Category: Art

A shark from the library

Libraries have been one of life’s joys for me.

The first one I remember was at Cleveland Elementary School. From the beginning, I appreciated the calm environment and, above all, access at will to a capacious body of material. All through life, I have cherished the approach of librarians, who I have never found to question me about why I want to know something. Teachers could be less tolerant: I remember one from grade 3-4 objecting to me checking out both a book on electron micrography and a Tintin comic, as though anyone interested in the former ought to be ‘beyond’ the latter.

At UBC, I was most often at the desks along the huge glass front wall of Koerner library – though campus offered several appealing alternatives. One section of the old Main Library stacks seemed designed by naval architects, all narrow ladders and tight bounded spaces, with some hidden study rooms which could be accessed only by indirect paths.

Oxford of course was a paradise of libraries. I would do circuits where I read and worked in one place for about 45 minutes before moving to the next, from the Wadham College library to Blackwell’s books outside to the Social Sciences Library or a coffee shop or the Codrington Library or the Bodelian.

Yesterday I was walking home in the snow along Bloor and Yonge street and peeked in to the Toronto Reference Library. On the ground floor is a Digital Innovation Hub which used to house the Asquith custom printing press, where we made the paper copies of the U of T fossil fuel divestment brief. This time I was admiring their collection of 3D prints, and was surprised to learn that a shark with an articulated spine could be printed that way, rather than in parts to be assembled.

With an hour left before the library closed, the librarian queued up a shark for me at a size small enough to print, and it has the same satisfying and implausible-seeming articulation.

I have been feeling excessively confined lately. With snow, ice, and salt on everything it’s no time for cycling, and it creates a kind of cabin fever to only see work and home. I am resolved to spend more time at the Toronto Reference Library as an alternative.

Open Process Manifesto

This document codifies and expresses some of my thinking on cooperation on complex problems, for the sake of the benefit of humanity and nature: Open Process Manifesto

It is based on the recognition of our universal fallibility, need to be comprehended, and to be able to share out tasks between people across space and time. To achieve those purposes, we need to be open about our reasoning and evidence, because that’s the way to treat others as intelligent partners who may be able to support the same cause through methods totally unknown and unavailable to you, across the world or centuries in the future.

Our entry into Lyra’s world

I have long considered the opening chapter of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass to be a masterful lesson in worldbuilding in speculative fiction. He does a magnificent job of introducing a subtly different alternative world, without ever relying on crude exposition or just telling the reader that some things are different and what they are. The biggest obvious difference with our world — that the people in hers have daemons — is revealed unobtrusively and naturally from the perspective of characters who consider it normal. We learn everything crucial about Lyra’s bond with Pantalaimon just from the character of their conversation in this short timespan.

Yesterday, during a discussion with ChatGPT about Lyra Bellaqua and Sherlock Holmes, I had the assisted realization that what the chapter also achieves, even more importantly, is to establish Lyra’s character through the same method of compelling and unobtrusive narrative storytelling. When we meet her, she is conniving to sneak in to the exclusive Retiring Room for Jordan College scholars, which is forbidden to her, driven by her consuming curiosity about what happens there. Right away, we see that she is inquisitive and bold, willing to defy the rules to learn, and unwilling to defer to stuffy authority. Then, when she observes the Master’s attempt to poison Lord Asriel’s wine, her choice is to intervene: revealing the fundamental moral framework that drives her. Even at a risk to herself, she will make a substantial effort to save someone else, as later revealed at a much grander scale with her Bolvangar rescue.

It is said that all speculative fiction is really a commentary on the present, and Pullman’s is sharp and relevant. The Golden Compass reveals the monstrosities that emerge from the unchecked power of the heartless, and presents selfless individual moral courage as a response. Comfortable and exclusionary systems of power which are free from outside oversight drift into seeing right and wrong in terms of their self-interest, if they even persist with thinking about morality at all. Lyra reminds us that, while it is never safe, we always have the choice to resist and to assert a standard of morality based on respect for the individual and repugnance at their exploitation and sacrifice for outside agendas. The arc of that demonstration all begins with the insight into her mind provided by that opening chapter, and that’s why it stands out as some of the strongest worldbuilding in fiction.

Notebook LM on this blog for 2023 and 2024

I have been experimenting with Google’s NotebookLM tool, and I must say it has some uncanny capabilities. The one I have seen most discussed in the nerd press is the ability to create an automatic podcast with synthetic hosts and any material which you provide.

I tried giving it my last two years of blog content, and having it generate an audio overview with no additional prompts. The results are pretty thought-provoking.

AI image generation and the credibility of photos

When AI-assisted photo manipulation is easy to do and hard to detect, the credibility of photos as evidence is diminished:

No one on Earth today has ever lived in a world where photographs were not the linchpin of social consensus — for as long as any of us has been here, photographs proved something happened. Consider all the ways in which the assumed veracity of a photograph has, previously, validated the truth of your experiences. The preexisting ding in the fender of your rental car. The leak in your ceiling. The arrival of a package. An actual, non-AI-generated cockroach in your takeout. When wildfires encroach upon your residential neighborhood, how do you communicate to friends and acquaintances the thickness of the smoke outside?

…

For the most part, the average image created by these AI tools will, in and of itself, be pretty harmless — an extra tree in a backdrop, an alligator in a pizzeria, a silly costume interposed over a cat. In aggregate, the deluge upends how we treat the concept of the photo entirely, and that in itself has tremendous repercussions. Consider, for instance, that the last decade has seen extraordinary social upheaval in the United States sparked by grainy videos of police brutality. Where the authorities obscured or concealed reality, these videos told the truth.

Perhaps we will see a backlash against the trend where every camera is also a computer that tweaks the image to ‘improve’ it. For example, there could be cameras that generate a hash from the unedited image and retains it, allowing any subsequent manipulation to be identified.

Related:

Toronto’s Neon Ride

Toronto’s Neon Ride group bike ride is great fun. It leaves weekly from Nathan Philips Square, beside city hall, at 7:30pm on Thursdays. Their Facebook page is the best place to look for photos and updates.

After getting hooked again on cycling during my Vancouver visit during the summer, I got a Bikeshare Toronto pass in September and did most of the Neon Rides until I got a job in December and was too busy.

This animation shows the 9 rides I have done with them, including whatever I tacked on before and after the formal ride from Nathan Philips to Nathan Philips:

The ride is much reminiscent of Critical Mass at its best. There is an able crew that leads, corks streets when the mass is crossing, and sweeps at the back for stragglers. All the lights and boomboxes make it energetic and fun. Quite notably – and compared with Critical Mass – the fun and colour of the Neon Ride virtually always produces a positive reaction from passers-by. It’s also a large enough group that you can ride in the middle while giving little thought to cars. Much recommended.

There is also a fine community within the event. As it is assembling and at the frequent pit stops, I have had great conversations and enjoyed the feeling of community and group spirit.

Enjoying Toronto’s Bike Share in the summer

On Wednesday evening, I did a 55km bike ride: east from the U of T campus across the Don into the beaches area, down to the southern tip of Tommy Thomson Park, then along the waterfront for a picnic dinner at a Queen’s Quay grocery store, and up the hill to The Perch.

These animations show the ride in yellow as well as all my previous walks and rides since 2020 in green: