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Saffron and Swans
Jun. 11th, 2020 08:09 pmToday I made saffron buns! Never had them before, and when I ordered groceries, I was finally able to get yeast, if only in packets. I wish they tasted sliiightly more of the saffron, but to be fair, I only had whole-wheat flour, which probably overpowers the taste some. They are still good.
Also attended some sessions of an online AI conference, which was heavy on the themes of bias and ethics in AI and diversity in CS. Interesting and important work! Though it did make me wonder if there's a named equivalent of, say, Murphy's Law for tech-related meetings - it takes a minimum of three CS people to get a projector working properly, and the same seems to hold for Zoom.
As a break from writing, I have slowly been working on my follow-up to my 'watch every single Carmen program in FS', which is 'watch every single Swan Lake program in FS'. On the one hand, my prediction that I would enjoy them overall more than Carmen programs seems to be true; I love the Swan Lake score and nobody's trying (and mostly failing IMO) to be sexy. On the other... some people could really use a dancer to show them how to do swan arms prettily instead of flapping their hands up and down, if they must do the swan arms. And could whoever is putting together the music please think of something other than the same moody, vaguely dramatic cut with the main motif that everybody else is skating to, especially since Black Swan came out? There's lots of beautiful music in the ballet! I've watched thirty of these things and I don't think the section from the dance of the cygnets has been in one of them, and that's one of the best parts! Maybe that specific piece isn't good music for skating to, I don't know, but... really, there's more in there.
Okay, the variety is actually not bad considering they're all sourced from the same ballet and from Black Swan - I think I just got a run of very samey ones. I've already watched Cyberswan and several programs using the folk/foreign princess dances. There's also a Russian one with vocals that I am curious about, but I can't seem to find what the song is called, let alone what it's about.
Also attended some sessions of an online AI conference, which was heavy on the themes of bias and ethics in AI and diversity in CS. Interesting and important work! Though it did make me wonder if there's a named equivalent of, say, Murphy's Law for tech-related meetings - it takes a minimum of three CS people to get a projector working properly, and the same seems to hold for Zoom.
As a break from writing, I have slowly been working on my follow-up to my 'watch every single Carmen program in FS', which is 'watch every single Swan Lake program in FS'. On the one hand, my prediction that I would enjoy them overall more than Carmen programs seems to be true; I love the Swan Lake score and nobody's trying (and mostly failing IMO) to be sexy. On the other... some people could really use a dancer to show them how to do swan arms prettily instead of flapping their hands up and down, if they must do the swan arms. And could whoever is putting together the music please think of something other than the same moody, vaguely dramatic cut with the main motif that everybody else is skating to, especially since Black Swan came out? There's lots of beautiful music in the ballet! I've watched thirty of these things and I don't think the section from the dance of the cygnets has been in one of them, and that's one of the best parts! Maybe that specific piece isn't good music for skating to, I don't know, but... really, there's more in there.
Okay, the variety is actually not bad considering they're all sourced from the same ballet and from Black Swan - I think I just got a run of very samey ones. I've already watched Cyberswan and several programs using the folk/foreign princess dances. There's also a Russian one with vocals that I am curious about, but I can't seem to find what the song is called, let alone what it's about.
