Managing editor of Neatorama, Miss Cellania, gives us a preview of a sci-fi featurette whose screenplay was the product of an artificial intelligence algorithm.
The neural network was developed at NYU and in a rare moment of cross-discipline camaraderie given over to a group of alumnus from the film school in order to make its directorial debut with Sunspring, impenetrable and campy by turns but strangely compelling and authentically funny. The authorship—mediated by the cast of actors—belongs wholly to Long-Short Term Memory, or rather as Benjamin as it refers to itself, is of course not the first experiment or piece of fiction crafted by an artificial intellect and while it might be derivative of everything fed to it, there does seem to be a sense of originality to be found also, enough even to make the collaboration’s co-producers feel a pang of guilt when they could not take sufficient time (and resources) to make the movie exactly as delivered. One can watch the film in its entirety at Ars Technica and learn more about Sunspring’s production and reception.
Friday 10 June 2016
rewritten by machine on new technology
gold-pressed latinum
To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Star Trek, the Canadian mint will be issuing commem- orative coinage with images of the franchise’s original series—including solid gold Star Fleet emblem communicator badges with a face value of C$200, though as bullion worth over one thousand. For those of us on a yeoman’s salary, there are smaller-denominations as well as other collectibles. I think all this excitement is wonderful and well-deserved, although it’s a bit ironic, I think, as the economics of the Star Trek Universe is not just cashless but seems close to utopian.
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agronomy-om-nom
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Thursday 9 June 2016
unobtainium
The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) just presented four new names for hitherto unnamed elements—three for places: Japan, Tennessee and Moscow plus one in honour of Russian-Armenian physicist Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian, responsible for discovering the heaviest elements on the periodic table.
Submitted for consideration for the public and the scientific community until November, these designations have not been finalized, and writing for The Verge, Elizabeth Lopatto has a few alternate proposals. Rather than Nihonium (Nh, which sounds rather bleak and nihilistic) for Ununtrium (eka-thallium or Element 113), Lopatto suggests Maneki-nekonium as most representative of Japanese culture, and introduces us to a new concept in the mono no aware (็ฉใฎๅใ), an empathy for impermanence, like appreciating the fleeting beauty of cherry-blossoms and as poetic as Virgil’s characterization lacrimรฆ rerum—the tears of things, and an apt name as these new elements are all expected to be pretty unstable. Other ideas for Moscovium (Mc) include Kareninium (for Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina) and Honktonkine for Tennessine (Ts). What are your ideas? I cannot believe that another the latest naming-convention, science is allowing the public any input.