Bits

Using #art as a medium to promote digital #literacy among young people in #Mexico https://tacticaltech.org/news/stories/partners-impact-story-cauce-ciudadano/

Cathode Retro is a collection of shaders that combine to emulate the properties and artifacts of a color NTSC TV signal as well as the visual look of a Cathode-Ray Tube (CRT) TV https://github.com/DeadlyRedCube/Cathode-Retro

“This is me saying we’ve worked on #tumblr for four years with ~200 people full-time, and spent well north of $100M above revenue trying to turn the site around, but it hasn’t yet. That sucks, but I also want to recognized the effort of everyone who tried and gave their best.” https://www.tumblr.com/photomatt/733551497286172672/translation-of-internalspeak-to-externalspeak

he careened from drug-running pilot to alleged CIA asset, only to be reborn as the pioneering computer programmer known as the father of data fusion. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250209276/thehankshow

Sound & Music

The #wfmu @wfmu #ambient #country Festival Tee https://suss.bandcamp.com/merch/ambient-country-festival-tee

One year, he was just different. He traded in his red baseball cap for a tartan beret, grew a huge handlebar mustache, and let his hair grow out. Not long, exactly, but certainly on the long side for an attorney. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/thanksgiving-is-always-ruined-by-that-one-uncle-obsessed-with-steely-dan

“There were so many people at #bandcamp who were musicians themselves, or knew musicians or operated labels or made vinyl for people. I worry that this multinational corporation swooping in to buy Bandcamp and lay off half the staff maybe doesn’t fully understand what Bandcamp was.” https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Faftermath.site%2Fbandcamp-just-trying-to-keep-the-lights-on-following-epic-sale-layoffs

Politics & Economics

When #canada created its own pension plan, in 1965, to address the growing poverty of retired Canadians sixty-five and older—thank you, Lester B. Pearson, for my monthly CPP cheque—the life expectancy of men, who made up the bulk of the workforce, was sixty-eight. https://thewalrus.ca/the-end-of-retirement/

“Higher Education for Good courageously offers critique, hope, and purpose for the practice and the trajectory of #highereducation ” https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0363

Bits

A use of #ai I can get behind https://dutchcyclinglifestyle.com/

Is My Toddler a Stochastic Parrot?
“The world is racing to develop ever more sophisticated large language models while a small language model unfurls itself in my home.” .. a beautiful rumination on #ai #llm #humanity https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fhumor%2Fsketchbook%2Fis-my-toddler-a-stochastic-parrot

A man who struggles to survive after awakening alone, trapped in a society connected only by a primitive computer network, where the ability to entertain is the only currency. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsEQXnddPa4

drawmyui.com sketch a #UI which is then sent to #gpt4 vision model & converted to working code #ux #design #ai https://www.drawmyui.com/

Pulling off an advanced scam on Wikipedia and got blocked, made a new account and spent five years of pretending to be an indie singer, emotionally traumatizing the person who revealed their fake(!) identity, disappeared off the face of the earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-11-06/Arbitration_report

All that location data your mobile churns out .. creates quite a market https://www.placer.ai/the-square/industry-trends

“When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution… Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.” https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/11/from-toy-to-tool-dall-e-3-is-a-wake-up-call-for-visual-artists-and-the-rest-of-us/

Sound & Music

a free, #opensource visual #synth and #DMX lighting tool https://videosync.showsync.com/

The Beths – Expert In A Dying Field

Great Surface Noise show on @WFMU .. trucker tunes & ambient country https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/133857

Largely viewed as a nostalgic totem these days, the #cassette #tape was revelatory and revolutionary in its time; its disruptive power anticipated the even greater tectonic shift that the digital age would bring to music. https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fculture%2Fcultural-comment%2Fthe-cassette-tape-revolution

Saddened and angered to witness this happening to #bandcamp https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/is-bandcamp-as-we-know-it-over/

Bob Mehr, author of “Trouble Boys: The True Story Of The Replacements” today on #wfmu @WFMU with Michael Shelley https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/133868

Politics & Economics

“We’re in the year 2023 .. if we get through this century without a mass extinction event and social breakdown – that is utopia. So, the bar for utopia has been lowered.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF7j7J84Tdk

By removing the carbon tax on heating fuel, we now have the situation where far more than “8 out of 10” households in #novascotia will be receiving more money back than they pay for the carbon tax.

Unfortunately, the prime minister’s decision to “axe the tax” simply enhances Canada’s reputation as a climate laggard. #climatechange #canada #policy https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/commentary/the-effect-of-the-heating-oil-carve-out-in-nova-scotia/

drawing on an extensive review of photographs, videos and police investigative files from 11 mass killings between 2012 and 2023, The @washingtonpost is publishing the most comprehensive account to date of the repeating pattern of destruction wrought by the #ar15 — a weapon that was originally designed for military combat but has in recent years become one of the best-selling firearms on the U.S. market. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2023/ar-15-force-mass-shootings/

In other cases, including lack of or delayed implementation of legislation, such as the Coastal Protection Act and regulations in #novascotia – political interests hinder planning actions that would limit hard infrastructure and development along the coast. https://theconversation.com/let-coastlines-be-coastlines-how-nature-based-approaches-can-protect-canadas-coasts-217353

“If you have 40 per cent of your market that’s somehow able to keep prices really low, you’re not going to be able to keep your prices really high, because people are going to have this other option,” she says. “That’s precisely why people don’t want [the co-op] sector to grow.” #canada #housing https://ricochet.media/en/4003/people-love-living-in-co-ops-so-why-did-canada-kill-the-program