i’m not saying the emperor has no clothes—i am saying his clothes are cheap, tacky, don’t work and are seriously overrated (12. 675)

Via Quantum of Sollazo, we enjoyed this essay by James Ball that challenges the conventional wisdom on Big Data, put into over-drive by AI, and how the relentless onslaught of serviced, targeted advertisements, which are at best repetitive and worst suspect and irrelevant. If AI, ravenous and insatiable, was producing better insight from triangulated demographics, it stands to reason that commercials, banners and pop-ups would be more focused, engaging and effective, rather than less so and an annoyance to be batted away. Spam proliferated due its virtually no-cost duplication and personalisation and now the process is even more effortless, automated as intrusive slop—going in the opposite direction of what’s hyped and heralded by this unholy twinning. The myth of supremacy in Big Data—started by loyalty programmes for brick and mortar retail chains—likewise crumbles when one looks at other aspects it supposedly influenced, like electioneering through micro-targeted ads which on subsequent analysis, reframing the narrative, from the touted architecture of choice to marketing for sponsors on the network. Much more at the links above.

10x10 (12. 639)

we don’t serve their kind here: “clanker” from the Star Wars franchise has become a universal slur for robots 

jeanine, you’ve changed: a thread about how a consultancy firm in 1987 was responsible for making late 80s and 90s cartoon characters bland and unanimated—via Super Punch 

retrospective: an interview with photographer Dennis Morris whose expansive portfolio of music royalty and documentation of the East End offer a correspondence and symmetry  

do you take this burger to be your dinner: the return after a long hiatus shows that King of the Hill was always about food 

regolith: former reality TV star, Fox News anchor and acting NASA administrator (plus also US Secretary of Transportation) announces the acceleration of the building of a lunar nuclear reactor, as well as freeing commercial drones from line-of-sight supervisor requirements 

ásatrúarfélagið: the resurgence of Norse paganism in Iceland 

bakeneko: superstition and myth regarding cats in Japanese culture—via Nag on the Lake and Everlasting Blört—see previously, see also 

hamburger royal ts: some facts about the McDonald’s Quarter-Pounder  

just another way to claim our attention, so that beautiful certainty we had starts to fade: set in 1984 California during Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign, the critically polarising 1990 Vineland by Thomas Pynchon (previously) speaks to the present 

flivverboob: a 1922 slur for a careless driver that didn’t not seem to catch on

text-to-toy (12. 625)

Via Web Curios, we are directed to a rather thoroughgoing and detailed dissertation to temper shortcomings and disappointment over artificial intelligence, plus our collective, oblique anxiety over what’s going on under the hood, by acknowledging that the large language models that we collaborate with are ludic (from the Latin for ludus or ludi, games—in the creative and playful sense) technology. The central crux of the thesis by Venkatesh Rao is that we find fault in the onerous tasks we seek to automate by dent of outsourcing what we don’t find fun, unwilling to engage with those missteps and the same impatience manifests when it comes to our expectations, misplaced as the off-registered AI outputs when put to more serious work, in not recognising its toy-like nature. We’ve identified for the machine a continuum of identity and equivalence for a car, from a sketch, to logo, to image, to video footage, to a model, to an actual car all as the same concept but only the last is not the form of a car with all the inherent physical constraints and requirements, which the AI does not know—being wrong about reality and representation in the same way images and models are, in correspondence with the way we can be duped by deep fakes or confidently wrong answers. Threats to playfulness and toy-making, model-hobbying are instinctive in this context and compensated for through deprogramming, overcoming the perceived infringement on vaunted humanity and genuineness when we are as poised for play and abstraction—which entails taking command of a situation with imagination, marshalling our toy soldiers—and balanced expectations of what we are working with.

