Heads Up

Milan Fashion Week: Models carry fake heads on Gucci catwalk
Feb 2018, BBC

On a scene designed as an operating room, fashion pinnacle Gucci sends its models down the runway holding their own heads in their hands. These heads look exactly like the people holding them.

Quick reminder - there was an artist a few years ago, biohacker Dewey-Hagborg, who made the paper because of her accurate 3D replicas of your head, off DNA you left in public, like on a straw or a coffee cup, or her favorite - cigarette butts.

There's only so many genes that code for face shape (5?). But she also puts the found genome against a real-human genome database, and pieces together other data like family history.
Together all this info gives her a general idea of what that DNA would look like if it were to make a face, and she designs and prints that face.

But why does this image creep me the f out? Recent headlines like these:

• Scientists Create Artificial Womb
• Baby Lynlee 'born twice' after life-saving tumour surgery; They take the baby out, perform surgery on her, and put her back in for 12 weeks
• Children receive new ears grown from their own cells in world first
• New lung 'organoids' in a dish mimic features of full-size lung
• Pig-Human Hybrid Created in Lab
• Wiring Monkey Brains Together Has a Point, Say Scientists
• No, there has not been a successful human head transplant

Dirty Datavores

As a non-partisan entity, I still can't help but think this is the hardest dig I've ever read about one of the two sides.

The best dis is one that was never meant to be, as seen here while a researcher describes the events of the past couple years in the US regarding mass psychological manipulation, i.e., fake news and Russian bots etc.; she really doesn't mean to throw the shade, but she does:

Twitter bot purge prompts backlash
Feb 2018, BBC

"Our work indicates a lot of the more conservative Americans were consuming more junk news," she explained.

"Filter bubbles and echo chambers are more dominant on the right compared to on the left.

"So, I don't necessarily think it's an attack on the right, it's just a reflection about the different ways different kinds of people consume information."

Ouch

Hype and Wonder

Alex Pardee made this picture, but not with graphene.

Scientists create patterned graphene onto food, paper, cloth, cardboard
Feb 2018, phys.org

If you're gonna tell me that we can make graphene at room temperature, and on bread of all things, I'm gonna wonder when we get to see graphene art.

I'm also looking for blowdryer painting on canvas seen through infrared lenses; can't tell if I made it up or saw it somewhere.

Property Rights

Getty Images complained enough about their right to intellectual property that Google basically disabled their image search engine.

That's right, go search for an image, and then try to view or save that image. And then wind your clocks back to the year 2005ish.

We now have to revert to searching through an entire website in order to find the image we've already "searched". Not ideal; in fact, it ultimately defeats the purpose of an image search function in the first place.

Not sure which part is more upsetting, that image searching just took a step back ten years, or that such a large entity as Getty is so clueless about how the modern world works. (Then again, there seems to be a lot of that going on these days.) And by clueless, I mean not recognizing the existence of a thing called the right-click.

In case you're having the same facepalm moment as myself, yes, right-clicking on the image and "open in new tab" completely defeats the purpose of the new changes, and erodes our confidence in large cultural institutions such as Getty, both at the same time.

Also, trademarks and logos are excluded from this new change.

Anger at Google image search 'peace deal'
Feb 2016, BBC


Post Script

But wait, because it doesn't end there. I like to provide proper source references for the imagery used on my page, just because. The problem I run into lately is this - many of the images I want to use have been populated to my search results from Pinterest (because they are owned by Google, let's not forget, it's no coincidence they run the image-search game). And people who post on Pinterest are very unlikely to leave source credits. And yet Pinterest is owned by Google, and so they dominate the image search results. So the chances of my finding the image on a site that gives its source due credit are close to zero. Soo, as a person who wants to do the right thing - the thing that Getty wants me to do, and the thing that Google ostensibly wants me to do - I cannot, because of the very entity that has made these changes in the interest of 'doing the right thing'. That's enough for today.


Post Post Script

Now we've covered that, it seems an appropriate moment to remind ourselves about the specifics of intellectual property. As a creator, all you have to do to gain the right to your own intellectual property is to make the thing.

You're a musician? Make a recording. Artist? Make a painting. Writer? Write it down. Once you have fixed that intellectual product into some physical form - be it a recording, painting, or even a poem scratched into the dirt and then photographed - you own it.

So that sounds great. Until you think about how some cultures, like the people who lived in America before Europeans, do not fix much of their cultural products into physical forms. Sand paintings? Not fixed. Tribal songs? No recording equipment, not fixed.

If you get upset because you can't find that Getty image, just take some cultural products from a culture that has no property rights (intellectual or physical). Public domain forever!

Grimm's fairy tales, that's another one. They were spoken, not written down. So when Disney went and took them all and made cartoons out of them...

Biomimetic Helmets

Woodpeckers show signs of possible brain damage, but that might not be a bad thing
Feb 2018, phys.org

Evolution is strange. Woodpeckers have to smash their heads into trees in order to eat. So nature gave them special skull designs to limit their repercussions. And now we humans are using that design to make our skulls safer. For those times when we inadvertently smash our heads into concrete etc.

The go to examples for biomimicry have been the genius environmental control system that is a termite mound, and the aerodynamic boxfish used to design drag resistant cars. Woodpecker helmets make a nice edition, and an even easier way to explain biomimicry.

