Oh great, science bros are out there proposing to use facial recognition technology to infer people's emotions in real time (can't imagine any problems with this) so that they can recommend 'matching' music (ditto, no notes)
💀
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
I reckon we could already be doing this. Each of us prices our intelligence according to how smart we have shown ourselves to be, and charges by the hour. So like, $500 would get you half an hour with someone like Thomas Nagel, or, three years with Sam Altman
she's going to be pretty pissed when she gets home after this. somebody should check on her dogs
Looking forward to giving this talk today, about Athanasius Kircher's two-volume doorstopper 'Musurgia Universalis' (1650). I had so much fun researching Kircher: one of the strangest blokes ever to write about music (and that's saying something)
www.eventbrite.com.au/e/spotlight-...
Aw man. It must be a condition on becoming a city planner that you have zero aesthetic sense whatsoever :(
I always get so sad when I see pictures of the old Penn Station, in NYC. (R: the waiting room.) How they could bring themselves to demolish this so they could construct a seething underground hellhole is just beyond me
agreed. the very pinnacle of mr collins-hood
Terrible news. His book Values of Art was, and still is, one of my touchstones. He was one of the best in the business.
Oh, this is terrible news. He was one of the sharpest and most insightful philosophers working in aesthetics. Values of Art is a wonderful book.
I can just imagine Ned reading the stuff about plant consciousness and chuckling to himself
Maybe he meant 'curse', in which case he might have had a point, given our predilection for muttering hexes over simmering cauldrons
Good morning to everyone apart from the person that drove past my apartment at 4:30am blasting 'Who Do You Think You Are' by the Spice Girls
TIL that Rick Rubin, record producer for basically every huge act since the 90s, started off as a philosophy major at NYU. I guess some decent alt/ac careers are possible then 🙃
www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/bro...
i lolled
Really sorry to hear this, Andy. Here's to a brighter 2026!
My department (philosophy, University of Melbourne) is advertising a 4-yr fixed-term lectureship in metaphysics and philosophy of science. Open to people with Australian work rights. Philosophy folk, please feel free to repost etc unimelb.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/UoM_Ex...
pretty incredible that an AI-generated COUNTRY song has done so well, given that genre's emphasis on authenticity. i guess it invites serious reflection on what 'authenticity' even means.
major whiff of frankenstein's monster about this. poor robot!
sadly philosophy isn't much better. my friend in classics tells me similar things. i wonder if any profession whatsoever (not just academia) has this problem?
I think some of them say that in investing in AI, they're investing in tech that will solve world hunger, climate change etc. However, actual technological solutions to combat eg climate change have existed for decades. Bezos et al don't want to tackle climate change, they just want to get richer.
Foam wasn't spilt in a tray.
Re the Andrew Formerly Known as Prince: I'm sure I'm not the first to think of Sue Townsend's 'The Queen and I', in which the royal family have been deposed and are living in a council estate. Hopefully King Chaz is reading this for inspo @backlisted.bsky.social
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Que...
This is a great (open-access) paper, cataloguing the utterly staggering amount of unwaged labour that generative AI -- and recommender systems before them -- rely upon to function. It's not just copyright-holders that gen AI violates, it is literally all of us
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
This is the perfect example of how empty pro-tech rhetoric is about technology like this. 'Oh, it'll be so much easier to use face recognition, you won't have to remember your passwords.' This is what it's actually for
Reminds me about how wary I used to be of going into Irish pubs in the US, as an Irish person, lest they set upon me and mount my taxidermied corpse on the wall as an instance of Authentic Memorabilia from the Oul' Sod
wow that is weird. like the musical equivalent of students listening to lectures on 2x, to get through them quicker
well, i'm sure he would be well placed to provide informative commentary on the role played by the Illuminati in the heist
what a cool building!
Amazing news, Yuri! Huge congratulations, and richly deserved!