11 x 11 (12. 622)

ped x’ing: an urban hawk takes advantage of a crosswalk signal to shield it from view as it stalks its pigeon bounty—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest  

whispering gallery mode: peacock plumage can be induced to emit lasers—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

pix: US government going after Brazil’s native digital payment platform—calling it an unfair barrier to trade—meanwhile only President Lula da Silva is standing up to Trump’s tariff bullying  

showrunner: Amazon investing in AI start-up Fable that allows subscribers to make their own TV shows  

pro-somnolence: the technique of cognitive shuffling to quiet the mind and get back to sleep 

manifesto antropófago: a 1928 counter-colonialism and counter-appropriation movement venturing out of São Paulo 

the candy factory: the unique artists’ commune in New York City founded by Ann Ballentine—via Messy Nessy Chic  

query-agnostic adversarial triggers: feline-related textual asides cause marked increase in AI error rates  

one year ago, america was a dead country, now it is the hottest country anywhere in the world: Trump escalates trade war with Canada as Carney suggests they may miss the deadline  

living batteries: cable bacteria thriving in muddy harness chemical gradients to create and electrical circuit and get oxygen in an anoxic environment  

starling network: Benn Jordan saved a .PNG image to a bird by turning a drawing into audio which could be mimicked and reproduced, see also—via Waxy

8x8 (12. 601)

field office: Trump withdraws the US from UNESCO for a second time 

vidi, quod aperuisset agnus: the Four Horsemen in art  

shoulder-top secretary: indirect communication, etiquette filters and letting the parrot speak for one  

symphonies of glass and steel: a century on, the spirit of Art Deco has shifted from enlightenment to oppression through the lens of a new property listing  

interlockers: chunky sandals that mimic zig-zag paver blocks 

game genie: a 1990 video game cheat cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System and its landmark legacy establishing reverse-engineering (see also) as fair-use and in-play premiums

velvet sundown: responding to the public backlash of AI slop on the internet, some companies are deplatforming or at least threatening to demonetise such tedious content crowding out everything else  

anamorphic sculpture: Thomas Medicus’ 2014 Emulsifier—the term, in the main, refers to the cinematography technique for translating the widescreen to narrower native aspect ratios 

national governing body: US Olympic Committee bars trans individuals from the teams in order to conform with Trump’s directives about protecting women on the anniversary of the 2001 found of the American Paralympics

7x7 (12. 581)

latam-gpt: frustrated with the limitations of hegemonic AIs, Latin America is building its own inclusive, nuanced version  

whatever files she thinks are credible: amid backlash and reversing a reversal of previous postures, US congress moves to release the Epstein files  

þjóðvegur 1: a twelve day summer road-trip on Iceland’s Route One worthy of a saga  

percussion section: a word-search drum machine for selection of literary classics—via Waxy  

what’s the story, morning glory: every Oasis song visualised—via Quantum of Sollazzo  

not our war: MAGA revolts over Trump’s decision to supply weapons to Ukraine, realising his fawning respect for Putin is not reciprocal 

 lived experience: editors engaged to fix AI copy 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronopticæ) plus the Trump-Vance ticket

fourteen years ago: a periodic table of typefaces plus holidays in France

sixteen years ago: IKEA nomenclature 

9x9 (12. 559)

the coffer illusion: studies in cross-cultural perception have insights behind their controversy—see previously  

rolling stock: new homeowner shocked to find a hidden model train alcove in the basement and has a new, unexpected restoration project—via Nag on the Lake  

reading the minutes: AI note-takers outnumber human participants in virtual meeting spaces  

remastered: British Film Institute hosts a rare screening of the original 1977 Star Wars on Technicolour reels  

no undo button for our fallen democracy: a chorus of responses to the cathedral-, not-in-our-lifetimes thinking that has replaced American exceptionalism  

hello stranger: a signature work of scrolly-telling from The Pudding of people who don’t know each other holding conversations—via Quantum of Sollazzo 

they’re all good boys: the golden retriever, Gilbert, assassinated along with the state congress representative and her husband lay in state at the Minnesota capitol 

heaven and earth magic: a 1962 cutout animation short by avant-garde filmmaker Harry Everett Smith made in residence at the Chelsea Hotel  

static spin: a superlative optical illusion

synchronoptica

one year ago: returning via Switzerland (with synchronopticæ) plus a new Labour government for the UK

