The Daily Populous

Friday May 12nd, 2017 night edition

image for Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?

An Exercise in Language Compression Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?.

I'll be analyzing the repetitiveness of a dataset of 15,000 songs that charted on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1958 and 2017.

I know a repetitive song when I hear one, but translating that intuition into a number isn't easy.

It turns out, for example, that the entire lyrics of Cheap Thrills reduce in size 76% when compressed.

The Repetition of Pop Music Distribution of compressibility of 15,000 songs from 1958 to 2017, excluding 20 outliers.

The current decade is pretty well-represented in the top 10 above, but it's also a bit overrepresented in my dataset (it's easier to find lyrics for recent songs).

The background blob is the histogram of all songs in the dataset (the same one as before, but mirrored). »

'The Drug Whisperer': Drivers arrested while stone cold sober

Authored by wltx.com

But 12 News partner station WXIA's Chief Investigator Brendan Keefe discovered some drivers are getting arrested for driving stoned -- even when their drug tests came back clean.

"I didn't realize that you could get arrested for something that you didn't do," Ebner told Keefe.

Katelyn Ebner: "Okay, so when I do a drug test, I'll be free to go, correct?". »

Germany Just Smashed an Energy Record, Generating 85% Electricity From Renewables

Authored by futurism.com

In this age of rampant global warming, the term “record-breaking” has started to sound a bit like…well…a broken record.

Thankfully, we also have some positive climate-related achievements to celebrate, the latest of which is courtesy of Germany, which just set a new national record for renewable energy.

Indeed, that commitment compelled National Geographic to call Germany “a leader” in the energy revolution amongst large industrial nations, and it’s easy to see why. »

Schwarzenegger Flips Off Lawmakers in Hidden Message

Authored by wired.com

Ammiano had strongly criticized the governor in early October and reportedly told Schwarzenegger at the time to “kiss my gay ass.”

When asked by the Guardian if the message was intentional, Schwarzenegger’s spokesman said only, “what a strange coincidence.”

Spokesman Aaron McLear told Threat Level the hidden message was just “a strange coincidence,” repeating the response given to the Bay Guardian. »