Posts with Recent Comments
Tubbs, have you ever considered a career in southern law enforcement?
Forty years ago today, Miami Vice premiered on NBC. Born out of writer-producer Anthony Yerkovich growing awareness of the practice of asset forfeiture (and not a memo by Brandon Tartikoff that said "MTV cops"), and originally imagined as a movie, the five-season, 114-episode show would revolutionize television, with People magazine saying it was the "first show to look really new and different since color TV was invented." [more inside]
There's an App for That!
Very Monet.
Tour Artist Mimi Lauter's Magical Los Angeles Garden “A lot of my work relates to my perception of color in the garden. Cultivating the land is a lot like making a painting. You begin by preparing the soil the way you prepare the surface of the picture. Once the ground is set you start to gather and orchestrate the color,” Lauter offers. There are, however, limits to the conceptual equation. “Paintings aren’t there to make you feel good, even though they can do that. Gardens are there to be a place of peace and sanctuary,” the artist muses. By Mayer Rus Photography by Jason Schmidt for Architectural Digest [more inside]
R1/B5, 5-7-5
Over on Youtube
"Haiku Beta 5 is OUT!"
Action Retro shouts
Said right: "Be Oh Ess,"
Beta 5 brings huge upgrades
in stability [more inside]
"Haiku Beta 5 is OUT!"
Action Retro shouts
Said right: "Be Oh Ess,"
Beta 5 brings huge upgrades
in stability [more inside]
Michaela Mabinty DePrince, 1995-2024, RIP
“The studied reveal is the specialty of the whore.”
Our reactions to prostitution are steeped in what Melissa Gira Grant calls “the prostitute imaginary.” They may feel visceral, rooted in some primal disgust reflex, but often derive from a combination of American puritanism and second-wave feminist rhetoric. Increasingly, we project our helplessness in the face of capitalist exploitation onto the sex worker, using her to signify human commodification distilled to its basest form. This collective psychic baggage primes us to see certain stories as more satisfying, more palatable, and more true. from Happy Ending by Sascha Cohen [The Baffler; ungated]
“Olivença é portuguesa, naturalmente"
Portugal's Defense Minister Nuno Melo has reignited a long-standing territorial dispute, claiming that the Spanish town of Olivenza rightfully belongs to Portugal and asserting that the country will not relinquish its claim. [AA] [more inside]
NaNoWriMo: Arguing against using AI for writing is "classist", "ableist"
Pivot-to-AI reports: In an official position statement on AI [archive], the NaNoWriMo organization declares: "We also want to be clear in our belief that the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege." This year’s new sponsor is ProWritingAid.com, which has now added unspecified “AI” functionality. [archive]
always having to tell her story
27 years on, having been adopted by business woman Prue Leith, Li-Da Kruger returns to Cambodia in search of her biological parents (2001). Made by The Cambodian Film Company/FulcrumTV and directed by Tamara Gordon. This is a 12 minute short video Li-Da Kruger, the adopted daughter of British Baking Show judge Prue Leith. A full documentary chronicling her search for her birth family was released a few years ago. (article in The Guardian).
‘I can never go back to who I was before.’
How a former content moderator thinks about the job. (SLWaPo gift) Content warning for animal abuse.
The NDP is ending its governance agreement with the Liberals
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is terminating the supply-and-confidence agreement his party made with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau's Liberal government. [more inside]
The coffee table that walks
You might have seen this coming
It seems unlikely that a system relying on hallucinated base rates and numerical simulations goes all the way to outperforming (half-decent) human forecasters in any meaningful way. from Contra papers claiming superhuman AI forecasting [Lesswrong]
The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out
The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out. Ig Nobel prize winner Saul Justin Newman on his paper Supercentenarians and the oldest-old are concentrated into regions with no birth certificates and short lifespans. [more inside]
A Run to Remember
What could be more amazing than a musical? (Free thread)
"You're doing a play, got something to say So you sing it? It's absurd!" In honor of finishing Something Rotten, one of the best musicals I've ever been in (and guess what song is still rolling through my head today), here's your free thread. [more inside]
Solar farms can benefit wildlife
Dampier island's transfer to traditional owners
Dampier island's transfer to traditional owners to support World Heritage bid, further its protection.
Less than 10 kilometres from the Burrup and its billions of dollars of industry, West Intercourse Island will join Murujuga National Park to protect it from future industrial development. [more inside]
We didn’t know all that stuff; we just knew how to find it
How do you find the life expectancy of a California condor? Google it. Or the gross national product of Morocco? Google it. Or the final resting place of Tom Paine? Google it. There was a time, however—not all that long ago—when you couldn’t Google it or ask Siri or whatever cyber equivalent comes next. You had to do it the hard way—by consulting reference books, indexes, catalogs, almanacs, statistical abstracts, and myriad other printed sources. Or you could save yourself all that time and trouble by taking the easiest available shortcut: You could call me. from The Department of Everything by Stephen Akey [Hedgehog Review]
no, it's the jared diamonds who are wrong
"An international team of geneticists has found evidence that this famous cautionary tale never actually happened. The true story of Rapa Nui (named Easter Island by colonial Europeans) is not one of self-inflicted population collapse, the new findings suggest, but of cultural resilience. In the 1600s, it seems that the ancient people of Rapa Nui were not utterly isolated on their island, and it is clear that they did not overexploit their resources to the point of 'ecocide'." Genetic Evidence Overrules Ecocide Theory of Easter Island Once And For All.