Fun fact! The nudes on Voyager actually got censored because people complained about the nudes on Pioneer, but then they snuck them in anyway with the scientific documents.
After NASA had received criticism over the nudity on the Pioneer plaque (line drawings of a naked man and woman), the agency chose not to allow Sagan and his colleagues to include a photograph of a nude man and woman on the record. Instead, only a silhouette of the couple was included. However, the record does contain "Diagram of vertebrate evolution", by Jon Lomberg, with drawings of an anatomically correct naked male and naked female, showing external organs. The person waving on the diagram was also changed: on the Pioneer plaque, the man is waving, while on the "Vertebrate evolution" image, the woman is waving.
"Hello from Earth! Now music from about 25% of the population and landmass."
I get that Americans, myself included, Beethoven and Bach are important and influence, but if it's trying to explain all of humanity, include more stuff from the nations of Africa, Asia, South America, and some stuff from the native people of Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the Americas.
It feels at best stupid to say "this details the best of humanity in a small package" and the best is mostly western.
I do love the "Hello from Earth" in several languages.
I've often heard that there was a specially recorded song by The Carpenters (usually in the context of jokingly complaining "why The Carpenters? The aliens are going to think we suck"). But it's not on the list. Is it an urban myth? Were they on a different spacecraft?
After a quick Google - they did a song about sending a song into space. Then they did a weird-ass TV thing about sending that song into space. But as far as I can tell, no Carpenters song has actually been sent into space.
(yeah yeah radio waves whatever. You know what I mean)
I loved how in Stellaris one of the first missions you can get to do is find and destroy voyager since it has too much information other civilizations can use to wipe us out.
I mean if there is alien life that has the ability to reach us, they are technically and socially so much more advanced than we are that we wouldn't stand a chance or be able to hide either way. They'll either come in peace and we live or they don't and we die.
I was expecting it to say "Sir, I do not have the intellectual property rights to play this mixtape to the public." The golden record is like MLK's speeches - we know they're epic, and we're not allowed to listen to most of it/them without throwing some cash around.