PicoBlog

Hi, Ari here, and while I’m off The Beat this week for vacation, I still wanted to share some thoughts about power, technology and Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. As someone who spent years practicing First Amendment law, some of the recent debate has been really interesting.  And you can always subscribe here to receive all my newsletter entries: About half of Americans get their news primarily from social media. Some of that may be actual news, simply distributed online, or commentary about actual news, and related discourse.

TL:DR: I’ve got a new feature in the New York Times Magazine on the promise and peril of language-based AI like GPT-3, and will be starting a new series here at Adjacent Possible documenting my future encounters with neural nets. For the past seven months or so, I’ve been working on an essay for The New York Times Magazine about large language models, the subset of deep learning that involves training a neural net on a massive corpus of text—the most famous example of which is OpenAI’s GPT-3.

Last Sunday I binged all six episodes of SHORESY on Hulu. I would have watched 600. It made me wish I were in a hockey league, so I could commit horrendous slashing penalties within seconds of sobbing through the national anthem. This will make sense if you watch it. You should watch it. It’s the most sheer fun I’ve had watching TV in a long, long time. IMMEDIATE AND SINCERE WARNING: If you are offended by profanity, or put off by crude jokes, disregard the previous paragraphs.

Duke Ellington’s music possesses a precise sonic chivalry; he courts and romances the whole world with the sound of his ideas. Charles Mingus heralded it“Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love'' and composed a song by that same name in 1974, the year Duke Ellington died— a requiem so reverent it’s part hologram, and when you listen you can see Ellington reassemble into a mist of purpose, royal and real as ever. This tribute is more poignant still because in 1953, Mingus was fired by Ellington after a brief stint with his orchestra, for getting into an altercation with the trombonist over a racial slur.

Not many left backs would have found themselves eight yards from goal to score a winner in a Women’s Champions League final, but Fridolina Rolfo isn’t your average left back. Get 50% off for 1 year This is a left back who hit double figures for goals and assists for a dominant Barcelona team last season. Rolfo is so productive in the attacking third that Sweden head coach Peter Gerhardsson can’t bring himself to play her anywhere close to the defence, instead giving her something of a free role further forward.

know someone who might enjoy my work? share with a friend! Share What would happen if we felt what we felt, said what we wanted, became firm about our beliefs, and valued what we needed? What would happen if we let go of our camouflage of adaptation? What would happen if we owned our power to be ourselves? —Melody Beattie, from The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency

☆☆☆☆ Kim Mo-mi (played by Lee Han-byeol/Nana/Go Hyun-jung) Kim Kyung-ja (played by Yeom Hye-ran) ↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name. On the surface, it appears that "Mask Girl" is about beauty standards and how our looks are a catalyst for who we will become. Even in an office setting where plain-Jane Kim Mo-mi (Lee Han-byeol) doesn't stand out, she covets her quasi-sleazy boss Gi-hun (Choi Daniel) — not because he's a genuinely nice guy, but because he's handsome.

Two things…check that…three things appear to have gone off the rails at the paper we used to call the Gray Lady.  First, whoever is in charge of the paper’s polls is not doing their job.  Second, whoever is choosing what to emphasize in the Times coverage of the campaign for the presidency is showing bias.  Third, the Times is obsessed with Joe Biden’s age at the same time they’re leaving evidence of Donald Trump’s mental and verbal stumbles completely out of the news.

Great example last night from Denis O. on LinkedIn, that connects with pretty much everything have been writing about, from elephants on beaches to the lack of understanding in large language models: As with everything in stochastic mimic land, this phenomenon doesn’t always replicate. But it’s not that hard to replicate, either: Examples like these highlight pretty much everything I have been saying here, from the very first post (The New Science of Alt Intelligence) to the last.