yaoptimist

I'm an optimist

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Classical music has never paid for itself. Ticket sales cover roughly a third of an American orchestra's budget, and that's the healthy ones. Since 2010, orchestras in Philadelphia, Louisville, Honolulu, and Syracuse have all filed for bankruptcy. Then gamers started buying tickets.

The model was always subsidy. Beethoven lived on an annuity from three Viennese aristocrats. Wagner had a Bavarian king paying his debts. The modern version swapped princes for donors and endowments, but the arithmetic never changed. The music on stage loses money and someone rich covers the gap.

Video game concerts broke that arithmetic. The Legend of Zelda's Symphony of the Goddesses sold out most of a world tour. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth sold out the Royal Albert Hall. Sonic filled London's Barbican for three straight nights. Same players, same halls. Different composer names on the program, and suddenly the box office covers the cost.

The audience explains why. The average classical subscriber is near retirement age and the field loses old attendees faster than it gains young ones. The Zelda crowd shows up in their teens and twenties, some in costume. A Royal Philharmonic poll found more young people now discover orchestral music through games than through live concerts.

So the annoyance is aimed at the wrong people. Koji Kondo and Nobuo Uematsu built the biggest onboarding funnel orchestral music has ever had. The 19-year-old hearing a 90-piece orchestra play Zelda tonight is the only plausible Mahler subscriber of 2046.

Haydn needed a prince to fund a symphony. Zelda fills the hall at face value. In 300 years of orchestral music, this is the first time the audience paid the whole bill.

[Jim O'Shaughnessy @jposhaughnessy]

Two thoughts from Bertrand Russell

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd."

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@viktaur27 @Teslarati The rate of improvement from original GPT to GPT-3 is impressive. If this rate of improvement continues, GPT-5 or 6 could be indistinguishable from the smartest humans. Just my opinion, not an endorsement. I left OpenAI 2 to 3 years ago. Am a neutral outsider at this point.

[Nichole @NicholeDelly]

Christopher Nolan convinced IMAX engineers to completely redesign their cameras just so he could film The Odyssey.

"I called my friends at IMAX and I said, 'If ever we're going to make a film entirely in IMAX, this is The Odyssey. So, can you find a way to alleviate the limiting factor?'"

"The limiting factor being the cameras are extremely loud."

"We've never been able to capture dramatic scenes with an IMAX camera."

"What they did is they came up with a way of blimping the camera."

"Essentially a high-tech box that you put the camera into and it silences it."

"It let us, for the first time ever, get the quiet scenes... and therefore be able to do the whole film."

[Tesla Owners Silicon Valley @teslaownersSV]

Engineering is magic

[Bilal Zuberi // Red Glass Ventures @bznotes]

I remind myself of this quite often.

[Physics-astronomy @Physicsastronmy]

April 6, 2026 | A Solar Eclipse Captured Far Beyond the Moon
No human has ever seen the Sun vanish like this from here. ☀️🌘

[Matt Shumer @mattshumer_]

https://t.co/ivXRKXJvQg

[Shibetoshi Nakamoto @BillyM2k]

this was scott adams’s favorite dilbert comic

you shall live on forever in your body of work, sir 🫡

[Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays]

A Final Message From Scott Adams

[Retro Anime @retro_anime]

Today, January 5th, marks the birthday of the legendary Hayao Miyazaki, one of the pillars of the anime industry and one of the greatest directors and artists in the history of cinema.

[The Golden Age @thegoldenaged]

Happy 85th birthday to one of Japan's greatest anime directors, Hayao Miyazaki 🎉❤️

[yaoptimist @yamozg]

Concept of systems allowed me to achieve success on objectives I wasn’t able to before. Ideas from understanding how different professionals think, to skill stacking, framing, etc contributed to progress in my life. Wishing you @ScottAdamsSays all the best and huge thank you for all the work you have done in the years.

[Grummz @Grummz]

Let's move to the future together.

[Wario64 @Wario64]

LEGO Star Wars 75419 Death Star (Ultimate Collector Series) official pics revealed ($999.99 - 9019 pieces) https://t.co/foCa7C3q6r

[Love Music @khnh80044]

What an awesome performance 😍❤️

[All The Right Movies @ATRightMovies]

How motion capture peformer Andy Serkis looked on the set of THE HOBBIT playing Gollum.

[Robert Patrick 🇺🇸 @robertpatrickT2]

Happy birthday to my friend, Dr. Peter Weller. A true legend and genuinely good man!

[Buitengebieden @buitengebieden]

Stalking skills.. 😂