Dear_one wrote:
Rant of the hour: Too many clips on YouTube have robot narrators with totally predictable speech mannerisms and a general inability to pronounce abbreviations correctly. Too many of the others now have synthetic "background" music to trick us into thinking the talk is more interesting than it really is.
Rant of the week: The Experimental Aircraft Association is one of the finest flowers of the American penchant for freedom. It lets people risk their own lives even if there is a remote chance of their accident affecting others. The amateurs have produced some great advances in aviation, doubling many records. What we need now are similar permissions for experimenting with more sustainable transportation and housing. Everything I want to build is mostly illegal to use.
Putting a music bed under speech is an old radio trick. Keeps the energy going while a person gives you a lecture. Thats acceptable "sleight of hand". But agree that that "robot" that amateurs rely on to avoid doing their own announcing is odious. Sounds mechanical. Mispronounces things.
Trouble is real announcers are often illiterate, and mispronounce things. One guy called "the Canary Islands" the "Cannery Islands" (like "Cannery Row"). The little yellow birds are named after the islands they were first discovered on (in case you're in grade school and dont know. lol). Another guy referred to Russian ships captured by a German cruiser in 1915 as "Soviet ships" ( the Czar still ruled Russia at the time. The Soviet Union didnt exist yet). The worst was a young lady hosting a show about "The Mandela Effect" who correctly stated that the effect was named after Nelson Mandela, but then said that she "didnt know who he was, or what he was famous for, but I know he was a South African man".