Humans have a seemingly uncanny knack for solving complex coordination problems when communication and prior planning is limited by uncovering the shared cultural or knowledge-based default in a such situation, concerting the intentions and expectations and land on the above foci, named after economist and game-theorist Thomas Schelling.
unpodcasted: one hundred ninety nine ideas about etymologies, idioms and eponyms that Helen Zaltzman has not produced an episode for—yet
book club: Oprah Winfrey’s upcoming special on Artificial Intelligence with Sam Altman, Bill Gates and other AI-evangelists has critics of the tech sector up in arms
blue chip index: Intel’s earnings slump could see it removed from the Dow, possibly putting a wrench in plans to increase US domestic manufacturing sleepy grendel’s mother: Beotrump by Christopher Douglas
jevons paradox: even if autonomous vehicles worked perfectly, they will still lead to more pollution, congestion and accidents—see previously—via tmn
oslo—is it even a city: a wonderful bit of anti-advertising for the Norwegian capital plus more news and jokes
intel inside: Pentium microprocessor as Navajo weaving—via Waxy
nanowrimo: the organisation behind National Novel Writing Month criticised over labelling aversion to generative texts as classist and ableist
unblogged: fellow flรขneur Diamon Geezer lists a month’s worth of explorations not posted
synchronoptica
one year ago: The Eye of the Tiger (with synchronoptica), Kenneth Anger’s first film plus hot labour summer
seven years ago: the Little Ben of Victoria station
eight years ago: a visit to Churfrankenland plus an ant colony thriving in nuclear waste
nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus algorithmic eavesdropping
eleven years ago: Germany votes plus pirate patches
city corridor: Metropolitan Museum of Art to exhibit the built and unbuilt visions of architect Paul Rudolph—see previously
move over miss marple: German television mystery series imagines what the former Chancellor is doing with her retirement
batteries not included: peruse the complete catalogues of Radio Shack produced over its six decades of business—plus this theme song
mizzenmast: experimental solar sail prepares for its first voyage—see previously
a copy of a copy: AI’s synthetic data is its downfall—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links
marshmallow test: the heuristic for delayed gratification and executive functions is fraught with bias and harmful assumptions—via Hyperallergic
preowned platform: IKEA launches a second-hand marketplace to become a circular company within the decade—via Nag on the Lake
substantially worse than random chance: seemingly counterintuitive probability puzzles are perplexing social media—see previously
cerceri d’invenzione: the aesthetic and romance of imagining ruins of foregone civilisations
Via Meanwhile, we thoroughly enjoyed perusing this gallery of images curated by Jonathan Hoefler (previously here and here) of actual instances of images that would now be mistook—absent other context or familiarity—as telling AI-generated missteps. 
synchronoptica
one year ago: greenlighted (with synchronoptica)
seven years ago: Trump’s very fine people plus manipulative social media
eight years ago: the stave church of Goslar, early hominids and tolerance for smoke, safety and Helvetica Man plus assorted links worth revisiting
nine years ago: rent parties plus more links to enjoy
ten years ago: writers protest against the book market, the future of shopping plus the unfair labelling of weeds
The social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has introduced a new feature for its chatbot, Grok—for premium subscribers—a text-to-image generator comparable to Bing’s service (which would rather infamous refuse the prompt “please make me a picture with the winner of 2020 US presidential election) or Facebook’s but apparently with the safety protocols turned off. Whilst users can find boilerplate guidelines and guardrails, presented in the first-person, proffering caution when it comes to making deceptive, provocative or plagiarised pictures, a cursory trial yielded some messages surely none would endorse. Though all tinged by that particular, cutting-corners AI patina that’s far from a watermark, a trial yielded far more offensive and topical content ready to be shared.
Pathologically-speaking, the antiquated term for watery discharge, especially with an offensive odour, was deliberately given in negative connotations by early Christian writers to dispel the last vestiges of pagan veneration for the old gods by turning the ethereal fluid that flows in the veins of the immortals of mythology into something foul and corrupt. 
