Category: ideas

One of the filmmakers (all of them are riffing off a Buffy Sainte-Marie commentary on the hoopla around Canada 150) says, “To me, decolonization has not been about a return to a way of life. No one is saying everybody has to give up their house and live in a longhouse. … It’s about understanding that colonialism has established structures that we all live under.”

The original 2013 Gloria was an honest and full-bodied depiction of a woman in her late 50s, still filled with determination and desire. U.S. moviemakers aren’t exactly known for their ability to imagine or understand older women – so maybe it’s good that the Chilean director who made the original is also tasked with the “adaptation” (not remake).

For real, and for instance, many of us may be living or working in mushroom buildings: “Mycotecture – architectural building blocks that are formed from the fibrous material of fungal roots – are as strong as concrete and as insulating as fibreglass.”

Even mall architecture is changing to fit the new concept in a space where retail is on the wane. “Gyms fit into a broader push by mall owners to reinvent themselves as centers of entertainment at a time when so much of apparel sales have moved online. Landlords are adding restaurants, ice-skating rinks, pools and other recreational options to boost sagging foot traffic.”

It’s not just any yacht – it belonged to Yugoslav leader (and uniter) Josep Tito. “If officials have their way, Tito’s boat will become a museum to display the complex history of Rijeka and serve as a point of pride for the nation.” Alert: Croatia’s far-right politicians, whose power is surging, are not into this idea.

Part of the idea would be making nightlife safer through smoothing the permit process for party spaces. “In the months since December’s tragic Ghost Ship fire in Oakland, which killed dozens of young music fans, Los Angeles has cracked down on unpermitted warehouse parties, which often play host to music and communities shut out of mainstream venues. But those shows have a huge cultural value, and still continue — just further under the radar in more marginal spaces. Meanwhile, promoters and venue owners say the permitting and building-code process is more time-consuming and expensive than ever.”

“A growing body of evidence shows that over all, college students learn less when they use computers or tablets during lectures. They also tend to earn worse grades. The research is unequivocal: Laptops distract from learning, both for users and for those around them. It’s not much of a leap to expect that electronics also undermine learning in high school classrooms or that they hurt productivity in meetings in all kinds of workplaces.”

“In many arenas, A.I. methods have advanced with startling speed; deep neural networks can now detect certain kinds of cancer as accurately as a human. But human doctors still have to make the decisions — and they won’t trust an A.I. unless it can explain itself. This isn’t merely a theoretical concern.”

Most reasonable people will begrudgingly accept that any given scientific finding has a small chance of being false. It’s like finding out that the FDA allows 1mg of mouse feces in a pound of black pepper; mouse poop is unsavory, but at least it only makes up 1 part in 450,000. However, there has been a growing concern for a bit over a decade that the state of science is far worse than this.

“The irony is that some of the individuals who do take part appear to be motivated by a burning distrust of the government or else a rebel anarchism set against large corporations – sentiments that are common among cadres of biohackers. Yet it’s those very governments and corporations that are injecting the money and ginning up the momentum behind the movement. Something doesn’t stack up.”