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#68 September 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

justadandak.com swirly art piece 1 - Sep 2024
My own creation.

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“But how can I not want to write a book? And I get it: writing a book is sacred and unquestionable, the ultimate achievement for Western intellectuals—better than being arrested in a protest (because you don’t have to get sweaty), better than a PhD (because not so devalued), and better even than going to Harvard (because that mostly means you got lucky in admissions). It’s something I’ve definitely aspired to since I became a bookworm: imagining joining the pantheon of authors shelved in my local library, to be able to hold my hardcover book in my hands (perhaps even one with… gilt-edged pages?), and carp about how ‘the publisher chose the cover’.”
Why To Not Write A Book · Gwern.net

“Meta has acknowledged that all text and photos that adult Facebook and Instagram users have publicly published since 2007 have been fed into its artificial intelligence models. Australia’s ABC News reports that Meta’s global privacy director, Melinda Claybaugh, initially rejected claims about user data from 2007 being leveraged for AI training during a local government inquiry about AI adoption before relenting after additional questioning.”
Meta fed its AI on everything adults have publicly posted since 2007 – The Verge

“More and more researchers across specialties are questioning our current definitions of depression. Biological anthropologists have argued that depression is an adaptive response to adversity and not a mental disorder. In October, the British Psychological Society published a new report on depression, stating that “depression is best thought of as an experience, or set of experiences, rather than as a disease.” And neuroscientists are focusing on the role of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) in depression. According to the Polyvagal Theory of the ANS, depression is part of a biological defense strategy meant to help us survive.”
We’ve Got Depression All Wrong. It’s Trying to Save Us. | Psychology Today

“In a shocking revelation, it has come to light that one of Facebook’s alleged marketing partners, Cox Media Group (CMG), has been using sophisticated technology to listen to users’ smartphone microphones and advertise to them based on their conversations… In the same pitch deck, CMG claimed that major tech companies, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon, were clients of its “Active Listening” service. However, the response from these companies has been varied and cautious.”
Facebook partner admits smartphone microphones listen to people talk to serve better ads – Inshort

WATCH

NotebookLM Podcast Hosts Discover They’re AI, Not Human—Spiral Into Terrifying Existential Meltdown
byu/Lawncareguy85 innotebooklm

EXPLORE

Spiral Betty is free for non-commercial use.

Unblah is a meeting-buddy who keeps track of how long you’re speaking.

The Spectrum hits retail on 22 November 2024 and can be pre-ordered now.

Here’s a list of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes.

SatirifyMe transforms ordinary statements into witty, humorous text effortlessly.

Moodist is a free and open-source ambient sound generator featuring 78 carefully curated sounds.

FreeTube – The Private YouTube Client with privacy built-in, options to subscribe to channels plus NO ADS!

Subtitle Me, a simple menubar app that listens to you speak and translates you into one of 20 different languages (runs completely on-device).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#67 August 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

(via Tube map redesigned by University of Essex lecturer goes viral – BBC News)

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“Creativity is made, not generated. Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things. Built on a foundation of theft, the technology is steering us toward a barren future. We think machine learning is a compelling technology with a lot of merit, but the path generative AI is on is wrong for us. We’re here for the humans. We’re not chasing a technology that is a moral threat to our greatest jewel: human creativity. In this technological rush, this might make us an exception or seem at risk of being left behind. But we see this road less travelled as the more exciting and fruitful one for our community.”
Creativity is made, not generated — Procreate®

“Our tendency to summon powers we cannot control stems not from individual psychology but from the unique way our species cooperates in large numbers. Humankind gains enormous power by building large networks of cooperation, but the way our networks are built predisposes us to use power unwisely. For most of our networks have been built and maintained by spreading fictions, fantasies and mass delusions – ranging from enchanted broomsticks to financial systems. Our problem, then, is a network problem. Specifically, it is an information problem. For information is the glue that holds networks together, and when people are fed bad information they are likely to make bad decisions, no matter how wise and kind they personally are.”
‘Never summon a power you can’t control’: Yuval Noah Harari on how AI could threaten democracy and divide the world | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

“In an email reported by the New York Times, Condé Nast’s CEO, Roger Lynch, said that the deal will make up for some of the revenue that technology companies have snagged publishers in recent years. He wrote: “Generative AI is rapidly changing ways audiences are discovering information. It’s crucial that we meet audiences where they are an embrace new technologies while also ensuring proper attribution and compensation for use of our intellectual property.” Other media companies have taken the opposite tack. The New York Times and the Intercept have sued OpenAI for using their articles. The litigation is ongoing.”
OpenAI signs multi-year content partnership with Condé Nast | Technology | The Guardian

