Tag: Nature

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Links

Links for November 23-December 4, 2020

  • When AI sees a man, it thinks “official.” a woman? “smile”| “The AI services generally saw things human reviewers could also see in the photos. But they tended to notice different things about women and men, with women much more likely to be characterized by their appearance. Women lawmakers were often tagged with “girl” and “beauty.” The services had a tendency not to see women at all, failing to detect them more often than they failed to see men.” // Studies like this help to reveal the bias baked deep into the algorithms that are meant to be ‘impartial’, with this impartiality truly constituting a mathwashing of existent biases that are pernicious to 50% of society.
  • The ungentle joy of spider sex | “Spectacular though all this is, extreme sexual size dimorphism is rare even in spiders. “It’s an aberration,” Kuntner says. Even so, as he and Coddington describe in the Annual Review of Entomology , close examination of the evolutionary history of spiders indicates that eSSD has evolved at least 16 times, and in one major group some lineages have repeatedly lost it and regained it. The phenomenon is so intriguing it’s kept evolutionary biologists busy for decades. How and why did something so weird evolve?” // This is a truly wild, and detailed, discussion of the characteristics of spider evolution and intercourse.
  • Miley Cyrus-Plastic Hearts // Consider me shocked, but I’m really liking Cyrus’ newest album.
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Links Photography Roundup Writing

The Roundup for April 1-30, 2020 Edition

(Unhoused by Christopher Parsons)
(Unhoused by Christopher Parsons)

Welcome to this edition of The Roundup! Enjoy the collection of interesting, informative, and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee or grab yourself a drink, find a comfortable place, and relax.

Inspiring Quotation

When you give something, you’re in much greater control. But when you receive something, you’re so vulnerable.

I think the greatest gift you can ever give is an honest receiving of what a person has to offer.
– Fred Rogers

Great Photography Shots

Some of the photos for the 2020 All About Photos Awards are just terrific.

“Jump of the wildebeest” © Nicole Cambre. 5th Place, All About Photo Awards.
“Beyond the wall” © Francesco Pace Rizzi. Particular Merit Mention, All About Photo Awards
“The Wallace’s Flying Frog” © Chin Leong Teo. Particular Merit Mention, All About Photo Awards
“Step by Step” © Mustafa AbdulHadi. Particular Merit Mention, All About Photo Awards
Untitled © Yoni Blau. Particular Merit Mention, All About Photo Awards
Woman Mursi © Svetlin Yosifov. Particular Merit Mention, All About Photo Awards

Music I’m Digging

My April best-of playlist features some classic alternative and a lot of not-so-new rap and R&B. I guess this is the first full playlist I’ve created purely when in self-isolation?

Neat Podcast Episodes

  • Lawfare-Jim Baker in FISA Errors // Baker previously was responsible for, in part, reviewing the FISA applications put before the FISC. Recently, the DOJ IG found that 29 of 29 applications they reviewed had errors, including a seeming failure to document or prove the facts set out in the applications. Baker assessed the legal implications as well as the normative implications of the deficits, and the need to develop stronger managerial control over all future applications.
  • CBC Ideas—The Shakespeare Conspiracy // Using Shakespeare as a kind of distancing tool—he’s long dead and so unlikely to enliven contemporary political passions—Paul Budra explores how different scholars and public intellectuals have asserted who Shakespeare ’really was’ and the rationales behind such assertions. In an era where the West is increasingly concerned about the rise of conspiracies this espisode provides a range of productive tools to assess and critique new and emerging conspiracies.
  • NPR throughline—Buzzkill // Mosquitos are, without a doubt, responsible for more human deaths than anything else on earth. This superb short podcast goes through how mosquitos have been essential to empire, warfare, and changes to humans’ genetic makeup.

