Mr. Plumbean

@chrisbrody

Music theory professor and pianist in Louisville KY, he/him, the most wonderful woolly baa-lamb that ever stepped

500 Folgt3.258 Follower7.427 Posts

YouTube Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir chrisbrody.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· 26d

If you encounter measure 840 it can only be in one of two situations: (1) a whole act of a Wagner opera, or (2) a fourth movement by Schubert. (This movement also has a repeat of the first 230 measures so in reality it's pushing 1100)

Beginning of a system of music for piano trio, measure number 840

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jul 1

What, was Vladimir Shpunt unavailable?

Chris Brody
• Jun 10, 2010 •
This is really music to a Dodger-hater's ears: the Dodgers have been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to have a Russian scientist named Vladimir Shpunt help boost the team's performance 10 to 15 percent by sending psychic "V-energy" to the team from his house in Boston.

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jun 30

You can imagine how I feel about these “leaders” on my campus

Select members of ELC staff train in Italy for professional development in the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy. So lauded was the ELC that Louisville Mayor Greenberg made his Thrive by Five announcement to offer pre-K education to all 3-4 year olds in Louisville at the ELC on March 12, 2024. High quality pre-K education correlates with later educational success and economic well-being, and on-campus childcare is a major benefit for students, faculty, and staff, yet both President Bradley and Provost Kathryn Cardarelli have dismissed the ELC as merely childcare that contributes nothing to the University’s educational mission in statements to the Faculty Senate and UofL newspaper.

Alarmingly, remarks made by President Bradley indicate prior knowledge of financial issues facing the ELC, issues that were not made public for the last 6 years. In comments to the Faculty Senate he stated that the deficit in 2020 was around $700,000 per year and that it has risen since then, and yet no one rang the alarm bells to ELC staff, families or supporters. Instead, it seems President Bradley chose to let a problem fester, instead of administering aid, until it could be announced that it had to be amputated.

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jun 29

Not a big deal as long as you make sure to pound in your neck bolts real good

Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster, complete with neck bolts

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jun 29

Office rubber plant is so happy to be home and outdoors for the summer that I had to take a horizontal photo to get all its leaves in

Hearty-looking rubber plant in a plastic pot in front of juniper bushes and some untidy groundcover

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jun 26

I'm forever grateful to the editors of Music Theory Spectrum for allowing me to include this entirely off-topic but glorious footnote

14. In the Loure (Ex. 11[e]), Roman numerals cannot capture the subtlety of m. 11’s downbeat, which hinges on two ambiguities: whether the treble C or B is the harmonic tone, and whether G♮ or G♯ is implied at the beginning of the measure. The blatantly contradictory pivot-chord analysis shown in the example attempts to convey that the two keys involved in the modulation make different “choices” from among those options (I: C and G♮; vi: B and G♯).

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jun 26

Maybe you’d prefer this one instead?

A chair for sale on a sidewalk that also looks kind of like a butthole

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jun 18

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jun 16

My personal reference point for "crepuscular" is always:

Edward Gorey drawing of an old-timey guy on a weird bicycle in the fog, with Gorey's handwritten limerick:

There was a young sportsman named Peel
Who went for a trip on his wheel;
He pedalled for days
Through crepuscular haze,
And returned feeling somewhat unreal.

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jun 13

Okay "Lake Los Angeles," California, who are you trying to fool

Maps screenshot of Lake Los Angeles, California, a small town with no lakes

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jun 12

I fell asleep while solving this cryptic and filled the whole grid with Z's 😭😭

Cryptic crossword grid filled with about 6 legit answers and every remaining square with the letter Z

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jun 8

Fantastic start to this puzzle 🤩

Part of a crossword puzzle grid, empty except for the answer "MINGUSAHUM" as an answer to clue "Jazz album featuring 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat." Puzzle is Freestyle 24 by Will Nediger (https://blog.bewilderinglypuzzles.com/)

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jun 8

All I'm saying is it would answer a lot of questions if it turned out that my child was actually an owl

THE NAPTIME HELL MATRIX

Quadrant 1: Kid needs nap + Kid takes nap.
Adherence to naptime schedule is more important than adherence to state and federal laws
Going anywhere fun is out of the question
Peace reigns in your house

Quadrant 2: Kid doesn't need nap + Kid takes nap.
Kid’s bedtime is now 1 AM
No trouble staying awake for nightly read-aloud of a few chapters of War and Peace
Maybe every night at midnight you and your kid could pretend it’s New Year’s Eve

Quadrant 3: Kid needs nap + Kid won't take nap.
Kid is effectively drunk on exhaustion by 3 PM daily. So … are they a happy drunk or a belligerent drunk?
Drown your sorrows by posting about them on niche social media site

Quadrant 4: Kid doesn't need nap + Kid won't take nap.
Bedtime now smooth as butter
You can take day trips without undue fuss
Congratulations, you are now parenting without a break from 6 AM to 8 PM daily

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Jun 2

These two (6 and almost 3) being sweet in the park the other day was a happy thing to be able to get a photo of

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· May 30

The new transparent alt text popover on the @bsky.app iOS app frequently makes the text unreadable (the text is also smaller than it used to be) … I realize screen readers are the most important use case but sometimes I appreciate being able to read alt text with my eyes!

An alt-text screenshot in which transparent alt text over a photo of black-on-white text makes everything illegible

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· May 29

If there were ever going to be a concert where I could wear my straw hat, this would be it, but sadly we are wearing concert black

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· May 20

The ideological homogeneity of Bluesky means we can produce ratios around here that would have been unimaginable on the old site. Proud of you guys

4 reposts
161 quotes
32 likes
16 saves
300 replies

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· May 7

I am but a mere child when it comes to data visualization and even I know this should really, really not be a pie chart

From the Wikipedia article on Pluto: the masses of various dwarf planets compared, but in a pie chart for some reason

Caption reads: The mass of Pluto compared to other dwarf planets (Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong and Quaoar, plus Pluto's moon Charon and the former dwarf planet Triton (Neptune I). The unit of mass is ×10^21 kg.

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· May 5

I can’t keep track of which industry groups are normal and which ones are insane, but it seems bad that the American Psychiatric Association treats Kennedy as sharing their basic goals in any sense when he won’t stop arguing in public that Prozac is worse than heroin

"We, as the A.P.A., want to be at the table for all these discussions and policy improvements," she said. "The bottom line is, we believe clinical care is safe and should be individualized for all patients, and we believe the secretary is taking steps that are beneficial for the field."

During his confirmation hearings last year, Mr. Kennedy claimed, without evidence, that S.S.R.I.s were partly responsible for the rise in school shootings, and that they could be harder to quit than heroin. At Monday's event, Mr. Kennedy repeated that claim.

"I happen to be an actual expert, because I was addicted to heroin for 14 years, and I never wanted to be" he said. "I was constantly getting off it, and then came back on. I went through withdrawal probably 100 times," he added. "You just have to steel yourself for 72 bad hours."

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· May 3

One of these William Albright hymns in the UU hymnal (composed 1973) includes some cute "In C"-style light aleatory. Obviously I think we should do this in my church some time

Optional instrumental ostinato:

[9 numbered pitches on a treble clef staff (D5, C♯5, C5, B4, A4, F♯4, E4, D4, C4), with a repeat sign, marked pp]

Instructions:

1. Play the 9 pitches in the order given and in any register (except low); let vibrate.

2. Play steadily in any tempo (MM 52–120); each player should choose a different tempo.

3. Starting with the first note only, add one series note to each repetition (1; 1+2; 1+2+3; etc.). When the series is completed, reverse the process.

4. When the entire cycle is completed, begin again without interruption.

5. The instruments begin shortly before the organ (or piano) and at the end they continue briefly after the accompaniment stops.

6. Instruments should blend with one another as much as possible to create an overall "celestial" effect, or spaced out at a distance.

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· May 2

You know, I sympathize with the rich-people-are-ruining-everything tone of this piece, but I just can’t get too worried about the threat posed by someone as blatantly delusional as Quasha, the pay-to-play conductor who’s the main character here. Love this kicker:

One thing money can’t buy, though, is rhythm. Quasha rehearsed the bassoon solo in measure 56 of the third movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, a spot with a slightly tricky syncopation. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the players to take her tempo.

“We’re starting to rush,” she said.

They played it again, still ahead of her.