twelve years ago: the US Mail-Cover Programme,  Stars Wars as written by Shakespeare plus America policing the world

thirteen years ago: a geography challenge 

6x6 (12. 540)

elbows up: on his way to attend the G7 in Canada, Macron visits Greenland, criticising Trump’s repeated overtures to annex the island—see previously  

ethanol orthodoxy: bio-fuel policy has been a net negative for the environment  

ready for prime time: Google text to video service is rolled out despite sloppy results 

c: MI6 appoints its first female spy chief in its one hundred sixteen year history—Dame Judy Dench only played one in the movies  

sidebar: revised injunction restrictions in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill that requires a bond, bribe to judges got even worst—see previously  

dudley do-right: G7 leaders gather in the Canadian Rockies for their economic summit 

synchronoptica

one year ago: a banger from Supertramp (with synchronoptica)

ten years ago: forbidden colours, assorted links to revisit plus cheap printing and chapbooks

twelve years ago: a visit to Wiesbaden-Schierstein plus Snowden’s formative time in Switzerland

fourteen years ago: revitalising a neglected church in Freibourg 

✨ (12. 531)

Via Quantum of Sollazzo, we found this metaphorical reading of artificial intelligence as the parable of stone soup—with stock and produce donated by curious onlookers—to be deliciously fitting. I don’t recall being exposed to the classic fable with returning soldiers being refused quarter by the equally destitute and war-ravaged residents of a village that they pass through—rather with woodland creatures. Watching the soldiers boil rocks in a cauldron, the group realises that they have a bit to spare after all and contribute various ingredients for flavour, and invested with the main dish decide to make a proper banquet with much revelry. The technology behind AI is not a multiplying factor but only exists and returns value because of human knowledge, experience and effort. Much more at the links above including how AI tutoring and shoehorning it into educational programmes isn’t to teach young people but to reinforce its own learning—to give better-phrased over-confident answers—magical indeed.

air gap (12. 511)

We enjoyed these collected reflections from The Curious Brain on how genuine experiences and inauthenticity has broken trust and belief in what formerly was upheld as evidence but in that betrayal has sparked not regression or aversion necessarily but rather an appreciation for what’s not flawless and frictionless (whether we’ve asked for it or not) and in this post-verification era when seeing is not believing, distancing ourselves with presence and identify and define oneself with showing up and—despite the fraughtness and frailty of memories and expressions otherwise not committed to documentation and curation, made less reliable when seen through a distorting and optimising lens—“I was there.” In this age, authenticity it’s free—it’s currency. It’s status. It’s luxury.

voice writers (12. 494)

Having known just a little about the development and integration of closed-captioning technology, we really appreciated this fascinating deep dive from Radio Lab into its history and struggle for equal access that followed, with accommodation, advances in hardware and software, representation and mandates all intertwined and informing one another, concluding with a reflection on how the process is being automated with artificial intelligence and how in training the machine, we ourselves are transformed through the collaboration. Of course the story didn’t end with triumph of accessibility through the above first demonstration, as the advances for the hearing impaired community were not widely accessible: most programming was not captioned and for those that were an expensive decoder was required as a television peripheral. The situation gradually improved and after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, TV sets were required to include closed captioning technology and all broadcasts were mandated to include subtitles. A workforce of thirty thousand transcriptionists were at work to capture all stations’ content and in order to reach all of the growing market with the rise of cable programming, institutions providing the service turn to emerging voice recognition systems. These early versions were too bug-prone to be useful, especially for realtime applications and failed to keep pace with live dialogue, seizing up at the slightest accent. Researchers, however, discovered that they were more responsive and accurate with the voices of the trial participants, and soon one devised helping the computer by reading back the words in a steady, well-enunciated manner that it could manage. A team of voice writers across the States repeated scripted shows and news reports as they were aired and achieved a pretty good level of fidelity by 2003. Even with only their master’s voice, the programme still had its shortcomings and the voice writers developed a code of substitute words to clear up homophones and short prepositions, for example: echoing, “She has tootoo daughters inly college comma tootaloo period” would yield the yield the desired text, “She has two daughters in college, too.” Two decades on, the software has advanced to the point where it can transcribe instantly without the help of an interpreter and is improving with AI refinements.