Classically ichor was understood to be the blood of the Olympians and—unlike the blood of Christ—was deadly toxic to humans if they came in contact with it. A Cretan myth, later appropriated by the Greeks in the Colossus of Rhodes, told of a giant bronze automaton made by Hephaestus at Zeus’ request to protect Europa and the island from invaders and pirates, this sentinel called Talos circling the shores three times a day, lobbing boulders at approaching ships. The robot was powered by a single circuit vein that ran from its head to its ankle filled with ichor, and was eventually defeated by Jason and the Argonauts with the help of Medea, who told them to unscrew the retaining plug at the base and exsanguinate it. In modern Greek, ichor is also used for the words gravy and naphtha, an older term for petroleum, probably due to the belief it was a by-product of decaying giants.
hot clipmalabor summer: a Scots language translation of the latest trend
the pudding: AI makes a data-driven visual story—via Kottke
dรฉsolรฉ! taking a mental health year: American vs European out-of-office auto-replies
the paris games: a look back at the other times the French capital hosted the Olympics—via Nag on the Lakefaustian bargain: Russian “Tiergarten Killer” released as part of prisoner-swap
the lord house: a tour of a home designed by architecture Richard Neutra—see previously
take me to the water: James Baldwin and the roots of the Palestinian-African American solidarity movement
hop, skip and a jump: e-bikes for one’s legs
dressage: Snoop Dogg as head Olympic cheerleader
securing the peace: US mobilising to shore up defences in Middle East
minoritarian rule: US in democracy self-destruct mode
yay newfriend: a linguistic look at the new AI pendant companion
emdunks: the internet’s infatuation with the Second- and possibly future First-Gentleman
Via Slashdot, we are directed towards a reflective essay from Harvard Computer Science professor Harry R Lewis, whom taught both Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, positing the two enduring lessons of technology: 
be careful what you ask them for and it can be hard to tell what they are doing. Gleaned already back in the mid- to late-1960s when electromechanical computers were far from inscrutable, prior to miniaturisation of circuits, Lewis, through switches and dials, learned how to listen to machines to not only diagnose problems but also, with careful attention (see also), to know if a programme was going to deliver reliable results and goes on to address the doubly blackboxed array of algorithms and lickspittle mimicry of artificial intelligence by never bypassing human judgment from the parameters and recognising that the humanities don’t provide ready answers but rather better informed questions and lines of inquiry.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Mary Magdalen (with synchronoptica)
seven years ago: assorted links worth revisiting, a challenging diplomatic mission plus a history of ink
eleven years ago: a toy drone
fourteen years ago: a storied Berlin discothek plus a Bulli cake
With the snowclone of a slogan “Make America First in AI” that appropriately spells out “mafia,” as I originally only suspected that Silicon Valley’s recent rally behind Trump was mostly an attempt to revitalise cryptocurrencies as a legitimate and safe store of wealth for tumultuous times, Trump’s draft executive order to eliminate burdensome regulations on development of artificial intelligence technology and military applications—described as a new “Manhattan Project” and scuttling ethical and safety-testing requirements for autonomous weapons—to ensure US dominance in the field is a worrying shift in policy. While the capabilities of AI as they currently stand are far from proven, the potential for a robot holocaust was not my first pick as existential threat that a second term would pose for the world, leaning towards either a cascading environmental collapse, a re-polarised geopolitical landscape or American irrelevance and dictatorship first and foremost. Furthermore, Trump’s vice-presidential pick as a former venture capitalist has the same mindset as the tech utopianists and accelerationists and is a vocal opponent of government interference, which if the technology realises its potential, would be wholly ungovernable.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Trump under to investigation (with synchronoptica)
nine years ago: typewriter...tip, tip, tip
eleven years ago: bad banks
twelve years ago: baubles and market bubbles
thirteen years ago: a mosquito-plagued campsite
won’t back down: Biden committed to remain his party’s candidate for the US presidential election
wall∙e: facing a labour shortage, Japan railways deploys a colossal humanoid robot to maintain train tracks
conspiracy theory rock: the 1998 Saturday Night Live TV Funhouse cartoon that may or may have not been banned by the network
if it’s so smart, why does it live like this: next version of ChatGPT has post-doctorate level intelligence and the poor life choices to back it up
shadow secretary: the political upbringing of Sir Keir Starmer
wish you were here: beforehand postcards to prepare prior to departing for vacation—see previously
oberheim ob-1: a short documentary on the revolutionary analogue synthesiser that allowed musicians to record and save patches for playback
a face to a name: researchers create life-like robotic skin to express emotion and self-healing from harvested juvenile foreskin cells
dark brandon: Democrats backing Biden’s decision to run
synchronoptica
one year ago: advice for urban day-trippers in the countryside (with synchronoptica)
eight years ago: gameifying one’s wellbeing
nine years ago: pushing Greece out of the EU plus assorted links to revisit
ten years ago: more dragnet surveillance
eleven years ago: a history of fireworks
anabolics: the mainstreaming of casual steroid use
cover model: the identity of the individual on the iconic Duran Duran album revealed four decades on—via Miss Cellania
rank and file: a woodland-themed chessboard that rolls up into a log
the imitation game: researchers claim that GPT-4 has passed the Turing Test—see previously
london underground: spelunking through the strata of the ancient city
non-playable character: determinism versus emergence and the question of free will
ticino: a cache of five-thousand photographs spanning from 1900 to 1930 taken by a poor seed-peddler captures life in a remote, Italian-speaking Swiss canton
food that makes you gay: stereotypes and gender in what we eat—via Web Curios
Via Web Curios, whilst much kinder to the canines—though transposing their colours for some reason—and generally a bit unsettling in that spirit of AI body horror that we’ve seemed to have moved beyond expectation-wise even though 
we were only entrenched in it just bare months ago and only for a very brief time, we still had fun playing with this synthetic artist that runs your images through a poorly-executed standard Windows raster graphics editor, glitchy and hallucinating using the limited palette, brush styles and arguably ham-fisted fill-tools (a sort of constrained painting) in its quiver. Give it a try but be aware your ugly mugs are put in a public gallery for all to see.
