verdens første bøssebryllup (10. 533)

Though not accorded legal sanction by the Kingdom of Denmark for more than sixteen years later, the Danish Evangelical-Lutheran Church became the first Christian communion in modern times to recognise gay marriage on this day in 1973 when radical priest—semi-retired for advocating social anarchy and protesting against NATO upbuilding but not defrocked—Harald Søbye, at the suggestion of a tabloid journalist who was one of the grooms, presided over the world’s first gay marriage. The reporter had met a florist at a discotheque in Vesterbro and asked Søbye to do the honours. From then to 1989 when civil unions were legally recognised, Søbye performed over two hundred blessings or full matrimonial ceremonies. The Church of Denmark in 2012 decided not just to bless and accept same-sex marriages (see also) but to moreover administer the vows and host the celebrations as well.

stochastic parrot (10. 532)

JWZ excerpts from a longer pair of complementary studies on ChatGPT and seeing through those statistical tolerances built into the overtures of a generally unremarkable plain of generative dialogue where with proper minding and limited exposure produce the glancing insight of an accomplished sophist but is otherwise the underlying coursing of conspiracy and misinformation that are the hallmarks of any ploy for attention, manufactured or otherwise. Especially arresting is the examination of the invitation to engage and use it as a partnership, many proponents and some educators and proctors, equating it to bringing calculators into the classroom, as it handily dismantles that comparison since calculators and other tools are made to be reliable and correct, not persuasive. What do you think? Are you a bit disappointed, deflated? There are woefully plenty of tasks where accuracy and objectivity don’t matter—filler, spam, splaining, search engine optimisation none of which seem to be very enlightening or ennobling applications, and money to be made from it but it only makes the internet built for people worse for it and we do ourselves a disservice pretending anyone is seriously reading that boilerplate.

giraffe confidence 43% (10. 531)

Without the need for camouflaging ones face so far, an Italian textile firm introduces a line of disruptive knitwear to safeguards ones biometrics, pitting AI against AI with adversarial patterns and patches designed to draw attention away from one’s face and other recognisable features, classifying a human with some other disposessing taxonomy before attracting too much notice.

 

7x7 (10. 530)

business vulnerable: dress codes for your wedding to confound invited guests 

boom and bust: in stark contrast to last year’s showcase dubbed Crypto Bowl, no cryptocurrency ads have been purchased for Super Bowl Sunday  

fanilect: more eggcorns and mondegreens in misheard lyrics to Taylor Swift songs  

gaming like it’s 1927: annual public domain table-top project playing and remixing expired IPs—via Things Magazine  

overworld theme: beatboxer recreates the songscape of Super Mario Bros. 2

only the shadow knows: a noir short by Fabrice Mathieu  

family dining: Facebook to open Metaverse to children to try to rehabilitate flagging interest 

assistant to the regional manager: the Great Resignation and unethical reclassification practises helped create inflated job titles

tetromino (10. 529)

Via the Awesomer, we are treated to the musical stylings of the artist JER and his rendition of the Tetris theme as a super-energising Ska cover. The folksong ‘The Peddlers’ (Коробе́йники) has a ironical O Henryesque twist—the comedic courtship of two young fabric-sellers takes a tragic turn when one rejects the gift of all of the other’s wares in order to encourage him to stay in the business and ends up being mugged after a successful day of sales—somehow seems ripe for the genre. More chiptune adaptations from The Skatune Network at the link above.

negative test (10. 528)

Approached by Facebook executives with a request to run an experiment tweaking power demands of certain applications to make using them drain one’s phone batteries, a data scientist refused to do so on ethical grounds citing that by dint of the sheer volume of users—in excess of one billion individuals—some were bound to be negatively impacted by a dead phone, lost, stranded or otherwise able to purchase items or verify their identity or alternatively to be gaslit by ones own gadgets, was fired and revealed the existence of this rather sinister experiment (see also) in a lawsuit suing for wrongful dismissal. Details beyond the allegations are sparse since the plaintiff’s employment contract included a clause for binding arbitration, effectively surrendering his right of recourse to legal remedy and submit to the decision of a judge paid a retainer by the social media enterprise.

native client (10. 527)

Via Clive Thompson’s latest Linkfest, not only are we directed to a collection of emulators of graphing calculators like the example pictured but are moreover educated in the method reproducing these classic interfaces using MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, an open-source tool to re-create hardware as software, previously)—a collaborative bit of programming by Nicola Salmoria to ensure that historic coding isn’t lost to the ages and that virtual consoles can exist within all sorts of operating system and browser environments. More at the Emulation Station at the hyperlinks above. 

 

9x9 (10. 526)

famous one hundred twenty-three metre spire of salisbury cathedral: Polish coast guard rescues divers near critical infrastructure who were searching for amber 

macroagression: some GOP members in the US congress have switched their American flag lapels for tiny assault rifles—see also  

backbox: watch composer and sound designer Suzanne Ciani, Diva of the Diode, create a soundscape for a pinball game  

donks: a new animated short from Felix Colgrave explores lost cargo, avatars and adaptive bottom feeders  

mastodon flock: find your following—via Waxy  

cel-ray: a peppery, celery soda that one can still find for sale  

rosetta stone: two trilingual ancient clay tablets rediscovered help scholars decipher a lost Canaanite script  

brought down by the left-wing economic establishment: Liz Truss attempts to revive her political career with a long screed in the Sunday Telegraph  

sæstrengur: Iceland developing contingency plans in case the undersea cables connecting it to the rest of the world are severed