February 20, 2018
I hear their screams
Howard Jones released Dream Into Action in 1985 [CD-based YT playlist, ~55m] and it made quite a splash on both sides of the pond and around the world, with several charting singles and gigantic sales. UK Vinyl Side One: Things Can Only Get Better [video], Life In One Day [video], Dream Into Action, No One Is To Blame [video, completely different version], Look Mama [video], Assault And Battery [more inside]
Exhibition of Memories
The Museum of Broken Relationships. "Before flying to Zagreb, I’d put out a call to my friends—What object would you donate to this museum?—and got descriptions I couldn’t have imagined: a mango candle, a penis-shaped gourd, the sheet music from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 3, a clamshell drilled by a dental student, an illustration from a children’s book that an ex had loved when he was young—showing a line of gray mice with thought bubbles full of the same colors above their heads, as if they were all dreaming the same dream."
The Shallowness of Google Translate
Douglas Hofstadter takes a deep dive into why AI techniques don't equate to real undersanding. longread.
Mon Dieu, it's full of...
{gravelly voice} Throughout history, mythical creatures and phenomenon have been spoken of, described, searched for. Often, with no resulting evidence, no video, no photo. The Yeti, the Sasquatch, the Unicorn, non-hipsters who eat Blue Star donuts; the roll-call of unproven legends goes on. But now, deep in the Val de Bagnes of Switzerland, unambiguous photographic proof has emerged of the most mystical, most tasty of them all... (as discussed in the Irish media, a nearby sighting, and another, the anatomy of one, a herd or flock, just over the border in Italy, and a previous sighting of similar)
RIP Thomas, the blind bisexual goose, 1980-2018
Thomas, a goose whose love life has delighted visitors to Waikanae's Waimanu Lagoons in New Zealand for many years, has died. His funeral featured a procession led by a bagpiper and a speech from the local mayor before the diminutive coffin was buried in a grave next to his life partner, Henry the swan. [more inside]
In its house at R'lyeh, dead AI waits Deep Dreaming
The Darkness at the End of the Tunnel: Artificial Intelligence and Neoreaction - by Shuja Haider. A story of: Time travel, a future superintelligence as unavoidably but passionlessly vengeful God, neoreactionaries as the alt-right's intellectual avant-garde, neoreactionaries planning White Flight to Mars, Google's Deep Dream and "the Cathedral", libertarian transhumanism and libertarian fascism, Lyotardian far-rightists, Deleuzian Thatcherism and accelerationism, the Dark Enlightment, superrich supercapitalist super-villains, Silicon Valley hyperracism, Noys, Lovecraft, AI as class disparity amplifier.And it isn't fiction.
Actually, my name is Austin Powers. Danger is my middle name
Dance or die!
Holly Dicker attends the biggest indoor hardcore rave in history to tell the story of Thunderdome and Holland's most significant youth culture movement. Legendary Dutch hardcore rave Thunderdome returns 5 years after their "final" 20th anniversary event in 2012. This is a great read about the history of a scene that inspired passion in a lot of people, as well as a detailed review of the event itself which seems rare in festival / rave culture.
Missouri Fought For Years To Hide Where It Got Its Execution Drugs.
To hide the identity of the new pharmacy, the state has taken extraordinary steps. It uses a code name for the pharmacy in its official documents. Only a handful of state employees know the real name. The state fought at least six lawsuits to stop death row inmates and the press from knowing the pharmacy’s identity. Even the way Missouri buys and collects the drugs is cloak-and-dagger: The state sends a high-ranking corrections officer to a clandestine meeting with a company representative, exchanging an envelope full of cash for vials of pentobarbital. Since 2014, Missouri has spent more than $135,000 in such drug deals. - The secretive company behind Missouri’s lethal injections [SLBuzzfeed]
What is reality, man?
Trypophobia may not be a real phobia. There is no green apple Gummi Bear flavor. Basically,
our senses may not be reliable.
“an endless war without boundaries, no limitation on time or geography”
Stop calling it seaweed.
From Overfishing to Sustainable Farming. The innovative 3D model for ocean farming employs hurricane-resistant anchors on the seafloor at the edges of the farm, connecting with ropes to buoys on the water’s surface. Another rope runs horizontally about eight feet below the surface. The kelp is grown on ropes hanging down off the horizontal rope, creating a vertical growing space. “Next to the kelp, we’re growing scallops and mussels, also vertically, and then further down, we have oysters in cages, and then clams actually down in the mud,” Smith explains. “The vertical-water-column approach reduces the farm’s footprint, and the multiple species create a diversity so that a farmer is protected should anything cause one of those crops to falter or fail in a given season.”
There's no wine at Wendy's
Wendy's Shabbat. The story of some eighty-something Jewish friends and their 97-year-old rabbi, who found an unorthodox way celebrating their Friday night meals. From the new film by Rachel Myers.
Who kills Bambi?
‘People think the deer are lovely. Then they learn more about it’: the deer cull dilemma. The Scottish Highlands have a deer problem. Is shooting tens of thousands of them the only solution?
Cambridge researchers attempt to vaccinate against Fake News
“The idea is that once you’ve seen the tactics, and used them in the game, you build up resistance,” said Sander van der Linden, director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. Researchers at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab have built an online game designed to reveal the key strategies used in the creation and dissemination of fake news. About the game. Previous related research into the subject from the same institution.
My ready meal is none of your business
Jack Monroe (previous) has responded to a now deleted tweet by Bath Conservatives suggesting Monroe is the poster girl for eating on £10 a week. Monroe's response:
I have lived, waiting in fear for this moment, for almost six years. Waiting, to be upheld as some kind of justification for the deepest incisions of Conservative cuts as they seek to justify their barbaric policies by attaching them to someone who can be used as an example of ‘pulling themselves up by their bootstraps’. [more inside]
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