onfocus

When things turn to garbage I guess I turn to Wikipedia. A couple more links I've been thinking about recently: False equivalence and Slippary slope. Have journalists seen these? Because I feel like they haven't seen these.

I have a slew of links to share, but it doesn't feel like a good time to share a slew of links. The daily news feels like a daily test of the paradox of tolerance and I've been thinking about that quite a bit. Also, brushing up on the concept of hate speech has been helpful for me.

Some unorganized links from the past week or so:

• MetaTalk: mathowie transfers ownership of MetaFilter to cortex - Big MetaFilter Universe news, but not a big shift for the site. Congrats to Matt and Josh on the move! Long may MeFi run.
• Erica Joy: I am disappointed but unsurprised... - A sexist manifesto circulating Google is abuse of co-workers but defined as an alternative view by Google management. (Update: Google management takes an alternative view.)
• Ijeoma Oluo: Facebook's Complicity in the Silencing of Black Women
• Atlas Obscura: Join the Search for Geedis - I love these pop ephemera mysteries.
• New York Times: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software - We have been having this conversation since voting machines were invented. This should be obvious.
• The Atlantic: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? - See Betteridge, but there's more than just the headline here.
• Teen Vogue: We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in Reaction GIFs
• Siggraph 2017: Deep Bilateral Learning - Teaching computers to edit photographs like a human.
• Texas Monthly: The Drug Runners - Sad update on the reclusive Mexican native people The Tarahumara of Born to Run fame.
• @GalaxyKate ...welcome to Programmer Hell - Apple spent billions to build a terrible work environment.
• The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Recurrent Neural Networks
• Politico: Inside Trump's snap decision to ban transgender troops
• Brad Sucks: Better Than Nothing Preorder - new vinyl ordered.
• Wall Street Journal: Why Vinyl's Boom Is Over - Two of my favorite artists provide a snapshot of where vinyl production is today.
• Ask Polly: It Seems Like My Friends Don’t Like Me - "We have to find a way to bring the sharp edges and troubling complications and glorious moments of joy into a world that communicates with a series of popping-Champagne emoji and eye roll memes."
• New York Times: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are - An update on PayPal's peer-to-peer option.
• Stanford Business: Why Working From Home Is a “Future-looking Technology”
• Dan Hon has been knocking neural network social commentary comedy out of the park lately by simulating Ask MetaFilter questions and Hacker News headlines.

I've been enjoying the new Arcade Fire:

"I trained a neural network to write Tom Swifties," Tom said artificially. But seriously, after "success" with Oregon Placenames I wanted to try something more complex. The short, repeating format of Tom Swifties seemed like something it could tackle. I found a good compilation and set to work training. (Start with the compilation if you haven't seen Tom Swifties before. You'll get the idea after a handful.)

I have a feeling I need to look into the whole GPU thing for processing because I've been training the AI nonstop on AWS for a few days now and while it has come a long way, it's still not speaking English. But the Swifty form is there and I think it has some interesting things to share. Here are a few:

• "Allye! Peen!" said Tom guiltorively.
• "I had a modight", said Tom inderitively.
• "I've not beat'd will we I sfong that take ban hisse", said Tom bardingly.
• "Let's go! wrong wo", said Tom posthalicteitingly.
• "Looks oke run shats", Tom repocked.
• "I more for owlanimors!" said Tom jauntly.
• "I haven to reperent", said Tom barch-oned.
• "I'm going to have sow manartioutive", said Tom pridely.
• "I like that a get a tround of chairs?" asked Tom consically.
• "You're faloamintica", Tom canied consentingly.
• "I don't play due the stragumed glan to the botheric", said Tom rasmitally.
• "It's tere takes my pief?" asked Tom centatically.

I notice that it's putting asked with the questions. I wonder if the adverb will eventually match the subject in the quote. I'll keep training, but it seems to get slower as it gets more complex. "I wonder if I could tap into more processing power," pb said cloudily.

Dan Hon recently trained an A.I. to generate British placenames. I followed his recipe and did the same for Oregon placenames.

I found a list of real Oregon placenames at the US Board on Geographic Names. I did a round of A.I. training with the raw data and found the output too noisy. So I did a little data massaging and gave it another shot, this time with cleaner results.

I set the whole thing up on a free AWS instance with the torch-rnn docker image. It was a snap. A slow snap. It would be faster with more processing power.

