Apophenia [444]
Greetings from the shed...
All the fours.
#TheAction
Ah, the perception of connectedness among totally unrelated phenomena. I just searched up 444. Wish I hadn’t. This was the first result. 🙄 Sometimes I feel YouTube is a Rubik cube made of sh*t. The more I try to figure it out, the more it stinks.
Thankfully I’ve had a lot of offline time this week, trawling through things in the shed, getting all nostalgic as I attempt what looks like a spring clean well before time.
Outside of that, I’ve also worked a lot. Written very little. And even got to head out to a couple of social gatherings.
Last Friday feels like yesterday. As we dial up the consumption on multiple levels, I hope all is well in your part of the world.
#ThePictures
You might have seen this video posted elsewhere.
Hello, I think it was Christian Payne Documentally who said...
In an era where deepfakes evolve at an exponential pace, the line between reality and illusion blurs.
Soon we'll find wisdom in questioning everything we see online. For in the realm of pixels the truth becomes a masterpiece of deception.
Some people were convinced it was made using some kind of A.I. tool, but in reality it was me and a webcam plus some help from Adrian Storey. I tried to look as wooden as possible in front of the camera and asked him to mess with the video so people questioned what they were seeing.
So using After Effects, he over smoothed skin, changed the white balance, added a layer to mask mouth and hair, over sharpening to look unnatural. Then offset this layer by one frame backwards. Then duplicated the layer, to mask the right eye, messed with colour correction, and offset this layer two frames. Then he duplicated the original layer, masked neck, added random flash moments of blur and changed the colour slightly. Finally he added one last layer to mask the hoody, sharpen a little and offset by one frame backwards.
So the video is really me and my voice saying things that I said. But twisted a bit.
Why make this?
By quoting myself through the lens of artificial intelligence, I hope to provoke some thought on the fragility of perceived truth in all these pixelated places we hang out. We’re already living in a world saturated with manipulated realities. Even before we start morphing voices and pushing pixels. I wonder if we’ll have time to employ the trustmarks and tools needed for us to differentiate truth from fiction. Will we even care to differentiate?
A glimpse at how journalists and photographers are living and working in Gaza.
#TheWords
Filmmaker fiddles his taxes to fund a documentary and gets five years.
Just finished the book A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner by Chris Atkins.
As I tend to read in snatches here and there, I enjoyed the diary format as the bite-sized chunks were easy to digest. It’s well-written, and the harrowing reality of prison life is interspersed with some dark humour and astute reflections on life inside.
He battles and often wins against the crippling bureaucracy, aware that his middle-class education offers him a skillset few inmates have. In fact, it’s his ability to suck up to authority and offer his skills to some of the harder inmates that gets him through.
I found it a compelling, thought-provoking read that sheds light on the human experience amid a challenging, broken system. The author doesn't shy away from addressing the systemic failures within the prison, while at the same time, questioning society's attitude towards incarceration. 4/5
I’ve met a few people over the last few weeks who see success as getting rich. Who seem to be putting any present chance of happiness on hold in the hope that it will come later with ‘success’. I wish they would read this by Morgan Housel.
#TheSound
Brendan Jacoby makes podcasting look easy. The Philosophy of Care Podcast was just an idea a couple of weeks ago and Brennan asked me how best to go about getting started. I mentioned Lav mics, Zencaster and offered to top and tale his recordings with some music from Andre Louis.
#TheConsumed
“People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas.” ~ Anon
If you’re looking for something different to consume this Christmas then you might find some inspiration overseas. There are so many tasty things out there.
#TheThings
Whilst shifting boxes and filing things away, I found a notebook that belonged to my biological father. Something that I don’t remember ever reading. There were notes, diary entries and all kinds of weird and wonderful sketches. Mostly from the 80’s.
Like some of the more esoteric truth seeking hippy’s of the 70’s or 80’s he was into lots of things. Including magic, astrology, Kabbalah, LSD and cloaks. On one page I found this short list.
I don’t think he ever got to paint this himself, so I used his prompt to see what Midjourney would make of it. I wonder if the algorithms were channeling (data mining) his former partner Catherine Andrews as the outcome looked a lot like something she would paint.
I spotted a series of images of abstract bikes on Etsy that I remember from the website of Wilf Lunn. (Someone else I think might have dabbled in LSD).
I also just came across a pile of his books while tidying the shed, all signed. This one contains a weird and wonderful collection of Christmas tree themed cards.
I’ve not spoken with Wilf for a while so dropped him and his wife Liz a Christmas email. Here is a video of his Protest Bike in action.
One more thing…
#TheThanks
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#TheWeb
A selection of 2023 book covers you might otherwise not get to see.
The Documentally community map is still a thing.
MDMA may soon be classed with the FDA as having a medical use.
Voyager 1 is glitching 15 billion miles from home.
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Last night I was a tipsy passenger in a classic VW Golf with a secret button discussing quantum pigeons I would have bought the URL Quantum Pigeon for a AI generated psyche rock band if it hadn’t already been taken. But right now I’m reading about researching quantum Batteries and how they break causality.
#TheEnd
We made it all the way down here. Thanks for reading.
I hope you have something lovely planned for the week ahead. I have a list.
“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” ~ George Orwell
Chill.
See you out there.
Over…
We should all deepfake ourselves just in case.
Sounds like you need someone to facilitate your vibrational tuning.