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.

kompromat

For shame on us all for spreading a fabricated story—if that turns out to be the case, without corroborating evidence.  The virulent nature of it, however, does not demonstrate a liberal bias in the media or a conspiracy within the highest echelons of the US intelligence service to discredit the president-elect but rather a reflection of us all: that this rumoured scenario is more believable than the fact a person displaying such an undignified demeanour could hold the office of president.
There was a moment—probably not more than two minutes sadly, when the whole world was of accord on the idea of fake news and were aligned to combat it but quite suddenly its definition expanded from just the propaganda-machines and mudslinging that yields headlines (generated for eking out a little revenue as much as if not more than for the ends of swaying public-opinion) of the outrageous variety to anything editorial or that one disagrees with. The press, no matter how they packaged or prefaced the story—whose salacious bits of course garner the most attention while being the least significant, true or otherwise, part of the dossier, were obligated to acknowledge it, even if it’s credibility seemed rather flimsy, like the notion that the sitting-president’s ascendency was invalid due to lack of American citizenship. Whether that decision to hold to journalistic responsibility possibly at the expense of short-term integrity of image bolsters or further erodes the fidelity of the press (that is, die Lügenpresse, the lying press and another term with the dubious honour of Unwort of the Year; Volksverräter—traitor of the people, was made equally infamous coincidentally just as the president-elect wondered out loud if we were living in Nazi Germany) remains to be seen. This is humiliating. I find myself more and more exhausted and can’t face the fact that this is only the beginning and there’s much at stake.

picture postcard

Via the always brilliant Nag on the Lake, we discover a website that an avid photographer named Mike Wong is crafting that heat maps where and when in the world photographs are taken and plots the most popular locations. What a nifty idea and one can zoom in and find out what’s most photogenic in one’s own neighbourhood.