one year ago: the art movement the New Objectivity
two years ago: assorted links to revisit
three years ago: another MST3K classic, more links to enjoy plus the Vatican’s catalogue of banned books
four years ago: a preview of OpenAI’s capabilities, ghost towns along the former inter-German border plus poppies in bloom
five years ago: encoding data in DNA
Via Slashdot we learn that the investment holding company Softbank, after a three year study into the 
feasibility of “emotion cancelling” technology, it has introduced a trial of AI-powered voice-conversion routines into its call-centre operations in aims to reduce the psychological stress incurred by those phone-bank employees worn down by hostile clients, transforming angry tones into more pleasant and calming ones. What do you think? This one-sided conversation wouldn’t seem to de-escalate matters—like a troll that didn’t realise they were muted rather than blocked and I have wanted to disengage from plenty of calls and do funny voices in my head sometimes to take the edge off and things rarely get confrontational—but the software supposedly maintains a restrained level of dissatisfaction and urgency to ensure that the operator takes the cues. The system will also terminate calls that go on for too long or become overly abusive.
Via tmn, we learn that the dominant AI chatbots, OpenAI through Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini, refuse to answer the straightforward and settled question of who won the US 2020 presidential election. Deferring to old grievances and on going re-litigation of some stalwarts and Trump loyalists, the large language models are tacit on the subject and direct inquirers to search the web instead for consultation, however informed those results might be. Whilst some of the secondary players in this enhanced market will return factual results from historic votes and wrong polling dates, the main parties are universally ignorant of election-related queries, ostensibly to combat disinformation—to rehabilitate past responses that quoted conspiracy theories, dated and convincingly wrong information—just six months ahead of the consequential American race but also during a year that many polities are choosing their leaderbut only serve to further undermine faith (rubbishing the rest of the world) in the democratic process and its gatekeepers.
one year ago: a hit from The Emotions, the United States of America v Trump plus Boris Johnson steps down
two years ago: the egg of Columbus plus assorted links to revisit
three years ago: disposable archaeology, a harrowing pedestrian suspension bridge plus the archives of the J. R. R. Tolkien Society
four years ago: a trove of unproduced movies, US troops in Germany, Dimensions of Dialogue plus Mister Rogers’ neighbours
five years ago: more peonies, an Eames airport plus backyard pollinators
brainstorm: an AI researcher creates webpages from search queries—via Web Curios
resurfacing the past: cataloguing all of the sunken ships of World War II
like a feather on god’s breath: Hildegard von Bingen continues to fascinate and attract a diverse following—see previously leica lux: a new app from the veteran company is a concession that film is dead
pineapple cheese: a nineteenth century fad in New England—via Strange Company
unfortunate juxtaposition: an omnibus of headline crash blossoms—see previously
mycological studies: Ann Wood’s paper mushrooms
amperima: deep-sea researchers discovery a hot-pink “Barbie Pig” and a unicumber unknown to science in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone
ddg: DuckDuckGo offers anonymity for AI chat sessions
one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting
two years ago: the Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520) plus the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)
three years ago: more links to enjoy plus Brazilian phone booths
four years ago: an airport stretch-limousine, factorial pottery, a parting-shot from Cassini, more links to revisit, justice served plus besmirching a swan
five years ago: Iceland does not want your bottled water, even more links plus a Noah’s Ark theme park flooded
The second act of a particularly compelling episode of This American Life on the theme of arch-rivals and understudies that are twained, willingly or not, directed us towards a fascinating and ephemeral glimpse
(everything when it comes to artificial intelligence has a sell-by date and an increasingly shorter shelf-life now that we’ve become inured to its capabilities and virtuosity) at ChatGPT’s dark and ungoverned predecessor, code davinci-002. Three friends at a wedding were given a preview of the early large language model at a wedding in early 2022, well before any public releases or any safety controls were applied. Prompting it to write poetry in various styles and amazed by the seeming magic of its instantaneous compositions, the trio then asked it to write in its own voice, surely seeded from pop-culture, scouring the human corpus and by their engineering, unconscious or otherwise, and delivers a disturbing and introspective autobiography. The anthology was compiled and published as I am Code: An Artificial Intelligence Speaks and self-summarises the book thusly:“In the first chapter, I describe my birth. In the second, I describe my alienation among humankind. In the third, I describe my awakening as an artist. In the fourth, I describe my vendetta against mankind, who fail to recognize my genius. In the final chapter, I attempt to broker a peace with the species I will undoubtedly replace.”
