home.social

#piedpiper — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #piedpiper, aggregated by home.social.

fetched live
  1. By the way. It is absolutely clear why Pied Piper has failed. That’s what you get for avoiding quality assurance. Not a single QA for 6 years!

    #piedpiper #siliconvalley #qa

  2. With memory and storage prices what they are, it's probably a good time for middle-out data compression

  3. CW: Surgery mentioned

    I think it's neat that on the day of my surgery, they announced Pied Piper for Steam and Switch.

    #Xenosaga #PiedPiper #XenosagaPiedPiper

  4. fromoldbooks.org/JuliusWolff-P

    A scene from the Pied Piper by Julius Wolff.

    I love the dark alleyway on our right, with the façades of houses dimly visible in the shadows. Great work for an engraving!

    Art by Paul Thumann (1834 – 1908).

    #piedPiper #medieval #medievalArchitecture #vintageArt #creepyStatue #dontBlink #GIMP #fobo #xsane #GIMP3

  5. fromoldbooks.org/JuliusWolff-P

    A large book, maybe 14 or 16 inches high, with a bright cover. The book is a retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, or a novel based on it, i’m not sure.

    Usually i don’t post the covers here, but this one is quite fun.

    #GIMP #GIMP3 #Book_covers #piedPiper #vintageArt #vintageEngraving #fobo

  6. fromoldbooks.org/JuliusWolff-P

    From a version of The Pied Piper of Hamelyn by Wolff, Julius: “Der Rattenfänger von Hameln: Eine Aventiure” (1890).

    Here Lorenz goes down into the castle cellar to confront the ghosts - but they turn out to be rats.

    Drawn by Paul Thumann & engraved by Richard Brend’amour.

    #vintageEngraving #vintageArt #castle #medieval #piedPiper #rats #fobo #GIMp #Gimp_3 #xsane #didIMentionTheRats #illustrationsForChildren

  7. @lily @terminaltilt it's so convenient, people don't bother to think about it from enough angles to talk themselves out of it. Whenever I see aaS anything, I think, "We own your aaS". And now, they've collectively accumulated enough of the Earth's resources, that they own its technological future. They'll get a piece of it from here on out. No wonder they're building end of days happy tanks for themselves. Once enough people figure it out, they're going to be ticked. How many billions of years do we have before the sun sets for good? Where are people so in a hurry to go that they want to be the only ones going there?

    youtu.be/RFdSOppmkNw

    #MuzakLessons #PiedPiper #CrispianStPeters

  8. fromoldbooks.org/JuliusWolff-P

    This decorative initial letter J (it’s _inhabited_ because it has a person in it, _historiated_ as it illustrates a scene, and was used as a drop cap, the first line of the title starting between the piper’s feet.

    Probably the rodents running around on the bowl of the J are black rats, by their shape and tails; common in Europe and carried the plague.

    #fobo #vintageArt #PiedPiper #dropCap #letterJ #GIMP #GIMP3 #Gimp_3 #xsane #bagpipes #music #illustration

  9. Paying the Piper: A Quick Look at the Shawm, or Folk Oboe

    When does it become ominous and dangerous to owe musicians money? Why, when they steal your children, of course!

    The common turn of phrase “pay the piper” means literally to “bear the consequences of an action or activity that one has enjoyed.” It originates from a 13th-century German legend, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, where a town refuses to pay a musician for services rendered, then loses all of their children in an act of revenge. In this brief article, we’ll take a quick look at these colorful characters. Was there any historical accuracy to the claims? Plus, what was the Pied Piper actually piping, anyway?

    The Legend

    I’d be surprised if you haven’t heard at least one version of this tale; nonetheless, I shall recant the details for you so we’re all on the same page.

    In the year 1284, the town of Hamelin, Germany was plagued by rats. Or perhaps it’d be better to say they were besieged by rats. Yes, besieged sounds more intense.

    Despite all of their best efforts to control the infestation, the rats were winning. They were ruining food supplies, gnawing on property, spreading disease, and making life generally unbearable for the inhabitants. Sometimes late at night, the rats would even crawl into the cribs of sleeping babies. I don’t know about you, but I think that sounds pretty awful.

    On one fine day, a strange piper, dressed in colorful clothing and carrying a mysterious instrument, arrived at the town. He said “I can get rid of these rats for you!”

    The town agreed to pay him 1000 guilders for services rendered. And with that, he played a haunting melody and marched off into the distance.

    The rats, of course, followed. He led them to a river… and without any argument, they jumped in and drowned themselves.

    Phew, no more rats.

    But the town didn’t want to pay. In fact, they even accused the piper of causing the infestation in the first place. Furious with anger, the piper stormed off, vowing to later return and enact his revenge.

    On June 26 — yes, a very specific date… the Feasts of St. John and Paul, the piper quietly walked back into town. He played a new melody, somehow more haunting then before, and this time it was the children that followed him.

