@bmerrell34 agreed, like frankly even saying 'jazz' is usually less helpful than being able to name, like, specific influences in a specific corner of jazz that sm is in dialogue with.
a real opinion i have is that people who think it's meaningful to think about music in terms of numerical ratings or grades have disqualified themselves as people who think about music
@bmerrell34 basically i want to be able to think about the choices musicians are making when they make stuff, why they might be making those choices in particular, and what the stakes of those choices are, and i want the music writing i read to be able to help illuminate that
@bmerrell34 and tbh i think 'good is good and bad is bad' is maybe actually closer to what i don't find very interesting about 'ratings brain' than it is an alternative to it
@arne__ness well also the flip side of 'not zero sum' never even seems to enter the conversation (i.e. 'not zero sum' is assumed to imply positive sum when it could just as easily imply negative sum)
but if i can tell that the writing is essentially an argument in support of the rating that's always a big 'i will never read this music writer again' moment for me, for better or worse
i do understand that people who write about music professionally are essentially forced to apply a rating by pretty much all available outlets and so i don't think it's disqualifying to have done so in that context
@AntiClimaco@TristanSevers and 'star wars did it' in the sense that star wars had to negotiate with the unions for it and that negotiation created a template for subsequent films to follow
In the 'Timaeus,' Plato proposes the idea that everything in the world is made out of little triangles, and i just know he would have gone crazy for video game graphics.
@kaibosworth@BigMeanInternet it's always felt a little but like the zoomers independently reinventing house of leaves from first principles to me, but fixated on the mall instead of the household, which is an interesting divergence