Good Reads

  • The Weirdly Enduring Appeal of Weird Al Yankovic // Anderson has done a spectacular job showcasing the beautiful humanity of Weird Al. In tracing his origin story, and explaining the care and time Al puts into his work, and the love he has for his fans, you really appreciate just how lovely a man he is. If anyone is a Tom Hanks for the geeks, it may end up being Weird Al.
  • There Is a Racial Divide in Speech-Recognition Systems, Researchers Say // It’s as though having engineers of particular ethnicities, building products that work for them, while also lacking employees of other ethnicities, has implications for developing technology. And the same is true of when developers do not include people with diverse socio-legal or socio-economic backgrounds.
  • The chemistry of cold-brew coffee is so hot right now // God bless the coffee-obsessed scientists who’ve taken a deep dive into the way that coffee beans respond to different extraction methods, as well as provide their own cold brew recipes. I can’t wait to see what research percolates out of this lab going forward!
  • What’s the Deal With False Burrs? // Having only recently managed to properly clean my home grinder, I was curious to learn a bit more about the differences in burr grinders. While I’m satisfied with my current grinder I can predict—based in owning a ‘faux’ burr grinder—that a Baratza Encore or Virtuoso is in my near future.
  • LIDAR: Peek Into The Future With iPad Pro // The recent release of the newest iPad Pro iteration has been met with a lot of yawns by reviewers. That makes a lot of sense, given the combination of the ongoing crisis and relatively minimal changes over the 2018 iPad Pro. The only really major new thing is a LIDAR system that is now part of the camera bump, but no mainstream reviewers have really assessed its capabilities. Fortunately the folks from Halide—a smartphone camera company—have dug into what LIDAR brings (and doesn’t bring) to the floor. Their review is helpful and, also, raises the question of whether professionals who do modelling should be consulted on the utility of these kinds of features, just as photographers—not gadget reviewers—should be asked deep and probing questions about the cameras that are integrated into smart devices these days.
  • The Mister Rogers No One Saw // Fred Rogers has had a number of films made about him and his life, but this essay by Jeanne Marie Laskas is different because it is so deeply personal about the relationships Fred had with those around him, and with the author. He inhabited a world that was just a little bit different than our own; his creativity was drawn from this place. But it was also a creativity linked with a deep ethic of work, where he focused on ensuring that his art was as perfect as possible. And left unstated in the article is one of the real testaments to his work: he would re- edit episodes, years after they had first been produced, when he found there were elements he was unhappy with or that no longer adequately represented what he had learned was a more right way of thinking about things. Also left unwritten in this piece was Fred’s belief that children we resilient and could be taught about the world; his shows dealt with issues like the Vietnam war and nuclear war in ways that were approachable to children who deserved to be involved in understanding their world, and always knowing they weren’t alone in it, and that it was perfectly ok to have feelings about it.
  • New York and Boston Pigeons Don’t Mix // The sheer size of pigeon populations–they extent across vast swathes of urbanized (and road connected) land–is pretty amazing. But, equally interesting, is how rural environments seem to, effectively, segregate populations from one another. It’s just another example of how genetically diverse groups can exist all around us, without our ever realizing the distinctiveness.

Cool Things

  • I Miss the Office // If you want office sounds for your work at home, then this site has you covered. (Also, if this is what you’re missing you’re kinda weird!)
  • How to Make Whipped Coffee // I am very curious to try and make this at some point in the future!
  • The Slow Fade of City Life // When the last two images are accurate, you know it’s a lot easier to get through the lack of the city.
  • Campari and Orange Juice // I have to say, this is my new favourite brunch drink. It tastes almost like grapefruit juice, though the real secret—not in this recipe—is to aerate the Campari and OJ in a blender before mixing in a cocktail shaker. The aeration really opens up the Campari and gives the whole drink a level of creaminess it otherwise wouldn’t have.
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Links Roundup

The Roundup for March 1-31, 2020 Edition

Title
(Curves by Christopher Parsons)

Welcome to this edition of The Roundup! Enjoy the collection of interesting, informative, and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee or grab yourself a drink, find a comfortable place, and relax.