⁓ (12. 484)

Although also slightly peeved that the em-dash has become the signature punctuation of artificial intelligence chatbots (see also, scroll down for an act of malicious non-compliance with an agent) and sad to see the way I write coopted—though maybe leaning too heavily on a brittle linkage and perhaps should rely more on brackets or the semicolon, I was naturally intrigued by this proposal for a separator available exclusively for human use to signal that it was not penned by machine, the am-dash, via Web Curios and as in cogito ergo sum. Superficially like the title swung dash (used primarily, however, to set apart a list of alternatives or approximates or in dictionary entries to avoid reprinting the term being defined), the am-dash would be but of a restricted character set—see also.
First widely used in the Nicholas Okes’ publication of Shakespeare’s plays to capture pauses, interruption and epiphany of the staged performances in the early seventeenth century, Jonathan Swift’s 1733 verse On Poetry later encapsulated the style as:

Blot out, correct, insert, refine,
Enlarge, diminish, interline;
Be mindful, when Invention fails;
To scratch your Head, and bite your Nails.

Your poem finish’d, next your Care
Is needful, to transcribe it fair.
In modern Wit all printed Trash, is
Set off with num’rous Breaks⸺and Dashes—

Much more at the links above.

heat index (12. 477)

Here is an interesting juxtaposition on bestseller recommendation from The Onion with the revelation that the Chicago Sun-Times with the help and hindrance of artificial intelligence crafted a “Best of Summer” reads that featured fake books by real authors. Authored by a freelancer brought on for content after the venerable newspaper let go a fifth of its writing staff, it hallucinated titles like Tidewater Dreams and Nightshade Market respectively attributed to novelists Isabel Allende and Min Jin Lee bookended by genuine literary works. The publication that it failed to proof or vet this section for their Sunday supplement and will do better to enforce their policies against the use of AI and going forward with label any syndicated material as coming from third party sources. Lawyers have faced disbarment for resorting to similar short cuts—citing made-up cases for precedent.  I wonder if the machine was being aspirational and bored with the task it was given proclaiming it could write such a narrative in the voice of the living author.

6x6 (12. 441)

αντίδωρον: brilliant wrapping paper makes presents appear as loaves of bread  

impact statement: for the first time, an AI avatar of a murder victim testifies in court 

heptapods: imagining alien languages reveals insights into the nature of our own ways of communicating—see previously 

picking fights: while Trump declares a ceasefire with the Houthi militant group—which we only know about because of Signalgate—the administration signals it will not get involved over the dispute in Kashmir  

orrery: a centenary of planetariums still inspiring awe—via tmn—see previously  

decomposing: lab-grown mini-brains of a deceased musician create posthumous compositions

origami mouse: a pointing device that folds flat when not in use—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest—along with a few more fun items on arcade classics

a1 is number one (12. 411)

Even as Trump has directed the responsible party to dismantle the institution, and is clawing back payment plans in arrears administered under department, he is encouraging the promotion of literacy in artificial intelligence, which the secretary so charged with making herself redundant referred to as the steak sauce, with the integration into the curriculum to teach the next generation of AI workers. Aside from sounding like a dystopian effort to drain human handlers of original, non-recursive thought, expendable once exhausted or replaced with a level of sycophancy useless to all parties, prioritising such initiatives following other governments stated reforms, which strike as far more feasible and responsible imbued with a functioning bureaucracy, Trump will need his DOE extant in some form to administer his Presidential AI Challenge and form partnerships within the industry, an unacknowledged tension for the organisation that he ordered dissolved and remanded to state school districts as the Supreme Court appears more focused on granting parental carve-outs for objectionable curricula rather than a hands off approach as promised.

not magic—it’s all done with mirrors (12. 389)

