minor arcana

Via Boing Boing, we’re treated to a suite of Tarot cards generated with a procedural, algorithmic model that is similar to the technique used in video games to create virtual universes and randomised, extended landscapes and textures. This demonstration from developer Watabou was an entrant to a symposium dedicated to exploring the craft of making software that makes things.

illegals programme

Though not adapted for prestige television until a few years after the revelation, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s infiltration into a network of sleeper agents of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR RF, Слу́жба вне́шней разве́дки) carrying out long-term, deep-cover assignments in target countries—the US and the UK—that culminated in July of 2010 was code-named Operation Ghost Stories.
The modus operandi was to pose (some assuming stolen identities) as ordinary citizens and ingratiate themselves to academia, industry and government in order to obtain intelligence on US posture and economic strength. The spy ring of ten members was uncovered just days after of then-president Dmitri Medvedev’s visit to the White House and is blamed by some as the initial cause of the collapse in good will between Russia and the Obama administration.

pre-crime

Thanks to a FOIA request filled by a group that advocates for greater transparency in algorithmically based decision making, we are given a glimpse into how software companies are peddling predictive policing to law enforcement authorities across several jurisdictions. Whether or not the programme has any merit in preventing infractions before they are committed, the best practises and techniques outlined in the training guide make concessions to the accuracy of its precognitive abilities by encouraging intrusion and over-policing and seeking out minor offenses in order to boost metrics.

no, you’re the puppet!

Idiot Trump’s predictable, petty

antics at the NATO summit are fomenting a dangerous distraction as the real and consequential crisis in the making (despite all the tantrums and threats) is the turning of Erdoğan’s Turkey away from its Western allies and towards Russia—a re-balancing act whose execution is seemingly more and more perfectly polished. I hope that the other members aren’t fully taken in by this side-show.

portrait studio

Considering all the horrors that the USA les enfants terribles are perpetrating, it’s a real challenge to provoke any sort of relief or respite touching this regime—so we are appreciative of the clever photo-editing work of an individual called Chest Strongwell. Such a repulsive collection of people have never looked gentler (or at least candid) but none of us are being fooled by this feigned innocence.