8x8

colossus: a robot firefighter worked alongside five hundred heroic first responders to help save Notre Dame

hyperacusis: a look at the rather long history of building acoustics and being driven to distraction

ben day dots: the studio behind the fantastic title sequence of Into the Spider-Verse

poe’s law: an internet adage that it’s become tougher and tougher to distinguish extreme views from parodies thereof

stumped: a look at the observation posts of World War I disguised as trees

the secret-sharer: tech companies contract armies of people to tweak and improve digital assistants

mush, mush: a team of Boston Dynamics Spot Minis working in tandem haul away a big truck

a vast symphony set in stone: tourists and scholars reflect on the cathedrals’ historic (and landmark) role and what it means to them  

fluctuat nec mergitur

architecture of choice

A team of researchers who trained a neural network to play arcade games would often ask human teachers, role-models to explain the rational behind the moves they made, veering left or jumping forward to avoid an obstacle, etc. to help the robot learn.
In efforts for transparency in algorithmic decision making and hopefully presenting AI as less of an inscrutable black box and more of an auditable system, the research team also trained the machine to generate a running account of each move it made. While this sounds well-intentioned, the more likely outcome will result in AI that comes up with a plausible and civil explanations ex-post facto, much like all people in certain situations measuring the programme’s response and against past human-user reactions and gradually building trust and a rapport based on what the AI has learned that we want to hear. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

baleen

Like nature studies informed by Bauhaus and Joan Miró, Present /&/ Correct refers us to the portfolio of art collective that embraces messy Modernism with their reinterpretation of specimen slides of plankton—that is whale food and an indispensable part of the food-chain not to mention producing fully half of the world’s biogenic oxygen supply that ought not to be judged by their size, individual members of this drifting current called plankters. Much more to explore at the links above.

the relentless amplification of nothing

The always excellent Things Magazine reflects on internet entropy and the tendency of things to fall into a state of neglect and disrepair often in favour of the sleeker, less labour intensive and attention demanding walled-gardens of social media that has become an exercise in judicious cannibalisation and that blog roll-calls in time become a poignant review of abandoned projects and interests, set aside maybe in some cases just a moment too long to ever get back in the habit.
No one is expected to explain oneself or defend changing circumstance and focus but it is a little sad to realise that voracious, giant platforms are usually the culprits. As much as we might cringe at the idea of social media curating our biographies and autobiographies forever open to public inspection and that in certain contexts nostalgia belies a toxic impulse, it can be on the other hand a moment of elation to go spelunking among the hulks of the moribund past and uncover artefacts that attests to a once vibrant hobby. The author shares some rare nuggets at the link above and we’d like to know if you’ve come across some undisturbed treasures yourself.

osterbrunnen

Sourced back as a tradition expanding outward from the Fränkische Schweiz (Franconian Switzerland) region in the early 1900s when public fountains started to lose a measure of their civil importance as more homes were being retrofitted with modern plumbing, decorating them and the village centre with eggs, ribbon and garlands for Eastertide has spread to other areas in Germany.

Though the ritual of well-dressing is a custom that goes back much further, communities have grown acutely aware and proud of their handiwork, since the 1950s generally put out on the day before Palm Sunday, that continues to evolve as a teachable and instagrammable lesson—plastic eggs having become the norm due to vandalism but many are returning to more authentic materials to celebrate the season and the rites of Spring.