Words of the day: “trophic asynchrony”, “phenological mismatch” - disruptions to established seasonal patterns of migration, breeding, flowering, feeling etc caused by climate change.
Swallows in February.
Untimely unsettlements of being.#LexiconForTheAnthropocene Ty @ginbatpic.twitter.com/somiPUQlTL
[cw: media theory]
I’m thinking you can make a greimas square of figures for post-broadcast infrastructure:
network = horizontal and connected
protocol = horizontal and disjunctive
the stack = vertical and connective
the vector = vertical and disjunctive.
I believe #gopher is making a viral comeback with good reasons; the hacker communities at large are reacting decades after Tim Berners Lee’s dismissal of it for the www and last not least the marketing of ‘solid’. Time has told what www has become. https://t.co/LA0f8b6Ffv
We live in anxious times, teetering on the edge of conflict, vulnerable to algorithmic manipulation. Our new work ‘TRIGGER WARNING’ looks for peace in this murky conflict.
You’re sat on a trolley hurtling down the track. Down one fork is a group of ethicists who think the trolly problem is the only materially relevant game in town. Down the other is software engineers who think technology is neutral.
Despite a weekend break from the debate, my attention keeps getting pulled back to the threads arguing that personal action to lower one’s carbon footprint is ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst toward the goal of climate protection.
For a year I’ve been reporting this story about major climate news, finally breaking today: A new simulation finds that global warming could cause stratocumulus clouds to disappear in as little as a century, which would add 8°C (14°F) of extra warming. https://t.co/1cSmLOsmOS
A fun excerpt from my Voyager research: at one point, NASA realised that starting and stopping the craft’s tape recorder (used to buffer data before transmission to Earth) caused it to rotate around its yaw axis. Committing things to memory affected its motion.
Got SpiralSynth Modular compiling again! Great thing about 15 year old software is that it takes practically no CPU to run :] pic.twitter.com/Bz4TSLgHoG
Hilarious when people say stuff like “capitalism gave us the internet”. Capitalism has done everything in its power to hold back the internet, which is based on free exchange, cooperation, and open protocols. Capitalism has tried to lock down, destroy, and sabotage every step.
MEDIUM EARTH of @theotolithgroup is generous to the slowness of the eye in gathering cinematic texture. The vastness of the sonic world it offers with low frequency, seismic gestures blends with evolving and morphing visual perspectives. #SAF19#hereafter@brakkegrondpic.twitter.com/w9GH5o01Qs
“Bag of Tricks for Image Classification with Convolutional Neural Networks” is such a great paper. Really clear, and most importantly, amazing results - >94.5% imagenet with a simple rn50, beating even inception v3!
Shiv Integer, as a security professional, brings shame to the Internet Security profession according to this fellow professional. Sorry we did it wrong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/pgfKTsAkzk
My set from the @bleep@Hyperdub instore up here.. Proper wonky one, all over the place, was fun instore vibes — “Keep Jumpin Y'Bastrds!” — https://t.co/C0ajNcWH84
A good tool to have, but which i definitely don’t have the skills to make: a bot that wide searches every known public “people finder” repository for folx’s data, sends deletion and opt-out requests en masse, and then scrubs itself. I think that could be helpful to a lot of peopl
— Damien saw the Time-Knife once. Highly Recommended (@Wolven) February 20, 2019
Properly stoked to announce that I’ve just signed the contract to write a book with @VersoBooks on systems; if you like how I’ve taken a run at concrete, adult entertainment, Elon Musk, and heavy machines, you will (I hope) be on board with this ⚒
The first population-level study on the link between gut bacteria and mental health identifies specific gut bacteria linked to depression and provides evidence that a wide range of gut bacteria can produce neuroactive compounds. Jeroen Raes (VIB-KU Leuven) and his team published these results today in the scientific journal Nature Microbiology. In their manuscript entitled ‘The neuroactive potential of the human gut microbiota in quality of life and depression’ Jeroen Raes and his team studied the relation between gut bacteria and quality of life and depression. The authors combined faecal microbiome data with general practitioner diagnoses of depression from 1,054 individuals enrolled in the Flemish Gut Flora Project. They identified specific groups of microorganisms that positively or negatively correlated with mental health. The authors found that two bacterial genera, Coprococcus and Dialister, were consistently depleted in individuals with depression, regardless of antidepressant treatment. The results were validated in an independent cohort of 1,063 individuals from the Dutch LifeLinesDEEP cohort and in a cohort of clinically depressed patients at the University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium.
Datashader is a graphics pipeline system for creating meaningful representations of large datasets quickly and flexibly. Datashader breaks the creation of images into a series of explicit steps that allow computations to be done on intermediate representations. This approach allows accurate and effective visualizations to be produced automatically without trial-and-error parameter tuning, and also makes it simple for data scientists to focus on particular data and relationships of interest in a principled way.
