Bits

an image of a female crested black macaque monkey is at the heart of a legal row between UK wildlife photographer David Slater and Wikimedia Commons over its #copyright status https://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2018/01/article_0007.html via https://bionicteaching.com/weekly-web-harvest-for-2024-01-11/

This desire to automate what can and must be human response is also simply a further indication of the dismissal of the importance of the labor of the primarily non-tenure-track faculty who teach courses like first-year writing … even entertaining the notion that the work can be done by generative AI shows the depth of scorn some administrators have for work that should be viewed as central to the institution. #ai #llm https://archive.ph/pBs1X

when disinformation is free, how can we restrict quality information to the privileged who choose to afford it? #ai #llm https://ianbetteridge.com/2024/01/24/the-information-grey-goo/

Music & Sound

A fantastic talk with Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker of #negativland on #wfmu https://www.wfmu.org/listen.m3u?show=136214&archive=247346&starttime=1:02:04

The History of the Mellotron #synth #music https://www.gearnews.com/british-giants-the-history-of-mellotron-the-worlds-first-sampler/

“accommodate many levels of attention without enforcing one in particular.” #ambient #synth https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/music-for-airports-list

I somehow missed this 2021 #negativeland #tinydesk https://www.npr.org/2021/05/06/993927925/negativland-tiny-desk-home-concert .. this is the bar by which live, online performances should be measured

Film & Video

I am Philbert now, but soon
I will be Whirlwind Dreamer.

https://www.criterionchannel.com/powwow-highway

Powwow Highway .. the older cousin of #reservationdogs

Politics & Economics

“We are seeing accidents happen. We are frightening the public. We are getting laws passed [banning the drug]. We are not using the anthropological approach of insinuating a valuable drug of this sort into our culture . . . gradually demonstrating the goodness of the thing.” https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fmagazine%2F2024%2F01%2F29%2Ftripping-on-utopia-margaret-mead-the-cold-war-and-the-troubled-birth-of-psychedelic-science-benjamin-breen-book-review

Bits

#web https://letsblock.it Remove low-quality content and useless nags, focus on what matters.

How the internet reshaped itself around Google’s search algorithms — and into a world where websites look the same. #web https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algorithm-webpage-optimization

the line between benign content and spam [is becoming] increasingly blurry – a situation that will surely worsen in the wake of #generative #AI https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/google_search_results_spam/

At this point, our average #AI bro, reborn from Cryptohell, will chime in and teach us that this is just the beginning and that very soon, we won’t be able to tell the difference anymore. Well played, AI bro! But you’re off-topic. We can tell now and we need to not fool ourselves that others won’t notice. https://ia.net/topics/ai-art-is-the-new-stock-image

Sound & Music

Here are some major touchpoints from the #cowpunk catalog to be found on #bandcamp from genre originators, to fast followers and regional spin-offs, to artists proudly self-identifying with the genre today. https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/cowpunk-album-guide

Yamaha channeling some Teenage Engineering #synth https://usa.yamaha.com/products/music_production/music-production-studios/seqtrak/index.html

it does evoke winds whipping over lonely plains, scratchy 45s booming out of shotgun shacks, and the vertigo-induced melancholy of being at the center of a giant landscape. Move over, Midwestern emo: this is Southwestern ambient. #bandcamp https://daily.bandcamp.com/album-of-the-day/cowboy-sadness-selected-jambient-works-vol-1-review

On one level it’s impressive that Spotify can perfectly capture my musical taste in a series of data points, and regurgitate it to me in a series of weekly playlists. But as good as it has gotten, I can’t remember the last time it pointed me to something I never expected I would like, but ultimately fell totally in love with. #music #culture #ai https://www.platformer.news/why-pitchfork-died/

Politics & Economics

“My biggest gripe about urbanization is it’s essentially unplanned except for one thing: commerce. That’s planned. Poverty is a design issue. It’s a failure to accommodate everybody. By design, cities should include every single individual who lives there.” #solarpunk https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fculture%2Fthe-new-yorker-interview%2Fdickson-despommier-wants-our-cities-to-be-like-forests

two million square kilometres of land and water #canada #trc https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/nunavut-trudeau-sign-devolution-argreement-1.7086272