Readit Newszonotope commented on The last masters of Afro-Colombian machete fencing globalvoices.org/2025/04/... · Posted by u/PaulHoule
Reminds me of Haitian Machete Fencing:
I guess the 20-somethings I know (and knew when I was also 20-something) are broke artists and models. They don't have $200 to spend on a night out every weekend. Nowadays certainly is affordable and there are others of course. People make it work.
There were definitely expensive clubs that kids with money went to when I was young -- a friend ran sound at The Box and that was always wildly priced. But there was no shortage of illegal parties in warehouses with cheap drinks and no cover on the williamsburg waterfront and out in Bushwick in the early 2000s for the weirdos. Even met my wife at one.
I think a lot of those illegal warehouse parties died with the DeBlasio administration. At least, that's when I stopped hearing about them so I am open to the possibility that I'm no longer plugged in to the right scene.
The DeBlasio administration was the first to add a "night mayor", and they made it easier to open legit venues in the same neighborhoods that used to host the illegal warehouse parties, like that triangle just west of Flushing avenue centered around the Morgan L train stop, where Elsewhere and The Brooklyn Mirage among a few other big, high priced venues are now.
In exchange for making it easier to open more venues and have more legal dance parties, they cracked down on the illegal parties pretty hard. This had the effect of pushing the prices up, changing the scene and crowd, and introducing more regulations. Before, you had to be a little more plugged in to know when and where the parties were because they were "underground" (but only a little). You could also reliably dance until 6 or 7am and buy all the alcohol you wanted whenever.
Now, these parties are way more mainstream so people who are less enthusiastic about dancing show up because it's something accessible to do, and everything must legally shut down at 4.
I remember being excited that things were going legit because I thought it would make the parties that I frequented better, but now with the benefit of hindsight over the past 8 or so years, I think it's had a negative impact on the scene, along with all the other issues related to the ubiquity of cell phones and the changing gen z tastes.
I still long fondly for Bushwick circa 2012, but it might just be more "Back in my day..." nostalgia.
zonotope commented on Nightclub stickers over smartphone rule divides the dancefloor bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c... · Posted by u/mellosouls
I did a lot of partying around NYC (pre baby) where this rule is rare. There are usually close to 50% of the crowd taking selfies, putting the phone in the air to "record" the DJ, or generally scrolling through instagram instead of dancing. I thought this was the norm, but then I spent a summer in Berlin. There, people actually dance, and are there to appreciate the music. The vibe is so much more fun because everyone there is contributing to the energy by actually having a good time, instead of being preoccupied with showing people who are not with them that they are having a good time. I think nightlife in Berlin is so much better than NYC because of a combination of the cell phone rule along with the stricter door policies, and I hope those come to NYC by the time my kid gets old enough for me to be able to go out again.
The idea is a sufficiently advanced AI could simulate.. everything. You don't need to interact with the physical world if you have a perfect model of it.
> But, what other fields would it do this in? How can it makes strives in biology, it can't dissect animals ...
It doesn't need to dissect an animal if it has a perfect model of it that it can simulate. All potential genetic variations, all interactions between biological/chemical processes inside it, etc.