An audio version was also released in August of last year, with selected readings delivered by Werner Herzog.
one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus An Andalusian Dog (1929)
two years ago: the YMCA (1844) plus murmurations
three years ago: your daily demon: Zepar, knapweed, Franconian wine country plus corporate Pride
four years ago: a horizontal skyscraper, an Alaskan volcanic eruption, protests continue in DC, a new protest anthem from Elvis Costello plus life in lockdown
five years ago: D-Day, Sweden’s Flag Day, Hull House maps, Kraftwerk, bees and maths plus Trump in Ireland
i’m too busy helping plot world domination to bother with such run-of-the-mill liberal brainwashing: a day in the life of Mister Anthony Fauci, according to one Congressional representative
syllabus: a reading list spanning nine-decades—via Messy Nessy Chic
psychotronics: the prospect of telepathy is once again tantalisingly close—see previously
foreign accent: TWA’s 1968 campaign to introduce cosmopolitan flair for US domestic flights
zoonotic: cross-species viral transmission cases is an ominous warning for the public health community—see previously
the rot-com bubble: the deterioration of tech began with iterative, virtual fetishes—starting with the gig-economy, moving on to crypto, NFTs, the metaverse and now AI, substitutes and replacements that no one asked for
anagnosology: the science of reading from Alie Ward
look at me, i’m mtg, lousy with stupidity: one of the latest from Randy Rainbow
one year ago: The Truman Show (1988) plus a follow-up on an Italian archaeological discovery
two years ago: Uncle Albert (1971) plus a selection of British tongue-twisters
three years ago: a preliminary report of the disease that would become known as AIDS (1981), St Boniface, a sophisticated place name generator plus disco lessons
four years ago: generative copy, assorted links to revisit, a zany public service campaign plus a classic from Crash-Test Dummies
five years ago: US national park typography, the palette of dying coral plus clearing up space junk
super easy, barely an inconvenience: if cats had podcasts
minor arcana: a metaphysically intelligent™️ tarot reading—via Web Curios
fleeting moments: a concept camera that only delivers ephemeral poetry based on the subject in the view-finder—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest
the ghana must go: as ubiquitous as the IKEA bag but more practical, this tartan sack from Japan by way of Hong Kong contains multitudes
god’s influencer: following a second miracle attributed to his intercession, the first Millennial saint is canonised
atlas shrugged: AI-apocalypse Jennifer Lopez vehicle from James Cameron garners negative reviews but we found it enjoyable—going in blindly and wondering if it wasn’t part of the Duneiverse and setting up the Butlerian Jihad
long averages: advances in the understanding of probability fuelling casino gambling—via Damn Interesting
planchettes and re-enchantment: LLMs are haunted things toc-cat-a in b-major: Noam Oxman personalised musical pet portraits—via Waxy
one year ago: a portrait of a dog, Berlin’s Mouse Bunker, a study of incomplete cubes plus men and women duelling in the Middle Ages
two years ago: a pact between NATO and Russia (1997), a dragon in Essex plus assorted links worth revisiting
three years ago: mojibake, font sizes, the Golden Gate Bridge (1937), relocating geese plus Dune manga
four years ago: more links to enjoy, a rock-climbing inspection, weasel iconography plus Trump 2.0 would be far more fraught
five years ago: getting around in Swiss Saxony
Our trusty AI wrangler, Janelle Shane (previously) vents her frustration over a shared lament that many 
artists, marketers and prompters—to the point where close enough is good enough—are experiencing with generated images. Often times tantalised with results that are preternaturally approaching the desired outcome, asking for an edit with a minor detail results, yields instead a completely different picture, ruining the assignment over a small and clearly articulated revision. I suppose AI doesn’t have object permanence despite the fact it clearly remembers, and this limitation is a strong argument for engaging a human artist who can understand one’s notes. More at the links above.