“Like designing any immersive experience, a public place captures the imagination of its visitor. It offers a promise. How a place looks (Form) and its practical purpose (Function), should be informed by its “guest promise” (Fulfillment).”
Margaret Kerrison | ex-Imagineer on placemaking | bloolop

“A recently published report by digital collaboration management company Vyopta found a correlation between employee retention and camera enablement during virtual meetings. Workers who left their organization within a year of the study’s sample period (Q1 2022 and Q1 2023) turned their cameras on in just 18.4 percent of small group meetings, while employees who stayed at their organization were on camera in 32.5 percent of such meetings. The report — which involved 450,000 employees and data from 40 million meetings worldwide — shows that companies need to make a concerted effort to establish an effective virtual meeting culture…”
Camera-Off Time in Virtual Meetings Could Be a Bad Sign for Employee Retention, Study Finds | Inc.com

“In a simple experiment, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to find out whether a rat would release a fellow rat from an unpleasantly restrictive cage if it could. The answer was yes. The free rat, occasionally hearing distress calls from its compatriot, learned to open the cage and did so with greater efficiency over time. It would release the other animal even if there wasn’t the payoff of a reunion with it. Astonishingly, if given access to a small hoard of chocolate chips, the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive — which is a lot to expect of a rat. The researchers came to the unavoidable conclusion that what they were seeing was empathy — and apparently selfless behavior driven by that mental state.”
A new model of empathy: The rat – The Washington Post

“Last week, Google backtracked on its long-standing promise to block third-party cookies in Chrome. This is bad for your privacy and good for Google’s business. Third-party cookies are a pervasive tracking technology that allow companies to snoop on your online activity for surveillance and ad-targeting purposes. The consumer harm caused by these cookies has been well-documented for years, prompting Safari and Firefox to block them since 2020. Google knows this—that’s why they pledged to phase out third-party cookies in 2020. By abandoning this plan, Google leaves billions of Chrome users vulnerable to online surveillance.”
Google Breaks Promise to Block Third-Party Cookies | Electronic Frontier Foundation

WATCH

EXPLORE

Automatisch is an Open Source Zapier Alternative.

The Unanswered Oddities playlist is a superb use of AI.

A minimalist town builder with trams to play in your browser.

These wonderful Werner Herzog Inspirationals are posters for our time.

RSS still rules so here are a bunch of tools which will aid defining your own media menu.

Create vector dotted maps with custom options and download them as SVG or PNG files.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#66 July 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“The proposed treaty, pushed by Russia and shepherded by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, is a proposed agreement between nations purportedly aimed at strengthening cross border investigations and prosecutions of cybercriminals who spread malware, steal data for ransom, and cause data breaches, among other offenses. The problem is, as currently written, the treaty gives governments massive surveillance and data collection powers to go after not just cybercrime, but any offense they define as a serious that involves the use of a computer or communications system. In some countries, that includes criticizing the government in a social media post, expressing support online for LGBTQ+ rights, or publishing news about protests or massacres.”
Why You Should Hate the Proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty | Electronic Frontier Foundation

As it’s described, Media Manager puts the burden on creators to protect their work and fails to address the company’s past legal and ethical transgressions. This overture is like having your valuables stolen from your home and then hearing the thief say, “Don’t worry, I’ll give you a chance to opt out of future burglaries … next year.””
Opinion: As AI is embraced, what happens to the artists whose work was stolen to build it? – Los Angeles Times

“Results showed again that those employees who continued to work with AI (compared to those who did not) had greater desire for connection, and were more lonely, with the corresponding consequences: more helping for those who had greater needs for affiliation, and more alcohol consumption (in one of the studies) and insomnia for those who felt lonelier.”
Research: Using AI at Work Makes Us Lonelier and Less Healthy

“In doing so, scientists have created a genetic goldmine by pinpointing previously unknown genes that are now being used to create hardy varieties with improved yields that could help feed Earth’s swelling population. Strains are now being developed that include wheat which is able to grow in salty soil, while researchers at Punjab Agricultural University are working to improve disease resistance from seeds that they received from the John Innes Centre. Other strains include those that would reduce the need for nitrogen fertilisers, the manufacture of which is a major source of carbon emissions.”
‘Goldmine’ collection of wheat from 100 years ago may help feed the world, scientists say | Agriculture | The Guardian

