Sunday 15 July 2018

hole number five is called fin me oot

Now apparently turned out of Castle Mayskull, the self-described consistent and (again) very stable genius is staying at his Scottish stronghold.
Trump (we’re giving this monster too much coverage but he deserves no peace) is unwelcome there as well, what with the PM revoking his status as a business and trade ambassador and a prominent Scottish university stripping him of his honorary degree well ahead of his latest conniption of reckless impolitic diplomacy. New Yorker correspondent takes a look at another one of Trump’s soi dissant titles, “the king of debt” through the lens of the dearly rehabilitated golf resort. What do you think? Outlays of over two-hundred million dollars (the biggest expenditure by far other than the campaign) of other people’s money have gone into this revenue-losing under-utilised venture, leaving a lot of unanswered questions about Trump’s business model and again who has leverage over him.

7x7

heliotrope: a crab-like robot-plant hybrid follows the sun to ensure its symbiont stays fully-charged, via Super Punch

everyone expects the spanish inquisition: FBI agent discredited for having political opinions while the controlling party of the US government ignores the fact that its electoral system is compromised

because I was not a trade-unionist: “The Hangman,” an animated short from 1964 that explores what can happen when no one is willing to stand up against evil

caviaั: to celebrate Russia’s hosting of the world cup, a German brewery makes “caviar” beer, via Coudal Partners

keep calm and carry on: the Queen has outlasted twelve US presidents and can certainly survive a pretender to the throne

town cube: sensational Japanese car designs from the 1990s, via Things Magazine

choreomania: a look back on the dancing compulsion that seized Strasbourg five hundred years ago

Saturday 14 July 2018

rumour has it

Notwithstanding conspiratorial thinking and demagoguery has all but replaced ideology in political discourse and repairing to such impulses is very dangerous for society, what conspiracy theories—aside from the Mormon account for periodic encounters with sasquatch being just sightings of Cain doomed to wander the Earth as an outcast for eternity—strike you as nearly plausible?
My favourite, the above excluded naturally, is that New Coke was not a marketing blunder but rather cover for a two-pronged conversion to its original family of products: one, the original formula switched from using cane sugar as a sweetener to cheap and abundant high fructose corn syrup; two, in order to placate those on the front lines of the US war on drugs, the new recipe dispensed with all coca-based derivatives, seeing its supplies in Colombia under threat. There’s apparently some credence to the latter while the timing is off by a few years on the former, the message is don’t drink sodas. If there ever was any merit or tonic to it, that’s long gone by now.  The above rumour is at best an instructive folktale or at worst, an affront against cryptozoologists.

l.a. looks or magic sharker

From our friends at Lewis & Quark (a.k.a. AI Weirdness, previously), we discover what results when a neural network is given the task of naming bespoke nail polish colours, with the help of a group of manicure enthusiasts contributing their name collection to the cause. Via my OED subscription earlier this week, I learnt that in 1999 a new portmanteau was put forward in the form of artilect, from artificial and intellect, but never really caught on.  Should we do something about that?  In any case, some of our favourites (many with a rather inexplicable gothic bias) included:

  • Ink Flame
  • Bloshing Glip
  • Batberry
  • Space Holly
  • Fire Splat
  • Murder Earth
  • Gold Be Tangeling
  • Social Mace
  • Twilight Mashery

Be sure and visit the site to see more and learn about the machine learning methodology and to even order a few select nail polishes named by their AI.

alien and sedition acts

The four bills passed into law on this day by the Federalist Party dominated US congress of 1798 made it more difficult for immigrants to acquire citizenship, granted the president the discretion to deport or imprison immigrants deemed a threat to national security and criminalised statements critical of the federal government.
Critics successfully argued that the acts were too onerous and persecuted those who disagreed with the Federalists or their values, codified at the time as a counter-measure to revolutionary fervour in France and the rest of Europe that was seen now as a threat to the newly-minted republic, and were three-quarters repealed during the Democrat-Republican administration of Thomas Jefferson. Remaining in statute, the Aliens Enemies Act was invoked during World War II to intern mostly Americans with Japanese heritage but also Germans and Italians and is still part of US code.