The sophomore album from Frowning Outlet, released in 1993. Building on their initial self-titled album, Antifragile merged their electronica-tinged sound with heavy grunge-metal guitars and a driving jazz bassline with the influence of guest keyboardist Chris Ferris, who once tracked down Trent Reznor's grandmother to get a message to the Nine Inch Nails frontman.

Overall, the fusion worked well except for the second to last song on the album, Beta Decay. Obvious to most of their fans that it was the last gasp of their experimental-crazed drummer before he was released, it reminds me of listening to The Police's Synchronicity album when the song Mother begins to blare out from the speakers, resulting in the same fumbling for the remote to jump to the next track.

Overall a good album to add to your collection if you can find a copy and you enjoy complex music construction and weird minimalist vocals. Recommended.

Iron Noder 2017

Antifragility is a quality of becoming stronger from frequent damage, upset, and general disruption to normal function. The concept was originally described by statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book Antifragile where he distinguished it from other kinds of stability. Many systems are robust in that they resist disruption and/or resilient in that they recover from disruption quickly but neither of these are necessarily antifragile. Antifragile things specifically thrive in stressful environments; gaining resilience, robustness, or both as a consequence of exposure to harsh conditions. Obviously,this concept is the literal opposite of fragility where a system tends to become weaker for each new stress.

Antifragility shows up in a ton of dynamic systems. Most organisms display antifragility in some fashion such as muscle growth in response to consistent exertion or bird populations around Chernobyl developing vastly higher cancer resistance. Economies, supply chains, and computer systems all have properties that allow for antifragile features. Necessity being the mother of invention, I'd argue that human civilization is probably the single best example of antifragility. Whatever you may think of modern society it's the output of a lot of selection pressures and a lot of trial and error. What doesn't kill you doesn't always make you stronger but it can and does in more places and times than most people expect.

IRON NODER XIV: THE RETURN OF THE IRON NODER

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