If people are happy, who will make our memes???

Yup! We live in a basement and have this deal with the spiders that they’ll be left alone as long as they stay off the furniture. For some reason we basically only see them in the bathroom but the occasional time they’ve been bad, they get exiled to the laundry room.Usually there are 3-5 out that we can see at any given time. Most are very tiny ones that chill in webs, but a few are hunters that are much more mobile. Those that stick around or do something notable get named after a while. Other than Hex there’s been …

Peeping Tom who lived in a web in front of the toilet and just watched you. Sometimes, usually after someone showered and there was condensation in the room, he’d take a little jaunt around his “porch”. He disappeared one day under mysterious circumstances. While hoping for his safe return I took the opportunity to clean around his home and accidentally sucked it up with a hand vacuum.

Marina, who was originally named Mario as I rescued her from the sink - the name was changed when I suspected her to be a girl due to her looking like a bigger version of a species we sometimes see. She was my fave as she was always up to something and was very active. We think she was huffing caulking as after we redid it she loved to sit on the new caulk, leading us to childishly say she was “addicted to caulk.” We were genuinely concerned about her addiction though as it seemed unhealthy. I once saw her awkwardly chase down a pill millipede. You wouldn’t think it possible for something a few mm across to look embarrassed, but I swear she did after she bit it in the ass and it ran off unphased. I think she was too tiny to pierce its exoskeleton. She’s recently disappeared and I’m legit sad and hoping she’s just off on one of her adventures.

I then recycled the name Mario for one who I had to quickly scoop out of the sink when I was running the water and hadn’t noticed because he was so tiny. I was proud of myself as, despite what you may think I’m slightly arachnophobic. (I was very arachnophobic before we started keeping them as free-range pets / housemates.)

Big Bertha, who lived in parts unknown but would often show up in the bathroom at night. She had a habit of temporarily stealing the webs of the resident spiders for a few hours before departing. Usually the other spider would fuck off and watch from a distance, but once I saw her in there just staring down the owner. To my knowledge, she never hurt them though.

It’s possible that Hex is actually Big Bertha, as he/she/it (I’m sure I’m misgendering the hell out of them all) has a similar personality.

Can you possibly tell that we cannot currently get pets due to our living situation? We’re making do with what the basement provides for companionship.

Better yet, how do we get this person screened for psychopathy?

It’s not quite the same, but … I swear, literally this morning while doing my business one of my bathroom spiders snuck under my slightly raised heel just to chill. If I’d put my foot down that’d be the end of that creature, but by luck I moved my foot instead to find a quarter-sized spider just hanging out where my bare foot had just been.

Side-note: This particular spider is called Hex because it’s missing two legs. I believe I found those legs right by the toilet a few weeks before I met my new pooping pal. I’ve always wondered how it lost them.

If you really truly are interested in it as a career don’t hold back, but know that it’s a looooooong road for very little money and absolutely no guarantees. Like anything fairly creative, only the top percentile make actual good money (or even sustainable money), and even then you usually have to freelance and build your own reputation to get there. That said, there are viable adjacent jobs that use that skillset. I worked in corporate AV for a few years, which involves running sound, lighting, and video for events. It’s far from glamorous though, and mostly involves manual labor in setups and teardowns. You’re basically a roadie who also runs the gear, but instead of mixing cool rock shows you’re mixing a few mics and a PowerPoint presentation for a pharmaceutical convention. The hours can also suuuuuuuck. My longest shift was 20 hours. I got home at 3 AM after that and then had to be back at the shop for 7. You live on free coffee and cookies that the banquet staff give you (you get to be on a first-name basis with every hotel banquet server in your city). It can be weirdly fun as a youngster but I have no idea how the older techs survived. I regularly worked 40 hour weeks when I was part time and 60-80 when full-time. I burned out by like 22.

