ticker-tape or news you can use

Several companies world-wide, including the Frauenhofer Institute in Germany, are developing applications that can process unfiltered data through algorithms which the program can fetch autonomously from the æther (with apparently little mentorship, apprenticeship or copy-editing) to formulate news articles, written in natural language.

These robo- journalism platforms produce relatively simple reports and have become proficient at relaying sports scores and stock market developments, with the ability to nuance coverage with all- encompassing access to archives and unfailing instincts for research and no abandon to hyperbole or histrionics, but there is no reason why the programs would not grow more sophisticated and take on more serious journalism—surpassing recommended articles for an individual's daily digest with actually writing a tailored one-off piece. I guess that such copy would also be well-suited for the language of targeted advertizing and marketing. The robots may prove especially well-matched in reviving the niche press, village newspapers, which have a very avid though limited readership—which is also I suppose the domain of bloggers. I do not think robojournalism will have an edge on the human press, weathermen or sports' casters anytime soon, but there is certainly the potential for advancement. What do you think—will robot writers replace human reporters?

reasonable person or scare quotes

Move along—nothing to see here.  There is an odd instance of disclosure yielding a sort of hybrid-transparency—that’s middling somewhere between rank-hypocrisy and demanding a blessing—with the news of the son of the vice-president of the United States of America being appointed to the board of directors of a Ukrainian natural gas concern.
This whole regime seems pretty keen on this line, gimmick of sophistry which divorces perception from reality and everything is same- otherwise—but of course that’s politics everywhere and immemorial, and there are too many incidents of unfortunate associations to list.  There’s no chance of corruption or conflict-of-interests or skewed negotiations. End of story—and the line of questioning was summarily rebuffed.  Of course, selling back fracking Freedom Gas to Europe and the US (as opposed to evil, commie Russian gas, and exporting the dirty business of doing business to someone else’s backyard) is a sure way to ingratiate democracy and singing eagles to the region, and has absolutely no parallels to former VP’s connections to war-profiteering and firms contracted to rebuild Iraq after the US invasion.  None whatsoever.

space-race, game-face

Even during the height of the Cold War, American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts flaunted the diplomatic rhetoric of their governments and carried out many joint operations. I remember those mission patches with Snoopy and the Soviet Bear mascots for the Soyuz project and I recall how the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, this past-future is just a few years hence but still set in a multi-polar world, where cooperation ultimately won the day.

Now, however, Russia is threatening to respond to the array of sanctions that the West has unleashed in kind—by denying the US the means to launch satellites in orbit and grounding NASA with no access to the International Space Station. Since the mothballing of the shuttle program, the US has become almost exclusively reliant on Russian launch vehicles and logistical support and Russia is now in a position to withhold such assistance. Meanwhile, threats—dares are being swapped over restricting public access to global positioning bearings, but that would cause the too much separation-anxiety for smart-phone and Navi (GPS) users—although Russia has its own system (independent from the US naval application made available to the world) as Europe is developing its own, as well. The reporting cites a number of officials saying that the decision to no longer support American military applications would be economic suicide for a Russian space program riddled with accidents and near-misses, but I think that's a lot of hot-air and that other clients would quickly be found to fill the void. What do you think? Who has painted himself into a corner?  I can only say it is time for extra-terrestrials to visit and put all these petty skirmishes in perspective.

fore and aft

While there is at least a modicum of public discussion and public outrage over the trade-deal, negotiated in secret after a model of corporate supremacy, between the United States and Europe, there is barely a bald mention of the pseudopodia of lobbyists who have no allegiance to any greater good are reaching out in the other direction—eastward.

