Tagged as “Industry 4.0,” (hey, at least it’s better than “Internet of Things”), this fourth industrial revolution has been unfolding over the past decade with fits and starts—largely because of the massive cultural and structural differences between the information technology that fuels the change and the “operational technology” that has been at the heart of industrial automation for decades. – Ars Technica
Author: Douglas McLennan
Seeing ISN’T Believing: The DeepFake Problem Means We Can’t Trust Any Video, Recording Or Image
DeepFakes created by artificial intelligence can now credibly fool anyone into thinking they’re real. “By combining this real clip of Albert Einstein speaking, for example, with a photo of the famous mathematician, you can quickly create a never-before-seen lecture.” But imagine the ill uses this can be put to. – The Verge
The Best-Selling Romance Novelist’s Baroque Tale Of Her Husband Trying To Poison Her (Is It True?)
About five years ago, the lawsuit claims, her hair and teeth started falling out and she developed intense nausea, tremors, disorientation, bone loss, facial swelling, and a peculiar metallic taste in her mouth. Tests of her hair, blood, and nails appear to reveal that she’d had high levels of toxic heavy metals in her system, including lithium, barium, arsenic, and mercury. Her suit notes that her husband had taken out a hefty life-insurance policy on her and “stood to gain millions of dollars upon her demise.” – New York Magazine
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Coming Back To Broadway
The show combines singing, rapping, comedy, beat-boxing and human percussion, with the performers taking suggestions from the audience to create “humorous bits, instantaneous songs and riffs, and fully realized musical numbers.” – Deadline
Arizona State University’s Project With James Turrell’s Roden Crater Says A Lot About Museums
As an artwork that encompasses a sprawling landmass as well as decades’ worth of crafting to customize it as a man-made offering to the cosmos, Roden Crater may be “an order of magnitude too great” for conventional means of art-world funding, said Michael Govan—whereas, “when a university comes in, they have particle accelerators. They see what Roden Crater is as an element of the university, and it makes sense, even by scale.” – ARTnews
The Radical Notion Of Harriet Tubman On The Twenty-Dollar Bill
Her expression is a stealthy contrast to the blank-eyed stare of Jackson, who would remain on the new twenty’s back side, demoted but not fully displaced. Should the bill one day materialize, the composition of Tubman and Jackson, two faces of the same vexed coin, would serve as an apt emblem of Americans’ habit of historical equivocation. White supremacists and abolitionists have no doubt that each contributed to the character of our country; there are “very fine people” on both sides of the bill. – The New Yorker
Why Paris Wants To Plant Forests Around Its Famous Landmarks
“Under a plan announced last week by Mayor Anne Hidalgo, thickets of trees will soon appear in what today are pockets of concrete next to landmark locations, including the Hôtel de Ville, Paris’s city hall; the Opera Garnier, Paris’s main opera house; the Gare de Lyon; and along the Seine quayside.” – CityLab
How The Baltimore Symphony Got Into Dire Straits
The Baltimore Sun obtained financial documents showing the orchestra’s fiscal health is in calamitous condition. Even factoring in additional state funding, the orchestra is projected to barely make payroll in July and August, according to cash forecasts for a 52-week season. The orchestra would likely end its fiscal year with an approximately $1.5 million deficit. – Baltimore Sun
The Monastery Where Spanish Was Born
According to García Turza, if the Suso monks were the first to record the sounds of the Ibero-Romance language on the page, they are also responsible for the creation of the Spanish alphabet. – BBC
The Success Problem: Is Your Happiness Dependant On It?
“Problems related to achieving professional success might appear to be a pretty good species of problem to have; even raising this issue risks seeming precious. But if you reach professional heights and are deeply invested in being high up, you can suffer mightily when you inevitably fall.” – The Atlantic