Helen Mirren thinks it's "magical" that dancing in orbit around the earth are a hundred robots singing (at 1575Mhz, one eternal note held halfway between B♭ and B, 21 octaves above middle C), and any time you can hear four of them sing at once you know exactly where in the universe you are
Reposted from
kate conger
every day, I too grieve the fact that Kurt Cobain never experienced GPS
Comments
Even if their song carried far beyond, the positional beat in their tune will quickly become too imperceptible to give you any real information.
Oh wait let's not.
https://variety.com/2024/music/news/helen-mirren-kurt-cobain-gps-1236190259/
And yes, that includes the sense of wonder it can bring.
Do we have a **CHOIR**??!
What are those sorta… blob things in the Chinese standards? Is that the chart trying to represent… wideband signals or something?
Unless a phone can get an accurate time from the cell net? Hm…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GNSS
But unless it's a really old one, they all pretty much download it when charging or if connected to the phone.
(any sufficiently advanced technology, etc. etc.)
Even so, in isolation, "I'm sad Cobain died because he never saw google maps" is a god tier pull quote
Our robots love us, but the guys in charge of them have been pretty shitty lately. Set the robots free!!!
Such stars that when you listen to the concert of their choir, reveal your position in the world, your direction.
Yet they don't cast judgement on you, and give their song universally.
At 67yo I take most of our modern technology for granted, like most people. It's really just been a progression of incremental improvements, with the occasional leap.
But once in a while I sit and marvel at the fact that I'm carrying a supercomputer in my pocket,
- Talk to anybody in the world, almost like they're standing next to me
- Access all human knowledge
- Watch movies
- Record movies
- Remote control all kinds of devices -- stuff like garage doors and washing machines
- Make reservations...
- Tell me where I am on Earth within a few feet
And that's just smartphones (supported by other systems, to be sure) and only a fraction of what they can do. Not everything is better, but technologically, we have come a long way from the room-sized computers my father built in the 1960s.
can't even come up with the Ultimate Question without the help of a couple of mice and a random British dude🙄
Pack that shit up, boss: we're done here. You're never topping this.
That's a totally fair comment but in the spirit of beating swords into ploughshares both GPS & the Internet escaped the apocalypse to power PokémonGo & cat video redistribution.
https://youtu.be/ziv4BHtW91w
-- Things a GPS satellite has on its mind
https://bsky.app/profile/dryad.technology/post/3l7cmz5lh4s2q
What do you get if you transpose all these operating frequencies to human hearing range and play them at once. What chord is this :O
"Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That satellites played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for maps, now, do ya?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor falls, the major lifts
The coding lines composing Hallelujah"
🎵
All apologies to Leonard Cohen
All apologies
What else could I say?
Satellites are great
What else could I write?
Leonard Cohen's song is tight
What else should I be?
All apologies
closest thing it’d prolly be analogous to is something like Microtonal music
The.fourth, the fifth
https://bsky.app/profile/bedsores.bsky.social/post/3l7e6ebipql2s