Biodiversity of insects is threatened worldwide. Here, we present a comprehensive review of 73 historical reports of insect declines from across the globe, and systematically assess the underlying drivers. Our work reveals dramatic rates of decline that may lead to the extinction of 40% of the world’s insect species over the next few decades. […] The main drivers of species declines appear to be in order of importance: i) habitat loss and conversion to intensive agriculture and urbanisation; ii) pollution, mainly that by synthetic pesticides and fertilisers; iii) biological factors, including pathogens and introduced species; and iv) climate change
Terrapattern provides an open-ended interface for visual query-by-example. Simply click an interesting spot on Terrapattern’s map, and it will find other locations that look similar. Our tool is ideal for locating specialized ‘nonbuilding structures’ and other forms of soft infrastructure that aren’t usually indicated on maps. It’s an open-source tool for discovering “patterns of interest” in unlabeled satellite imagery—a prototype for exploring the unmapped, and the unmappable.
GPT-2 displays a broad set of capabilities, including the ability to generate conditional synthetic text samples of unprecedented quality, where we prime the model with an input and have it generate a lengthy continuation. In addition, GPT-2 outperforms other language models trained on specific domains (like Wikipedia, news, or books) without needing to use these domain-specific training datasets. On language tasks like question answering, reading comprehension, summarization, and translation, GPT-2 begins to learn these tasks from the raw text, using no task-specific training data. While scores on these downstream tasks are far from state-of-the-art, they suggest that the tasks can benefit from unsupervised techniques, given sufficient (unlabeled) data and compute.
tuning youtube algo to serve wholesome “polyglot surprises old woman by speaking her rare language” videos instead of “cringe fails and public freakouts compilation #666.” moving past hatred and disgust one day at a time
Y’ALL. Intersectionality is not about the intersection of identities, its about the intersection of institutions of oppression. Making that distinction is verrrrrry important.
This article uses an annotation tool so that we don’t have to define cultural terms in the article. We’re doing this because we want the people who already understand those terms to feel like our target audience. https://t.co/X7QUuuUKaK
Svalbard Satellite Station, also known as SvalSat, is a satellite ground station near Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway. Its position on the 78th parallel north makes it advantageous for communication with satellites in low polar orbits. SvalSat has 31 multi-mission and customer-dedicated antennas, serving clients like NASA, the European Space Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and others.
The central question raised by these insect apocalypse stories is one that goes way beyond the fate of insects: How should we act upon imperfect knowledge? https://t.co/XULTG9cbz5
Climate scientists are too alarmist, say people who claim a carbon tax will destroy the economy, crush freedom, and turn the US into a communist dictatorship
How can science fiction help us confront environmental crisis? @grist investigates, with a particular emphasis on climate fiction (including our recent Everything Change, Volume II anthology!) and interviews with experts and editors. Dig it: https://t.co/HQsAAe7rFw
“Afforestation” (brand new forest) programs such as the “great green walls” planned across the Sahel and NW China have also had pretty terrible tree survival rates.
We delivered a talk on “exit and salvagepatch” strategy to a group of young militants and polipunks in the inner city today. Their message back to me: show us what to smash and we’ll help you build from the ruins. Deal.
how large a city could you build (how many people) in which 1) the only forms of transportation are walking (or chairs/electric scooters for the disabled) and elevators; and 2) max travel time within 30 mins? walking need not be at surface level (eg pedestrian bridges btw towers)
imma let you finish, but… what if this was our pop cultural high point? kinda haunted by that thought lately for some reason pic.twitter.com/bBsCKnwD7r
The other night I found myself sitting in my dark car in the Vroman’s parking lot, laptop actually in lap, listening to old Art Bell Area 51 shows and writing clojure to analyze 6.5 billion aircraft transponder pings I’ve picked up over the years.
Your tweets hint at an intuition I had about the human experience (qualia) of time. It seems to me that *frequency* is the way we perceive time. Repetition forms reality. I once posed the odd provocation, “Is it possible for humans to perceive something that only happens *once*?”
“Now it is true that we very proudly killed Cook, who brought VD & Tuberculosis to the Hawaiian people with his disease-ridden men. In fact, we Hawaiians still celebrate every 14 February as Hauʻoli Lā Hoʻomake iā Kapena Kuke!” https://t.co/pBmNEKcRvs
Anyway it’s quite something, I guess, to be the generation to ride the peak, to be the ones who can look back at the long rise behind us, like the smooth flank of a gigantic ocean swell, and forward, at the precipitous and chaotic drop to come, seeing even the rocky ocean floor.
“The data behind it isn’t anything new, but the public-friendly repackaging of that data, known as climate-analog mapping, represents a shift in how science reaches the public.” https://t.co/cqrSwsaBOR via @WIRED
I’m going to refer to the ideal as “Interdependent Music” from now on. Seems sticky & illustrative. Independence without mutual support + obligation = hellscape. A re-reading of what made the original indies special was the interdependence + resiliency of artist led networks..
“my battery is low and it’s getting dark” is so hauntingly human, so crushingly lonely. I can’t articulate the deep, profound ache that sentence evokes. It’s acceptance and defeat and terror and sadness all at once, all from one tiny machine we asked to explore the stars for us.
Most of Sun Ra’s albums were pressed in units of 100. They rarely sold out. About the same amount of people who supported experimental music then, support it now
Today, we’re expressing gratitude for the opportunity to rove on Mars (#ThanksOppy) as we mark the completion of a successful mission that exceeded our expectations.
