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Have a happy dancing grey goose:

 

  • A few other quotes, besides Patton, who spoke our newsletter title.
    • “Character is fate.” – Heraclitus
    • “A life without festivity is a long road without an inn.” – Democritus
    • “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’” – Kurt Vonnegut
    • From the Iliad: “Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now.”
    • From The Metamorphoses:

“But, though repulsed, her love persists; it grows on grief.“

“She never smiles except when some sad sight brings her delight; she is denied sweet sleep, for she is too preoccupied, forever vigilant; when men succeed, she is displeased – success means her defeat. She gnaws at others and at we own self – her never-ending, self-inflicted hell.”

“And there they walk together now: at times they are side by side; at times she walks ahead with him behind; at other times it’s Orpheus who leads – but without any need to fear should he turn round to see his own Eurydice.”

 

  • Mt Etna blew perfect smoke rings!

Mount Etna, Europe’s largest volcano, puffs giant ‘smoke rings’ into sky https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/08/mount-etna-smoke-rings-volcano/

mount-mildly-interesting-Mt-Etna-s-volcanic-vortex-rings-look-like-comms-from-film-Arrival

 

 

  • This songwriter kiddo who started making puppets vibes as one of the most authentic humans on the planet earth, and frankly a total joy. I hope for her success, and possibly children’s show with music. LOL So funny.
@sophietruax Replying to @Heythisguydoesart ? original sound – Sophie Truax

SPACE

  • I tried my hand at some AI art. It’s a goof, a lark. I see the LLM hoovered up the greats like Ron Cobb, Syd Mead, and John Harris. I injected all of that into HR Giger to imagine a home port for the Nostromo from Alien. It was registered in the Solomon Islands… which is canon, but a throwaway line. Other books say it was registered in Panama. But a space port reall wouldn’t work as well vs in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I think this all came out really nice, but people fear change, AI, and all that. For this experiment, it’s harmless.

If you don’t like AI, don’t look, but 4K Ridley Scott release of Alien had me catch a LOT I’d forgotten about or missed. The Nostromo is registered in the Solomon Islands, & my imagination ran wild w/ idea of a future spaceport in the Solomon Islands.

 

 

 

 

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

 

  • 11 years of research: An Electric New Era for Atlas Our new electric Atlas platform is here. Supported by decades of visionary robotics innovation and years of practical experience, Boston Dynamics is tackling the next commercial frontie https://bostondynamics.com/blog/electric-new-era-for-atlas/


 

 

  • Brainstorm and Until the End of the World are coming true. We’re going to be able to create memories, hack dreams, and record thoughts. Craziest sentence ever:

“For these and other unforeseen reasons, it is critical to raise awareness of the risks of brain decoding technology and enact policies that protect each person’s mental privacy,” the researchers concluded.

 

Scientists Use GPT AI to Passively Read People’s Thoughts in Breakthrough An AI model similar to ChatGPT was combined with fMRI readings to non-invasively decode continuous language from subjects, a new study reports. https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3w3g/scientists-use-gpt-ai-to-passively-read-peoples-thoughts-in-breakthrough

 

 

MIT Scientists Are Building Devices to Hack Your Dreams “You can try flying, singing, having sex — it’s better than VR.” https://futurism.com/mit-scientists-devices-hack-dreams

A new way to control experimentation with dreams Device not only helps record dream reports, but also guides dreams toward particular themes. https://news.mit.edu/2020/targeted-dream-incubation-dormio-mit-media-lab-0721

 

High-resolution image reconstruction with latent diffusion models from human brain activity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517004v2.full.pdf

Paper: Hyperrealistic neural decoding for reconstructing faces from fMRI activations via the GAN latent space https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03938-w

 

 

  • More AI video from text prompt, I assume a roaring 20s Star Wars retro-futuristic steampunk vibe.

 

 

 

  • This AI Matrix retrofuturistic imagining is interesting:

 

 

  • This stuff reminds us we should never give up on more Mindhunter on Netflix:

Unmasking the Mad Bomber When James A. Brussel used psychiatry to think like a criminal, he pioneered the science of profiling https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/unmasking-the-mad-bomber-180962469/

 

 

 

 

COMEDY

 

  • This is a Pepsi vs Alien 3 tie-in, and man… the 1990s were just so wild and weird:

 

In fact, there was even a sendup of 90s kids commercials, called “every 1990s commercial ever”

 

We even had the internet on telephones prior to the internet.

