TIL: Today I Learned

GasBandit

Staff member
TIL one of my favorite so-called "royalty free" music loops that I got from one of my professional services (and have used in multiple youtube videos, including HFA2) is actually ripped right out of the middle of a very not-royalty-free song by a minor artist. I didn't get snagged for it, but it's a bummer. So I bought the guy's album.

Here's the song in question.



This is the second time I have caught this service passing off a 30 second loop cut out of a copyrighted song as "royalty free" and it is making me dubious about using them any more. The first one was from Beyonce, which I'm surprised HASN'T gotten me copy-dinged on youtube because I used it a couple times too, before I heard the real song (I don't listen to much Beyonce).
 
You're not talking a karaoke remix version, are you? You mean a straight up copy/paste?
Also, thanks for giving me another artist to add to my Pandora "Crunch!" station.

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
You're not talking a karaoke remix version, are you? You mean a straight up copy/paste?
Also, thanks for giving me another artist to add to my Pandora "Crunch!" station.

--Patrick
Nope, no artist credit, no anything, it's just listed in the service as "Electro loop 029" and consists of a cropped section of the song. It's not a karaoke version, or a cover, or a remix, it's just repackaging the hook from a copyrighted song and calling it royalty free.

I'm not the biggest stickler for copyright law out there, but I try to give credit where it's due, or at the very least, I'd like to know when I'm stealing and when I'm not.
 
My favorite sushi place no longer sells beer, wine or (sadly) sake. They invited us to got the liquor store next door and byob, but didn't know if they had sake.

We find a nice bottle of good junmai sake and bring it back, and the restaurant manager shakes his head and says (with a smile) "we call this wakame sake in japan."

I'd never heard of that term so I looked it up when I got home. I think he was having a little joke on us.

Wakame Sake, translated as seaweed sake, is a delicacy where a naked, supine model clamps her thighs together to form a triangular cup. Sake is poured down her body and into the indentation. As it fills, the woman’s pubic hair begins to gently undulate in the warm sake, similar to seaweed swaying in the ocean. Then a drunk businessman leans down and slurps it out of her crotch.

Or maybe flirting with my wife ;)
 
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I went to an outdoors show as a teen and remarked to a vendor that a dark brown vest was remarkably soft.
He explained that it was referred to as "shaved beaver" and I should ask for it by name.

--Patrick

He was teasing you. The fur is called sheared beaver.
 
TIL: saccadic masking.
Radiolab investigated something similar about how your brain deals with blinking and what it does to your attention.

Also, I discovered you can "see" that seemingly Brownian motion of your eyes for yourself at night while driving. Wait until you're stopped at a light (for safety!) and, without moving your head at all, whip your eyes from top to bottom in as straight a line as you can manage. You will see that the streaks left by the traffic light or by the tail lights of the car in front of you are not straight, instead they will have a bit of a wave to them. This is because your retina will fatigue if the same image is left on it too long, causing its sensitivity to fade. You eyes compensate for this by jittering even when you think you are holding them completely still.

--Patrick
 
Radiolab investigated something similar about how your brain deals with blinking and what it does to your attention.

Also, I discovered you can "see" that seemingly Brownian motion of your eyes for yourself at night while driving. Wait until you're stopped at a light (for safety!) and, without moving your head at all, whip your eyes from top to bottom in as straight a line as you can manage. You will see that the streaks left by the traffic light or by the tail lights of the car in front of you are not straight, instead they will have a bit of a wave to them. This is because your retina will fatigue if the same image is left on it too long, causing its sensitivity to fade. You eyes compensate for this by jittering even when you think you are holding them completely still.

--Patrick


That phenomenon is also how illusions like this work:

Stare at the image for about 30 seconds and then look at a white wall or sheet of white paper and the image will appear red white and blue. The cone receptors in your retina get fatigued for the black, yellow and white colors, so when you look at a white space, the opposing colors receptors have to "pick up the slack" and so you see an after image of the red white and blue.

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Sensation and Perception was one of my favorite undergrad classes.
 
Stare at the image for about 30 seconds without moving your area of focus
If you move your eyes around during the 30 seconds, it doesn't work for reasons we were just discussing.
Perception has always fascinated me, just never enough to make it part of a career or program of study.

--Patrick
 
If you move your eyes around during the 30 seconds, it doesn't work for reasons we were just discussing.
Perception has always fascinated me, just never enough to make it part of a career or program of study.

--Patrick
There's also Lateral Inhibition which is how your brain helps you perceive edges by inhibiting surrounding neurons. Fascinating stuff. Of all the senses, we probably understand the most about how the transduction process works in vision.
 
TIL: That the bring out the gifs thread is NOT actually titled "Bring out THE Gifs". The "the" is missing. I swear for years (or however long) I've been reading it in my head with "the" in place.

.... unless someone is fooling around with title naming dickery. in which case... well played sir/madam, well played.
 
TIL: That the bring out the gifs thread is NOT actually titled "Bring out THE Gifs". The "the" is missing. I swear for years (or however long) I've been reading it in my head with "the" in place.

.... unless someone is fooling around with title naming dickery. in which case... well played sir/madam, well played.
Whoa.
 
There are a whole slew of products produced just for TV so they don't have to pay licencing fees to companies like Nabisco and Coke and such.
 
I just saw an episode of Brooklyn nine-nine that had Let's potato chips. I got excited thinking that this was some kind of confirmation of that the show took place in the same universe as Community, but it turns out that they've been in like a dozen different shows over the last 30 years.

http://community-sitcom.wikia.com/wiki/Let's_Potato_Chips

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Boo. I say we pretend it's the same universe anyway.
 
I just saw an episode of Brooklyn nine-nine that had Let's potato chips. I got excited thinking that this was some kind of confirmation of that the show took place in the same universe as Community, but it turns out that they've been in like a dozen different shows over the last 30 years.

http://community-sitcom.wikia.com/wiki/Let's_Potato_Chips

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Same reason that when a sitcom wanted a mildly raunchy reference to titty mags, they used "Playpen", rather than one that, you know, existed.
 
TIL: That the bring out the gifs thread is NOT actually titled "Bring out THE Gifs". The "the" is missing. I swear for years (or however long) I've been reading it in my head with "the" in place.

.... unless someone is fooling around with title naming dickery. in which case... well played sir/madam, well played.
It had always bothered me.
 
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