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Entries for March 2021
How Do Algorithms Become Biased?
In the latest episode of the Vox series Glad You Asked, host Joss Fong looks at how racial and other kinds of bias are introduced into massive computer systems and algorithms, particularly those that work through machine learning, that we use every day.
Many of us assume that tech is neutral, and we have turned to tech as a way to root out racism, sexism, or other “isms” plaguing human decision-making. But as data-driven systems become a bigger and bigger part of our lives, we also notice more and more when they fail, and, more importantly, that they don’t fail on everyone equally. Glad You Asked host Joss Fong wants to know: Why do we think tech is neutral? How do algorithms become biased? And how can we fix these algorithms before they cause harm?
According to the National Labor Relations Board, “Amazon repeatedly violated the rights of employees who pushed for health and safety improvements during the coronavirus pandemic”. But the NLRB is powerless to do anything about it.
30 of the Best Book Covers of the Year (So Far). Some great design in here.
Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World
Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World is the latest world-explaining documentary series from television journalist Adam Curtis. It’s available in the UK on BBC’s iPlayer and, unofficially as a fan upload, on YouTube; I’ve embedded the trailer and the first part above.
But what exactly is it about you might wonder, even after watching the trailer. Reading Sam Knight’s January 2021 profile of Curtis in the New Yorker might help you there:
For more than thirty years, Curtis has made hallucinatory, daring attempts to explain modern mass predicaments, such as the origins of postwar individualism, wars in the Middle East, and our relationship to reality itself. He describes his films as a combination of two sometimes contradictory elements: a stream of unusual, evocative images from the past, richly scored with pop music, that are overlaid with his own, plainly delivered, often unverifiable analysis. He seeks to summon “the complexity of the world.”
Lucy Mangan’s review for The Guardian was overwhelmingly positive:
The power dynamic, how it shifts, how it hides and how it is used to shape our world — the world in which we ordinary people must live — is Curtis’s great interest. He ranges from the literal rewriting of history by Chairman Mao’s formidable fourth wife, Jiang Qing, during the Cultural Revolution to the psychologists plumbing the depths of “the self” and trying to impose behaviours on drugged and electro-shocked subjects. He moves from the infiltration of the Black Panthers by undercover officers inciting and facilitating more violence than the movement had ever planned or been able to carry out alone, to the death of paternalism in industry and its replacement by official legislation drafted by those with hidden and vested interests. The idea that we are indeed living, as posited by various figures in the author’s landscape and (we infer from the whole) the author himself, in a world made up of strata of artifice laid down by those more or less malevolently in charge becomes increasingly persuasive.
Other reviews, particularly from those on the right, call his work incoherent and Curtis himself something of a propagandist. Admission: I haven’t seen any of Curtis’s work, save for the occasional clip here and there. I know some of you out there are big fans — should I start with this one, HyperNormalisation, Century of the Self, or….?
Opening lines of books, rewritten for the pandemic. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. Too many people were outside without masks on. Oh, well, never too early for Netflix.”
You Don’t Know What’s Going On In People’s Lives
Illustrator Hazel Mead created a pair of pieces called You Don’t Know What’s Going On In People’s Lives: the original version and one featuring children. The images above are snippets from the larger images, both of which are available as prints in Mead’s shop. (via cup of jo)
Update: Several people sent me a link to this video from Cleveland Clinic that is very similar to Mead’s illustrations.
On the coming 4th surge of Covid-19 in the US. “I understand the impatience with restrictions – I’m fed up and tired, too – but our restlessness risks creating one last set of victims who could easily be spared.”
Delayed: R. Kikuo Johnson’s New Yorker Cover
That’s the cover for the April 5, 2021 issue of the New Yorker illustrated by R. Kikuo Johnson.