We are living in the midst of particularly chaotic times. I won’t bore you with my thoughts on them—you have lots of your own, and there are millions of others you can avail yourself to—but, instead, offer a few questions that Neil Postman reflected on in his lecture, “The Surrender of Culture to Technology”:

  1. What is the problem to which technology claims to be a solution?
  2. Whose problem is it?
  3. What new problems will be created because of solving an old one?
  4. Which people and institutions will be most harmed?
  5. What changes in language are being promoted?
  6. What shifts in economic and political power are likely to result?
  7. What alternative media might be made from a technology?

It strikes me that, as a society and species, we may need to ask these questions frequently to better appreciate the implications of using different classes of technologies to mediate the spread and consequences of the disease current ravaging the world.

Inspiring Quotation

“The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.”
— Carl Sagan

Great Photography Shots

I was really struck by the modernist architecture that Bogdhan Anghel has captured in Budapest. I can say I’ve ever thought much of visiting that city, but now I’m starting to reconsider that position.
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Title
Title

Music I’m Digging

I’ve been home for a lot of this month, which has meant I’ve had lots of time to listen to music on my home-speakers which, honestly, has been pretty terrific. There’ve also been a ton of great albums that have come out, many of which contributed tracks to my favourite tracks of March 2020 list.

  • Bones UK—Bones-UK // The mix between the guitar riffs and vocals are absolutely delightful; this almost has a Garbage vibe at points, which almost immediately endears the band and album to me!
  • Dirty Projectors—Windows Open (EP) // As a longtime lover of all things Dirty Projectors, this short EP is everything I’ve come to expect from the band. Lovely music to relax to in these routinely anxious times.
  • Run The Jewels—Ooh LA LA (Single) // Classic RTJ sound, with the sounds of DJ Premier mixed throughout. This track bridges some of my favourite hip hop groups, and while it’s a little slower/relaxed than my favourite RTJ tracks, it’s a solid contribution to their ongoing corpus of work.
  • Jay Electronica—A Written Testimony // I hadn’t previously come across Jay Electronica but having now come across this album I’ve subsequently listened to everything I could find that he’s done. The mixing of his work alongside the sampling from Jay-Z is just terrific.

Neat Podcast Episodes

  • The Documentary-North Korea’s celebrity defectors // I had no idea that there was a subset of Korean society that put North Korean defectors on near-daily TV, where the defectors will talk about the hardships of living in North Korea. Of note, the exploitative nature of the episodes stood out, as did the like fabrication of many of the stories so that the persons presenting stories retain their jobs.
  • The Axe Files-Gerald Butts // Gerald Butts is the former chief advisor and strategist to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Axe does a great job unpacking some of the things that Butts has been involved in; beyond the usual discussion of his past, the discussion also outlines some of Butts’ assessment of the Trump era and its impacts on Canada/US relations.
  • 99% Invisible-This is Chance! (Redux) // This rebroadcast episode is a story about an earthquake that struck Anchorage in 1964. The earthquake was terrible, but what’s genuinely heartwarming is how the community came together. What perhaps struck me the most was how valuable journalists were in this period, and how they (like with first responders) run towards danger as opposed to race away from it.
  • Lawfare-How Do You Spy When The World Is Shut Down // The CIA is in a challenging situation given the country lockdowns occurring in the face of COVID–19: how can CIA officers engage with, or recruit, spies in an era where they can’t physically meet with people? On the whole the discussion was insightful, though the failure to recognize that the CIA’s Internet-based communications and modes of recruitment are unreliable in light of the agency’s loss of its China-based spies was a notable gap in the conversation.

