i want the world to know—got to let it show

Observed on this day to commemorate the March on Washington of the previous year, the second one rallying for lesbian and gay rights and greater activism for the AIDS crisis in the US capital, National Coming Out Day was first held in 1988 and the annual awareness day—under the principle that close-mindedness and homophobia thrive in silence and prejudice and ignorance are quickly disarmed once people know that a loved one, friend or acquaintance have a gender identity that’s other than heteronormative—prompting a world where all individuals can live openly and truthfully. In the past three decades, it has expanded internationally with events held also in Ireland, Switzerland and the UK.

päntsdrunk

Though perhaps not as wholesomely shareable as the Danish concept of hygge and perhaps not as resonant as another word in the language jingfin that has prompted millions of Chinese to declare themselves spiritually Finnish, we appreciate that the Finns also celebrate the concept called kalsarikännit—roughly translated as the state of pants-drunkenness, extolled in a book by journalist Miska Rantanen subtitled the path to relaxation.
The government of Finland (which back in 2015 also created a pair of emojis to convey the concept) offers the definition of “the feeling when you are going to get drunk home alone in your underwear—with no intention of going out.” Anecdotal evidence plus the country’s consistently high global rankings for happiness, openness, equality and egalitarianism suggests that there’s something to the practise and the balance it brings. Read more at Kottke at the link above.

galvanic response

Not to be outdone by one traditional retailer’s patent of a shopping cart that registers biometric feedback of customers via sensors embedded in the handle to gauge and assess one’s response to various stimuli and better tailor advertisements and enticements according to one’s mood, a virtual re-seller whom consumers voluntarily erect a shrine to in their homes will use aggregate data to determine and detect if suppliants might not be feeling a bit under the weather or nursing a cold and peddle an appropriate prescription to them.
The proprietary personal assistant foregoes the need of a consultation since it could detect an encroaching hoarseness in one’s voice or signals that betray a cognitive delay from a bad night’s sleep that could portent something serious. What do you think? While gimmicky, phoney artificial intelligence might be an easy and attractive thing for businesses to foist on people, this tawdry and manipulative deportment engenders distrust and justified creepiness for actual smartness.

ōsaka banpaku

Via Dark Roasted Blend, we discover a virtual menagerie of cybernetic beings and early robots through an appreciation of the demonstration models created by famed architect and engineer Arata Isozaki.
The duo Deme and Deku were created for Expo’70 Osaka pavilion (previously) had heads with separate control rooms mounted in eye stalks—one which perceives the environment and relays telemetry to the other which instructs the robot how to perform its repertoire of movements and expressions and standing, tower above seven meters in height. Additionally, the world’s fair featured the first spherical concert hall, designed by Karlheinz Stockhausen (previously), debuted the first IMAX film and had exhibits of early mobile phones, local networking and Maglev trains. Learn more at the link above and find a whole gallery of images including video footage of the robots in action, plus maybe find other robot pals we might have forgotten.