- Some mind blowing glimpses of the future with fascinating implications. Jukebox uses neural nets to generate music—and even “rudimentary” singing!— in multiple genres and styles. Vocal Synthesis is trained on the speech and speech patterns to create new audio (from a “special message” from Barak Obama and Donald Trump to Jay-Z performing Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”). ¶ As these kinds of programs rapidly improve, theoretical questions of copyright (who “owns” the copyright of an AI-generated voice performance?) and life (how do we tell real from literally fake news?) become real and pressing. ※ See also: From the pyramids to Apollo 11 — can AI ever rival human creativity? ※ One more link, this time a bit less world-changing: This Meme Does Not Exist.
- Even right here, people (and birds), live in different worlds. A pair of them: There’s an Entire Industry Dedicated to Making Foods Crispy, and It Is WILD and Inside the Outrageously Prestigious World of Falcon Influencers.
- I love this project! Check it out while you can: This Website Will Self-Destruct
- The King’s Letters, the fascinating story of “The 15th-century scholar who upset the Korean aristocracy by creating a native script for the Korean language, and thus wean it off Chinese characters.” ※ Pairs well with: The origin of language in the brain is 20 million years older than we thought.
- I Turned a 1920’s Typewriter into an EDM Drum Machine.
- Yes, I’m the kind of person that, in the midst of a pandemic, worries over such things. Maybe this is why: COVID or Covid? The comfort of pedantry at a time of national crisis. ※ See also, the Chicago Manual’s shop talk on the Styling COVID-19 and Related Terms. ※ And in sign language, literally: Due to Covid 19
- A life well lived: Madeline Kripke, Doyenne of Dictionaries, Is Dead at 76
- How Soviet Artists Imagined Communist Life in Space. ※ Bonus: Nikolai Mikhailovich Kolchitsky’s fantastic illustrations.
- First, consider that there is a “literary magazine for Taco Bell literature.” Then enjoy an interview with the editor of Taco Bell Quarterly, who explains how to make art out of a fast food brand.
- Today in 1469, writer, philosopher and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli is born in Florence, Italy. Machiavelli’s most famous book, The Prince, was dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, who would be the ruler of Florence from 1516-1519. Machiavelli’s book has been celebrated and condemned in the centuries since for its formal innovation, philosophical subtlety and its seeming recommendation of cruelty, autocracy and deception. The latter perception—a partially unfair one driven by partisan interests including the Catholic church—resulted in the eponym Machiavellian (one who prefers expedience and desired outcome to morality; deceitful, cunning, scheming, duplicitous) as early as the 1570s.