Are The Feels Even Real

New Zealand gannet 'no mates Nigel' dies alongside fake partner
Feb 2018, BBC

Nigel "no mates", a lonely New Zealand gannet who lived his life on the edge of the cliffs of an uninhabited island, has been found dead alongside his partner - a concrete replica bird.

This is probably the saddest thing you'll ever read on this site.

Environmental scientists put 80 decoys all over this uninhabited island in the hopes that more gannets would move there (New Zealand).

There's a picture too sad to post, of Nigel posturing with his concrete partners. "Volunteers said they were touched after witnessing him carefully construct a nest from seaweed and twigs on the cliff edge in an apparent act of courtship in 2013."

But wait; the twist:

"Despite the arrival of the three other [real] gannets, Nigel apparently refused to be separated from his replica mate and his commitment was confirmed when he later died by its side."

Like the Stanely What

Centuries-old arm of St. Francis Xavier is in Ottawa
Feb 2018, CBC

directly from CBC-
The month-long cross-Canada tour of a Catholic relic — the severed arm of St. Francis Xavier — is ending in Ottawa this week.

St. Francis Xavier was a Catholic missionary and his arm is considered sacred because he baptized more than 100,000 people with it.

Xavier died in 1552 and his body remains in India, but the Catholic Church removed his arm.

This is the first time the relic has ever been in Canada and one of only a handful of times it has left the Vatican.

Only a handful.

And then, somebody says, "It's kind of like the Stanley Cup".

The Stanley What?


And on a partially unrelated note:

In case you're thinking what I'm thinking:
People ate mummies in the 1800's

But wait, there's more:
This is an update, because I only just now discovered that, yes, the circumcised foreskin of Jesus is one of the holiest of relics, and it's called the Holy Prepuce, or the Holy Foreskin.

King Fake

He knows the first rule: stupid hats, when done right, give you authority

Thank you VICE UK:

How To Become TripAdvisor's Number 1 Fake Restaurant
Dec 2017, VICE
video link

Vice correspondant Oobah Butler becomes so good at writing fake reviews that he learns how to send restaurants to top rate, and then decides to do it to a restaurant that doesn't even exist. And then proceeds to king troll the interweb, or at least South London.

He names his restaurant after his backyard, in a most perspicacious manner, The Shed, and by appointment only. Bogus pictures of bogus food (made with shaving cream; because regular cream is too expensive?) named after bogus things like "moods" (because if they were "horoscopes", he would have to do 12), and all in his bogus restaurant/back yard.

Followed by expertly calculated fake reviews and voila:

From the bottom of 18,149 to the top at #1, it took only months for him to realize he should probably call back some customers and have a proper night.

They don't pay, because they're told it's experimental, and they eat microwave food, and they like it. Who doesn't like macaroni and cheese?

You know what else people like? Not knowing things. They didn't know where the restaurant was located, and whether they could ever get a seat. Like lingerie, the less he told them the better. They get all excited and fill in the blanks themselves.

Then the real reviews of the fake restaurant come rolling in. And that's it, experiment over. Social engineer extraordinaire. Bravo.

Agamemnon's Mask

The Mask of Agamemnon represents one of the greatest discoveries of modern times, as it verified that the Trojan War recounted in the Iliad actually happened.

German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann found the mask in 1876. He was an amateur archaeologist fascinated with ancient times and convinced he knew where the city of Troy was located. He took his life's fortune made in the import/export business and set for Troy, and found it. And it turned the Troy of Homer's Iliad from legend into history.

Although the way the mask was found is a great story, the truth is always the best.

Science later found that the mask was 300 years older than previously thought.

The general public, or general population, was so overcome with elation at the discovery of all this that once the true owner of the mask was revealed (by science, years later) they simply decided, en masse, that they would continue to call it the mask of Agamemnon.


Despite the findings of science, the public continues to call it the Mask of Denial, I mean the Mask of Agamemnon.

All Ears

Children receive new ears grown from their own cells in world first
Feb 2018, The Independent

The new technique involves taking a scan of the child’s unaffected ear, reversing the dimensions and 3D-printing a biodegradable mould punctuated with tiny holes.

Cartilage cells taken from the recipient’s other, unaffected ear are then used to fill the holes while the new ear is still in the lab.

Over three months the cartilage cells begin to grow in the shape of the mould, and the mould itself begins to break down.

While this process is underway, the ear is grafted onto the recipient.
-BBC


Hearing this news, I can't help but to remember the documentary of kidnapping in Brazil, Manda Bala (Send A Bullet).

Specialty doctors, or plastic surgeons, were making a living solely by reattaching ears that had been forcibly removed from kidnapped victims with the intent to extort for ransom. The family who received the ear would send it to the doctor, who would hold on to it in his refrigerator until the ransom was paid, and the ear could then be safely reattached.

If you haven't seen the film, please do, and if you take NJ Transit, definitely watch the film, so you can feel better that you don't have to take a helicopter or a bulletproof car to work.

Fakeswap

Discord just shut down a chat group dedicated to sharing porn videos edited with AI to include celebrities
Jan 2018, Business Insider

First there was photoshop. The logical progression is video. And the logical progression of that is porno.

In this case, your face just got stamped onto Mia Khalifa, in action. The fake part is the face. And the implications go pretty far beyond pornography.

And really, how new is this? Not very - I've got a link here to a 2011 example of augmented reality faceswap. That means realtime. And that was 2011.

image source, same link