Bits

A tool to help you explore #FFmpeg #video filters in your browser https://ffmpeg.lav.io/

As we look forward, we should not let our reliance on #socialmedia overshadow the continuing significance of free-to-air broadcast #radio as a cost-effective, highly reliable information source. https://theconversation.com/as-canadian-wildfires-rage-facebooks-news-ban-reveals-the-importance-of-radio-211966

There is a long history and clear playbook for industry capture and instrumentation of open source projects, and major AI companies recognize the value of #opensource #AI in leveraging the benefits of owning the ecosystem, enjoying the fruits of community labor, and defining the terms of engagement. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4543807

The idea behind #opensource was to rebrand #foss in a less ambiguous – and more instrumental – package that stressed cost-savings and software quality, as well as “ecosystem benefits” from a co-operative form of development that recruited tinkerers, independents, and rivals to contribute to a robust infrastructural #commons #ai #llm https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

This popular education-inspired guide breaks down and contextualizes artificial intelligence technologies within structural #racism — and provides hands-on exercises to help us imagine beyond, and dream up alternate and ideal futures with #ai #education https://alliedmedia.org/resources/peoples-guide-to-ai

Email masks are masked, or private, email addresses that forward messages to your true email address. These masks allow you to share an address with third parties which will mask your true email address and forward messages to it. https://relay.firefox.com/

Music & Sound

#rpi #guitar #music #midi MiGiC is an audio software that converts your electric guitar to MIDI with minimum latency and great accuracy. https://migic.com

Art

The idea was to create a very simple, modernist poster series for #movie enthusiasts. The designs rigorously adhere to the same mold: a circle overlaid by two diagonals, all inscribed in a square. #art #design https://www.michalkrasnopolski.com/#/classic-movies/

Politics & Economics

“We need to have a conversation as a nation on how we prepare for and fight fires. Nine communities in the Northwest Territories are being evacuated. I think that’s 63% of our population.” #canada #nwt #yellowknife https://macleans.ca/news/rebecca-alty-yellowknife-evacuation/

They use computer #algorithms to find houses that would be profitable to turn into rental properties, often snapping them up with cash bids within minutes of a property coming onto the market. And when areas no longer have affordable houses to buy, they can raise #rent. #housing #students https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/private-equity-at-the-head-of-the-class-why-college-students-are-sleeping-in-cars.html

Clout is the values-free currency of the always-online age – both a substitute for hard cash as well as a conduit to it. Clout is a calculus not of what you do, but of how much bulk you-ness there is in the world. You get clout by playing the victim. You get clout by victimizing others. This is something that is understood by the left and the right. If influence sways, clout squats, taking up space for its own sake. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/26/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-conspiracy-theories

#inequality is a political choice, not an inevitability. https://wir2022.wid.world

Bits

These technological infrastructures may disproportionately harm #indigenous communities by making their private and sacred knowledges legible by #ai . Data collection for AI could lead to the commodification of this sacred knowledge for profit. #privacy #research #ethics https://theconversation.com/zooms-scrapped-proposal-to-mine-user-data-causes-concern-about-our-virtual-and-private-indigenous-knowledge-211577

In this study, you will be asked to rate 20 news headlines as real or fake and answer a few optional questions about your background. It should take 2-3 minutes to complete.” #literacy #media #disinformation https://yourmist.streamlit.app/

our findings suggest that new #conference modalities provide substantial opportunities to increase the impact and accessibility of scholars, build and empower diverse research communities, and improve the sustainability of societies. #academia https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/of-meetings-and-members/

Datasette Cloud is the new #saas hosting platform for the #Datasette #foss project. It enables teams to create a private collaboration space, upload and share data securely with each other, and then selectively publish that data to the world. https://www.datasette.cloud/blog/2023/welcome/

the site is a one-man battle against entropy, constantly battling domain registrars, anti-scraping systems, copyright enforcement, easily spooked advertisers, and global financial system payment rails designed to obstruct Russian citizens. https://gyrovague.com/2023/08/05/archive-today-on-the-trail-of-the-mysterious-guerrilla-archivist-of-the-internet/

