More than 200 mobsters convicted in historic Italian mafia trial France24
- LLMs are “fundamentally limited by language itself” while “human intelligence draws upon a panoply of ways of knowing and being”-- critiques of current "AI" drawn from a philosopher ahead of her time: Susanne Langer
As philosophers like to link to the following was originally published on August 1, 2014. I thought that revisiting the question could be a fitting and fun activity for World Philosophy Day, which is today.]
As George Orwell wrote in his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language:”
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Mathematicians Have Found The Ninth Dedekind Number, After 32 Years of Searching
THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: AI finds formula for how to predict monster waves by using 700 years’ worth of data.“Stories about monster waves, called rogue waves, have been the lore of sailors for centuries. But when a 26-meter-high rogue wave slammed into the Norwegian oil platform Draupner in 1995, digital instruments were there to capture and measure the North Sea monster. It was the first time that a rogue had been measured and provided scientific evidence that abnormal ocean waves really do exist.”
I love how eyewitness reports of rogue waves from sailors were dismissed until there was a digital record. Sort of like sprites and pilots. “Although sporadically reported for years by airline pilots, only in the past decade or two has there been enough evidence to convince atmospheric scientists to investigate the phenomenon.”
Opinion | What 19 Poynter employees are thankful for in journalism
Next time around
Photographer Anna Huix’s project, Tales beneath the melting ice / art and film by Rafael Sommerhalder / AI meets Capability Brown / spooky forest / a map of the world of Aleister Crowley / the Index of Aesthetics / a profile of the late Georgie Wolton / Michel Faber on Tinnitus / diagrams of remote lighthouses / the story of the Sandown Clown / How to upset an artist / the Star Trek chair catalogue / search for text in amongst the David Rumsey Map Collection / Maps on the Web / in search of PG Wodehouse’s England / something Sir Pelham Grenville would have approved of: Conkers: the unlikely contact sport taking London by storm / Hospitalithings, ‘A quiet observation of objects found in places of accomodation’ (via b3ta).
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The TapeOp podcast / Webcurious, now you’re talking / manuals, manuals, manuals / Shift Happens, a book by Marcin Wichary / Hidden Architecture / the rise of the stylish British car boot sale / a few links about how U2 and co set about creating their show in the Las Vegas Sphere / related, Marco Brambilla’s contribution to the show / Czech village priest sorry for smashing pumpkins / illustration by Stella Murphy / Alison, a graphic novel by Lizzy Stewart / illustration by Ardhira Putra / five best St Vincent songs / ‘Everyone at this gig looks just like you‘ / Rivian loses $33k on every truck it sells / the death of automotive patina / One Revolution Per Minute, a short film about the dizzying chaos of low gravity orbit.
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Subsidised clothing repair: “Starting this month, anyone in France who has shoes resoled or clothing repaired will receive a subsidy. The repair bonus of between six and 25 euros is intended to encourage consumers to visit cobblers and tailors instead of throwing away old shoes and clothes.” (via MeFi / apologies for all the Guardian links.