The music store gig was really fun though. I ran the rentals desk and spent a lot of time teaching my customers how to use the pro audio gear. That’s also the most ridiculous place I’ve ever worked in terms of memorable stories.

You can also run sound in a dive bar, but that’s mostly about who you know and involves more networking than you’d expect to work in a dive bar for very little money.

As far as actually being a professional audio engineer or producer who makes a living making records - that’s the real tough part. I suppose it’s possible to land a staff job in a studio, but that’s not really how it worked in my small city. I freelanced with my own gear and home studio for years until I met a (relatively - this is Canada) big-name producer who I’d built rapport with from my job in the music store. He offered to let me work out of his proper studio for a very reasonable rate. Note that this wasn’t a job - it was an offer to pay him to use his facility. Still, it was the closest thing I had to a break and for a few glorious months I was (barely) scraping by as a full-time recording engineer. The clientele I had built up over the previous decade were almost exclusively local punk and garage rock bands, meaning none of them had money, and now they had to pay real studio fees on top of my own, so I was charging way too little. I was technically doing it though, but then I finally fully burned out - due in part to some looming personal issues - and that was that.

As to all your other comments - alllll of that can be learned through study and experimentation. I went to an overpriced school to learn the fundamentals, but a diploma like that means shit and you can learn it just as well on your own. With stuff like EQ you don’t need to be able to instantly pick out a good/bad frequency fully by ear - there are little tricks for zoning in on what you’re looking for (crank the gain on the EQ and scan the frequency range until you find the tone you’re trying to get rid of, then turn it down. Hint: it’s almost always the lower-mids making stuff sound muddy.)

This all being said, if you’re interested in this stuff I suggest dipping your toes in as a hobbyist first. If it becomes your obsession maybe consider a career, but only if you’ll be content working adjacent jobs rather than recording bands full time. Also, in case I didn’t make it quite clear, there’s a ton of networking involved. It’s easier if you actually play in a band, as I did (you don’t have to be good - just out there meeting people). I suppose it’d still be possible otherwise if you spend most of your free time at local shows and really get to know the musicians. Also, by the time I was getting in, home recording was a vibrant industry so wasn’t just competing with other engineers for jobs - I was also competing with bands just doing it themselves. I’m sure that’s only gotten tougher these days with cheap gear being so accessible.

I hope this doesn’t come across as demoralizing. I just want to make sure you know what you’re potentially getting yourself into. If you’re hating your current industry, though, and this all sounds overwhelming, another approach is to find something tolerable but maybe not what you envisioned, and make the best of it. In creative fields work typically becomes your life as it’s a constant grind to make ends meet and something that was once pleasurable inevitably becomes tainted by association. Some people have the emotional fortitude to survive under those conditions but I suspect they’re few and far between. I’ve worked probably a dozen jobs in my life before landing in my current role. Depending on how you count it, I’ve been here about 11 years and I fully expect this will be the company I work at for the rest of my working life (in part because my family bought the business a few years ago after several of us had worked there for years). The job has nothing to do with anything I went to school for and is in an industry I have no personal interest in. But, the work itself is interesting and sometimes creative,. Most importantly, the people are good, so I’m about as happy as a person can be in a job. Keep yourself open to opportunities like that, if you can find them. Buying the business helped, but even before that I had pretty much accepted that I was a lifer because this was the first grown-up job I felt content in.

I used to actually know a ton about this stuff but haven’t touched a musical instrument or audio device in over 12 years. Sooooo, bear with me.

All of this will depend entirely where your interests lay in terms of audio production/engineering. One of the core skills would be the ability to pick out different sounds from a soundscape. I suspect you already have a knack for that given how much you seem to think about audio quality. Tied in with that would be an understanding of how digital audio works in terms of bitrate, dynamic range, what clipping sounds (and looks) like, etc. I’m sure there’s tons of info on all that online. Analog audio has a whole other set of skills associated with it, but I doubt it’s super accessible these days for a beginner. That’s outside of cassettes, at least. I’m sure old 4-track cassette recorders are super cheap. As much as I loved analog recording, you’re probably better off just going digitally and using processing to get an approximation of the “traditional” analog sound, though, if that’s your jsn. Or if you’re going for a black metal sound or something else intentionally grungy, go to town on a cassette deck.