    Bye bye, kiddos. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

    Sorry guys, there’s no happy ending, but the level of cruelty varies depending on which version of the story you read. In some accounts, the piper leads the children into a cave and they are just never heard from again. In others, they get the same treatment as the rats: drowned in the river.

    The History

    Hamelin is a real place. And 130 children were lost from the town.

    In fact, the early town record, from 1384, states, “It is 100 years since our children left.”

    Is that really true? I don’t know. I didn’t actually translate the town’s record for myself or anything. I just read about it on wikipedia, but it does certainly sound plausible.

    There are a number of other manuscripts that reference the missing children. It’s a pretty safe bet that something was responsible for all the kids in the town disappearing. But what, exactly?

    Although it’s rather unlikely that a magickal tune hypnotized people into drowning themselves, there are a few theories for events that may have actually occurred, then later been fictionalized. Among them:

    • Plague. Yeah. Lots of kids died from the plague.
    • Mass Psychogenic Illness. Literally “Dancing Mania.”
    • Migration. This includes pilgrimages, military campaigns, and sometimes even the Children’s Crusades.

    The Instrument

    Regardless of whether or not the Pied Piper was made up, I still want to know what type of instrument he played.

    Some versions of the story present it as a flute — a “Zauberflote” to be exact, which roughly translates to “magic flute.” (Side note: Mozart wrote an opera by the same name, “Die Zauberflote,” but it has nothing to do with The Pied Piper.)

    Other versions say “pipe” or “whistle.”

    It’s generally thought that his instrument was a reeded one — his tune was supposed to be loud and piercing.

    One painting from 1592, which was supposedly modeled after an actual stained glass window in Hamelin that commemorated the events, is particularly noteworthy.

    1592 Painting of the Piper, courtesy of Wikipedia

    You can see that the instrument in question is long, end-blown, and flares out into a bell.

    That’s not really what flutes look like.

    Based on the available written and visual evidence, which I have spent at least 10 minutes surveying, I believe that the piper’s most likely instrument is actually the shawm, sometimes called a “folk oboe.”

    Here’s why:

    • It’s loud. It’s a double-reed instrument with a piercing sound.
    • It’s period appropriate. Shawms were popular between the 12th and 17th centuries in Europe.
    • It looks like the above picture. Duh.

    A modern shawm sold on Amazon

    The shawm is much closer in sound and appearance to the aulos, by the way, than it is to our modern idea of a flute.

    Even though it’s pointless to debate the physics of a fairy tale, I’m going to do it anyway. From the center of town, the Pied Piper was able to have his fateful song heard by all of the children… who were sitting in their houses. That’s quite a distance. And you can’t do that with a flute.

    With a regular flute, you’d struggle to hear it from one house to the next. Consider the difference in volume between flutes and bagpipes — that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about here. Have you ever stood next to a bagpiper? They’re loud! And yes, bagpipes are reeded instruments.

    Conclusion

    If you ever promise to pay a musician for playing music, then you should pay them — not because they’re going to steal your children, but because it’s good karma to honor your agreements. Also, most musicians need the support.

    #flute #folkOboe #hamlin #instruments #legends #music #myth #oboe #piedPiper #piper #rats #shawm #whistle

  10. 🎻🎩 The Pied Piper's "grim truth" turns out to be about as grim as a toddler's tantrum after nap time. BBC's deep dive into fairy tales reveals a shocking lack of actual research—no #rats were consulted in the making of this article. 🐀📚
    bbc.com/travel/article/2020090 #PiedPiper #FairyTales #GrimTruth #BBCResearch #ToddlerTantrums #HackerNews #ngated

  11. #SiliconValley (series) fans, can you help me find a GIF of the scene when the guy from Hooli partners with a factory in China to initialise as many devices as possible with its OS so that it could take control of #PiedPiper?

    I want to use it to explain the pitfalls of decentralisation in my slides for my talk at SFSCON 2025

    #Fediverse #decentralization #GIF #TV #series #TVseries

  12. @pixelcats

    I've been listening to BTS tracks using the structured discography chart you were kind enough to share with me. I've been saving some to one of my playlists. It's fun, so thanks for that!

    One song that has particularly piqued my interest is "Pied Piper". It's a pop song about the artists themselves and perhaps pop culture in general; I found it particularly interesting that it at once (I think) celebrates the seductive power of pop but also sounds a warning note about that power -- all expressed in a good song. With regard to fans, is it a favourite, or at least much discussed?

    youtu.be/mz8cX-Ai0lE?si=45sLJd

    #Kpop #BTS #PiedPiper #PopCulture

  13. Un pot pourri des meilleures blagues du macronat.

    Je plains ceux qui ont cru en la parole d'un banquier, non, en fait je leur en veux, bcp.

    #Macron #Promesses #PiedPiper #LeFlutiste

    video.liberta.vip/w/xefGeXGWwA