Cap­i­tal­ism at its finest…

‘Is cur­ing patients a sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el?’

The arti­cle is in Dutch, but a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words… If no action is tak­en, this will be the Nether­lands in 2300… (Image by phys. geo­g­ra­ph­er Kim Cohen, Utrecht Uni­ver­si­ty)
De zeespiegel­sti­jging is een grot­er prob­leem dan we denken. En Ned­er­land heeft geen plan B

Final­ly, a great new album by Belgium’s best kept secret: Dez Mona — Book of Many

Dark­est Hour

This morn­ing, I crossed paths with my 139 mil­lionth cousin.

That we end up being mis­led by our sens­es is a wide­ly-accept­ed tru­ism, as most humans mis­take the lim­its of their per­cep­tion for the lim­its of the world itself.

The Ques­tion Of Per­cep­tion

How did Chopin’s phys­i­cal frailty shape his cre­ative choic­es?

Paths of Glo­ry (1957) ★ ★ ★ ★. Anoth­er Stan­ley Kubrick mas­ter­piece. Hard to believe he only was 28 years old at the time. You would expect this kind of crafts­man­ship only of very expe­ri­enced and more senior direc­tors.

“Socrates Wants You to Tidy Up, Too”

Socrates Wants You to Tidy Up, Too

“The head­line sto­ry is that it’s not so much about the nature of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy as about a new mutant form of cap­i­tal­ism that has found a way to use tech for its pur­pos­es.” ‘The goal is to auto­mate us’: wel­come to the age of sur­veil­lance cap­i­tal­ism

The Deer Hunter (1978) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

‘Brex­it refugee’ Euro­pean Robin giv­en warm recep­tion in Bei­jing

This is such a sim­ple yet pow­er­ful idea: an AR app “AR Sen­sor” to mea­sure and visu­al­ize var­i­ous spa­tial data, such as Wifi sig­nal strength. (via hackaday.com)

Visu­al­iz­ing spa­tial data with AR

I still find all this very dif­fi­cult to grasp, but it’s always fas­ci­nat­ing to see how art can help explain a sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry: How Space and Time Could Be a Quan­tum Error-Cor­rect­ing Code

A must read, if you ask me: Child­hood’s End, by George Dyson.

‘Most of us, most of the time, are fol­low­ing instruc­tions deliv­ered to us by com­put­ers rather than the oth­er way around. The dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion has come full cir­cle and the next rev­o­lu­tion, an ana­log rev­o­lu­tion, has begun. None dare speak its name.’

Some hits, some miss­es…

35 years ago, Isaac Asi­mov was asked by the Star to pre­dict the world of 2019. Here is what he wrote

‘Thanks to our grow­ing famil­iar­i­ty with com­put­ing, vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), ‘mod­ern’ soci­eties are now bet­ter placed than ever to grasp the insights of this tra­di­tion.’

Mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy is akin to the meta­physics of Vedan­ta

I very much enjoyed Oskar Kokosch­ka. A ret­ro­spec­tive in Kun­sthaus Zürich today.

How Much of the Inter­net Is Fake?

Every­thing that once seemed defin­i­tive­ly and unques­tion­ably real now seems slight­ly fake; every­thing that once seemed slight­ly fake now has the pow­er and pres­ence of the real.

Every year, the rasp­ber­ry in my gar­den man­ages to bear fruit until the Christ­mas hol­i­days. This lit­tle fel­la was the sole sur­vivor of this year’s bat­tle.

This quote from What art is is a pret­ty good sum­ma­ry of Arthur Danto’s phi­los­o­phy of art in gen­er­al. What Art Is

Who would’ve thought that Nick Cave would lead the way to a bet­ter, more com­pas­sion­ate way of online com­mu­ni­ca­tion?! I’m hooked on The Red Hand Files Nick Cave is show­ing us a new, gen­tler way to use the inter­net

Cur­rent­ly read­ing: How to be a Sto­ic by Mas­si­mo Pigli­uc­ci.

Prob­a­bly not. Would Human Extinc­tion Be a Tragedy?

Der­mor­phis don­aldtrumpi ? Amphib­ian that buries head in sand named after Don­ald Trump

Deep-learn­ing tech­nique reveals “invis­i­ble” objects in the dark, requir­ing only one pho­ton per pix­el

Intrigu­ing.
An ant colony has mem­o­ries that its indi­vid­ual mem­bers don’t have

Gov­ern­ments and pri­vate com­pa­nies are deploy­ing AI sys­tems at a rapid pace, but the pub­lic lacks the tools to hold these sys­tems account­able when they fail. AI cre­ates an account­abil­i­ty gap

Human cre­ativ­i­ty is tech­nol­o­gy agnos­tic. Tech­nol­o­gy tru­ly is just an exten­sion of man. iPhone film-mak­er Char­lotte Prodger wins 2018 Turn­er prize

Inter­est­ing, but some­what sober­ing read.. The bad news on human nature, in 10 find­ings from psy­chol­o­gy

Good series on machine learn­ing by MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review: Inside the world of AI that forges beau­ti­ful art and ter­ri­fy­ing deep­fakes

This artist is call­ing on sci­en­tists and artists to work togeth­er to engage peo­ple emo­tion­al­ly in the planet’s plight—to find new ways to use sto­ries in con­junc­tion with sci­ence. Sci­en­tists and Artists Must Work Togeth­er — Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can Blog Net­work

To live and die in L.A. (1985). Basi­cal­ly an updat­ed ver­sion of The French con­nec­tion. Remind­ed me of Mia­mi Vice. With a young and con­vinc­ing Willem Dafoe and also John Tur­tur­ro. And not to for­get Rob­by Müller on cam­era.

Sor­cer­er (1977). Anoth­er great movie from William Fried­kin. In all his movies there seem to be only losers and no win­ners. No mat­ter what genre, his main char­ac­ters always are in absolute despair. Great sound­track by Tan­ger­ine Dream as well.

Today is Uni­ver­sal Children’s Day. A nice occa­sion for the Dutch par­lia­ment to start the hope­ful­ly new tra­di­tion of Ques­tion Time for chil­dren!

The French Con­nec­tion (1971) This must have been the best crime thriller I’ve ever seen. The dense edit­ing gives the whole film a ner­vous pace, and the haunt­ing sound­track keeps you shiv­er­ing through­out. Def­i­nite­ly made me curi­ous about oth­er films direct­ed by William Fried­kin

Anoth­er good one from the sev­en­ties, with a young Nick Nolte. Plot line a bit dis­ap­point­ing, but great cin­e­matog­ra­phy. Who’ll Stop the Rain (1978)

Enjoyed watch­ing some great films from the sev­en­ties late­ly. Night Moves (1975) cer­tain­ly was one of them. Direct­ed by Arthur Penn, and with a great Gene Hack­man.