“We’re still finding it, but we’re getting better.”

The musicians nodded. They didn’t change a thing.

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Apr 25

Such good stuff here—no less good for the fact that these crucial points seem like fundamental common sense. Apparently not common enough for people making educational policy at all levels! www.newyorker.com/culture/prog...

The main arguments against the use of generative A.I. in children’s education are threefold. The first is that L.L.M.s encourage cognitive offloading before kids have done much cognitive onloading—that is, if these tools cause atrophy of thought in adults, then we can scarcely overestimate the potential effects on a brain that has not developed those cognitive muscles in the first place.

The second is that chatbots, which mimic emotional intimacy and tend toward sycophancy, warp how children forge their selfhood and relationships. Around age ten or eleven, kids are “suddenly developing more sophisticated relationships and social hierarchies,” Mitch Prinstein, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told me. “A lot of that can be traced back to surging oxytocin and dopamine receptors. Oxytocin makes us want to bond with peers, and dopamine makes it feel good when we get positive feedback.” When a fawning L.L.M. enters the chat, “it’s hijacking the biological tendency to want peer feedback,” Prinstein said. Tweens do a lot of mutual emotional disclosure in the normal course of growing up, he went on, “but if they’re going to a chatbot, they miss out on practicing skills that we use for the rest of our lives.”

The third complaint against the use of A.I. in schools is that it confuses ends and means, privileging the most efficient route to the correct answer, the crispest thesis statement, or the neatest drawing over the messier and less quantifiable process of building a thinking, feeling person. “We are potentially undermining complex thinking, changing the development of sociality, and mistaking the learning goal,” Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, who is a professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience at University of Southern California, told me. “We are cutting off learning at the knees.”

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Apr 23

Here's me actually playing something after I'd been dinking around on banjo for about a year and taken a few classes. If you're a musician & especially a music teacher, I highly recommend trying to have the experience as an adult of really sucking at something

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Apr 14

Me to this fingering editor:

Girl to Bart Simpson: “Do you ever think anything you don’t say?”

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Apr 14

After a final large vowel spiral,

The World Parliament convenes in a session above the clouds, and the subject for debate is love. As the parliamentarians arrive via transparent elevators at the top floor of the skyscraper or floating glass dome, helicopters and doves occasionally pass by in the blue sky beyond. The debate is carried on in unknown languages, with occasional lapses into intelligibility in the local language. Delegates rise to present their interpretations of love, with the President commenting on each view. When a janitor interrupts with the news that an illegally parked car is about to be towed away, the President realises it is his, and rushes out. A coloratura soprano is elected temporary President, and the debate is continued. After a final large vowel spiral, the parliamentarians synchronously declare the central theme of the opera: "World parliament Wednesday from Light, day of reconciliation, love". The session is adjourned, all rise and exit while singing further attributes of Wednesday ("day of spaces", "day of women's rights", "day of Mercury", "day of reconciliation", "day of flying", "day of new languages", etc.) on a G♭. Unsure where he should exit, the fattest bass stops, turns to the audience in embarrassment, and before leaving stutters, "Now the next scene would follow".

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Apr 12

You guys think it’s fine if I do this in the concert? Is it better or worse if I also add a tennis player “Come on!!”?

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Apr 10

do not dasterb

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Apr 7

When I heard that they were going to be wearing eclipse goggles I briefly wondered whether they’d be some astronaut-only heavy-duty ones or the same disposable cardboard ones we all had in 2024 and 2017, and I love that it’s the latter

The four Artemis II astronauts wearing eclipse glasses as described

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Mar 27

Like many TT faculty, I’m technically on a 10-month contract—this is a job perk that essentially formalizes the existence of summer break. Of course I still do some work over the summer and I’ve never bothered with an out-of-office message. But this year I’m considering putting this one up on June 1

Because the University of Louisville has chosen to close its childcare center—taking this action unilaterally, in secret, on short notice, and without seeking alternative solutions—I am caring for my children full-time during June and July and will respond to your message in early August. If you require my assistance sooner than that, please contact President [text cuts off]

Mr. Plumbean@chrisbrody· Mar 27

I wonder what it's like to feel like you need to be the 201st person to tell this amateur musician that that's just a courtesy accidental