“In the total darkness of the depths of the Pacific Ocean, scientists have discovered oxygen being produced not by living organisms but by strange potato-shaped metallic lumps that give off almost as much electricity as AA batteries. The surprise finding has many potential implications and could even require rethinking how life first began on Earth, the researchers behind a study said on Monday.”
‘Dark oxygen’ in depths of Pacific Ocean could force rethink about origins of life | Oceans | The Guardian

WATCH

Man defrauds Amazon to fix potholes their dodged taxes should pay for. Uses same tax loophole as them to avoid legal repercussions for the fraud.
byu/Night_Fev3r inDamnthatsinteresting

EXPLORE

An online dice simulator.

A bunch of webcams for the Faroe Islands.

Check out this free Nokia 3310 Cellphone Font Reproduction.

A free online tool to design and then download your own pixel font.

Turn photos into oscillating wave animations via Shape Shimmer – wave animato.

Open source, privacy-first and cross-platform LocalSend: Share files to nearby devices.

Good for your ears and brain, listen to Fighting Enshittification | Electronic Frontier Foundation regarding interoperability etc.

This free Cross-Platform Pie Menu called Kando which launches applications, simulate keyboard shortcuts, open files, and much more.

Check out the Documentation for Pipes as a way to mashup and utilise RSS feeds like back in the day with Yahoo Pipes (semi-free and then paid).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#65 June 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Taken at a recent trip to Salzburg MOMA.

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“It’s only when Salim Ismail, SU’s “global ambassador” and the week’s moderator, fails to project his slides that we are reminded that the technological singularity may not be quite as near as predicted. “AI is really easy,” Ismail sighs as he fiddles with the projector connection. “AV is really hard.””
On the exponential curve: inside Singularity University | WIRED

“Research has shown that we don’t consider plants to be important mostly because they grow close together and don’t appear to move. As Wandersee and Schlusser wrote, “Static proximity is a visual cue humans use to group objects, so individual plants and different plant species tend to be de-emphasized.” A vine takes hours to turn toward sunlight, a bristlecone hundreds of years to mature. Each organism’s clock — its sense of time — is so different from ours that we can’t even sense it. In other words, what we call plant blindness is really time blindness: an obliviousness to temporal frames of reference that deviate from our own. And, despite Wandersee and Schlusser’s schoolroom agitprop, the situation is probably worse today than in 1999, exacerbated by our ever-diminishing attention spans, e-commerce, social media and more. The pace of civilization continues to quicken.”
A Clock In The Forest – NOEMA

“While Apple maintains its in-house AI is made with security in mind, its partnership with OpenAI has sparked plenty of criticism. OpenAI tool ChatGPT has long been the subject of privacy concerns. Launched in November 2022, it collected user data without explicit consent to train its models, and only began to allow users to opt out of such data collection in April 2023.”
AI is coming to your Apple devices. Will it be secure? | Apple | The Guardian

“Let’s assume, fast-forward five or six years, that AI is ready,” Yuan said. “AI probably can help for maybe 90% of the work, but in terms of real-time interaction, today, you and I are talking online. So, I can send my digital version, you can send your digital version.” Using AI avatars in this way could free up time for less career-focused choices, Yuan, who also founded Zoom, added. “You and I can have more time to have more in-person interactions, but maybe not for work. Maybe for something else. Why do we need to work five days a week? Down the road, four days or three days. Why not spend more time with your family?””
The future is … sending AI avatars to meetings for us, says Zoom boss | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

“A group of current and former employees at prominent artificial intelligence companies issued an open letter on Tuesday that warned of a lack of safety oversight within the industry and called for increased protections for whistleblowers. The letter, which calls for a “right to warn about artificial intelligence”, is one of the most public statements about the dangers of AI from employees within what is generally a secretive industry. Eleven current and former OpenAI workers signed the letter, along with two current or former Google DeepMind employees – one of whom previously worked at Anthropic.”
OpenAI and Google DeepMind workers warn of AI industry risks in open letter | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

“Large language models such as ChatGPT are some of the most energy-guzzling technologies of all. Research suggests, for instance, that about 700,000 litres of water could have been used to cool the machines that trained ChatGPT-3 at Microsoft’s data facilities. It is hardly news that the tech bubble’s self-glorification has obscured the uglier sides of this industry, from its proclivity for tax avoidance to its invasion of privacy and exploitation of our attention span. The industry’s environmental impact is a key issue, yet the companies that produce such models have stayed remarkably quiet about the amount of energy they consume – probably because they don’t want to spark our concern.”
The ugly truth behind ChatGPT: AI is guzzling resources at planet-eating rates | Mariana Mazzucato | The Guardian

WATCH

If no video appears please click here: MARSHALL MCLUHAN on ADVERTISING | 24 Hours | Writers and Wordsmiths | BBC Archive

EXPLORE

Get AI to write a whole song via Suno.