I began preparing for this project by revisiting news coverage of anti-Asian hate crimes committed during the pandemic. As I absorbed one account after another, they became increasingly difficult to read. So many mothers and grandmothers have been targeted. I imagined my own mom in that situation. I thought about my grandma and my aunt, who have been among my greatest sources of support. The mother in the drawing is made up of all these women.
So simple, so powerful. The way the shoes, eyes, and faces are positioned and angled. On Twitter, Jiayang Fan commented:
I can’t stop staring at this cover. I can’t stop wondering who would come to this mother-daughter pair’s aid if someone attacked them. I can’t stop thinking I was once the daughter and how helpless I still feel to protect my mother.
“The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine is extremely effective in adolescents 12 to 15 years old, perhaps even more so than in adults, the companies reported on Wednesday.” Zero infections & no serious side effects in trials.
VW’s name change to “Voltswagen” is a dumb April Fools joke. Another own goal by the company. How about this: make good cars, sell them to people, and stfu.
Gradations Are Soothing
From Daihei Shibata, Gradations is a meditative short video of hard boundaries of color and shape turning into gradual transitions.
When we gradate the boundaries between two polarized things, the two become smoothly connected. By blurring the various boundaries, we can find complexity, diversity, and richness of information.
This is really lovely — take a couple minutes to watch. (via the equally lovely the kid should see this)
You can watch Bowling for Columbine for free on Michael Moore’s YouTube channel. I haven’t seen this in years – I wonder how it holds up?
Walking 56 Miles to Work
A few years ago, Beau Miles walked 56 miles to work on a college campus, leaving home with just the clothes on his back and a hat. He foraged what he needed along the way, including food, water, and a pair of shoes. Recently, he was asked to give a lecture on adventuring and, as part of his preparation, decided to walk to campus again. I really enjoyed watching this — Miles’ curiosity and drive is infectious. And his roadside scavenging reminded me of the survival scenario exercise where you need to rank salvaged items in terms of usefulness.
You may remember Miles from the “mile an hour” marathon he ran around his neighborhood over the course of 24 hours. (via craig mod)
The date of full bloom of the Kyoto cherry blossoms has been measured since 812. Due to climate change, they’ve been blooming earlier & earlier. In 2021, they bloomed earlier than ever before.
Showcasing Women Street Photographers
Women Street Photographers started as an Instagram account founded by Gulnara Samoilova in 2017 but has since grown into a community with a website, exhibitions, and even a recently released book.
I pulled a tiny selection of photos featured on their Instagram — from top to bottom: Ora Buerkli, Laura Reid, Thouly Dosios, and Sonia Goydenko. (via colossal)
Very frustrated at the continuing lack of rapid testing (and free mask distribution) in the US. The vaccines are great, but we could move even faster & smarter w/ lots of antigen testing & more mask-wearing.
Another survey by Kaiser Family Foundation also shows that Covid vaccine hesitancy has dropped in the last few months. “Republicans and white evangelical Christians were the most likely to say they will not get vaccinated.”
A simple simulation game where you try to steer a ship through the Suez Canal. It took me only 30 seconds to Ever Given that thing right into the bank.
“Volkswagen plans to change its brand name in the United States to ‘Voltswagen’” – I hope this is an April Fools thing. VW has been *terrible* in naming cars in recent years: Tiguan, Arteon, Touareg…yuck.
The Year Earth Changed
Produced by BBC Studios Natural History Unit and narrated by David Attenborough, The Year Earth Changed is an upcoming documentary that looks at what happened to the natural world when much of the world’s human population stayed indoors for a few months.
From hearing birdsong in deserted cities, to witnessing whales communicating in new ways, to encountering capybaras in South American suburbs, people all over the world have had the chance to engage with nature like never before. In the one-hour special, viewers will witness how changes in human behavior — reducing cruise ship traffic, closing beaches a few days a year, identifying more harmonious ways for humans and wildlife to coexist — can have a profound impact on nature. The documentary, narrated by David Attenborough, is a love letter to planet Earth, highlighting the ways nature bouncing back can give us hope for the future.