Journalist Thom Hartman, writing for AlterNet, prefers to call the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) by the fitting abbreviation “SHAFTA” (Southern Hemisphere Asian Free Trade Agreement) as it, from what little can be gathered, is poised to raise the stakes of the race to the bottom and gouge already tenuous environmental and labour safeguards. Not many more details could be limned, what with the media cone-of-silence, which is surely enforced by the business stakeholders.

letter and spirit or jot and tiddle

The High Court of the European Union ruled in favour of the “right to be forgotten” and is granting individuals the right to petition internet search-engines to remove indexed results that the individual esteems to be libelous, misleading, dated or simply incorrect—to include public documents and news articles. Search-engines do not host content and merely return results—based on several metrics which may or may not be biased, although we have been shown that the “internet” can be bought to skew perception or ease-of-access like when an oil company responsible for a grave environmental disaster paid to have negative publicity deflected or America’s assault on net-neutrality, and having a haunt from the past disappeared in one or several search engines does not mean that the offending characterization is gone and cannot be found with some old-fashioned muckraking;
the websites that archive such stories or photos have no mandate to take down their content just because it is no longer indexed but the hopes are that such unwelcome material will wither away. It is very significant to side for individual privacy and reputation and afford regular people the chance to challenge the medium, which is normally reserved for the powerful or litigiously patient, but it seems a lot of questions remain unaddressed and there’s no mechanism in place to queue ones petitions. What onus does the individual have to prove hardships caused and what are the criteria for infamy? Also—how specific would a take-down request need to be worded, since cause-celeb tends to splinter and branch-off down a dozen different pathways and the searchers and browsers would quickly find loop-holes? I think there’s little danger of white-washing or further compartmentalizing history in the ruling of the justices as it is presently issued and it will help undo some incriminating acts of youthful indiscretion and the like, so maybe some people will be able to take back a few poor choices—to an extent, but I still think it prudent to fear, in terms of censorship and revision, what sort of precedent might be prized from this right to be forgot.

gehirn-jogging or shiny objects

The New York Times has an interesting feature about the collective-awakening (for America, at least) among mental health professionals and patients regarding the stages of inattentiveness which manifests itself at different ages either as hyperactivity, a deficit-disorder or senility.

Though the parasitic pharmaceutical industry may deliver quick-fixes, the community is slowly admitting, to mask the symptoms of the legitimate condition—not a self-diagnosis or peer-pressure, the drug therapies have diminishing returns over the course of the likely mental metamorphosis to follow. In fact, medication seems to exacerbate later problems—whereas practising mindfulness and guided training seem to enable real recovery and sharper focus. Surely the training has many aspects and measures, but the principle trust seems to be not the embracing or indulging of ones distractions but rather acknowledging, in a forgiving manner and without guilt or judgment since this is also where creative connections radiate from, that one is drifting off-target, thinking about the side-show, and making the effort to return to the subject at hand. Had this been recognised in some other eon, I am sure that this effort-of-aim would have been regaled with all sorts of philosophical conceits.

castellum cattorum or trizonesia

Here are some more images from our recent trip to the Kassel area.

The town itself was devastated during World War II, which saw a lot of intense house-to-house fighting, and many of the destroyed historic building were not restored but rather a mid-century modern city emerged from the rubble but it was nonetheless interesting to tour and recall the region’s history. Kassel was in competition with Bonn to be the capital city of West Germany.
 Kassel became a garrison-town for American soldiers instead, but immediately following the Potsdam Conference (in order to ensure that the exchange of foodstuffs from the Soviet Union for raw materials from the Ruhrgebiet was administered properly) the Office of Military Government, United States established its economic ministry in nearby Minden and the headquarters of the British Element of the Control Commission for Germany was also close by in Bad Oeynhausen.
Having not participating in the Potsdam talks, French forces originally clung to the western border but later joined the US-British condominium to administer the so-called “Trizone” until the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) on 23 May 1949 (Germany turns 65, retirement age soon).
Although the endonym for Germany is and was Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the initialism BRD was never used by West Germans and was only a foil to DDR (East Germany, Deutsche Demokratische Republik) to keep either nation from calling itself Deutschland.
All of these challenges barn-stormed the plain, the corridor in this part of northern Hesse (earlier still, those Hessian mercenaries that fought alongside the rebel forces against the British during the American Revolutionary War hailed from Kassel and earlier still) and it is unfortunate that the inner-town was ravaged and wiped clean—without an ensemble to jar these long memories, but happily the periphery was spared and is cherished.