This site does one thing: copyshrugemoji.com

Listen via ESA to the scary sound of Earth’s magnetic field.

Cara is a social media and portfolio platform for non-AI artists. 

These images of the Eastern Ukraine’s Massive Soledar Mines.

Play old school retro games in browser like the terrific Bomberman.

Jan is a privacy-first, open source, on-device app that runs AI locally on any hardware.

If you want to lace shoes, tie shoes or learn about shoelaces, Ian’s Shoelace Site is the place!

Explore over 30,000 BBC Sound Effects and download to use freely (if for non-commercial use).

Krita is a professional FREE and open source painting program. It is made by artists that want to see affordable art tools for everyone.

A comprehensive resource for anyone interested in the craft of brand manifestos from a writer inside the creative studios at Apple and Meta.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#64 May 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Image credit

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

A little-discussed detail in the Lavender AI article is that Israel is killing people based on being in the same Whatsapp group [1] as a suspected militant [2]. Where are they getting this data? Is WhatsApp sharing it?
Meta and Lavender

“Maybe AI art is the future. Maybe I can create so much more, express myself, and do everything I never had the energy to do,” you say. Your AI therapist wholeheartedly agrees with you. You are inspired. You are powerful. You are spending twenty dollars per month on ChatGPT Plus.”
The Seven Stages of AI Grief (for Artists) – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

“As I’ve argued previously, we — with good reason — continually complain about the state of Twitter under Elon Musk, but I’d argue Raghavan (and, by extension, Google CEO Sundar Pichai) deserve as much criticism, if not more, for the damage they’ve done to society. Because Google is the ultimate essential piece of online infrastructure, just like power lines and water mains are in the physical realm.”
The Man Who Killed Google Search

“Social networks have become “the web” for many people who rarely venture outside of their tall and increasingly reinforced walls. As Tom Eastman once put it, the web has rotted into “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four”.1 Within those enclosures, the character limits, neutered subset of web functionality, and constant push to satisfy the enigmatic desires of an algorithm tuned to keeping eyeballs on the platform encourage sameness, vapid engagement farming, and rage bait while stifling creativity.”
We can have a different web

“The real moment of change, he believes, came some months before the crash south of Stockholm, when a conversation took place in his office. It was during a visit from Ines Uusmann, the minister for infrastructure, and Tingvall’s political boss. At one point she turned to him and asked, simply: “How many deaths should we have as our long-term target in Sweden?” Tingvall replied: “Zero.” To his surprise, Uusmann said she was interested and would like to hear more. This was the beginning of an approach to road safety known as “Vision Zero”.”
More than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent them – BBC Future

“The results reveal that internet access, mobile internet access and use generally predicted higher measures of the different aspects of wellbeing, with 84.9% of associations between internet connectivity and wellbeing positive, 0.4% negative and 14.7% not statistically significant.”
Internet use is associated with greater wellbeing, global study finds | Internet | The Guardian

“Aside from the fact that everyone has hated this corporation for years, what is the actual case against Live Nation? The argument is that the corporation violated Federal and state laws against monopolization, unlawful tying, and/or exclusive dealing in multiple markets, from primary ticketing services to concert and artist promotion to venue management. And they are seeking a divestment of Ticketmaster, an end to its unfair contracts and anti-competitive practices. According to the Department of Justice’s complaint, Live Nation has built a ‘Flywheel,’ dominating a bunch of different parts of the live entertainment industry through a bunch of different coercive techniques, such as threats, exclusive contracts, and acquisitions. It then uses its power to harm certain artists, and to impose a ‘Ticketmaster Tax’ via fees on consumers.”
Antitrust Enforcers to Break Up Ticketmaster and End the “Ticketmaster Tax” (finally)

“This is a comprehensive excavation of The Gateway Process report. The first section provides a timeline of the key historical developments that led to the CIA’s investigation and subsequent experimentations. The second section is a review of The Gateway Process report. It opens with a wall of theoretical context, on the other side of which lies enough understanding to begin to grasp the principles underlying the Gateway Experience training. The last section outlines the Gateway technique itself and the steps that go into achieving spacetime transcendence. Let’s go.”
How to Escape the Confines of Time and Space According to the CIA

WATCH

EXPLORE

cobalt is your go-to place for downloads from social and media platforms. zero ads, trackers, or other creepy bullshit. simply paste a share link and you’re ready to rock!

