zone out

Having hosted the debut of the first film script written by a neural network, Ars Technica was already versed with the screen-writing talents of an artificial intelligence named Benjamin, who is now re-enlisted the acting talents of the cast of his first short film, Sunspring, for a bolder experiment in which Benjamin was given full creative control and nearly single-handedly responsible for production from start to finish. Sponsored by the recently concluded Sci-Fi London 48 Hour Challenge, Benjamin adhered to a few basic movie prompts and a few other criteria and drawing on footage from public domain cult classics The Brain that Wouldn’t Die and The Last Man on Earth and digitally inserted the performers into his film.

blogosphere

Chillingly, via Slashdot, we learn that Tanzania is besting its neighbours Uganda and Kenya in severely curtailing internet freedoms, requiring all blogs and online forums to be registered or suspend all operations immediately, on pain of high fines or imprisonment. For a website to continue posting, authors or moderators must pay a licensing fee that just tops the average annual salary for a Tanzanian labourer and one would suppose further acquiescing to not being a general nuisance to the government.

4,645

Eight months after Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, devastating the island and many residents in remote areas are still without basic utilities, the official government tally of fatalities has stood at sixty-four.
An impromptu memorial two weeks ago (and we’re all ashamed for having overlooked such a powerful and important gesture, which illustrates how beastly and uncaring and so easily called away we can be) on the marble courtyard of the San Juan capitol grew into thousands of pairs of empty shoes being neatly lined up to represent a truer number of the number lost in the storm.

6x6

empanelment: ten anti-Trump cartoons that the Pittsburgh Post Gazette refuses to publish

won’t you be my neighbour: Anthony Bourdain was like Mister Rogers (previously) for adults, plus the article that launched his career, via Coudal Partners

binney & smith: Crayola launches a cosmetic line based on its crayons

race to the bottom: a business-model based on the destruction of the resources it relies on is strikingly uneconomic

here we come on the run with a burger in a bun: dinosaur taco-butlers

bodyguard: a profile of the elite Nepalese Gurkha contingent protecting the Kim-Trump summit in Singapore

the use of words of good omen

Boing Boing’s archives directs our attention to a useful resource for copy-writers who’ve run out of innocuous, weasel words to mask the unpleasant realities of fascism and white supremacy that’s encroached on civics and politics and has gotten quite the unsettling foothold. Give it a try and see what doublespeak headlines are generated.