“We’ll always have Paris,” Bogart tells Bergman in the final scene of Casablanca, a line and film inseparable from the grand mythology of Paris. The city still inspires non-Parisians to purchase Belle Epoque poster art by the shipload and binge Netflix series in which Paris looks like a “city where the clouds part, your brain clears, and your soul finds meaning,” Alex Abad-Santos writes at Vox. It’s also a place in such media where one can seem to find “success without much sacrifice.”
Paris was the city where Hemingway felt “free… to walk anywhere,” he wrote in A Moveable Feast; where James Baldwin wrote in his 1961 essay “New Lost Generation” of “the days when we walked through Les Halles singing, loving every inch of France and loving each other… the nights spent smoking hashish in the Arab cafes… the morning which found us telling dirty stories, true stories, sad and earnest stories, in gray workingman’s cafes.”
A 5-Hour Walking Tour of Paris and Its Famous Streets, Monuments & Parks
The Type Directors Club has announced the winners of their two design competitions: TDC67 Communication Design and 24TDC Typeface Design. (via print)
Vice/Motherboard – “Decades before ‘Zoom fatigue’ broke our spirits, the so-called computer revolution brought with it a world of pain previously unknown to humankind…Decades before “Zoom fatigue” broke our spirits, the so-called computer revolution brought with it a world of pain previously unknown to humankind. There was really no precedent in our history of media interaction for what the combination of sitting and looking at a computer monitor did to the human body. Unlike television viewing, which is done at greater distance and lacks interaction, monitor use requires a short depth of field and repetitive eye motions. And whereas television has long accommodated a variety of postures, seating types, and distances from the screen, personal computing typically requires less than 2-3 feet of proximity from monitor, with arms extended for using a keyboard or mouse. The kind of pain Getson experienced was unique to a life lived on screen, and would become a more common complaint as desktop computers increasingly entered American homes over the course of the 1990s and into the early 21st century…”
Above the Law: “Are you fluent in AI-speak? Here’s your chance to find out. This is the inaugural installment of The Legal Tech-to-English Dictionary, part of our Non-Event for Tech-Perplexed Lawyers. Jared Correia is the host of the Non-Eventcast.
There’s a term for when attorneys use Latin and other arcane languages to describe legal processes to consumers: “legalese.” But there’s no similar term for when vendors use technical and other arcane languages to describe their legal software operations to lawyers. True, this dynamic may seem unfair. But now we have The Legal Tech-to-English Dictionary to help us cope. Read on for the inaugural installment, where we translate AI-related topics to plain English…”
See also via Tech Republic – Ethereum cheat sheet: Everything you need to know – “Cryptocurrency: It’s a word that anyone who spends any time online is sure to have heard of by now. Decentralized digital cash like Bitcoin has made cryptocurrency, and by extension the blockchain, a hot topic for discussion, and the cryptocurrency known as Ethereum is one of the hottest. But Ethereum isn’t technically just another cryptocurrency—it’s a whole decentralized computer network powered by a cryptocurrency called Ether. Instead of just being an alternative to the dollar, euro or pound, Ether has a specific application…”
The $4 Billion App That Doesn’t Value Privacy, Security or Accessibility
The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) – It is tempting to excuse Clubhouse’s flaws as growing pains, but the app’s design and rollout illustrate just how little Silicon Valley and its venture capital backers have learned…Clubhouse is a small but quickly growing audio-based, invite-only mobile chat app and social network owned by Alpha Exploration Co. In what feels like a combination of talk radio and podcasting, the app allows its users to weave in and out of digital spaces known as “rooms” to listen in on live conversations between featured speakers, known as “hosts,” and their guests, as well as to join “clubs” of interest. Clubhouse rooms and clubs span many topics, everything from vegan fashion to bitcoin, theoretically offering something for everyone. Despite its high valuation, Clubhouse’s founders and backers have demonstrated limited regard for privacy, security and accessibility to date, and appear to have learned little from the missteps of earlier platforms on perennial challenges such as content moderation, facing them sooner than platforms have in the past. As one reporter observed, “Clubhouse [is] speed-running the platform life cycle.” As a result, Clubhouse is an important case study in the limits of our approaches to data governance in the face of Silicon Valley’s indefatigable ethos…”
‘Belonging Is Stronger Than Facts’: The Age of Misinformation
The New York Times – “We are in an era of endemic misinformation — and outright disinformation. Plenty of bad actors are helping the trend along. But the real drivers, some experts believe, are social and psychological forces that make people prone to sharing and believing misinformation in the first place. And those forces are on the rise. “Why are misperceptions about contentious issues in politics and science seemingly so persistent and difficult to correct?” Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth College political scientist, posed in a new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s not for want of good information, which is ubiquitous. Exposure to good information does not reliably instill accurate beliefs anyway. Rather, Dr. Nyhan writes, a growing body of evidence suggests that the ultimate culprits are “cognitive and memory limitations, directional motivations to defend or support some group identity or existing belief, and messages from other people and political elites.” Put more simply, people become more prone to misinformation when three things happen. First, and perhaps most important, is when conditions in society make people feel a greater need for what social scientists call ingrouping — a belief that their social identity is a source of strength and superiority, and that other groups can be blamed for their problems…”