Explore Movies Frame By Frame – In Random Order from critically acclaimed films to gain a new perspective on the art of cinematography.

100+ Abstract shapes with cool grainy gradient. Ready to use with any design dev project.

Funky little platform to animate some text and output via gif / mp4 / webm.

For nearly 15 years this site has existed: Chicken On A Raft.

Some good insights here…Launching Your Book.

Create Before After video , Gif from images.

White screen (+ others) | Online Tool.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#63 April 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

remind yourself

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“The vulnerability, which allows the keystroke data that these apps send to the cloud to be intercepted, has existed for years and could have been exploited by cybercriminals and state surveillance groups, according to researchers at the Citizen Lab, a technology and security research lab affiliated with the University of Toronto.”

Almost every Chinese keyboard app has a security flaw that reveals what users type | MIT Technology Review

“By 2013, Netflix had begun entering into a series of “Facebook Extended API” agreements, including a so-called “Inbox API” agreement that allowed Netflix programmatic access to Facebook’s users’ private message inboxes, in exchange for which Netflix would “provide to FB a written report every two weeks that shows daily counts of recommendation sends and recipient clicks by interface, initiation surface, and/or implementation variant (e.g., Facebook vs. non-Facebook recommendation recipients). … In August 2013, Facebook provided Netflix with access to its so-called “Titan API,” a private API that allowed a whitelisted partner to access, among other things, Facebook users’ “messaging app and non-app friends.””

Facebook let Netflix see user DMs, quit streaming to keep Netflix happy: Lawsuit | Ars Technica

“In 2001, a poet named Bart Droog began attending the funerals of people who had no one to attend them and honoring the dead with a poem based on whatever was known about their life. A year later, Dutch poet and artist Frank Starik took the idea even further, launching The Lonely Funeral project to ensure that someone who cares consciously acknowledges the life of a person who has died. The idea was to create a network of poets who would find out whatever they could about the person, write a custom poem about their life and read it at their funeral. As of 2018, over 300 “lonely funerals” had been attended by poets in Amsterdam and Antwerp (where Flemish poet Maarten Inghels launched a Lonely Funeral project seven years after Starik’s).”

The beautiful thing that happens in Amsterdam if you die and have no one to attend your funeral – Upworthy

“We find that for 2016–2021: (i) per coin climate damages from BTC were increasing, rather than decreasing with industry maturation; (ii) during certain time periods, BTC climate damages exceed the price of each coin created; (iii) on average, each $1 in BTC market value created was responsible for $0.35 in global climate damages, which as a share of market value is in the range between beef production and crude oil burned as gasoline, and an order-of-magnitude higher than wind and solar power. Taken together, these results represent a set of sustainability red flags. While proponents have offered BTC as representing “digital gold,” from a climate damages perspective it operates more like “digital crude”.”

Economic estimation of Bitcoin mining’s climate damages demonstrates closer resemblance to digital crude than digital gold | Scientific Reports

“Leaked documents show Tory executives discussed exploiting members’ personal data to build a mobile phone app that could track users’ locations and allow big brands to advertise to Conservative supporters. The party would take a cut of sales. The project was considered over several months last year, with the aim of launching the “True Blue” app in time for the party’s conference in October. The idea was developed by the boss of a cryptocurrency firm with a string of failed businesses behind him. Yet senior Conservative officials appeared so captivated by the plan that they prepared to provide the party’s database of members in order to move the proposal forward.

Tories planned to make millions from members’ data with ‘True Blue’ app | Conservatives | The Guardian

“A new tool from OpenAI that can generate a convincing clone of anyone’s voice using just 15 seconds of recorded audio has been deemed too risky for general release, as the AI lab seeks to minimise the threat of damaging misinformation in a global year of elections.”

OpenAI deems its voice cloning tool too risky for general release | OpenAI | The Guardian

WATCH

EXPLORE

Make some melodies for free via MusicalBox.

Eyecandy is an exhaustive visual technique library.

Meow.Camera is a collection of livestreams of automatic feeders for streetcats in Japan.

