7x7

cryptolocker: knowing it would face the loss of all its records otherwise, a community college ponied up a hefty ransom to hackers

call me gavin: revolutionary presidential grandson who bridged the gap between Walt Whitman and the Summer of Love, commune-founder and muse Chester A Arthur III was quite an astounding individual

by any memes necessary: chat-bot and desktop assistant that communicates exclusively through GIFs

tilting at windmills: decommissioned, obsolete turbine blades repurposed as architectural elements

hyper-realism: painted portraits that surpass photography

back in the habit: a Dutch fashion designer collaborated with the Dominican order to update their traditional garb

weepuls: the story behind those promotional balls of fuzz with googly eyes from the 1970s and 80s

tranvía

As part of a broader discussion on borders and boundaries, Citylab presents the fascinating semi-legendary story of the streetcar line that used to connect the metropolises of El Paso, Texas with Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua as it evolved from mule to monorail (proposed at least on paper) over seven decades.
The trolley-tracks were finally dismantled in the early 1970s—when many municipalities were abandoning streetcars and in some cases mass-transit altogether—at the urging of shopkeepers on the Mexican side who complained that it was too easy and tempting for their customers to do their shopping across the border, but there were hundreds of intervening stories to gather and tell, which a member of the El Paso city council is trying to do, also hoping to restore if not a transnational trolley (and they’re not giving up on that dream without a fight) at least a corridor of public transport with vintage streetcars.

media circus or cause célèbre

Now that the press has managed to censor its own agency to report on the dirty laundry of the newly installed regime—squandered I suspect even when it becomes vital to do so in the future since the constituency that stands behind him seems unphased no matter what’s the scandal of the day, these words of experience from a Russian reporter, Alexey Kovalev—sometimes contributor to The Guardian, about journalism under a climate of control, disdain for the profession and hampered investigations I think is an important and chilling cautionary-tale.
There are a lot of points made here and of course the parallels aren’t perfect and there’s no one to one corres- pondence—at least he made the trains run on time—but one thing did particularly strike me as something that we can expect to see in future audiences that leadership deigns to grant to the Fourth Estate: favouring those soft-ball sorts of questions lobbed from plants in the gallery, “Mister President, Mister President—there are too many vagrants in our neighbourhood.” “Why are the streets in such bad conditions?” Certainly not matters for the president but as he’s ever only a tweet away and thus infinitely accessible, he’ll get to appear like a hero for directing a clean-up operation regardless of the costs and how it might impact other projects in the community (it coming out of the local budget of course) and he’ll get to shame the municipal authorities for letting this happen. What do you think? It’s early yet but we’ve already been treated to several highly choreographed events and at least one with the floor packed with shills to do the cheering and out-shout the boos and groans.

upscale or lossless

The dominant internet search engine and several other platforms are utilising machine-learning to fetch images on mobile devices and maintain high-resolution quality but only use a quarter of the data volume to do so, thus being less taxing on users’ plans. The technique is an established one of inserting pixels to make up for lost details but instead of following a fixed formula, the routine has fast enough processing-speeds to adapt to each images as it comes and may even be able to re-enhance video in real-time.

#maga

The Russian Duma, championed by the same conservative politician that codified the county’s rules on gay propaganda, is poised to decriminalise domestic violence, upholding the traditions of the good old days when youths did not sass their elders.
Of course, this is not limited to empowering parents to smack an incorrigible child without fear of reprisal but also drives women who are victims of violence further into the background by legitimatising such behaviour, so long as it doesn’t leave a permanent mark. Elsewhere, we learn that Japan is recalling its diplomats from South Korea over a statute erected in Busan that commemorates the so called “comfort women,” victims of sex-slavery under Imperial Japanese Army.

chariots of the gods?

I enjoyed reading this brief travelogue from Atlas Obscura about the Gothic “new” cathedral of Salamanca, the old city declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with its rather anachronistic astronaut adorning its façade, which was added during a 1992 renovation that will surely present a puzzle for visitors of the distant future but is by no means a hoax—rather a contemporary signature of the masons doing the restoration work. This detail to discover and wonder about made me think of the Darth Vader grotesque that’s lurking high in the eaves of the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

speech coach or elocution

In the near future, algorithms analysing voices might supplant recruiters and hiring officials, we learn via Marginal Revolution. Of course, everything’s an audition already and we’re all singing for our suppers but it seems unwelcoming and strangely paternalistic for a machine to judge your potential in ways that are far more accurate than we are resigned to accept.
Of course once computers begin to encroach on the bailiwick of human resources, it won’t just be one’s next promotion hinging on one’s tone or feigned enthusiasm—especially as machines and automation take more jobs from the market. The practical good—although we need to remember that formulæ aren’t completely above human bias since they’re programmed to look for specific criteria by humans—is finding the best fit for the employer and employee but being dismissed at the first peep would be heartbreakingly demotivating and I’m sure some would be encouraged to try to game the system. Maybe such analysts could also be programmed to collude with the connected world at large to spare our feelings and nudge us towards the ideal, algorithmically-determined vocation without our even realising it or having to face rejection. What do you think? Computation-coddling I think wouldn’t be very character-building but I imagine that those fortunate enough to be born into that environment would know nothing other than brilliant luck and impeccable timing.

jimadores

Bat-friendly tequila wrests one species from the brink of extinction.
The blue agave plant is exclusively pollinated by the lesser long nosed bat but as the nectar (the key ingredient in tequila) content is at its highest just before blossoming, farmers tended to harvest the plants before they flowered and relied on cloning to restock their fields. A joint US-Mexican initiative persuaded producers (jimadores) to set aside parts of their fields all allow some of the agave to reach maturity and bloom, thus feeding the bats, whose numbers are very robust after three decades of conservation, and reaping the benefits of cross-pollination for the long-term resilience of their crops.