Good Reads

  • How computational power—or its absence—shaped World War naval battles // In this special piece published by Ars Technica, Huang outlines the importance of naval plotting and how it transformed both fleet deployments and conflicts, as well as its roles in major battles in the 20th century. It’s notable because it both showcases the increasing value of intelligence collection to mobilize forces and resources around the world, and for appreciating the difference between tactical versus strategic situational awareness.
  • Why Birds Are the World’s Best Engineers // I loved this long, and in-depth, assessment of the novel characteristics of birds nests and how challenging it is for scientists to even determine how they develop their strength and integrity, let alone replicate such characteristics. Once more, we see that animals that surround us are ingenious in ways that was struggle to fully appreciate, let alone mimic.
  • Forget that tired-old coffee ring effect: “Whiskey webs” are the new hotness // Really cool research reveals that there are different chemical properties between American and non-American whiskeys, to the effect that the former manifest ‘webs’ that are unique to specific brands whereas the latter only do so when fatty composites are also added to proofed-down whiskey. While the authors talk about how this technique could be used too sniff out counterfeit whiskey, my mind went to something a bit different: in theory, it might be possible to determine if, say, a Japanese whiskey was just something that was rebadged Canadian whiskey or scotch.
  • Pablo Escobar’s Hippos Fill a Hole Left Since Ice Age Extinctions // I find it moderately amusing just how much attention Escobar’s hippos attract, but this this article was a novel way to consider how introducing large herbivores can restore ecological links that have been broken for thousands of years. While the authors of the underlying study are not calling for deliberate introductions–and recognize that humans may be less willing to introduce top predators into their environments, as well–the research showcases the prospective positive effects of animals taking root in environments far from home.
  • A 7-Eleven in Japan Might Close for a Day. Yes, That’s a Big Deal. // It’s stunning that attempting to take a single day off causes such consternation for a major franchise, and speaks to the failure of corporate executives to recognize that their franchises are owned and operated by humans and not robots. One set of facts that I thought was fascinating from the article was that, “[t]he government considers convenience stores part of the country’s infrastructure, like highways and sewers. They are expected to help promote regional tourism and to help with local policing by offering a safe place for people to flee to. Its stores can be called on to help distribute aid and supplies during a natural disaster.” It’s so foreign to me that convenience stores would be so important to society given how they operate in North America, and speaks to how subtle cultural differences can be between different countries with similar businesses.

Cool Things

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Links Roundup

The Roundup for December 1-31, 2019 Edition

Alone Amongst Ghosts by Christopher Parsons

Welcome to this edition of The Roundup! Enjoy the collection of interesting, informative, and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee or grab yourself a drink, find a comfortable place, and relax.

This month’s update is late, accounting for holidays and my generally re-thinking how to move forward (or not) with these kinds of posts. I find them really valuable, but the actual interface of using my current client (Ulysses) to draft elements of them is less than optimal. So expect some sort of changes as I muddle through how to improve workflow and/or consider the kinds of content that make the most sense to post.

Inspiring Quotation

Be intensely yourself. Don’t try to be outstanding; don’t try to be a success; don’t try to do pictures for others to look at—just please yourself.

  • Ralph Steiner

Great Photography Shots

Natalia Elena Massi’s photographs of Venice, flooded, are exquisite insofar as they are objectively well shot while, simultaneously, reminding us of the consequences of climate change. I dream of going to Venice to shoot photos at some point and her work only further inspires those dreams.

Music I’m Digging

I spent a lot of the month listening to my ‘Best of 2019’ playlist, and so my Songs I Liked in December playlist is a tad threadbare. That said, it’s more diverse in genre and styles than most monthly lists, though not a lot of the tracks made the grade to get onto my best of 2019 list.

  • Beck-Guero // I spent a lot of time re-listening to Beck’s corpus throughout December. I discovered that I really like his music: it’s moody, excitable,and catchy, and always evolving from album to album.
  • Little V.-Spoiler (Cyberpunk 2077) (Single) // Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most hyped video games for 2020, and if all of the music is as solid and genre-fitting as this track, then the ambiance for the game is going to be absolutely stellar.

