unpalatable or hue and cry

What has been determined to be the world’s most loathsome and revolting colour, called Opaque Couché, is to be generic hue going forward for all plain-packaged cigarettes in Australia and the UK, which also won’t be allowing identifiable logos or signature typefaces.
Reverse-marketers are hoping the aversion to the colour, which looks like the filth of spent soil, will also deter people from smoking. Pantone, the tincture company who produced Opaque Couché and is known for nominating a colour of the year to reflect or determine the interior decorating zeitgeist of the moment, is not happy about having any of its carefully cultivated spectrum called ugly. For me it’s hard to image that any choice in palate won’t eventually become a branded look itself, even if it’s for the Victory cigarettes and gin of the addicted proles of Airship One—like the particular reds and browns that are associated fast-food and reportedly hunger. What do you think? There have been other proposed candidates for packaging that might prove a bigger deterrent.

silicon valley, tin-pan alley

It is indisputable that the wired economy encourages moonlighting and pushed a sizable proportion to a managed, feudal entrepreneurship wherein risks and rewards are mitigated for the organisers, but the Guild also cultivates a myth about its importance and predominance. Being a feckless challenge to question the drift of market-forces in whatsoever capacity, it’s hard to dispute progress without being labelled a Luddite.
That sense of entitlement, however, to being a serf, a mechanical Turk to a pyramid-enterprise that trickles down. As much as we might rail against nationless corporations for not paying their share of taxes into government coffers or being exempt from the same regulations that govern mere mortals, we attribute the same belief that enables the scoff-laws—government policies and policing are antiquated institutions that stand in the way of progress and our own jonesing for something on the side. What should I be the only chump paying into that system?  Zoning and safety laws or an evolving framework of regulation certainly would only suppress and prevent us from turning vacant apartments into boutique-squats for well-paying tourists, and price-out established residents or so gentrify courier-services as to drive into the ground the entire infrastructure with competition. What do you think? Despite our complaints, wouldn’t we all like to be as clever and exploitative, even if we wouldn’t admit to sharing those same values?

rewritten by machine on new technology

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.

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.