January 19, 2015
In your wildest schemes...
Australian comic artist Sam Wallman (previously) has released a scary/optimistic new piece that looks at Climate Change.
we will rest upon the ground and look at all the bugs we found
A Tasmanian artist is repainting, reclothing, and re-"homing" Bratz dolls. Underneath the heavy eye-makeup, high heels and porn-star pouts, the artist finds children. [more inside]
That's Not What Joe Strummer Had in Mind
"From the pictures and videos that accompany the NBC News and Buzzfeed stories, the crowd appears to have been predominantly white... which explains why they're described in the media as 'celebrating' rather than 'rioting'. But every time this happens – that is to say, every time sports fans, predominantly of the white variety, go on rampages after wining (or losing) various championships – many of us with a few gray hairs on our heads are reminded of the Clash's seminal punk anthem, 'White Riot,' which was released as a 7-inch single (that would be on vinyl, kids) in March 1977, and was later included on both the UK and the US versions of the band's debut album, The Clash." Whites Riot: That’s Not What Joe Strummer Had in Mind, by David Von Ebers (TwiB! / Valid magazine).
“finance is a practice oriented industry”
Paper Sculpture by Ito Wataru
Ito Wataru is a paper artist from Saitama, Japan, who graduated from Tokyo National University a few years ago. A Castle on the Ocean 海の上のお城 (2007) is the product of four years of work and has lights and a little paper train (which moves, but alas, no video). [more inside]
The trigonometry of relationsips. Who is responsible...?
Embodied Cognition
The Deep Mind of Demis Hassabis - "The big thing is what we call transfer learning. You've mastered one domain of things, how do you abstract that into something that's almost like a library of knowledge that you can now usefully apply in a new domain? That's the key to general knowledge. At the moment, we are good at processing perceptual information and then picking an action based on that. But when it goes to the next level, the concept level, nobody has been able to do that." (previously: 1,2) [more inside]
"Justice is Our Creed and the Land is Our Heritage"
#24 Get used to the bear behind you.
24 pieces of life advice from Werner Herzog (SLWH) Paul Cronin's book of conversations with filmmaker Werner Herzog is called Werner Herzog - A Guide for the Perplexed. On the back cover of the book, Herzog offers a list of advice for filmmakers that doubles as general purpose life advice.
MOM, an inflatable incubator, and winner of the 2014 James Dyson Award
The annual James Dyson Award is open to current and recent design engineering students. The winner this year is James Roberts with his inflatable incubator MOM. The device costs around £250 compared to £30,000 for modern incubators and could prevent up to 75% of fatalities in premature birth cases in the developing world.
How's your subway IQ?
It's 2015 and inequality looks like it's going to be here for a while
Oxfam's latest report ahead of the World Economics Forum in Davos says that "by next year, 1% of the world’s population will own more wealth than the other 99%." [more inside]
The most popular cuisine in Utah? Hawaiian.
You will come down too soon
A Mexican restaurant has started a Sunday brunch to expand its revenues beyond dinner. A Mercedes dealer, anticipating reduced demand, is prepared to emphasize repairs and sales of used cars. And people are cutting back at home, rethinking their vacation plans and cutting the hours of their housemaids and gardeners.
In Texas, they're hunkering down for the Oil Bust.
In Texas, they're hunkering down for the Oil Bust.
Solving the Web's Deepest Mystery
He was sitting on his bed, surreptitiously surfing the science and math board on 4chan, the notorious underground forum, when he came across a strange image that had appeared on the site three days earlier. It contained a message written in a thin white font against a black background. "Hello," it read. "We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There is a message hidden in this image. Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through. Good luck." It was signed "3301." [more inside]
2015: The year /baph/ /b/reaks?
Gamergate documenter @a_man_in_black has written another article for BoingBoing, this time about /baphomet/ on 8chan: The Invasion Boards That Set Out To Ruin Lives.
Mefites with long memories might find some of the terminology that comes up familiar if they read this 2008 article by Julian Dibbell: Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World.
Meanwhile, /baph/ monitor and current bête noire @Cernowatch has put up yet another storify about why "Don't feed the trolls" is not a sustainable strategy for dealing with 8channers.
Mefites with long memories might find some of the terminology that comes up familiar if they read this 2008 article by Julian Dibbell: Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World.
Meanwhile, /baph/ monitor and current bête noire @Cernowatch has put up yet another storify about why "Don't feed the trolls" is not a sustainable strategy for dealing with 8channers.
"Would you like to play a game?"
Mario AI - "Mario's inner emotive states cause behavior-determining drives. For example, Mario will collect coins if he is hungry. Whereas, when he is curious, he will explore his environment and autonomously gather knowledge about items he does not know about yet."
if, however, the solution requires deep collaboration, EQ trumps IQ
Eyes on the exercise prize
You're Not Beautiful
Labour's Shadow Culture Minister Chris Bryant has said the art world must address lack of diversity “I am delighted that Eddie Redmayne won [a Golden Globe for best actor], but we can’t just have a culture dominated by Eddie Redmayne and James Blunt and their ilk,” James Blunt has replied. Bryant has replied in turn. The dog from Downtown barks up.
Stephen Hawking is not part of the solution, he is part of the problem.
The equations on the blackboard may be the problem. Mathematics, the language of science, may have misled the scientists. “The idea,” says physicist Lee Smolin, “that the truth about nature can be wrestled from pure thought through mathematics is overdone… The idea that mathematics is prophetic and that mathematical structure and beauty are a clue to how nature ultimately works is just wrong.” [more inside]
“Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”
“Murakami-san no tokoro” or “Mr. Murakami’s place”: [Japanese] an agony uncle column by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. [more inside]
Sort
In this essay I argue that an important recent development in the struggle to represent algorithms is that computer algorithms now have their own public relations. That is, they have both a public-facing identity and new promotional discourses that depict them as efficient, valuable, powerful, and objective. It is vital that we understand how the algorithms that dominate our experience operate upon us. Yet commercial companies -a recent phenomenon- now systematically manage our image of algorithms and the information we receive about them. Algorithms themselves, rather than just the companies that operate them, have become the subject of mass marketing claims. To make this clear, I analyze a variety of visual and multimedia depictions of algorithms. I begin by reviewing a variety of historical and contemporary attempts to represent algorithms for novices in educational settings, and then I compare these to recent commercial depictions. I will conclude with a critique of current trends and a call for a counter-visuality that can resist them.
"This is whataboutery with a TARDIS"
It was with a heavy heart and no small amount of anger that I decided it was necessary to write a public refutation of the insidious myth that the Irish were once chattel slaves in the British colonies. The subject of this myth is not an issue in academic circles, for there is unanimous agreement, based on overwhelming evidence, that the Irish were never subjected to perpetual, hereditary slavery in the colonies, based on notions of ‘race’. Unfortunately this is not the case in the public domain and the ‘Irish slaves’ myth has been shared so frequently online that it has gone viral.For OpenDemocracy, Laim Hogan writes a short article on the myth of Irish slavery, extracted from his larger essay 'The myth of “Irish slaves” in the colonies'. This has become relevant again in the wake of Ferguson as white supremacists and others use it to disparage and minimise African-American history and suffering: "the Irish don't ask for reparations and they were slaves".
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