Neat Podcast Episodes

  • 99% Invisible-Racoon Resistance // As a Torontonian I’m legally obligated to share this. Racoons are a big part of the city’s identity, and in recent years new organic garbage containers were (literally) rolled out that were designed such that racoons couldn’t get into them. Except that some racoons could! The good news is that racoons are not ‘social learners’ and, thus, those who can open the bins are unlikely to teach all the others. But with the sheer number of trash pandas in the city it’s almost a certainty that a number of them will naturally be smart enough and, thus, garbage will continue to litter our sidewalks and laneways.

Good Reads

  • America’s Dark History of Killing Its Own Troops With Cluster Munitions // Ismay’s longform piece on cluster munitions is not a happy article, nor does the reader leave with a sense that this deadly weapon is likely to be less used. His writing–and especially the tragedies associated with the use of these weapons–is poignant and painful. And yet it’s also critically important to read given the barbarity of cluster munitions and their deadly consequences to friends, foes, and civilians alike. No civilized nation should use these weapons and all which do use them cannot claim to respect the lives of civilians stuck in conflict situations.
  • Project DREAD: White House Veterans Helped Gulf Monarchy Build Secret Surveillance Unit // The failure or unwillingness of the principals, their deputies, or staff to acknowledge they created a surveillance system that has systematically been used to hunt down illegitimate targets—human rights defenders, civil society advocates, and the like—is disgusting. What’s worse is that democratizing these surveillance capabilities and justifying the means by which the program was orchestrated almost guarantees that American signals intelligence employees will continue to spread American surveillance know-how to the detriment of the world for a pay check, the consequences be damned (if even ever considered in the first place).
  • The War That Continues to Shape Russia, 25 Years Later // The combination of the (re)telling of the first Russia-Chechen War and photographs from the conflict serve as reminders of what it looks like when well-armed nation-states engage in fullscale destruction, the human costs, and the lingering political consequences of wars-now-past.
  • A New Kind of Spy: How China obtains American technological secrets // Bhattacharjee’s 2014 article on Chinese spying continues to strike me as memorable, and helpful in understanding how the Chinese government recruits agents to facilitate its technological objectives. Reading the piece helps to humanize why Chinese-Americans may spy for the Chinese government and, also, the breadth and significance of such activities for advancing China’s interests to the detriment of America’s own.
  • Below the Asphalt Lies the Beach: There is still much to learn from the radical legacy of critical theory // Benhabib’s essay showcasing how the history of European political philosophy over the past 60 years or so are in the common service of critique, and the role(s) of Habermasian political theory in both taking account of such critique whilst offering thoughts on how to proceed in a world of imperfect praxis, is an exciting consideration of political philosophy today. She mounts a considered defense of Habermas and, in particular, the claims that his work is overly Eurocentric. Her drawing a line between the need to seek emancipation while standing to confront and overcome the xenophobia, authoritarianism, and racism that is sweeping the world writ large is deeply grounded on the need for subjects like human rights to orient and ground critique. While some may oppose such universalism on the same grounds as they would reject the Habermasian project there is a danger: in doing so, not only might we do a disservice to the intellectual depth that undergirds the concept of human rights but, also, we run the risk of losing the core means by which we can (re)orient the world towards enabling the conditions of freedom itself.
  • Ghost ships, crop circles, and soft gold: A GPS mystery in Shanghai // This very curious article explores the recent problem of ships’ GPS transponders being significantly affected while transiting the Yangtze in China. Specifically, transponders are routinely misplacing the location of ships, sometimes with dangerous and serious implications. The cause, however, remains unknown: it could be a major step up in the (effective) electronic warfare capabilities of sand thieves who illegally dredge the river, and who seek to escape undetected, or could be the Chinese government itself testing electronic warfare capabilities on the shipping lane in preparation of potentially deploying it elsewhere in the region. Either way, threats such as this to critical infrastructure pose serious risks to safe navigation and, also, to the potential for largely civilian infrastructures to be potentially targeted by nation-state adversaries.
  • A Date I Still Think About // These beautiful stories of memorable and special dates speak to just how much joy exists in the world, and how it unexpectedly erupts into our lives. In an increasingly dark time, stories like this are a kind of nourishment for the soul.