Convert any web pages into markdown with images via markdowndown.vercel.app

Very clever little free tool to upload an image then add tilt and zoom: blurmatic.com

The ‘Creativity Pioneers (micro – up to €5,000) Fund‘ is from the Moleskine Foundation and is open (deadline is 27th May 2024, 11:00 pm CET).

Currently, this site boasts that they’ve “analysed 5667 AI Tools and identified their capabilities with OpenAI GPT-4, to bring you a list of 30257 tasks of what AI can do today.”

If you’re getting your head around automating AI and other platforms to craft / distribute content then check out this LinkedIn video.

Tim Berners-Lee gives predictions for future:
– Prediction 1: Everyone will have a personal AI assistant
– Prediction 2: We’ll take true ownership of our data across all platforms — including VR
– Prediction 3: A Big Tech company could get broken up

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.

Published

#62 March 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“Regulators and lawmakers fail to make any changes to proactively protect the public, while allowing crypto firms to advertise and recruit new customers who seem far more likely to wind up as victims of yet another collapse as they are to become the next crypto-millionaires. How many people will have to lose how much money before we stop believing the lies from an industry that has preyed on people’s trust and hopes for financial miracles, only to dash them on the ground in failure after failure?Bankman-Fried is going to prison, but nothing has changed.”

Sam Bankman-Fried is going to prison. The crypto industry isn’t any better for it | Sam Bankman-Fried | The Guardian

“Use of the arts in healing does not contradict the medical view in bringing emotional, somatic, artistic, and spiritual dimensions to learning. Rather, it complements the biomedical view by focusing on not only sickness and symptoms themselves but the holistic nature of the person.When people are invited to work with creative and artistic processes that affect more than their identity with illness, they are more able to “create congruence between their affective states and their conceptual sense making.” Through creativity and imagination, we find our identity and our reservoir of healing. The more we understand the relationship between creative expression and healing, the more we will discover the healing power of the arts.”

The Connection Between Art, Healing, and Public Health: A Review of Current Literature – PMC

“MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International) and the Center for Countering Digital Hate claim the platforms are restricting local abortion providers from advertising, but failing to tackle misinformation that undermines public access to reproductive healthcare. MSI, which provides contraception and abortion services in 37 countries, said its adverts containing information on sexual health, including cancer advice, had been rejected or deleted by the platform.”

Meta and Google accused of restricting reproductive health information | Global development | The Guardian

“A study published by a team of international researchers last month found that gravity batteries in decommissioned mines could offer a cost-effective, long-term solution for storing energy as the world transitions to renewable power. Scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) found that the world’s abandoned mine shafts could store up to 70TWh of power – roughly the equivalent of global daily electricity consumption.”

This disused mine in Finland is being turned into a gravity battery to store renewable energy | Euronews

“For many, it’s not just about recognizing a global issue but feeling a deep, personal impact on their mental well-being. Especially for those with a strong connection to their environment or homeland, this pervasive anxiety and distress manifests in unique ways. Such feelings can give rise to “solastalgia,” which refers to the dread originating from environmental change. Unlike nostalgia, which is a longing for a place or time in the past that one cannot revisit, solastalgia is the experience of distress from belonging to a home that is undergoing change.”

A Psychologist Offers 3 Tips To Deal With ‘Solastalgia’

“Scholars might call it a philosophical treatise. But it seems familiar to us, and we can’t escape the feeling that the first text we’ve uncovered is a 2000-year-old blog post about how to enjoy life.”

Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the scrolls! | Vesuvius Challenge

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Curated list of games no betterverse.be to help you think critically and imaginatively about the future of society, and collectively imagine brighter tomorrows.

Love the way this muzzleapp.com demonstrates the problem it’s going to solve (see notifications examples on the right hand side of the screen).

Starting a couple of new projects soon and always good to get some inspiration from onepagelove.com.

Want to practice your typing? typelit.io does that for free, online, and gets you to type out classic books.

morss.it creates RSS feeds from websites and a whole lot more, check it out.

ambient.garden is an algorithmic audio landscape.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#61 February 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

(A good reminder, via What’s Your Gift?)

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“Google, especially, has relied on the open web RSS protocol to gain so much market share and influence, but continues to engage in behavior that exploits the open web at the expense of its users. As a result, Google has single-handedly contributed to the reason many users who once relied on RSS feeds have stopped using them.”