From there I’d say the biggest skills would be understanding basic mic technique, the general physics of sound, and how to properly set your levels (basically the ratio of preamp vs amp). Next up would be figuring out basic processing - namely the different types of EQ and compression. Effects play into that too - especially reverb and delay - but EQ and compression (plus proper micing and levels) are generally going to be the foundation of a good mix.

That being said - this all entirely depends on what you’re going for. If you don’t do anything musical yourself and aren’t inclined to record other musicians, you can have tons of fun remixing other people’s work. I’m pretty sure there are sites out there where you can download raw audio tracks to mix yourself. Another viable option if you’re into electronic forms of music is to get a sequencer and experiment that way.

I got my start when I was maybe 13 or 14 with a cracked copy of Fruity Loops (I think it’s called FL Studio now). I used that to write dumb electronic songs despite having no theoretical musical or audio knowledge (besides having previously used the built in Windows sound recording software to layer weird shit I recorded with a crappy mic). That software also came with demo tracks that I experimented with. About a year later I got a bass guitar and started a punk band, and that led to all sorts of weird experimentation with recording mediums. From there I bought a shitty reel to reel tape deck and began recording punk bands out of their jam spaces, eventually went to school for audio engineering, had a bunch of jobs related to the art (while freelancing doing recording work and live sound), and finally burned out and never touched a guitar or mic again.

None of that is necessary or even something I’d recommend. It’s a perfectly legitimate hobby if you want to keep it small-scale. You can start it with almost no money, but that’s where I’d caution you if you have anything approaching an addictive personality - the gear can get super addictive as you begin a quest for the perfect tone. For a few years there I worked at a musical instrument store and most of my paycheck went right back to my work (the staff discount sure helped though). Likewise, most of what I’d make freelancing would go back to gear as well. That’s one of the big reasons I quit cold turkey one day. I still miss it as a hobby, but I know the second I start it back up I’ll be right back to dreaming of expensive tube preamps. Your own mileage may vary if you have better self-control.

I’m kinda shocked that the Trump campaign would agree to this. These rules seem directly in response to his debate style.

For all Biden’s many faults, having to share a stage with him in a civilized manner is almost certain to work against Trump. Especially when his campaign is consistently trying to paint Biden as mentally unwell and out of touch.

I’m glad it’s happening, just shocked that it’s happening under these conditions. I fully expected the Trump campaign to find a reason to back out leading up to this, and any of those rules would likely be a justification for that that his base would be fine with.

That one surprises me less, based on the limited stuff I already know about GMO companies like Monsanto. Still madness, of course.

They should name that shop Potpourri.

Very good point! I imagine meeting someone in person and finding out they have the same unusual hobby would have been quite the thrill. I’m old enough to distinctly remember a world before the ubiquitous internet, but never had a super niche hobby to have given me that sort of experience.

That’s a fair point but I suspect this has always been the case. I bet if we could go back to the prehistoric period we’d find someone saying, “Cronk found himself another dick-shaped leaf to add to his collection.” I’d almost think with less available to amuse them, people would be finding joy in all sorts of weird hobbies or collections.

No hard feelings at all. I made a well-intentioned but dumb joke that wasn’t well-received and you had the guts to call me out on why people were reacting so badly. I respect that, and am always open to changing my perspective in the face of new evidence.

For what it’s worth, it sounds like we’re largely on the same side here. With Lemmy being such a small place, I even recognize your user name as someone I’m pretty sure I’ve come across before and thought, “this sounds like a smart person.”

Perceptions are also easily swayed because we’ve been on an unusually long objectively (not relative) downward slope.

