Geoff Manaugh’s latest speculative piece in BLDGBlog that turns over the aesthetics of civil engineering to an algorithm that has demonstrated a knack for the scenic initially made me think of another trail of a neural network plucking idyllic postcards from vast collections of unprocessed data, but the examination went deeper to question what these heralded breakthroughs in artificial intelligence might mean when the gauge of their success is our hazy ideal.
Humans own sense of taste and proportion are in turn thought to be informed, like our myths and oral traditions, by surveying the plains of Africa and learning that certain configurations of contour and shading invite prey and shelter—and are in tour reflected in the art and landscaping that we find unconsciously resonant. Advertisers exploit these sort of backdrops all the time to draw us in—or at least not to offend by choosing something anodyne and universal. What do you think? I do admit that in a moment of laziness recently that has since proven quite serendipitous and worth repeating I have turned to a PfRC site-specific image search to try to pick illustrations to go with some posts that I don’t have a specific for. With over four thousand articles and more photographs (mostly confusingly captioned or labelled), I’d prefer to recycle one of my own—especially pictures I’ve taken myself rather than accumulating more, I restrict the search criteria to this site and tell the search engine a few topics in the post, and I’ll get results like the one pictured—which is exactly what I had in mind. If our digital amanuensis and analyst is only rewarded for being a feed-back loop that draws on our oldest comforts neither side is challenged and the process seems like atrophy rather than growth.
Sunday, 6 August 2017
retrolithic
have you seen any russians in west virginia, ohio or pennsylvania?
Just days after someone leaked to the press the full, revealing transcript of Dear Leader’s telephone conversations with foreign heads of state, his embattled though quick to squander any sympathy the public might have formed for him for working in such a toxic climate Attorney General announced that four White House staffers have been charged with unauthorised release of information. In an aggressive crackdown that might meet the definition of a witch-hunt, he pledged to stop the culture of leaks and would uncover the culprits, adding that no one is “entitled to surreptitiously fight their battles in the media by revealing sensitive government information,” never mind that his mission in defence of an individual who has a substantial portion of the medium exclusively rigged to support his agenda, no matter what form it’s taking at the moment and speaks further to importance of distinguishing between what is an illegal leak (the disclosure of classified information), a legal leak (almost everything else) and gossip or speculation.
It’s just like the regime painting with too broad a brush when it comes to fake news—just because the truth is not flattering does not mean that it’s not the incontrovertible truth. The Attorney General is also reformulating the subpoena laws so that journalists might not so easily protect their secret sources. I wonder how that will manifest itself. At the same time, it was revealed that a small delegation of members of the intelligence committee travelled to London—with sanction by the rest of the members—to confront the former MI6 spy who compiled the Moscow dossier on Dear Leader. The law-makers did not met with the ex-spy but were being I suppose vaguely menacing. Then, and speak of Friday afternoon disasters (some people take all week to think up problems to spring on others)—Dear Leader announces a working vacation at one of his New Jersey golf resorts, abruptly but argues it was timed to coincide with long-planned renovations to the official residence—which Dear Leader recently described as a dump. The White House’s superintendent probably struggled to come up with something plausible quickly, but I suspect that they’re installing more surveillance equipment in efforts to intercept patriotic leakers. Such paranoia eventually backfires, especially given this bumbling cast of morons to include a Majordomo that suggests lie-detectors be installed—and Dear Leader’s own atrocious behaviour (not that it hasn’t already been broadcast before and to little lasting avail) will be on display.
Saturday, 5 August 2017
heart of sharkness
Though I can imagine dealing with a hailstorm of vicious man-eating sharks might seem presently rather mild and the preferred challenge in comparison to the plagues that Dear Leader is capable of calling down on civil society and the environment, in case you had not heard—as Dave Log informs, the disaster horror comedy movie franchise that has started to attract all sorts of bottom-rung actors who vie for cameo-roles was also courting the likes of Donald Trump to play none other role than president of the United States of America.
Although second choice after Sarah Palin refused the part, Trump was reportedly very keen to be presidential, even if it was in a gory and bad film, with David Hasselhof, and Charo, and several other reality television stars. Trump was rather crestfallen in January of 2015 when his team of handlers asked him not to appear in Sharknado: Oh Hell No! as production might interfere with his actual bid for the presidency they were pushing the serial candidate to announce soon. I wonder what kind of persuasive argument that had to weave in order to get Dear Leader to give up on a sure thing for laborious long-shot. In this instance, I think we can all wish that his baser instincts would have prevailed.
vroom!
