Tag: art

An analogy using photography that illuminates human interpersonal communication

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

image source

I mean no offense to anyone, not even the photographer, but this is an example of how bad normal photos were in the pre-cellphone camera days. It can serve as an analogy for how people communicate interpersonally before FIML. Before FIML, our communication will be restricted, unsophisticated, clunky, and though it may be expressive as in this photo, probably not what we meant or deeply wanted to say. You can see the people in this photo definitely do not do FIML: 1) because the technique had not been invented in 1970; and 2) because you can. It is my firm belief that when millions of people do FIML we will enter an age of really good communication, much better than today. Just as most people now having a good camera on them all the time has yielded a massive improvements in photography, so FIML will deeply improve the ways we speak and listen and feel about doing that. Cellphone cameras give us many opportunities to shoot good photos and lots of practice in how to make a good photo. FIML is not quite like a camera, but it is a kind of cerebral technology that results in partners communicating much better. When we understand the FIML technique and use it often, our communication will improve at least as much as photography has improved due to widespread use of cellphone cameras. ABN

Motorcycle Personal Protection Equipment — armor and abrasion — explained

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

The “EN” stands for “European Norm.” You might also notice armor listed as “CE”. The letters “CE” are the abbreviation of the French phrase “Conformité Européene” which literally means “European Conformity”. The term initially used was “EC Mark” and it was officially replaced by “CE Marking” in the Directive 93/68/EEC in 1993. “CE Marking” is now used in all EU official documents. All of this has to do with the European motorcycle safety standards. America has unofficially adopted these standards, but they are not required by law for street use. In contrast, to ride a motorcycle in Europe, you have to have protective apparel that meets these standards. Since April 2018, all motorcycle garments fall under the scope of the PPE regulation, which basically means that if it is sold as protective motorcycle apparel, it’s deemed to be personal protective equipment and should be tested at an official notified body under a strict set of standards to comply with the PPE regulation.

How are CE-standards and PPE related? Very much, actually. Motorcycle clothing (specifically jackets and pants/trousers, notwithstanding gloves, boots, and impact protectors) is grouped into what’s called Personal Protective Equipment – aka PPE. And like your kitchenware or electronics, PPE is governed by their own specific set of rules and regulations depending on how these products are used and how they are classified, and which group/subgroup they fall under. Here’s where it gets quite complicated. The set of standards that “govern” PPE – specifically motorcycle clothing – for leisure use is CE-standard EN 17092, which has now become a harmonized European standard.

Harmonized standard, meaning that it is a recognized throughout the EU as a tool that’s widely accepted for the certification of PPE motorcycle garments. That said, we’ll disclaimer here and say that this is intended to be a general overview of an incredibly complex subject that is both politically and economically charged. The purpose is to help riders understand that even with an arguably imperfect system in place, the CE-certification label/marking does mean something. It means that the garments have been tested to meet at least the minimum safety requirements, so you actually know what it’s intended use is. And that’s Personal Protective Equipment in the form of motorcycle clothing.

A major impetus behind standard EN 17092 coming into play is because of aforementioned reason: to make sure riders actually get something protective when shopping for motorcycle clothing without any prior knowledge of materials, constructions, or test methods. Just because it looks strong, doesn’t make it so in an emergency situation. And just because it feels sturdy, doesn’t make it appropriate to be worn at riding speeds. The application of the EN 17092 standard means that clothing that looks like protective motorcycle gear, actually is protective motorcycle gear!

link

Linked article provides a good, clear explanation of European safety standards for motorcycle garments. These standards are unofficially used in USA, which otherwise does not have its own standards. Article explains the reasoning behind the standards and how to determine what fits your needs. ABN

WRITER ALARMED WHEN COMPANY FIRES HIS 60-PERSON TEAM, REPLACES THEM ALL WITH AI

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Impostor Syndrome

The pace at which AI has damaged countless industries is whiplash-inducing. And no one understands this better than a writer who in 2023 was excelling at his copywriting job with a team of writers 60 people strong — and by the next year found himself the last human standing, arm in arm with AI imitators he was expected to drag along and get up to speed.

“They wanted to use AI to cut down on costs,” the writer told the BBC, using the pseudonym Benjamin Miller.

At first, the new workflow was this: his manager would feed a headline into an AI model, and it would generate an outline that the team were expected to work with, with Miller doing the final edits.