FediFetcher is a tool for Mastodon that automatically fetches missing replies and posts from other fediverse instances, and adds them to your own Mastodon instance. #fediverse https://blog.thms.uk/fedifetcher

combine.social polls your home timeline and notifications and fetches replies to all posts as well as all recent messages by any user who shows up in your notifications (e.g. likes, boosts or follows). #fediverse #mastodon

Music & Sound

harmonai.org #foss #generative #audio tools

The new Rhodes MK8 is brilliant .. but the $$ is dizzying .. #music #keyboard https://rhodesmusic.com/product/rhodes-mk8/?i4hA-1vET=bfDd-dyhq&bfDd-dyhq=vXx7-ybKl&j6ze-8Vlt=zgqv-XOaX&oK6Y-asRb=HUiz-sgeB&jG7J-ExmY=iQzh-TJM5&YwO3-BFJw=eCWS-zAkw&xs4p-XS62=W0P1-nCKw&W0P1-nCKw=EVri-vfvu&lbEE-ArPs=CG2D-gpja

“The music sounds old, but in the way a landscape can feel old; in the same way that a landscape promises it will renew itself, the music points to the future.” https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/americana-indigenous-roots-robbie-robertson/

Art

Amazing #drone #photo awards https://droneawards.photo/gallery

Politics & Economics

the structure of the industry colliding with the socioeconomic reality of defaulting debtors basically ensures that it will be a miserable place populated by miserable people who will project leveraged amounts of misery into the outside world in the hopes of collecting a tiny sliver of defaulted debts. #debt #strikedebt #economics https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/the-waste-stream-of-consumer-finance/

Great chat between @blindboyboatclub & Manchán Magan #rewilding #pagan #mythology .. “mythology is the fruiting body of the human unconscious” https://play.acast.com/s/blindboy/mythology-rewilding-forests-and-indigenous-knowledge-with-ma

There is no province in #Canada where workers can afford an apartment at minimum wage. #housing https://monitormag.ca/reports/cant-afford-the-rent/

“if you don’t do the impossible, we’re going to wind up with the unthinkable ..” #solarpunk https://unevenearth.org/2019/10/bookchin_doing_the_impossible/

The burden of student #debt threatens to exacerbate existing income and wealth inequality in American society, as these borrowers have to choose between paying off the cost of their own education and saving for their own children’s college expenses. #strikedebt https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/business/generation-x-retirement-student-loan-debt.html

“People change unconsciously before they change consciously. They begin to float dreams—daydreams are dangerous. Daydreams are pieces of imagination, they are bits of poetry. They are the balloons that fly up in history.” #solarpunk https://unevenearth.org/2019/10/bookchin_doing_the_impossible/

#libraries represent the best of our efforts to take care of one another. Their ongoing existence is a reminder that—not just in some far-off future, but even today—other ways of being are possible. https://popula.com/2023/08/07/are-libraries-the-future-of-media/

#Libraries came before publishers. We came before copyright. But publishers now think of libraries as customer service departments for their database products. #copyright #copyleft https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/internet-archive-emergency-lending-library.html

#canada #forest #fire #climatechange https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-wildfire-season-worst-ever-more-to-come-1.6934284

promoting social connection is key to reducing the harmful effects of #climatechange including its effect on #mentalhealth . Other studies also show that the more connected we are, the better we will be able to discuss and respond to climate change. https://theconversation.com/it-is-not-just-heat-waves-climate-change-is-also-a-crisis-of-disconnection-210594

Whatever you may think of individual celebrities—I certainly admire a few—the phenomenon of celebrity is a grave social ill https://longreads.com/2023/08/17/lorne-michaels-saturday-night-live/

We are not convinced by the intertwined educational and data futures that investors are creating, as it is a reductionist view of the purposes of education, focusing on efficiency gains and learning as an individual activity that is primarily carried out for economic purposes. #edtech #highered #economics https://educationdatafutures.digitalfuturescommission.org.uk/essays/competing-interests-in-education-data/investigation-financial-power-brokers-edtech