sprecherauthentifizierung

Controversially, German immigration authorities have announced plans to utilise speaker- and speech-recognition software to screen refugees applying for asylum. Automated analytics can help expedite the applications of individuals and families from war-zones but could also as expeditiously disqualify those that the algorithm determines don’t have the speech markers and regionalism that corroborate claims that they are fleeing from Syria but are rather seeking better economic opportunities or welfare.
Having used voice samples and linguistic analysis since the 1990s to screen refugees, the idea is not a new one and human experts have demonstrated a high error rate and many worry that those misjudgements might only be magnified by automation. Affecting a semester-abroad accent is one thing but native speakers are also apt to adopt the expressions and pronunciation of those around them unconsciously out of deference fairly swiftly. Though immigrants have people advocating for them and arguing that the process is prone to error, but I think Germany’s plan has elicited less apprehension than a similar process might soon judge our fitness for employment. Both potential applications are of great consequence and deserve equal scrutiny.

hanami or casting shade

Æon magazine features an excellent essay by conservationist and philosopher Rebecca Gibbs on the celebration of Sakura (サクラ) , the short season of cherry trees going to blossom in Japan (read more about Japan’s concept of microseasons here), that’s customarily attended with hanami (花見) that is holding family and company picnics to enjoy and appreciate the transient beauty of the explosive over-abundance of Nature.
Informed in part by Buddhist teachings stressing the pathos or empathy toward the surrounding world, Gibb argues that these traditions that have been fostered for centuries does a better job in encouraging the public to care about environmental stewardship than the more tone-deaf and abstract campaigns that the West usually rely on. Appreciating a tree like the Lorax as a biome, a source of shade, oxygen, a home for birds and bugs is the message of Sakura, and it doesn’t demand one acknowledge a deeper beauty or go in search of one—after all, there are other well-established and familiar Japanese customs in gardening and pruning that speak to the cultural aesthetic, and seems like one that we are failing to grasp and adopt. What do you think? Perhaps we are all beginning to realise that Nature is not something separate from ourselves and our experience.

now there’s only love in the dark

Via Curious Brain, we are treated to Billy Butcher’s little collection of 1980s love ballads presented in style of Steven King horror paperback covers—or rather VHS cassette  boxes. Aside from Bonnie Tyler’s torch song, titles with lyrics and cover-notes include Nazareth’s Love Hurts, Chris de Burgh’s The Lady in Red and Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order.

sock-puppet, sine cure

Although it is not unusual for hold-over appointees from the previous administration to serve in caretaker capacity until an incoming regime can fill positions, the fact that Dear Leader abruptly called for the dismissal of the incumbent Surgeon General of the United States on a Friday afternoon so the news might get buried and with no replacement waiting in the wings (and few lined up in general) seems a bit suspect.
Dear Leader, on the eve of the March against Alternative Facts, might have decided to fire America’s Top Doctor for a number of reasons, including labelling gun-violence and opioid-use a matter of public health or for saying that vaping was not such a stupendous alternative and may prove a gateway to other more damaging habits, but it was most likely his recent appearance with puppet and stooge (and degenerate) of the immunizations racket to argue that vaccinations keep us all safe and healthy. Many of Dear Leader’s core supporters, we’ve heard tell, are of the conviction that immunizations cause autism and a whole host of ills and would rather tempt the ravages of medieval diseases that had been all but eliminated in the West, and so the physician had to be replaced with one of his lieutenants—making her the first individual to hold the office without a medical background, which seems a bit important.

kittyhawk oder wo ist mein fligendes auto?

At an airstrip outside of München, Lilium Aviation, Dezeen informs, undertook its first maiden voyage earlier this week with its electric powered prototype, a two-seater vertical take-off and landing personal jet.
The Bavarian start-up certainly has some robust competition, but they are pulling out ahead of the pack with this feat. With future plans for allowing a fleet to be summoned via cell-phone, like hailing a taxi, the aerial vehicle has a range of three hundred kilometres and can travel as fast per hour, and can either be piloted by its passengers or can fly autonomously with human remote supervision, as was done for this test-flight. Learn more and see video footage of the at the links above.

leerverkauft oder going-long

History’s non-events, those disasters thwarted by accident or fortune, always figure strangely in a milieu that’s supposedly both nimble and lame with near-misses and we are still trying to wrap our heads around on what transpired in Dortmund on 11 April when the number two German football club’s tour caravan and the rival Monacan national team were targeted with roadside bombs.
Reinforced glass on Borussia Dortmund’s bus and a hedgerow ultimately prevented loss of life and limb which would have surely precipitated an unimaginable tragedy for both countries. Though the attack was diffused the same script was trotted out, with the Cosplay Caliphate immediately taking credit—with most of the public willing to grant it them—and a radical left-wing anti-fascist was accused of trying to pull off this mass-murder because hooligan fans of team represented intolerance. Some formulated that the extreme right AfD would have Borussia Dortmund martyred in order to strengthen their anti-immigration platform. The true-crime truth is indeed stranger and is an outlier for what we expect in this environment: as common as the refrain is that greed is cause of all sorrows, we are surprised to find that that motive lie behind this calculated murder attempt. An individual identified as Sergej W had bought up fifteen thousand team stock market shares with the option of selling them short (Leerverkauft), since the portfolio of the team would plummet in value in the aftermath and was staying in the same hotel as the teams at the time of the attack with a room with a view of where the bombs were planted. Had Sergej W’s plan succeeded, his speculation would have yielded him four million euro off of an initial investment of eighty thousand.

the big guava

Although multi-coloured motifs certainly have their place as with the rainbow pride flag or the banner of the Sámi peoples, the city flag of Tampa (the Big Guava as it was called in 1970 for introducing that fruit to America)—as Weird Universe informs, from a vexillographer’s view violates a lot of the guiding principles of design, particularly its odd pennant shape that makes it prohibitively expensive to reproduce in number.
There are a multitude of other state and local flags that could benefit from a re-vamping, but despite being the official symbol of the city for seven decades, residents seem taken aback and a little embarrassed to learn of this jumble that’s unfurled daily at city hall. There’s reasoning behind F Grant Whitney’s vision—which is an homage to the flags of the six powers that have controlled Florida but those elements could have perhaps been better represented. What do you think? Would you recognise your town’s regalia especially in a different context?

ux or peer-review

Albeit the ubiquitous and public institution has weathered criticisms by academia in the past citing the platform for unreliable references and is constantly under siege by vandals and revisionists, Wikipedia’s record for dealing and dispatching with fake-news (following Cunningham’s Law) is far better than that of other social media networks.  Without question consumers of such streams of likes and like-mindedness ought to be encouraged to be more savvy, critical and literate when it comes journalism.
Like the argument espoused by Big Thinker Katherine Maher, social media users would be as quick to extinguish a self-serving falsehood as an encyclopædist in many cases but the difference in virality and endurance is not in giving users a means to conduct fact-checking but diverges much earlier—in the sequestered and opaque (probably even as unclear to the merchants of doom that profit from them) decisions of algorithms and market-models to promote one particular news item to one particular individual over another. Each user experience (UX) is of course unique and personal and no two people would be able to share that same tailored barrage of content, unlike being spectators at a sports event or rally or even being exposed to a suite of commercials on television. Until social engineers and mediators can be more forthcoming about the profit-motives and why, to the best of their knowledge, one headline, advertisement was served to you instead of another.