https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL9iJJICOLc And now for a good use of AI. The UK-based telecom company O2 has developed a chatbot (“named Daisy”) that performs a noble task. Impersonating an elderly grandmother, the chatbot engages with internet fraudsters and then systematically frustrates them...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhTS_RSQxw4 It’s Friday, which means that tonight, many of us will sit down to watch a movie with our family, our friends, our significant other, or — for some cinephiles, best of all — by ourselves. If you haven’t yet...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dK05vRrQEE Music is often described as the most abstract of all the arts, and arguably the least visual as well. But these qualities, which seem so basic to the nature of the form, have been challenged for at least three...
As you’ve probably noticed if you’re a regular reader of this site, we’re big fans of book illustration, particularly that from the form’s golden age—the late 18th and 19th century—before photography took over as the dominant visual medium. But while...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt6WQYtefXA We made sand think: this phrase is used from time to time to evoke the particular technological wonders of our age, especially since artificial intelligence seems to be back on the slate of possibilities. While there would be no...
Charlie Chaplin started appearing in his first films in 1914—40 films, to be precise—and, by 1915, the United States had a major case of “Chaplinitis.” Chaplin mustaches were suddenly popping up everywhere–as were Chaplin imitators and Chaplin look-alike contests. A young Bob Hope...
We can all remember seeing images of medieval Europeans wearing pointy shoes, but most of us have paid scant attention to the shoes themselves. That may be for the best, since the more we dwell on one fact of life...
Image by Kenneth Zirkel, via Wikimedia Commons There have been many theories of how human history works. Some, like German thinker G.W.F. Hegel, have thought of progress as inevitable. Others have embraced a more static view, full of “Great Men” and...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jgev_YGl44 One would count neither Elon Musk nor Neil deGrasse Tyson among the most reserved public figures of the twenty-first century. Given the efforts Musk has been making to push into the business of outer space, which has long been...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJtiPRDIqtI Not everyone on August 1, 1981 had a VCR at their disposal, and not everybody stayed up until midnight. But fortunately at least one person did, in order to tape the first two hours of a new cable channel...
