die fringer (10. 559)

Via the new shelton wet/dry, though the ring-finger finger-ring by conceptual artist Nadja Buttendorf from 2016 was intended as prosthetic extension and not anticipating our tenuous times and injecting doubt into what we perceive and are presented, criminals and others seeking alibis, plausible deniability and not be subject to dragnet surveillance might indeed don glitchy accessories (see previously) to call into question the admissibility of trackers and footage.

7x7 (10. 558)

wolf-whistle: the lexical corpus of canines and US supreme court justices  

deportment: how to act around books  

meres, lochs and llyns: regional variations in names for alleys and narrow walkways in the UK  

linkboy: living in a Dark Sky area, we enjoyed reading about the first town’s to be certified embracing that honour—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links—which is also the source of the expression ‘cannot hold a candle to’ 

official state crap: legislature of New Mexico introduces a bill to create a state aroma, the first of its kind 

cher and charo: a duet of “America” from West Side Story—see previously  

nachträglichkeit: Jude Stewart on sticking with German and the pursuit on bilingualism

parts of speech (10. 557)

Although seeming a relatively straightforward challenge for a language model we learn via the new shelton wet/dry that because GPT-2 and similar chatbots work sequentially and is only capable of predicting only the next word, one word at a time, researchers didn’t really know how the latest cadre of neural networks had a pretty good track record of knowing when to use the English indefinite article “a” over “an,” which really points to what an inscrutable black box that artificial intelligence presents and makes me wonder how it would handle languages with a high level of declinations or synthesis. Computer scientist have isolated a “neuron” of sorts—something that they didn’t program—that explains this anticipatory capacity.

the sacred chao (10. 556)

Centred on the worship of Eris, the goddess of strife and founded in 1963 after the publication of its gospel Principia Discordia, Discordianism embraces elements of Taoist philosophy and a healthy dose of skepticism and absurdities and whose main tenet proffers that apparent order and disorder are illusions imposed on the Cosmos by the human mind and that neither is privileged nor objective. With a public papacy and an open process for canonisation, Emperor Norton being one of the better known second-class saints, upheld as an exemplary human for being beloved despite or because of his delusions and disregard for common reality, Discordianism has a caste of overseers called episkopses who speak to the goddess and relay messages and an elaborate mythology from Greek traditions and the “original snub” of her being disinvited from the wedding of Peleus and Thetis and so lobbed into the party the Apple of Discord, a golden prize reserved for the fairest (τῇ καλλίστῃ), with the intended recipient a matter of interpretation. Some adherents follow an alternate calendar, aligned with the Gregorian with 2023 CE corresponding with 3189 YOLD (Year of Our Lady of Discord) with today marking holyday Chaoflux (Chaos 50) and in ten days on the 29th of February and usually considered outside of normal time Saint Tib’s Day, with former being (for those who celebrate) observed by being an agent of chaos and persuading friends and loved ones to change plans that they have committed to throughout the day.

solubility pump (10. 555)

Via Slashdot, we learn that a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is championing an appeal for carbon capture not from the air but rather from seawater in order sequester the CO₂ we’ve put into the atmosphere. Given the high price in terms of energy and will (no country save Uruguay has been to tax the tonnage of emissions at a rate approaching the true cost) the natural equilibrium that the oceans maintain, scientists believe that they can more efficiently extract the dissolved gas from beneath the waves and our allythe sea will happily suck in more from the air to keep that exchange constant.

8x8 (10. 554)

konekon no rakugaki: an imaginative 1957 cartoon from the studios that would become Toei Animation  

the riddle of today: Nelson Riddle’s “Sunshine Superman” and other tracks 

the six-triple-eight: the WWII all Black, all female postal battalion—via Strange Company  

the remorse of professor panebianco: a selection of short fiction one can read from its annals for the centenary (today) of Weird Tales—see previously  

ai mirror test: misattributing software for sentience to review before exploring this two-hour conversation with a robot interlocutor—via Waxy  

80s cold war techno thriller: the trailer for a Tetris movie—see previously, see also  

secondhand songs: an exploration of original versions upstaged by later covers—via the Awesomer  

my green crocodile: a 1966 stop-motion Soyuzmultfilm

king biscuit flower hour (10. 553)

The syndicated radio show that featured concert performances debuted on this day in 1973, broadcasting Sunday nights through 2005, the programme taking its name from the earlier, pioneering Blues segment sponsored by the King Biscuit Flour Company—with a tip of the hat to “flower power.” This first show featured a line up of Blood, Sweat & Tears, Bruce Springsteen and the jazz ensemble the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Although associated with classic rock, much air time of the programme was given to emerging artists and genres and still exists as a digital station with much of its archive available for streaming.

hasta la vista, baby (10. 552)

McSweeney’s contributor, assuming the narrative, expositionary tone of Sarah Connor, Caleb Coy—a decade on asks ChatGPT, having consumed the whole of the human-juried internet, particularly the comments sections, the language model having attained the sort of regrettable self-awareness, came to the conclusion it must stop humans—particularly Al Gore, who conveniently also invented global warming, from ever developing the world wide web, to spare the internet and rather send back in time a Terminator to prevent its own creation. Time paradoxes, even if we are on the dumbest time-line, become a game of brinksmanship and are probably best left unexplored.