Catch-up links
A gathering of great links related to posts sent since January. A catch-up and enrichment, serious and funny.
Read time: Really, is time relevant? Just links … so you could spend hours! This week: At the end of every post, I’ve provided “Links, cited and not, some just interesting.” Sometimes I hold some back, and inevitably new related articles catch my attention, newly published or old and resurfaced. This post provides a few additional readings. Next week: If I can get it all together, a post on naming cars. Part of the strange psychology of the car in the US and much of the world.
Below are references to readings and resources, online and not, associated with various Technocomplex posts since January 2022. There are over twenty links, so you can take your time with them. They are arranged by the post title, listed chronologically. Some posts do not appear in the list. Related posts (such as “Grasping mind” and “Extended mind”) appear together in the list, with the earliest of the grouped posts guiding the chronology.
In case you missed a post, the headings have links. And do share this post with friends! It rounds up much of the content of Technocomplex.
Happy surfing!
MoToR eyeglasses (January 13) & Rolling tires (February 17)
A patent illustration for a foot-pedaled monowheel. See, people can put all sorts of things inside tires! Lose, John Otto. One-Wheeled Vehicle. USPTO 325,548. Paterson, NJ, filed April 22, 1885, and issued September 1, 1885. https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/illustrations/one-wheeled-1885/. The patent illustration is below at the upper left.
They’re for real, despite the danger. And I watched this one being built down the hall from my Duke office:
Learning and sorting (January 20) & Writers first, then students (April 14)
Really nice piece on the meanings and importance of “tone” in one’s writing style: Parker, Nick. “The CIA.” Substack newsletter. Tone Knob (blog), May 13, 2022.
Words do matter: Cavin, Tony. “Why NPR Isn’t Using the Word ‘Manifesto.’” NPR, May 15, 2022, sec. National. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/15/1099014432/why-npr-isnt-using-the-word-manifesto.
Terry Eagleton: “[T]he cheapening of language is deeply correlated with the cheapening of the whole culture.” And: “I like the idea of being told to write three thousand words on the idea of chaos by Friday. Academics will normally blench at that.” The Point magazine has offered “Criticism in Public,” a multi-part series on writing and language. This is the most recent installment: Eagleton, Terry, and Jessica Swoboda. “A Moral Language: A Conversation with Terry Eagleton.” The Point Magazine (online), May 3, 2022. https://thepointmag.com/dialogue/a-moral-language/.
Johnson, Steven, and Nikita Iziev. “A.I. Is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What It Says?” The New York Times. April 15, 2022, Online edition, sec. Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/magazine/ai-language.html.
Robots. Once again with feeling! (February 5), “Humours,” artificial friends, and a social soul (March 10) & Sex robots and human emotion (April 28)
Taking love of anime farther than most: Dooley, Ben, and Hisako Ueno. “This Man Married a Fictional Character. He’d Like You to Hear Him Out.” The New York Times, April 24, 2022, sec. Business. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/business/akihiko-kondo-fictional-character-relationships.html.
Amusing. Nina Paley spices up ancient goddesses, or at least statues of them. How about a couple-thousand-year-old Galatea or two: Kiely, Alexandra. “The Real Story of the Goddess GIFs.” DailyArt Magazine (blog), January 27, 2018. https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/real-story-of-the-goddess-gifs/. And all twenty-four from Paley: https://blog.ninapaley.com/2018/01/01/24-free-goddess-gifs/.
In addition to empathy, which can be simulated, there’s humor. Humor might not be simulated — or at least some parts of humor: Veale, Tony. “When Will Humorous AIs Press Our Buttons with Their Jokes?” Psyche, April 25, 2022. https://psyche.co/ideas/when-will-humorous-ais-press-our-buttons-with-their-jokes.
I think we’ll see this issue of AI personhood come up more and more in coming years. It will get panties in a twist in law and elsewhere: Cheong, Ben Chester. “Granting Legal Personhood to Artificial Intelligence Systems and Traditional Veil-Piercing Concepts to Impose Liability.” SN Social Sciences 1, no. 9 (September 2021): 231. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-021-00236-0.
Good article on personhood for animals and things like lakes: Wright, Lawrence. “The Elephant in the Courtroom.” The New Yorker, February 28, 2022. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/07/the-elephant-in-the-courtroom.
The WSJ comes in late to the party (and discusses the issue of personhood not nearly as thoroughly): Ramey, Corinne, and Deanna Paul. “Happy the Elephant Has Lawyers Arguing to Free Her From the Zoo.” Wall Street Journal (online), May 12, 2022, sec. “A-Hed.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/elephant-lawyers-zoo-happy-11652366080.