Our Opportunity Rover’s last communication with Earth was received on June 10, 2018, as a planet-wide dust storm blanketed the solar-powered rover’s location on the western rim of Perseverance Valley, eventually blocking out so much sunlight that the rover could no longer charge its batteries. Although the skies over Perseverance cleared, the rover did not respond to a final communication attempt on Feb. 12, 2019.
As the rover’s mission comes to an end, here are a few things to know about its opportunity to explore the Red Planet.
90 days turned into 15 years!
Opportunity launched on July 7, 2003 and landed on Mars on Jan. 24, 2004 for a planned mission of 90 Martian days, which is equivalent to 92.4 Earth days. While we did not expect the golf-cart-sized rover to survive through a Martian winter, Opportunity defied all odds as a 90-day mission turned into 15 years!
The Opportunity caught its own silhouette in this late-afternoon image taken in March 2014 by the rover’s rear hazard avoidance camera. This camera is mounted low on the rover and has a wide-angle lens.
Opportunity Set Out-Of-This-World Records
Opportunity’s achievements, including confirmation water once flowed on Mars. Opportunity was, by far, the longest-lasting lander on Mars. Besides endurance, the six-wheeled rover set a roaming record of 28 miles.
This chart illustrates comparisons among the distances driven by various wheeled vehicles on the surface of Earth’s moon and Mars. Opportunity holds the off-Earth roving distance record after accruing 28.06 miles (45.16 kilometers) of driving on Mars.
It’s Just Like Having a Geologist on Mars
Opportunity was created to be the mechanical equivalent of a geologist walking from place to place on the Red Planet. Its mast-mounted cameras are 5 feet high and provided 360-degree two-eyed, human-like views of the terrain. The robotic arm moved like a human arm with an elbow and wrist, and can place instruments directly up against rock and soil targets of interest. The mechanical “hand” of the arm holds a microscopic camera that served the same purpose as a geologist’s handheld magnifying lens.
There’s Lots to See on Mars
After an airbag-protected landing craft settled onto the Red Planet’s surface and opened, Opportunity rolled out to take panoramic images. These images gave scientists the information they need to select promising geological targets that tell part of the story of water in Mars’ past. Since landing in 2004, Opportunity has captured more than
200,000 images. Take a look in this photo gallery.
From its perch high on a ridge, the Opportunity rover recorded this image on March 31, 2016 of a Martian dust devil twisting through the valley below. The view looks back at the rover’s tracks leading up the north-facing slope of “Knudsen Ridge,” which forms part of the southern edge of “Marathon Valley
There Was Once Water on Mars?!
Among the mission’s scientific goals was to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils for clues to past water activity on Mars. In its time on the Red Planet, Opportunity discovered small spheres of the mineral hematite, which typically forms in water. In addition to these spheres that a scientist nicknamed “blueberries,” the rover also found signs of liquid water flowing across the surface in the past: brightly colored veins of the mineral gypsum in rocks, for instance, which indicated water flowing through underground fractures.
“when removed from the circumstances for which it was designed, WaveNet can “speak” on its own. […] speechlike sounds are accompanied by the irregular clicking of digital teeth and smacking of synthetic lips. […]What human mouth might produce such uncanny abjection?”
Ever had one of those bugs that makes you want to study really hard, apply to grad school, get a doctorate in physics, spend the rest of your life in deep research, invent a time machine, go back in time, kill Charles Babbage and prevent the computer from coming into existence?
Mileva Maric was the only woman in the physics program w Einstein. She failed her exams a few weeks after discovering she was pregnant and then dropped out. They both were working on 2 papers each. A few years later he published 4 papers that became known as a miracle. No
That’s what I normally use, but in this case I need to be able to differentiate those people as a clump from the other people who happen to be science researchers :) unless we decide that science researchers aren’t people, which is fine by me
Bold of you to assume the AI programed by supremacist idiots won’t train itself on the corporations’ attempts to use the occult for profit https://t.co/mtnbIXYfWD
— Damien saw the Time-Knife once. Highly Recommended (@Wolven) February 12, 2019
I put my Antarctic “emulation” code on a website where you can run it at the push of a button, no knowledge or installation needed. I think this is the future: https://t.co/ORVzLvpScy
1. chaos magic wasn’t a mistake. it’s just…like kesey said about acid (paraphrasing) “you can’t just keep opening & closing the door; eventually you have to walk through.”
“What happens to us
Is irrelevant to the world’s geology
But what happens to the world’s geology
Is not irrelevant to us.
We must reconcile ourselves to the stones,
Not the stones to us.”
Great text on a great painter. Everything and nothing at the same time. “It has to look easy,” he said, “That feeling like it just happened.” That quote is something to write up somewhere as a constant reminder no matter what medium you’re working in. https://t.co/ShQGOSsgpZ
On the 19th @ 1900 I’ll be at @Futures_Design London meet-up talking about the failure of speculative design to achieve anything of substantial human value beyond ‘hm interesting’ or profit https://t.co/cNmHf9GTHl
