An advertisement from 1968 for airliner passenger seats promising “sumptuous, living-room comfort.” It does actually look reasonably comfortable, unlike the glorified lawn chairs they jam into planes now. Note, though, no seat belts in evidence. I honestly don’t know if this means that passenger jets didn’t have them at that time, or if they’re simply deleted here for advertising purposes.
On the one hand…
On the other hand:
The court ruling can be read HERE, and it makes for confusing reading.
So an AI was programmed to examine hundreds of paintings and then dream up one of its own. The end result is recognizable, and recognizably art. Is it *good* art? Meh. It’s not a clear and accurate representation of the subject; it does not uplift; it’s not really that interesting on its own. Still: it’s way better than most modern art, so it’s got that going for it.
And it just sold for almost half a million dollars.
One painting is hardly a threat to the art world. Except… maybe it is. Algorithms have been cobbling together books of terrible fiction (and terrible non-fiction) for some years now, with some newspaper articles on dry topics such as the stock market created automatically. So far, nobody is beating down the doors to get this computer generated stuff (the auction went for zillions probably because of the First! factor), but the sheer volume could easily overwhelm the marketplace of ideas. I, for example, proved to myself that I could write perhaps two novels per year (I have so far failed to provide any evidence that I could get so much as one novel published in a lifetime). A bot could crank out millions of them in the same timeframe and theoretically so swamp Amazon that even if one f my books was published, AND even if everyone who read it declared it to be the best book ever, it probably still wouldn’t sell because there are 50,000 AI generated books on the same topic with virtually the same title.
And that’s just assuming that AI generated books remain lower quality. But there’s nothing special about art: there is no need for sentience, or “soul,” or “love” or anything else to put words to a page… or paint to a canvas. A computer can make a million paintings or write a million books, and the marketplace will poke through the pile and find the few that are kinda good. The computer will recognize those successes, and learn from them. Before long, AI will create art that, if you didn’t know it was AI created, you’d think a talented human artist had created.
I suspect that eventually the “art scene” will be mooshed into a paste of commercially successful “pop art.” As the market for human artists falls away to nothing, with computers cranking out the images for book covers and magazine articles and movie posters and statuary and wall paintings, the humans who would have climbed the rungs of art success, learning and growing in the process, will follow other paths. Art will no longer be a way for even the barest of incomes for the vast majority of artists. And consequently, good artists won’t turn into great ones. The computers will continue to make art that is Good Enough. And there things might well plateau, unless the AI become *truly* creative. And if that happens, we’re all kinda boned.
I’ve just sent out the rewards for October, 2018, to APR Patrons. This months rewards include:
CAD diagram: 20-meter Orion spacecraft
Diagram: Genealogy of Piper aircraft
Document: “Story of the Uprated Saturn I” NASA-MSFC brochure circa 1966 describing the Saturn Ib, including future possibilities
Document: “Preliminary Design Study of a Three Stage Satellite Ferry Rocket Vehicle,” 1954 Goodyear paper describing the METEOR launch vehicle. First of a number of METEOR documents I have.
Document: “The Rocket Research Aircraft Program 1946-1962,” Edwards AFB booklet describing the various rocket aircraft tested up to the x-15
If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.
Gab is a “free speech” alternative to Twitter. Or it was… the actions of one man have caused the whole thing to lose it’s internet host. Which would be akin to shutting down Facebook because someone posted something horrible.
Breaking: @joyent, Gab’s new hosting provider, has just pulled our hosting service. They have given us until 9am on Monday to find a solution. Gab will likely be down for weeks because of this. Working on solutions. We will never give up on defending free speech for all people. pic.twitter.com/YvnBOFoQQn
— Gab.com🍂 (@getongab) October 28, 2018
A one-man “space pod” very similar in concept to the ones in “2001,” but designed by Lockheed in 1964. This *could* perhaps have influenced the film makers and/or their designers.
In todays installment of “what the hell is wrong with these people,” some jackhole went into a synagogue during a BABY-NAMING CEREMONY and shot the place up, killing a number of people. Rather amazingly, the cops actually captured him.
As always, the officials are digging through the guys social media, and once again… boy, what a winner.
Media difficulty: he hates Trump, too.
Yet another Identity Politics success story.
I watched an interview on CNN with a lawyer who had at one time represented Cesar Sayoc, the apprehended and presumed mail bomber. He had some interesting things to say about Sayoc, none of them complimentary; the summation is that Sayoc is not only nuts, he’s *stupid.* But one of the more interesting details: Cesar Sayoc has spent years portraying himself as a Seminole Indian… but his father was a Filipino and his mother is Italian.
Also interesting: his father vanished from the family when Sayoc was very young. No mention was made of a stepfather, so chances are this is yet another feller who grew up without a proper male role model.
Someone got themselves arrested down in Florida. Not a lot of info yet, and at this stage it could be just “a person of interest.” There is, however, a photo of the persons van, which seems to be liberally slathered in political imagery. From this distance, *of* *course* its difficult to tell just *what* political imagery, but it looks like right-wing imagery (flags and GOP symbols and such). If so… say “howdy” to your new Dem-dominated Congress.
Photo of the suspect's van in Plantation, FL @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/jGCBDSkH5J
— Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) October 26, 2018
A law enforcement source told Fox News that the suspect is a white male in his 50s, a former New Yorker, who lives in Aventura, Florida, who had prior arrests for terroristic threats.
Well, if this is accurate, we have ourselves a nutjob.
I’ve always looked askance at any vehicle wallpapered in political stuff… *especially* vehicles like this one, covered in a bunch of text that you have to be relatively close to read.
UPDATE:
Sayoc’s white van, which had pictures of Trump and the presidential seal plastered to the windows, was seized by the officials and hauled off to a secure facility.
The suspect is a registered Republican, according to records.
Say hello to your new Speaker.
A couple years late on the news about this, but… bah. Bah, I say.
The “Hard Mobile Launcher” that had been on display at National Museum of the USAF (Dayton, Ohio) was apparently sold in 2015 for the bargain basement price of $27,500. The HML was the mobile launcher for the Small ICBM (Midgetman), and it seems it is now bits of steel, likely shipped to China to be turned into nails (after careful measurements).
Bah.