Without further setup, plan your next camping trip and imagine the vistas you'll see in such artificially imagined Oregon places as:

• Thkewood Meadows
• Cookstop Lake
• Thedrel Springs Cemetery
• Water Reservoir
• Rogah Butte
• Newar Creek
• Willaning Creek
• Dazian
• Booper Summit
• Pister Creek Ranch Spring
• Josspor Ridge
• Bickmass Log Pond
• Trout Bucktuby
• Monnnit Hellant Plant Creek
• Pitter Cip Number One
• Seven Creek
• Giam Creek
• Hemil M Creek
• Hug Waterhole
• Dukapin Meadows
• Bensbush Creek
• Malow Creek
• Lattle Lake Recreation Meadows
• Mule Park
• Road Ranch
• Bruck Creek
• Gregley Park Recreation Site
• Forent Well
• Kench Bed Reservoir
• Indian Slide
• Sinkhawk Trail
• Tondyle Canyon
• Spilling Pond
• Syn Reservoir
• Pieson Reservoir
• Thirn Mountain
• Fence and Swalich
• Lower Spring Cemetery
• Bolard Creek
• Coney Butte Park
• Skihino Peak
• Laix Spring
• Clenmill Creek
• Oshers Forest
• Fork Slow Spring

This is a random linear sampling from potentially infinite output. It might be funnier to go through with an editorial eye and find the most amusing, but it's getting late and I have a trip to Fence and Swalich to plan.

And now, the wokest links (apologies to @ameliargh):

• Politico: Inside the 24 hours that broke Sean Spicer - Spicer resigns.
• Vox: President Trump is considering pardoning himself. I asked 15 experts if that's legal. - poli sci students 3am dorm room what if? is now our reality.
• Lawfare: The President vs. Federal Law Enforcement: Trump Attacks Everyone
• Daily Beast: Team Trump Used Obamacare Money to Run PR Effort Against It - "Problematic."
• The Atlantic: What’s Broken—and What’s Still Working—in American Politics

In other news:

• Jason Kottke: How to safely enjoy the 2017 solar eclipse, a buyer's guide for normal people
• Anil Dash: How Glitch is Growing - Things get interesting when you remove barriers.
• Mike Monteiro: On my second birthday we landed on the moon. - Making a larger We. Words to live by.
• New York Times: Are You a Carboholic? - Yes.
• The Verge: Google introduces the feed, a personalized stream of news on iOS and Android - Keeping Google Reader running would have given them a 10+ year head start.
• The Verge: The Game of Game of Thrones: season 7, episode 1, Dragonstone - Excellent summary and snark, +10 points. Won't trade Verge.
• BBC: Amazon and eBay images broken by Photobucket's 'ransom demand' - Host your own images (thoughts, ideas, creative output)! Decentralize now!
• Co.Design: AI Is Inventing Languages Humans Can’t Understand. Should We Stop It? - It doesn't look like anything to me to me to me to me to me.
• Disney Parks Blog: First Look: Disney Parks Unveils the Star Wars-Inspired Land Model - I think this park would live long and prosper but I don't see a quidditch pitch.
• New York Times: Don’t Leave Health Care to a Free Market
• Lucy Bellwood: 100 Demon Dialogues

My dad has an encyclopedic knowledge of classic rock and he just started a classic rock blog called On the Records. He's writing brief but dense artist summaries that are easier to digest than a wikipedia entry. He's also adding personal stories about his relationship with music. His post From Records to Playlists reminded me just how far music technology has progressed in a short period of time. Blogs! They're still neat. If you like music that was mostly delivered via vinyl you should meet my dad.

It has been a while, dear reader. I was about to declare link bankruptcy, delete all to-share links, and start again with a clean slate. However, in the rush to find the latest and greatest links I assume you might have missed one of these non-organized gems from the past arbitrary amount of time. Or maybe you'll rediscover a popular link from weeks ago and see it from a wiser, weeks-older perspective. Anyway, here's Wonderwall (of links):

• What football will look like in the future
• The New Inquiry: Taxonomy of Humans According to Twitter
• Reliable: The Ultimate Collection of Google Font Pairings (Displayed Beautifully with Classic Art)
• Economist: How do you pronounce “GIF”? - Dammit Economist, this not a teach the controversy debate. Pick a side as we all must.
• Eugene Register Guard: Eclipse apocalypse: Up to a million visitors are expected to watch the rare event
• CBS: Facebook, for the first time, acknowledges election manipulation
• Buzzsumo: We Analyzed 100 Million Headlines. Here’s What We Learned - How is clickbait headline formed?
• Big Medium: No Share Buttons on Mobile Sites (Except This One Weird Case)
• Washington Post: The slow, secret death of the electric guitar. And why you should care.
• Syncope - Test the rhythm of typography.
• Postlight: Serving 39 Million Requests for $370/Month - Picture serving pages without servers, whoa.
• bl.ocks.org: Wilson’s Algorithm - a-maze-ing.
• Standard Ebooks - Nicely designed public domain books.
• OregonLive: Quest to develop abandoned film uncovers Mount St. Helens eruption photos
• Kelly Watkins: The 5 books every marketer should read
• NASA: Shadow of the Eclipse
• New Atlas: To the stars by atom bomb: The incredible tale of the top secret Orion Project
• The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques
• Every Frame a Painting: Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual Comedy
• Open Culture: 65,000 Fans Break Into a Singalong of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” at a Green Day Concert in London’s Hyde Park

I had a great time with friends at the Oregon Country Fair yesterday. It's a fun event with an amazing atmosphere. This year I mostly took atmospheric pictures with an old Lensbaby selective-focus lens. Sometimes it's good to go lo-fi.