Cool Things

  • The Deep Sea // This interactive website that showcases the sea life we know exists, and the depths at which it lives, is simple and spectacular.
  • 100 Great Works Of Dystopian Fiction // A pretty terrific listing of books that have defined the genre.
Categories
Links Roundup

The Roundup for January 21-31, 2018 Edition

(Smile! by Christopher Parsons)

Welcome to this edition of The Roundup! Enjoy the collection of interesting, informative, and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee or grab yourself a drink, find a comfortable place, and relax.

Inspiring Quotation

“To create one’s world … takes courage.”

— Georgia O’Keeffe

Great Photography Shots

I really appreciated the very different natures of the three shots, below, which were compiled by Mobiography as part of the 15 Superb Smartphone Photos of Urban Life challenge.

(‘Waiting for their pasta‘ by @zoyazen)
(‘PANCHIKAWATTE‘ by @the.r.a.b.b.i.t)
(‘Sunsets and silhouettes‘ by @tanvi2016)

Music I’m Digging

I’ve been listening to a bunch of different playlists over the past few weeks, with my favourites being:

  • Apple Music – The New Atlanta // There are some amazing artists coming out of Atlanta, with 21 Savage, 6LACK, and Takeoff probably being amongst my favourites at the moment.
  • Apple Music – The New New York // Part of the reason I wanted to listen to this list was because Atlanta is being seen as where a lot of the freshest talent is coming from; I wanted to be able to compare between the two cities and the new artists emerging out of them. If I’m honest, I’m preferring the New York playlist with artists like Thutmose, Princess Nokia, 6ix9ine, HoodCelebrityy, amongst others.
  • Jasmine Jones – 🍽 // I’ve been listening to a lot of Jasmine Jones’ playlists, with her playlist for dinner parties being a really nice background playlist with interesting and cool tracks that I haven’t ever found on an equivalent playlist. Really though, all of Jones’ playlists are worth checking out!
  • Songs I Liked in January 2019 // I didn’t actually favourite a huge number of new songs this month, which was actually a bit shocking when I ran my script. Still, I really do like the few tracks that did get a like!

Neat Podcast Episodes

  • Backstory – Nixon Beyond Watergate: A History of the Presidency Before the Scandal // I really didn’t know much about Nixon other than the scandal and so, as an example, had no idea that it was under his presidency that a lot of the United States’ environmental regulation began in force. Nor was I really aware of just how effective a political communicator he had been prior to the scandal itself. If you’re interested in filling in some historical blank spots then this is a good listen.
  • 99% Invisible – Gathering the Magic // I played Magic: The Gathering periodically during high school and university but always got out because I saw that it would demand a regular monetary investment to have the ‘best’ cards. That said, it was a lot of fun when I played. This episode goes through all of the challenges in putting together a game that is card-based and yet has a significant storyline behind it. Moreover, it talks about the politics of adding progressive cards, such as characters with non-CIS sexualities. That said, I think that the discussion of the game that fails to account for the financial rationale for putting out new decks on a regular basis papers over the fact that this is a game built to print money, and has for a long time. A more holistic accounting would have touched on the relationship between that business model and the progressive nature of that game itself (at least as presented by the persons interviewed in the episode).

