sprecherauthentifizierung

Controversially, German immigration authorities have announced plans to utilise speaker- and speech-recognition software to screen refugees applying for asylum. Automated analytics can help expedite the applications of individuals and families from war-zones but could also as expeditiously disqualify those that the algorithm determines don’t have the speech markers and regionalism that corroborate claims that they are fleeing from Syria but are rather seeking better economic opportunities or welfare.
Having used voice samples and linguistic analysis since the 1990s to screen refugees, the idea is not a new one and human experts have demonstrated a high error rate and many worry that those misjudgements might only be magnified by automation. Affecting a semester-abroad accent is one thing but native speakers are also apt to adopt the expressions and pronunciation of those around them unconsciously out of deference fairly swiftly. Though immigrants have people advocating for them and arguing that the process is prone to error, but I think Germany’s plan has elicited less apprehension than a similar process might soon judge our fitness for employment. Both potential applications are of great consequence and deserve equal scrutiny.

hanami or casting shade

Æon magazine features an excellent essay by conservationist and philosopher Rebecca Gibbs on the celebration of Sakura (サクラ) , the short season of cherry trees going to blossom in Japan (read more about Japan’s concept of microseasons here), that’s customarily attended with hanami (花見) that is holding family and company picnics to enjoy and appreciate the transient beauty of the explosive over-abundance of Nature.
Informed in part by Buddhist teachings stressing the pathos or empathy toward the surrounding world, Gibb argues that these traditions that have been fostered for centuries does a better job in encouraging the public to care about environmental stewardship than the more tone-deaf and abstract campaigns that the West usually rely on. Appreciating a tree like the Lorax as a biome, a source of shade, oxygen, a home for birds and bugs is the message of Sakura, and it doesn’t demand one acknowledge a deeper beauty or go in search of one—after all, there are other well-established and familiar Japanese customs in gardening and pruning that speak to the cultural aesthetic, and seems like one that we are failing to grasp and adopt. What do you think? Perhaps we are all beginning to realise that Nature is not something separate from ourselves and our experience.

now there’s only love in the dark

Via Curious Brain, we are treated to Billy Butcher’s little collection of 1980s love ballads presented in style of Steven King horror paperback covers—or rather VHS cassette  boxes. Aside from Bonnie Tyler’s torch song, titles with lyrics and cover-notes include Nazareth’s Love Hurts, Chris de Burgh’s The Lady in Red and Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order.

sock-puppet, sine cure

Although it is not unusual for hold-over appointees from the previous administration to serve in caretaker capacity until an incoming regime can fill positions, the fact that Dear Leader abruptly called for the dismissal of the incumbent Surgeon General of the United States on a Friday afternoon so the news might get buried and with no replacement waiting in the wings (and few lined up in general) seems a bit suspect.
Dear Leader, on the eve of the March against Alternative Facts, might have decided to fire America’s Top Doctor for a number of reasons, including labelling gun-violence and opioid-use a matter of public health or for saying that vaping was not such a stupendous alternative and may prove a gateway to other more damaging habits, but it was most likely his recent appearance with puppet and stooge (and degenerate) of the immunizations racket to argue that vaccinations keep us all safe and healthy. Many of Dear Leader’s core supporters, we’ve heard tell, are of the conviction that immunizations cause autism and a whole host of ills and would rather tempt the ravages of medieval diseases that had been all but eliminated in the West, and so the physician had to be replaced with one of his lieutenants—making her the first individual to hold the office without a medical background, which seems a bit important.