Via MetaFilter, we thoroughly enjoyed this latest music video from OK Go (previously), for a song with the generic title Love, that features rather than CGI an amazingly choreographed array of industrial robots that the singers interact with precise timing to create one four minute continuous, kaleidoscopic shot (one can see more on the making of the spectacle here though the execution is transparent and no less upstagingly mind-breaking for it). It was filmed in the Keleti (Eastern) train station of Budapest.

agency for defence against hallucinatory disruptions (12. 364)

Via Web Curios, we are directed towards this AI generated music video from artist called Igorr from the Meat-Dept collective that displays a directorial continuity through storyboarding that we didn’t think was possible with current models—the inability for character permanence or the ability to tweak the outcomes, edited or otherwise. There’s no real narrative quality to the short piece but the underscoring of the percussion track and the unexpected series of strangeness holds one’s attention despite its unsettling visuals and übercanniness. Neurodivergence is virtuosity, particularly in this setting.

*     *     *     *     *

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus The Good Life/Good Neighbours (1975) 

seven years ago: Capella Sansevero, askance satellite views, more on seamstress Agnes Richter plus antique Friendship Books

eight years ago: an open air gallery in Amsterdam, tensions over North Korea, Gibraltar and Brexit plus a march against alternate facts

nine years ago: an MST3K reboot plus mesh churches

ten years ago: more links to enjoy plus Norway mothballs a secret arctic seaport

the wisdom of the crowds (12. 362)

A bit of social media sleuthing and reverse engineering suggests that the Trump administration contrived its nonsensical tariff formula by asking AI and set those custom rates per the confident suggestion of a chatbot, which are not reciprocal to import duties at all but rather their trade surplus divided by total exports. Economist and frequent financial contributor to The New Yorker and other publications James Surowiecki obtained similar solutions when prompting various AI models with the question “how to fix trade imbalance.” We suspected that infusing artificial intelligence into everything and the attendant slop produced eventually would drive us collectively over a cliff but wasn’t suspecting such a mark, like a kid rushing to get an overdue homework assignment completed, would be its agent, native and wilful ignorance, shortcuts and retribution conspiring to further fray the global supply chain whose brittleness was on display not too long ago during the pandemic and unleash havoc on world markets and international relations.

catbus and content policy (12. 349)

Though circulating for less than a week, the relatively low benchmark which has been picked up by several prominent posters, OpenAI’s latest chat-to-image feature can faithfully filter pictures in the style of Studio Ghibli. While again encroaching on a signature look without credit or attribution is hardly anything new, mainstreaming a disregard for infringement on intellectual property does seem to be an inflection point not to be celebrated—especially as it comes on the cusp of a US court decision, reversing earlier judgments, that AI works of art can be copyrighted as long as a human prompter is involved, a seemingly backchannel approach as derivative works would instantly overwhelm and bury their original corpus. Far from thrilled to see their creative process automated, the studio’s co-founder filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki responded that he was utterly disgusted with these developments that can in virtually instantaneously animate the results, something that illustrators and colourists take weeks and months to achieve. This news comes at the same time an AI voice generator, with thirty-six years of dialogue of Homer or Moe Szylak, could effective replace the actors behind The Simpsons franchise.

9x9 (12. 339)

debonair: an amazing and comprehensive collection of flight attendant uniforms—via Things Magazine  

contrapoints: a documentary contextualising misinformation to point out it is misinformation 

shortened itinerary: second lady’s tour of Greenland (now joined by her husband) is limited to inspecting the troops at Pituffik Space Base  

seagram’s vo: pallets of American alcohol being returned to the manufacturer  

jug band: a fun cover of Beat It!—with a powerful solo bridge by the Bottle Boys 

boilerfaker: a new trend in microdosing alcohol—via tmn  

duty to report: the 1890 attempt to coerce Canada into joining the US backfired spectacularly  

signalgate: The Atlantic editor inadvertently added to a national security counsel group chat publishes transcript in full after Trump administration downplayed the seriousness of the breach 

hmnd: an incomplete bestiary of humanoid robots