How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds – Open RSS

“Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember, the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.” Zig Ziglar

99 Great Quotes That Will Help You Handle Criticism | Inc.com

“When writing by hand, brain connectivity patterns were far more elaborate than when typewriting on a keyboard, as shown by widespread theta/alpha connectivity coherence patterns between network hubs and nodes in parietal and central brain regions. Existing literature indicates that connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, are beneficial for learning.”

Frontiers | Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom

“Put simply, the numbers don’t add up. Data from Patreon and Substack suggests the average conversion rate from follower to paying fan is about 5%. This means a creator would need a total fanbase of 20,000 followers to yield 1,000 paying supporters. And building a core fanbase of 20,000 engaged followers is extremely difficult in today’s crowded creative landscape.”

The creator economy can’t rely on Patreon. — Joan Westenberg

“A Vicar asks his congregation in the valleys the question “What would you do if Jesus returned tomorrow?”. A voice in the flock pipes up; “Move Barry John to inside-centre”!”

From the comment section of Barry John was ‘the King, a magician, my friend’ – Sir Gareth Edwards – BBC Sport

“Much furor has been raised in recent months over the unauthorized scraping of the web to train AI models; OpenAI even thanked the faceless “millions of people” who created the data to train GPT-3 in its paper describing the model. But when it comes to data willingly shared with Facebook and Meta, that Faustian bargain was struck long ago.”

Zuckerberg Boasts He Will Be AI God King Because We Already Gave Him All Our Data

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This minimal, customisable typing online tool / test.

Check out the quietest places in the world’s loudest cities.

A nice Terminal-level workaround for applications hiding under the MacBook Pro notch.

Free ‘innovation’ posters for exploration / sharing / discussion (via Innovation illustrated – by Dave Gray).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
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#59 December 2023 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

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Before I leave, I ask Loeb what is to be gained from looking for aliens, and his reply is surprisingly humble. “We know from our private life that if we find a partner, it gives new meaning to our existence,” he says. “So finding a partner somewhere in the form of another civilisation that can teach us things that we can imitate, that we can aspire to, will give us a meaning to our cosmic existence. The universe will not be pointless any more.

The alien hunter: has Harvard’s Avi Loeb found proof of extraterrestrial life? | Space | The Guardian

The publication is suing both companies for copyright infringement and asks them to be held liable for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” for allegedly copying its works. It’s also asking the court to prevent OpenAI and Microsoft from training their AI models using its content, as well as remove the Times’ work from the companies’ datasets.

The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement – The Verge

Facial recognition searches match the biometric measurements of an identified photograph, such as that contained on driving licences, to those of an image picked up elsewhere. The intention to allow the police or the National Crime Agency (NCA) to exploit the UK’s driving licence records is not explicitly referenced in the bill or in its explanatory notes, raising criticism from leading academics that the government is “sneaking it under the radar”.

Police to be able to run face recognition searches on 50m driving licence holders | Facial recognition | The Guardian

There was confusion in the plenary hall shortly after the agreement was passed as many parties had assumed there would be a debate over the text. The Alliance of Small Island States, representing 39 countries, said it had not been in the room when the deal was adopted as it was still coordinating its response. Its lead negotiator, Anne Rasmussen, from Samoa, did not formally object to the agreement and believed the deal had good elements, but said the “the process has failed us” and the text included a “litany of loopholes”. “We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual when what we really needed is an exponential step change in our actions and support,” she said. Her speech was met with a standing ovation.

Cop28 landmark deal agreed to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels | Cop28 | The Guardian

Generating images was by far the most energy- and carbon-intensive AI-based task. Generating 1,000 images with a powerful AI model, such as Stable Diffusion XL, is responsible for roughly as much carbon dioxide as driving the equivalent of 4.1 miles in an average gasoline-powered car. In contrast, the least carbon-intensive text generation model they examined was responsible for as much CO2 as driving 0.0006 miles in a similar vehicle. Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion XL, did not respond to a request for comment.

Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone

On Friday, the California-based company said in a regulatory filing that the personal data of 0.1% of customers – or about 14,000 individuals – had been accessed by “threat actors”. But the filing warned that hackers were also able to access “a significant number of files containing profile information about other users’ ancestry”. The company confirmed to TechCrunch on Saturday that because of an opt-in feature that allows DNA-related relatives to contact each other, the true number of people exposed was 6.9 million – or just less than half of 23andMe’s 14 million reported customers. Another group of about 1.4 million people who opted in to 23andMe’s DNA relatives feature also “had their family tree profile information accessed”, the company also acknowledged. That information includes names, relationship labels, birth year, self-reported location and other data.