 

 

 

  • Aidy Bryant roasts! Her hesitation and pathos while being both fake crass and fake dumb is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a LONG TIME.

 

 

  • Don Rickles, the Greatest:

 

  • An older Dick Cavett one where he’s roasting Cavett LOL

 

MOVIES & TV

  • This is like a 2 minute mood board of how Alex Garland uses color. I just found this channel, but innovative concept well executed.

 

  • Speaking of, this poor writing was why Alex Garland was rumored to have quit directing. He’s just going to do lots of stuff, and maybe a solo directing gig in the future. Screenwriting and lots of projects until then:

Civil War film-maker Alex Garland: ‘In the US and UK there’s a lot to be very concerned about’ The Oscar nominee has an enviable list of hits to his name, from 28 Days Later to Ex Machina. So why has making a thriller about a divided America pushed him to quit the director’s chair? https://amp.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/30/alex-garland-civil-war-interview

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Producing live TV is bonkers bananas. This is the Oscars and Cuba Gooding Jr’s Win. It’s INSANE ENERGY:

And Baseball

 

 

  • These actor breakdowns, especially people that no longer give a flying eff, or any sh*ts, my goodness, they’re a delight:

Stellan Skarsgard

 

Brian Cox

 

MUSIC

  • Taken from us far too young, Donny Hathaway with the other best set of pipes in soul music history, Aretha Franklin.

CDN media

r/rnb - Donny Hathaway and Aretha Franklin at the Grammy Awards 1973

 

 

  • Frank and Moon Zappa talk to Dave about the Valley Girl phenomenon. Note that Moon is 14 here, and so freaking composed and self-aware. Really miss Frank. A lot. He’s so effortlessly and breezily whip smart.

 

  • RIP to Mr. Albini. This interview is fantastic, from October 2023… 6 months before he past.

Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and “In Utero” producer Steve Albini https://teamcoco.com/podcasts/conan-obrien-needs-a-friend/episodes/dave-grohl-krist-novoselic-and-in-utero-producer-steve-albini

 

Steve Albini’s 10 Essential Recordings The musician and audio engineer, who died on Tuesday at 61, gave artists including Nirvana and PJ Harvey an authentic representation of their work at a reasonable price. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/arts/music/steve-albini-songs.html

 

 

 

Stephen Tobolowsky, also famous for saying “My Voice is My Passport, Verify Me” in the packed cast prescient “Sneakers”, and the memory loss scenes from Christopher Nolan’s “Memento”, was a writer with David Byrne, and Byrne wrote it about him. So, that’s how the band Radiohead got their name from the Ryerson gent! =)

He was also in Spaceballs. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? He can’t!

Stephen Tobolowsky - IMDb

 

 

  • “Kraftwerk were using a Bee Gees-branded toy drum machine. You really couldn’t make it up”: Yes, a band you considered at the forefront of synth technology used a toy beat maker. And a pretty terrible one at that By Andy Jones( Computer Music, Future Music, emusician, Keyboard Magazine ) published 2 days ago And it’s certainly not the only piece of weird gear the iconic German band have used… https://www.musicradar.com/news/did-kraftwerk-really-use-a-toy-bee-gees-drum-machine

 

  • This young man is hilarious. Good beats, weird tracks, funny reactions.
@cartervailmusic We’re guys, ya know? #dirtman #dirt ? original sound – Carter Vail

 

Culture, Society, People, Politics

  • I remember learning how some nice hand gestures in some cultures are swearing in others:

The many meanings of the pinched fingers emoji https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51333661

 

 

File:Buffalo sentence 1 parse tree.svg

 

 

  • I absolutely love these old pics of mid 19th century wild west Saloons. I’m going to add many, many more at the bottom of this post:

Old West Saloons: Rare Photos Reveal the Vibrant Culture of Cowboy Saloons in the 19th Century https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/wild-west-saloon-photos/

 

 

 

  • Man, the president of Guyana CAME WITH FACTS, and was not to be tested. It’s never a good look when a developed nation tells a developing nation not to do all the things we did to become developed.

 

  • Speaking of Central or South America, back in the day it was real life Indiana Jones. THAT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!:

Historical Photos of Expeditions to Mesoamerica and South America in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/mesoamerica-south-america-expeditions-photos/

 

 

 

VEHICLES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MORE SALOONS

By Uncle FishbitsCategories: Newsletter