled by later authoritarian marxists, but their theory and practice are very much extensions of his own. Depicting Marx as anti-authoritarian and counter-cultural is revisionism.

Let’s dispel with this fiction that Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

Sorry citizen, your time for self expression and democracy, as materialized by a single vote for one preset option you had no voice towards, in an election rigged by the party brass, has passed. Please go back to being an obedient worker drone. See you in two years, which is plenty often enough for a satisfactory democracy!

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If anyone wants to read the actual communiqué, here is a machine translation:

Claim of Responsibility No. 8

We are responsible for the sabotage of the railroad line north of Leverkusen. Incendiary devices were placed in a large cable shaft at the northeast corner of the Wupper Bridge and in a narrower shaft halfway between the underpass and the radio tower. We used timers, which we had already described in “move fast and break things,” as well as one liter each of barbecue lighter fluid. We regret that the fire was able to spread slightly and thank the fire department for containing it. In the future, we will wait for more favorable weather.

There have been some journalistic blunders in the political interpretation of our actions. We had already distanced ourselves from the prevailing ideologies of our time in an earlier letter. The fact that even the Office for the Protection of the Constitution only skimmed the text should give pause for thought. To summarize briefly:

For those on the left, people are fundamentally equal in their abilities and worth. It follows, then, that all people should have roughly the same amount of power and the same economic status. Those on the right place greater emphasis on the differences between people. They argue that positions of power in the social hierarchy should be held by those with greater abilities. This debate is important and must be held in every society. However, the extent to which this cultural struggle has taken root in people’s minds now prevents us from focusing on what really matters. Conveniently, of course, the other side is always to blame.

We are in the midst of a mass extinction. If it is not stopped, sooner or later humanity itself will fall victim to it. The cause of this mass extinction is technological escalation. Those who profit from it call it “progress.” The cause of technological escalation is competition.

Since competition among living beings can be reduced but not eliminated, the elimination of industrial technology is imperative. If necessary, even a small minority can bring this about through sabotage. Governments and corporations are unable to do so because of the laws of competition, as they would have to undermine their own power base.

It is impossible to rebuild industrial production chains once they have been completely destroyed.

Plants, animals, and many people will immediately be better off as a result. For people in urban centers, the transition will be difficult, uncomfortable, and dangerous at first, but we will get through it. Over time, we will come to appreciate the benefits.

Our movement has many names: We are anti-industry. We are the anti-tech movement. We are biocentric. We are dark green. We are the new Luddites.

This movement will prevent the planet from being shredded. We are not asking for permission to do so.

If you wish to better understand the motivations of these people, I suggest reading some of their other writings, like this translation of their n. 3 letter which goes deeper into the subject. And then read some of the Switch Off stuff which unfortunately hasn’t been translated but has the complete reasoning.

I’m not looking to either support or oppose them here, I just think people should form opinions based on actual sources rather than biased summaries, snide comments and their own preconceptions.

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Courriel is québécois, the official metropolitan french translation is “mél” which as far as I know sees virtually no use.

Also the académie isn’t coining these official government translations , but rather an entity called the CELF. What the académie does is, well, nothing, it’s basically just a tool for embezzlement that happens to be supported by a major newspaper.

I think every three to six months I read people on HN saying the new X.Y model has finally broken the barrier and is the game changer that will forever transform the industry.

You obviously haven’t actually tried it, else you wouldn’t write this, so why talk?

Grand and intoxicating comment

Je sais pas trop ce que tu veux dire par variété quand tu proposes de remplacer des trotskistes (qui sont léninistes) par des maoïstes (aussi léninistes) et des ML (toujours léninistes), ainsi que des anarchistes (ensemble ultra grand avec des centaines de tendances très différentes)

Because “garbage in, garbage out”. Statistical models will by design reproduce any bias in the training data.

For instance, in 2018, Amazon scrapped a hiring AI tool because it discriminated against women. It did so because it was trained on previous Amazon hires which, it turns out, had a sexist bias. It’s a testament to the power of these statistical methods that the tool managed to discriminate against women in spite of gender having been stripped from the data: the model managed to reconstitute the information based on other elements to a statistically significant degree.

Applying this to crimes, can you think of any biases in police action or the justice system that could be reproduced by the AI? Communities that get unfairly targeted, or others that benefit from blind spots?

Furthermore, there are some other issues.

One is confirmation bias: if the AI predicts there will be crime in an area and a patrol car is sent, it will confirm the prediction… In that police tends to find crime wherever it goes. If this data is then again used as input, over time this will bias the AI more and more.

Another issue is dilution of responsibility. If a human being gives an order that turns out to be illegal, they are legally responsible and can be prosecuted. If however that same person tells their subordinates to obey the AI, and that AI gives illegal orders, who is responsible? In truth, the same people are still in charge – they can feed and train the AI however they like, and ignore its output if it isn’t as they wish. But it is a legally and mediatically gray area that would be very useful for enforcing illegal orders without risking prosecution.