sic transit gloria mundi

Humanity may indeed be caught aware by the Singularity—assuming that it’s not already occurred—and not wanting to spread the bombast of street preachers but this inevitable development, as Wired! magazine reports, of learning software writing its own, improved (in novel and unexpected ways) learning software makes me think that we are lurching ever closer to that reality.
Presently the machine is learning to build neural networks that optimise search results and targeted marketing across one relatively knowable, shared plane of existence, but should human programmers by side-lined into a sine cure, directorial role will greatly accelerate the pace of transformation—which with too much human intervention could really turn into an experience fraught with the tantalisingly tremolo-fulfilling and the unchallenging. What do you think? Not only will the way we interact online change in exponential ways, fully-automated and autonomous, self-generating learning software will also spread into the real world much faster and take helm not only in transit but also in legal, financial and health services and be accorded a role in civil and corporate governance, making it not only more difficult to justify wealth disparity but also calling into question our economic models and priorities to begin with.

hsinbyushin

Presenting a particularly woke feature for Public Domain Review, English professor Ross Bullen shows us how carnival barkers of the past too could conjure up a rather indirect but in no way allegorical nor subtle forum for airing racial tensions and expounding on ideas of white supremacy—pointedly in late nineteenth century America just two decades after its civil war.
Circus impresario PT Barnum’s latest acquisition was about to go on display and the public was abuzz with excitement, only that what was billed as a sacred white elephant (which Barnum’s agents had procured at a high price from the Burmese monarch and Barnum himself tried to curb the audience’s expectations) didn’t prove to be white enough with one critic even calling the creature more like a “mulatto.” A figurative meaning was already attached to owning a white elephant as both a blessing and a curse as the prestige of it was also burdensome and impractical but the stock usage of white elephant swaps, the adage that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure or as a commentary on costly to maintain projects (but unable to dispense with) and under-utilised infrastructure really became cemented in common-parlance after this episode. Despite Barnum’s reputation as one to pass along hoaxes and the fraudulent as authentic, this genuine curiosity couldn’t keep his spectators enthralled and precipitated a broadening culture war with elephant bleaching and racist soap advertising campaigns, and those who did come to behold the sacred white elephant were met with the reflection of their perhaps unformulated, unarticulated ideas about identity and the other turned back on them.

igneous

As an update to a project first covered last summer, we learn that an international consortium of engineers and alchemists have brought the first negative-emissions power plant on-line in Iceland.
The scientists and their backers were understandably muted about their works and successes—hoping that industry would do a better job of policing itself and leave direct-air capture—having filters sequester atmospheric carbon-dioxide by transforming it into stone—as an absolute last-resort. Additionally, despite the fact that we’ve probably passed that pivot point and considering what’s at stake, the scientists were also not wanting to seem too pie-in-the-sky considering the prohibitively high costs associated with constructing the facilities—but desperate times call for a symmetrical response and right now with many places battered by climate-change driven natural disasters—hurricanes, wildfires, no price can be too dear. This first prototype plant paired with the geothermal generating station in Hellisheiði (to make it truly carbon-negative) is so far able to reabsorb the annual emissions of an average family home, but a May demonstration project in Geneva captured the equivalent of twenty households with costs coming down.

patrimony

Disturbingly—though the US only rejoined the international body promoting education, scientific research and preservation of cultural heritage from hegemon in 2002 after an eighteen-year hiatus that Ronald Reagan initiated, accusing it of betraying a bias towards Communism—Dear Dotard has unilaterally decided to withdraw America’s membership from UNESCO (also the purveyor of international days of observation and the committee behind the creation of CERN, for starters) predominately over what’s characterised as its anti-Israeli leanings demonstrated by making Palestine a full-member and for (in July) inscribing a site in Hebron to its World Heritage List. Fiduciary concerns were also cited as contributing factors—including some half a billion dollars in back payments that America has yet to repay. Following the US announcement, Israel expressed its intent to leave the organisation as well.

nacht und nebel

We’ve previously confronted the highly disturbing tolerance and even admiration that certain elements of the American populace have displayed (and woefully continue to do so—just now with more abandon and zeal) for the National Socialist political party of Germany and knew of the rally held in Madison Square. It always struck me as a secret, shameful episode that despite mounting anecdotes and evidence was something that was buried and few knew of, so we were grateful to learn that a short, straightforward documentary called “A Night at the Garden” by Academy Award nominated director Marshall Curry has been complied from all available footage. It is absolutely inconceivable to me that with the benefit of hindsight and historical distance, a bunch of Cosplay Nazis are convinced that holding these views are acceptable. 

non verbus, sed rebus

We enjoyed pouring over the pictorial kanji typography from artist Nozzdesu that makes Japanese writing a bit more accessible to the illiterate and reminded us of a similar experiment with Arabic script. The calligraphy (shodō, 書道) of Japan, as with many other places, has gone through many stylistic shifts and some glyphs broach the recognisable and selecting for geometry, colour and style can go further in helping to impart meaning for outsiders. Pictured is the word eiga (映画) for movie.

må jeg skjære ham i fingeren? må jeg rive ham i håret?

Synchronised to a two-dimensional physics simulation, animator DoodleChaos’ line-rider rendering of Edvard Grieg’s (previously) In the Hall of the Mountain King was a rather thrilling sled ride. You should definitely have the speakers on full blast for this one and watch it through to the end when it gets really harrowing.

rogues' gallery

While previously on PfRC we were exposed to the teaching and methodology of Inspector Alphonse Bertillon whose research into how anthropometry could be applied as systematic way of identifying repeat offenders and informed our notions of biometrics, we hadn’t actually seen his superbly complex diagrams and composite “mug-shots” until now.  First working as a transcriptionist for the Paris police department, Bertillon grew frustrated with informal, instinctive forensic techniques that were failing to reduce recidivism rates—and encouraged bolder criminal behaviour since it appeared unlikely one would be caught and the potential reward made the risks acceptable ones.
No doubt Bertillon was a dedicated pioneer whose legacy lives on in all precincts, but something about him strikes me as very Inspector Javert (from Les Misérables who became obsessed with capture and punishment of Jean Valjean) especially considering his growing eccentricities and loss of credibility when he claimed that there was a mathematical infallibility to his technique (when there demonstrably was not) and his false testimony was used to sentence Alfred Dreyfus (of the divisive Dreyfus Affair, a study in anti-Semitism and grave miscarriage of justice in which a captain was incorrectly accused of treason whilst his superiors, the real culprits, deflected the blame) to exile and imprisonment. Eventually Bertillion’s comprehensive system of markers was collapsed into the complementary but competing method of dactyloscopy, once the inspector himself perfected a way to retrieve latent fingerprints from smooth surfaces.