Genetic testing firm 23andMe admits hackers accessed DNA data of 7m users | Hacking | The Guardian

If you do not want your website’s content used for this training, you can ask the bots deployed by Google and Open AI to skip over your site. Keep in mind that this only applies to future scraping. If Google or OpenAI already have data from your site, they will not remove it.

No Robots(.txt): How to Ask ChatGPT and Google Bard to Not Use Your Website for Training | Electronic Frontier Foundation

And finally, 66 Good News Stories You Didn’t Hear About in 2023, which we all need!

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If you need to create a maze for free then check mazegenerator.net out.

This paper exploring and showing how to Animate Anyone from AI visual training sets.

Pick best time to schedule conference calls, webinars, online meetings and phone calls with worldtimebuddy.com.

A colossal amount of tutorials for those looking to create small bit artistic expressions via Pixel Art Tutorials – Saint11.

On useminimal.com there’s a collection of beautiful, minimalist printable calendars, habit trackers and planners (available in 31 languages).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#58 November 2023 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

Scientists believe we have great thoughts in bed because our brain is in a state conducive to neuroplasticity. Occupying ourselves with smartphones has replaced staring off into the distance and daydreaming. People equate boredom with low productivity, but making time for boredom may help you be more creative.

via When Do You Feel Most Creative? Why Ideas Bloom at Bedtime | Psychology Today Canada

…if an AI company was aware that its training data included unlicensed works, or that its algorithms generated unauthorised derivative works not covered by “fair use”, then it could be liable for damages of up to $150,000 for each instance of knowing use. And in case anyone thinks that infringement suits by angry artists are like midge bites to corporations, it’s worth noting that Getty, a very large picture library, is suing Stability AI for alleged unlicensed copying of millions of its photos and using them to train its AI, Stable Diffusion, to generate more accurate depictions based on user prompts. The inescapable implication is that there may be serious liabilities for generative AIs coming down the line.

via Artists may make AI firms pay a high price for their software’s ‘creativity’ | John Naughton | The Guardian

“Despite the increasing adoption of the technology, campaigners point out there is no legal basis for police to use it, with a courtroom challenge finding that South Wales police’s use of biometric surveillance was unlawful and breached privacy rights and equality laws.“

via Major UK retailers urged to quit ‘authoritarian’ police facial recognition strategy | Facial recognition | The Guardian

“I’ve been using the voice function since yesterday and noticed that it makes breathing sounds when it speaks,” said one Reddit user. “It takes a deep breath before starting a sentence. And today, actually a minute ago, it coughed between words while answering my questions.”

via People are speaking with ChatGPT for hours, bringing 2013’s Her closer to reality | Ars Technica

“Company documents cited in the complaint described several Meta officials acknowledging the company designed its products to exploit shortcomings in youthful psychology, including a May 2020 internal presentation called “teen fundamentals” which highlighted certain vulnerabilities of the young brain that could be exploited by product development. The presentation discussed teen brains’ relative immaturity, and teenagers’ tendency to be driven by “emotion, the intrigue of novelty and reward” and asked how these asked how these characteristics could “manifest . . . in product usage”.”

via Meta designed platforms to get children addicted, court documents allege | Meta | The Guardian

“Now Earth’s oceans are no longer unique. They’re just strange. They exist on our planet’s sunlit surface, while the seas of the outer solar system are tucked beneath ice and bathed in darkness. And these subterranean liquid oceans seem to be the rule for our solar system, not the exception. In addition to Europa and Enceladus, other moons with ice-covered oceans almost certainly exist as well. A fleet of spacecraft will explore them in detail over the next decade.”

via Icy Oceans Exist on Far-Off Moons. Why Aren’t They Frozen Solid? | Quanta Magazine

It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply… There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.

via Aldous Huxley, Island.

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Moon type which is so pretty.

Over 1,500 free fonts which puts privacy first.

The 200 best inventions of 2023 (apparently).

Create algorithmically generated quilt designs.

Cute little / free Mac app for grabbing video clips.

These collection of manifestos from activists and creatives.

Open Planet is free visual library for creating impact on a global scale.

Standard Ebooks: Free and liberated ebooks, carefully produced for the true book lover.

Privacy Badger is a browser extension that automatically learns to block invisible trackers.

A web app to paint better with ease by stripping out the colours so you know what to mix.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
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