But that was just the beginning. Months later, management decided to cut humans out of the loop almost completely. Going forward, the AI model would generate articles in their entirety. Shoddy automation was here, and as a consequence, most of the writers lost their jobs. Miller kept his — though his role was going to be a bit different than before.

Now, he was tasked with polishing up the AI’s lackluster prose, and, to quote the BBC, “make it sound more human.” If only there was a way of doing that with, uh, human writers.

Dehumanizing Drudgery

Soon, Miller was the only human employee left on the team. It was down to him, and him alone, to fix up all the AI-generated articles.

“All of a sudden I was just doing everyone’s job,” Miller told the BBC. “Mostly, it was just about cleaning things up and making the writing sound less awkward, cutting out weirdly formal or over-enthusiastic language.”

“It was more editing than I had to do with human writers, but it was always the exact same kinds of edits,” he added. “The real problem was it was just so repetitive and boring. It started to feel like I was the robot.”

And so Miller found himself in the unenviable position of legitimizing the intrusion of AI into his very own job by making the extremely fallible models appear more capable than they actually are. This hasn’t been a fate exclusive to writers; in the service industry, for example, an army of underpaid, outsourced workers secretly worked behind the scenes to power the “AI” drive-thrus at the fast food chain Checkers.

link

I worked as a translator for many years. Gradually, computers took over and I moved on. I found it liberating to be replaced by machines. The other day I posted a song supposedly composed and played by AI. I think the song is pretty good and is a masterpiece of composition, employing almost every major lyrical and musical trope in its genre. It’s humorous, cleverly mocking, has many good lines—I think her name was Hailey. Where’d you run? The song was based on a Tik Tok clip with the pictured women making a reference to a sexual act. She was joking. The video was widely received with good humor. You can find more reactions at the link. As for the musicality of the tune, I play guitar but AI selected riffs ‘twice as better than I will’. Lots of people dump on music, especially country, because it’s just simple patterns. Steve Pinker has said as much. But AI is going to show Pinker that even his exalted thoughts and prose can be imitated. They too are just simple patterns, tropes. AI is revealing the core of Buddhism, itself the root of skepticism and stoicism, by forcing us see and feel the amalgam of experience and memory that is human ‘creativity’, its transience, emptiness and copyableness by a machine. ABN

Tired and Traumatized by this Country as Someone Born in China. Hope that you Foreigners can Understand the Life of Young People here is not like your Imagination

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

I’ve lived for more than two decades, but I still think my story that started from a nameless tiny town in China was like an unbelievable story filled with an unexplainable sense of asphyxiation. Maybe if you’re a foreigner, you may lost your Orientalist illusion of a mysterious Eastern Country by reading this text. It’s real life, the BLOODY life from the first view account of some really traumatized person.

I was born in an isolated town in China, where the society was semi-primitive (populated by several large clans in the surrounding villages). My parents were hyper-conservative and an absolute fit of Asian parent stereotypes: obsessed with over-education and hyper-paranoid. When I was young, I was forbidden to play with other kids in the community, for fear that I’d be run over by a car or be kidnapped. I’ve literally lost the critical period of learning how to deal with others, that’s probably why I never learned how to socialize properly.

Just like stereotyped, they invested a ton in my education. I started to learn English even before I could speak Mandarin properly (despite my mom trying to speak Mandarin at home to reduce the influence of dialect on me, my speaking is still heavily influenced by dialect speakers since my environment has barely a Mandarin speaker).

My very first “memory” of this world is about kindergarten. I never appreciated it. Instead, I thought that life in Kindergarten was the first torment for me in my life. I still remember the dystopian and surreal architecture, being a repulsive conglomerate of artificially, unnatural colored Kindergarten compounds (based on the false assumption that kids love highly saturated, colorful things) surrounded by faded Soviet-style buildings with aluminum chimneys. After nearly 20 years I revisited my kindergarten and the nearly unchanged architecture reminded me about the reproduction facility that runs Bokanovsky’s process in Huxley’s book Brave New World. I saw the lawn where kids massacred ants and bugs by various means for fun.

Continue reading “Tired and Traumatized by this Country as Someone Born in China. Hope that you Foreigners can Understand the Life of Young People here is not like your Imagination” →