Olympic-sized hoax? ‘Lost’ Krautrock warm-up tapes mysteriously surface – SPIN
Neither interview includes photographs of Zeichnete, and he doesn’t appear in a series of promotional videos for the release … And the more you listen to the music, the more it begins to sound both too pristine, given the tapes’ alleged age, and too stylistically perfect in its aping of Neu! and Kraftwerk. The resemblance is almost uncanny.
Links
Nostalgic for a better future
NASA’s ‘worm’ logo lay dormant for 28 years. So why are people so obsessed with it? – Fast Company
Danne says these simple, elegant, and versatile visual elements also underscore a deeper meaning. “NASA is very romantic and sexy,” he says. Especially when compared to other government agencies, like the Department of Transportation. “They both have motion built into their matrix, but NASA is the only one that has adventure and exploration.” It represents an entity that takes humans to the furthest possible realms; In just four letters, it “personifies innovation and moving ahead.”
Human authors have nothing to fear—for now
A new AI language model generates poetry and prose – The Economist
But the program is not perfect. Sometimes it seems to regurgitate snippets of memorised text rather than generating fresh text from scratch. More fundamentally, statistical word-matching is not a substitute for a coherent understanding of the world. GPT-3 often generates grammatically correct text that is nonetheless unmoored from reality, claiming, for instance, that “it takes two rainbows to jump from Hawaii to 17”.
Often the best part about going to the cinema
Trailer Time Machine – Watch random film trailers from a year of your choice!
All the trailers are hosted by YouTube and may or may not turn out to be what they claim they are. Films are sorted into years by whatever they’re listed as on IMDB. No, I don’t know why the trailer for your favourite film isn’t on there. Yes, I expect some films with the similar names have got mixed up.
Joanne McNeil knows what she’s talking about
7 books about cyberspace by women writers – Electric Literature
Here are seven texts that capture the emotional charge and atmospheric qualities of the internet, especially in its early years. These authors express what it felt like to be present and part of the free-ranging internet populace that was cyberspace and is the internet now—sometimes—in its more secretive corners.
Walk a mile in someone else’s screen
TheirTube – How do the recommended videos look on their Youtube home page?
This whole project started when I was in a heated discussion with a person who thought climate change was a hoax and 9/11 was a conspiracy. Through conversations with him, I was surprised to learn that he thought everyone’s YouTube feed had the same information as his own feed. When we showed each other our YouTube homepages, we were both shocked. They were radically different. And it got me thinking about the need for a tool to step outside of information bubbles.
The camera never lies?
Truthmark is a photography database aiming to stop misuse in fake news – It’s Nice That
The aim, as the companies explain in a statement, is to “protect democracy by reducing the misuse of photos worldwide and ensuring that the truth is protected”.
Leave a message after the tone
More red phone boxes adopted in Yorkshire than are left in traditional use – Yorkshire Post
In Stutton near Tadcaster, the decommissioned box was converted into a Christmas card last year, passing on festive messages to neighbours and friends. There is an art gallery in Settle, while York’s oldest phone box on Duncombe Place now houses a defibrillator.
I’d like to add you to my professional network
How a Chinese agent used LinkedIn to hunt for targets – BBC News
Former government and military employees and contractors are not shy about publicly posting details of their work histories on the website in order to obtain lucrative jobs in the private sector. This presents a potential goldmine to foreign intelligence agencies.
Paintings with punch
Banksy paintings worth an estimated £1.2m to be sold at charity auction – The Guardian
This triptych hangs in Sotheby’s galleries alongside works by some of history’s greatest landscape painters, including Bellotto, Van Goyen and Turner. Banksy’s work, however, stands alone for its potent political message.
He can’t help himself
A new Will Self short story – Will Self
It’s usually a mistake for a fiction writer to rush into print with a story that takes flight, imaginatively, from events that are still underway, and which are affecting large numbers of people. In the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, this injunction to keep out would seem to be as strident as the black-and-yellow striped tape swagged about a crime scene.
Science fiction, present tense
23 of the best sci-fi books everyone should read – Wired UK
It is a pro-science novel that at its heart shows Dr Frankenstein as the callous fiend of the story, who created a being and was not willing to accept responsibility for his actions. In an age where the space between technical life and death is narrower than ever, and scientists are playing with the makeup of what makes us humans, Frankenstein can still teach an important lesson: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Ignore your inbox
Why email loses out to popular apps in China – BBC Worklife
Zhong Ling, assistant professor of economics at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, believes WeChat fits into the Chinese working culture. “WeChat, as a messaging platform, demands less formal working time than email,” she says. “This informality makes people more likely to respond instantaneously… the demand for [an] immediate response is motivated by the cultural and business environment in China.”
Feeling well?
Insane after coronavirus? – London Review of Books
My mind had moved a few inches to the left of its usual place, and I developed what I realised later were actual paranoid delusions. ‘Jason’s cough is fake,’ I secretly texted a friend from the bathtub, where I couldn’t be monitored. ‘I … don’t think his cough is fake,’ she responded, with the gentle tact of the healthy. ‘Oh it is very, very fake,’ I countered, and then further asserted the claim that he had something called Man Corona.
HE technology, Eco’s lists
Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World
Supported by the principal bodies and agencies in UK post-compulsory education, the Committee was set up in February 2008 to conduct an independent inquiry into the strategic and policy implications for higher education of the experience and expectations of learners in the light of their increasing use of the newest technologies.SPIEGEL Interview with Umberto Eco: ‘We Like Lists Because We Don’t Want to Die’
The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries.