The Year Earth Changed debuts on Apple+ on April 22, aka Earth Day. (I can’t believe they resisted calling this Nature Is Healing though…)
“Climate Anxiety Is an Overwhelmingly White Phenomenon”
In an opinion piece for Scientific American, Sarah Jaquette Ray argues that our response to the climate emergency must be equitable, or as she puts it: “We can’t fight climate change with more racism.”
One year ago, I published a book called A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety. Since its publication, I have been struck by the fact that those responding to the concept of climate anxiety are overwhelmingly white. Indeed, these climate anxiety circles are even whiter than the environmental circles I’ve been in for decades. Today, a year into the pandemic, after the murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed, and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, I am deeply concerned about the racial implications of climate anxiety. If people of color are more concerned about climate change than white people, why is the interest in climate anxiety so white? Is climate anxiety a form of white fragility or even racial anxiety? Put another way, is climate anxiety just code for white people wishing to hold onto their way of life or get “back to normal,” to the comforts of their privilege?
This is one of those articles where I want to quote the whole thing, so I’ll just do one more paragraph, leave a link to her book, and then just let you read it.
The prospect of an unlivable future has always shaped the emotional terrain for Black and brown people, whether that terrain is racism or climate change. Climate change compounds existing structures of injustice, and those structures exacerbate climate change. Exhaustion, anger, hope-the effects of oppression and resistance are not unique to this climate moment. What is unique is that people who had been insulated from oppression are now waking up to the prospect of their own unlivable future.
Simulating Church Organ Music With a Commodore 64
Linus Akesson noticed that without the benefit of the acoustical properties of massive churches, the sound that comes out of organ pipes sounds tinny, like 8-bit chiptune sounds.
Back in 2008 I had an epiphany about church organs: At least in theory, organ pipes produce very simple waveforms, much like 8-bit sound chips do-and the reason church organs don’t sound like chiptunes is primarily because of the acoustics of the church.
Thinking that process could be reversed, he remapped the keys of a Commodore 64 so he could play it like an accordion, ran it though a reverb machine, and created the sixtyforgan. The Bach piece he plays at the end of the video above (and a different Bach piece here) sounds so much like it’s being played on an organ.
See also Hear How Choral Music Sounded in the Hagia Sophia More Than 500 Years Ago (in which a filter is applied to choral music to make it sound as though it’s being sung in a cavernous church). (via @emanuelfeld)
We Can’t End the Pandemic Without Vaccinating Kids. “So far, children have mostly been spared from the worst aspects of Covid-19. Let’s keep it that way.”
The Louvre Puts Its Massive Collection of Art Online
Late last week, the Louvre announced that it had put its entire collection online, over 482,000 works in all.
Designed for both researchers and curious art lovers, the collections.louvre.fr database already contains more than 482,000 entries, including works from the Louvre and the Musée National Eugène-Delacroix, sculptures from the Tuileries and Carrousel gardens, and ‘MNR’ works (Musées Nationaux Récupération, or National Museums Recovery) recovered after WWII and entrusted to the Louvre until they can be returned to their legitimate owners. For the first time ever, the entire Louvre collection is available online, whether works are on display in the museum, on long-term loan in other French institutions, or in storage.
With so many works, where to start? Try these “playlists” created by the museum, e.g. Masterpieces of the Louvre or Major Events in History. Or try the search function and find, for instance, all of the museum’s works by Leonardo da Vinci or Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (one of the very few women whose art is on display at the museum).
Unlike in other US cities, violent crime dropped sharply during the pandemic in Baltimore after the city temporarily stopped prosecuting drug possession, prostitution, and other minor charges. So the city made those changes permanent.
Ian Manuel spent 18 consecutive years in solitary confinement from age 15 to 33. “The harrowing injustice I suffered as a boy should never happen to another child in this country.” Solitary is straight-up state-mandated torture.
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