Good Reads

  • The Route of a Text Message // I’ve never come across a simultaneously so-comprehensive and so-amusing explanation of a contemporary technology. Scott’s breakdown of every single element of typing a SMS message is remarkable; if only there were more such breakdowns, perhaps more social scientists would realize the importance of how policies and laws can affect protocols and code for good or ill.
  • Amazon Knows What You Buy. And It’s Building a Big Ad Business From It. // I had no idea how sophisticated Amazon’s advertising systems were, and that they were leveraging information given to the company, like type of car you own, purchases you make, size and composition of your family, and so on, to help third-parties target ads. This is yet another case of a company exploiting data in non-transparent ways that are, frankly, just creepy.
  • The Secret to Getting Top-Secret Secrets // Fagone’s article is somewhat mis-titled; it’s really a story about Jason Leopold, a journalist who’s been using the USA’s FOIA process to extract secret documents from the government to subsequently report on them. And the story of Leopold’s journalist and personal history is really, really interesting: he’s managed to turn his addictive personality from that which was destructive (e.g. drugs, alcohol) to positive (e.g. requesting documents from the government). Fagone effectively showcases the depths of Leopold’s character and, in the process, also raises baseline questions of why more journalists aren’t using Leopold’s method more rigorously given its successes.
  • Your Company’s Promotion Process is Broken // Mannan’s piece is a must-read for anyone who needs their regular reminder that gender and cultural backgrounds are factors managers absolutely must take into consideration when they’re evaluating employee performance. I found her honesty in presenting her own experiences, as well as how a manager productively engaged with her to improve how she wrote her own self-assessments, was refreshing and provided a good number of practical things to watch for when actually evaluating employees’ self-assessments.
  • The Secrets of Lyndon Johnson’s Archives // When I visited President Johnson’s ranch last year I’d never really known much about him. And, to be fair, I still know little about him. However, Caro’s article on his experiences in going through the president’s archives is deeply revealing of the limitations of other authors’ biographies of the president and the sheer amount of work Caro does in excavating the truth of his subjects. It’s a stunning article in just the process of Caro’s work, to say nothing of the actual insight he has in conducting interviews and gaining the trust of interview subjects.
  • The Sloth’s Busy Inner Life and Where Sloths Find These Branches, Their Family Trees Expand // These pair of articles from the NY Times’ science section are really, really interesting insofar as they explain why sloths in South and Central America risk the dangerous trip down from their trees to defecate (reason: to foster moths, which ultimately live and die in the sloth’s fur to facilitate the growth of moss that the sloth eats from its fur) and how trees in cacao plantations are helpful to facilitate survival of sloth populations. It’s incredible to realize how intricate these animals’ ecosystem has become and, also, worrying to realize how delicate these ecosystems really are.
  • 8 Tips For Incredible Urban Photography On iPhone // This is a terrific guide for thinking about how to see an urban environment and, also, how to compose and edit the shots that you take with your iPhone or any other camera that you happen to have with you. There’s lots of good guides like this, but it was the comprehensive nature of this piece that made me really like it.
  • I Tried to Block Amazon From My Life. It Was Impossible. // Using a customized VPN, Hill attempted to block any access to Amazon products and realized that while avoiding Amazon retail is challenging, but possible, it is almost impossible to avoid using the company’s Internet infrastructure. In the process, she disclosed in a clear and transparent way just how broad Amazon’s power has become, and that the company arguably operates as a quasi-monopoly in today’s digital economy.

Cool Things

Categories
Photography

End of Summer

End of Summer by Christopher Parsons. Image made with Olympus EM10ii and a Panasonic 25mm F1.7 at Sugar Beach on September 3, 2018 in Toronto. Edited in Apple Photos.
Categories
Photography

Momma

Photo made with Olympus EM10ii and 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 E at the Financial District May 27, 2018 in Toronto. Edited in Apple Photos and Polar.
Photo made with Olympus EM10ii and 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 E at the Financial District May 27, 2018 in Toronto. Edited in Apple Photos and Polar.
Categories
Photo Essay Photography Writing

Photowalk Challenge

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Natural Ladders, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons

There are a lot of different ways that you can challenge yourself to a photowalk. Use specific lenses or focal lengths or creative formats. Walk a predetermined distance and take a hundred photos from that site. Shoot black and white, mobile only, or focus on a concept, colour, or number.

I think I have a challenge that’s a bit different.

Recently I planned a photowalk to wander along a river in Toronto and, along the way, shoot some sculptures I’ve wanted to look at for the last several months. I got ready to head out, threw my camera over my shoulder, and walked out of my building and into a light drizzle of rain.