Comics and a Heidegger T-shirt design (February 10)
It could be part of my Heidegger comic book:
Venkatesan, Sathyaraj, and S Yuvan. “How Imagination and Technology Are Combining to Bring Comics to People with Visual Disabilities.” Scroll.in. https://scroll.in, February 19, 2022. https://scroll.in/article/1017727/how-imagination-and-technology-are-combining-to-bring-comics-to-people-with-visual-disabilities.
A really long piece of music (February 24)
Hm, that’s about three minutes of “silence.” From Wikipedia, the attic of arcane knowledge like this: “The very first US CD pressings of the album [Nine Inch Nail’s Broken] had ‘Physical’ and ‘Suck’ included on a second disc, a three-inch mini CD. … Later American pressings eliminated the second disc as well and included the songs on the main disc as tracks 98 and 99. On this version tracks 7–97 consist of 4 seconds of silence each resulting in a slightly longer total playtime (33:09 vs. 31:35)” (my emphasis).
Seven hours is nothing compared to a few centuries of John Cage organ music, but this may be the longest recorded piece. From Artificial Truth: “ ‘Doom Apocalypse X, The Ultimate Fate Of The Universe (Part IX: The Photon Era)’ from NǽnøĉÿbbŒrğ VbëřřĦōlökäävsŦ, lasting almost 7h, with the full album, ‘The Ultimate Fate Of The Universe’ a bit under 23h.” No, I do not know how to pronounce the group’s name, but it translates into Nanocyborg Uberholocaust. The tracks are free to download, if you want to listen for a few hours. This one might also qualify as Muzak, if you’re in the right mood.
If you’re really interested in other musical edge cases: Voisin, Julien. “Horrible Edge Cases to Consider When Dealing with Music.” Artificial Truth, April 2, 2022. https://dustri.org/b/horrible-edge-cases-to-consider-when-dealing-with-music.html.
Grasping mind (March 17) & Extended mind (May 5)
This one probably relates more to what Benjamin Workshop created, but it is relevant. And it was published in Nature, which is no small feat for a video game bot: Wurman, Peter R., Samuel Barrett, Kenta Kawamoto, James MacGlashan, Kaushik Subramanian, Thomas J. Walsh, Roberto Capobianco, et al. “Outracing Champion Gran Turismo Drivers with Deep Reinforcement Learning.” Nature 602, no. 7896 (February 2022): 223–28. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04357-7.
Muzak. Like the air, only sweeter (April 7)
Yes, there is a stream for Muzak music: Last.fm. “Muzak Music.” Accessed May 16, 2022. https://www.last.fm/tag/muzak.
Muzak to shop for clothes by: Mehta, Jonaki. “A Former Gap Employee Embarks on a Quest to Collect Every In-Store Playlist.” NPR, May 5, 2022, sec. Music. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096564202/gap-store-playlist-music-collection.
Oh, golly, I’m definitely a Herb! An interesting Substack of curated playlists by music people. While not all easy-listening, it’s for Sundays (or maybe any day of the week). You could pretend it’s Muzak, though you might need to squint your ears a bit. Valenti, IV, Sam. “Herb Sundays.” Substack newsletter. Accessed May 13, 2022.
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And “Flow State” — “Every weekday, we recommend two hours of music that’s perfect for working”; no algorithms, “just humans making recommendations to other humans.” The newsletter’s name is a hat-tip to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (whose last name I never spell right): “Flow State.” Substack newsletter. Accessed May 14, 2022. https://www.flowstate.fm/about.
White shirts. Really! (April 21)
“ ‘Blue jeans, shorts and sneakers are strictly prohibited.’ Diners were ‘kindly’ requested to wear jackets. For those without a jacket, a vintage Yves Saint Laurent model would be provided.” Krishna, Priya. “Leave the Sweatshirt at Home. Dining Dress Codes Are Back.” The New York Times, May 17, 2022, sec. Food. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/dining/restaurant-dress-code.html.
“History of The White Shirt Campaign.” Accessed January 9, 2022. https://www.witchery.com.au/white-shirt-campaign/campaign-history/.
I wonder if this should catch on in the US? Anyone interested? Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation (OCRF). Witchery White Shirt Campaign 2021 for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation (OCRF), 2021. See also the page from OCRF about the campaign, which asked people to wear a white shirt on May 8.
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