I’m definitely with you here. I used to buy into the liberal notion that the world is objectively getting better (liberal as in the classic/European meaning, not how it’s typically used here in North America). I think that was largely true for a long time since WWII, and it’s probably still true in several metrics. Overall though, it feels we’re on a major downward trend in many places where it really matters such as the climate, wealth inequality, global strife, etc. I’ll admit that’s had me pretty demoralized but then I have some good interactions with folks in here that helps me see a little light in all the misery, so thanks for that.

Imagine how different the world was for people with super niche interests before the internet. Back then, this would have been seen as the weird (or at best eccentric) guy in your town who collects fire alarms and won’t stop talking about them. Now he’s presumably got a fulfilling social life via his unusual hobby, and an outlet to share his thoughts to a willing audience.

For all its many faults over the last decades, this is the pure internet at its best.

Well now I’m bummed out to find out that people are trying to patent math.

I’m with you on all of those though.

Well, while I was also mostly joking with that second comment, respect for calling me out on it. For the record, I do know that people have always been this stupid and that much of the US is ridiculously gerrymandered. If anything I was maybe projecting a bit as I suspect I got COVID a few years back and my short-term memory has been off ever since. It’s been a point of concern for me as, I admit, it’s made me feel more stupid.

I do think people are getting worse, but in reality I blame misinformation campaigns for that.

The one thing I will (politely) disagree with in your comment is your characterization of pot smokers being hard left or disengaged with politics. I think it’s much more universal across the spectrum than you’re suggesting. Now that it’s legal in Canada it seems like everyone uses it to some degree. That’s an exaggeration but I’m continually shocked by some of the people I know coming out of the woodwork as users, and many are not even close to hard left (and are engaged in following news and voting for the party I loathe).

Anyway, respect again for sharing your opinion and I’m truly sorry if I offended anyone with my earlier comment. I’ll leave it up for the sake of posterity.

Oh, I know. I was being facetious in my earlier comment. For the record, I’m vastly in favor of legal weed and occasionally partake in it myself.

True. I literally think of that most days when I see older folks irrationally freak out at the smallest inconvenience. Not that this happens to most old folks, it’s just really remarkable when you do witness it. It’s really sad that they can’t control it, just too bad about the ones who gained power and used it to fuck everyone else over.

Why not both? Yeah, dams cause continued ecological damage and I don’t think we should be building more of them, but let’s leave them in place until they can be replaced with proper renewables.

But yeah, you’re 100% correct that that shit should have been nationalized yesterday. Unfortunately all it takes is a conservative-majority (low-c conservative for an international audience) to re-privatize it and let their buddies buy it at a discount. That seems to be what’s happening globally. I’m starting to think the best way forward for most things related to the common good are the formation of non-profits or worker’s co-ops but that’s a non-starter in something as large-scale as baseline power generation.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but could legal weed have been a bad thing? That brand of fuckery is getting increasingly popular here in Canada too.

Slightly more seriously, I wonder if Long COVID really is messing up people’s brains to this extent. People who would have been on the fence about voting for someone like her before COVID were also the most likely to intentionally avoid protecting themselves from it. Are future historians going to look to that as the catalyst that collectively broke our brains?

Edit: to clarify my initial joking comment about legal weed, I’m super in favor of it and have been for a very very long time. The “brand of fuckery” I refer to as getting more popular in Canada is a reference to the Boebert/Trump-style populism that’s been invading our country over the last decade and to which our almost definite next prime minister subscribes. I was merely joking that perhaps Coloradans are smoking too much, leading to decisions like re-electing Boebert, and perhaps that’s also why we Canadians are making poor choices in this regard.

I don’t care about the downvotes for my vague post - just want to set the record straight that I think weed is good, and putting people in jail for using it is bad.

I’m sure your question was rhetorical, but for those listening from the back: Decades of intentionally under-funding public education, for a start.