The low chances of rain had turned into the reality of rain, and it was only starting to come down harder. Without weather sealed gear there was no way I was going to be walking a few kilometres in the rain and shoot.

I quickly rerouted to an enclosed botanical garden that I live nearby. And pulled out my 12-42mm 3.5-5.6 II R kit lens and started at one end of the gardens and walked all the way to the other end.

Piles, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons
Sharp Symetry, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons
Unitlted, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons
Opening, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons
Revealed, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons

I then swapped out my lens for the Panasonic 25mm 1.7 I had with me, and proceeded to walk all the way through the gardens once more. The shots I got tended to be different from the zoom lens, and forced me to think about what was differently possible to shoot with the prime lens compared to the short zoom.

Rough Hills, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons
Valve, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons
Red Frame, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons
Untitled, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons
Apex, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons

Once I’d walked the length of the gardens once more I passed through it one last time, this time with my Olympus 40-150mm 4.0-5.6 R. This is definitely not the lens I’d normally use for this kind of shooting environment. And that meant that I was forced to really try with the lens and make it perform in a space in which I’m not comfortable using it.

Aligned, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons
Pals, 2018, Toronto by Christopher Parsons

What did I take away from this? That by walking the same space with different lenses possessing different characteristics I saw the space and photographic opportunities differently. It also was a useful exercise in just visualizing the possible: what shots was I willing and able to experiment with based on the lens at hand? What kind of shot — architecture or natural environment – captured my imagination with the different lenses?

The shots shown above are those that I was most happy with. There were, obviously, far more that got deleted (especially from the 40-150mm!). It was a fun opportunity, and a challenge I suspect I’ll revisit in the future.

Categories
Aside Writing

2018.2.8

I keep reading all kinds of amazing and exciting things about Bear, and after a conversation with Jeff Perry on Micro.blog, which started following his post ‘Using Bear as an Apple Notes Replacement’, I was convinced that it might be interesting to try switching to Bear…and then read the documentation for importing documents.

I have a lot of notes stored in Apple Notes. Thousands of them. Many of them have attachments. And Bear can’t automatically import them; instead, I’d have to manually export, import, and re-attach documents. While I’d like to try the application — support for real Markdown sounds exciting! — I just can’t afford to burn a week or more just moving files from one repo to another. I already spend that time moving from Evernote to Apple Notes!

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Plant Memories

Europeans citizens and their settlers have long treated the natural world as mere ‘stuff’ that can be manipulated to achieve our human-centric ends. It wasn’t that long ago that animals were regarded as dumb beasts without the ability to genuinely feel pain or have thoughts or memories. It turns out that our presumptions of plants are similarly undergoing radical reevaluations by some in the scientific community.

After training the plants, Gagliano withheld the light. When she next turned on the fans, she had switched them to the opposite branch of the Y shape. She wanted to see if the plants had learned to associate airflow with light, or its absence, strongly enough to react to the breeze, even if it was coming from a different direction, with no light as a signal. It worked. The plants that had been trained to associate the two stimuli grew toward the fan; the plants that had been taught to separate them grew away from the airflow.

“In that context, memory is actually not the interesting bit—of course you have memory, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to do the trick,” she says. “Memory is part of the learning process. But—who is doing the learning? What is actually happening? Who is it that is actually making the association between fan and light?”

It’s telling that Gagliano uses the word “who,” which many people would be unlikely to apply to plants. Even though they’re alive, we tend to think of plants as objects rather than dynamic, breathing, growing beings. We see them as mechanistic things that react to simple stimuli. But to some extent, that’s true of every type of life on Earth. Everything that lives is a bundle of chemicals and electrical signals in dialogue with the environment in which it exists. A memory, such as of the heat of summer on last year’s beach vacation, is a biochemical marker registered from a set of external inputs. A plant’s epigenetic memory, of the cold of winter months, on a fundamental level, is not so different.

It’s absolutely amazing to learn how much we do not know, and similarly striking that so many people actively work to prevent scientists from learning more about the natural world.