Kickoff For December 9, 2024
Another weird and wonderful mix of articles this week. Mostly new(ish) ones which got in the way of me clearing out my backlog of older articles. That'll come soon enough.
With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:
AI art: The end of creativity or the start of a new movement? — Wherein Claudia Baxter looks at the titular question, and considers what creativity actually is and actually means.
From the article:
It all comes down to intent, this is "what truly distinguishes the creativity of the human and the machine", says du Sautoy. "No machine is driven to express itself creatively. It is prompted by the intention of the human."
Math Is Still Catching Up to the Mysterious Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan — Wherein we learn about the work of a brilliant mathematician who produced a prodigious amount of work before dying young, and the influence that work has on mathematicians tackling complex problems today.
From the article:
“Ramanujan is someone who can imagine things that someone like me cannot,” Mourtada said. But the development of new fields of mathematics has “given us the possibility to find new partition identities that Ramanujan could probably have found just by imagination.”Another weird and wonderful mix of articles this week. Mostly new(ish) ones which got in the way of me clearing out my backlog of older articles. That'll come soon enough.
With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:
AI art: The end of creativity or the start of a new movement? — Wherein Claudia Baxter looks at the titular question, and considers what creativity actually is and actually means.
From the article:
It all comes down to intent, this is "what truly distinguishes the creativity of the human and the machine", says du Sautoy. "No machine is driven to express itself creatively. It is prompted by the intention of the human."
Math Is Still Catching Up to the Mysterious Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan — Wherein we learn about the work of a brilliant mathematician who produced a prodigious amount of work before dying young, and the influence that work has on mathematicians tackling complex problems today.
From the article:
“Ramanujan is someone who can imagine things that someone like me cannot,” Mourtada said. But the development of new fields of mathematics has “given us the possibility to find new partition identities that Ramanujan could probably have found just by imagination.”
Meet the Italian ‘Fruit Detective’ Who Investigates Centuries-Old Paintings for Clues About Produce That Has Disappeared From the Kitchen Table — Wherein we learn about Isabella Dalla Ragione and her work with Renaissance paintings, why she's fascinated with the long-gone tree fruits depicted in those paintings, and how her work is helping cultivators bring some of those fruits back.
From the article:
The importance of agricultural biodiversity, Dalla Ragione says, can be explained with a very human metaphor—language. She likens biodiversity on a farm to expanding a vocabulary. Conventional agriculture, with its limited genetic range, relies on a narrow vocabulary: “Industrial agriculture created a few varieties that are very productive in very precise conditions, with a lot of chemicals and a lot of water. The new varieties may be bigger and have more consistent color, but they have very few genes—few words. Their genetic patrimony is very simple.
A Defense of Peer Review — Wherein Dan Elton looks at the history, uses, and abuses of the (admittedly flawed) process of peer review in scientific publishing and argues that instead of scrapping the process that scientists need to improve and augment it.
From the article:
The modern scientific enterprise is a complex system involving numerous interactions between the public, funding agencies, publishers, established researchers, and new researchers trying to move up through the ranks. While imperfect, at its best, peer review plays an important moderating role in many interactions within this system.
Should We Get Angry When Artists Sell Out? — Wherein Ted Giaoa looks at the history of musicians licensing their work to corporations, why they do it, and expresses the (I believe wrong) opinion that musicians shouldn't do that since it erodes the trust of their fanbase.
From the article:
Many managers now advised artists to put advertising placement ahead of all other ways of promoting songs—because a TV commercial launches a song more widely than radio airplay. In a total reversal of previous practices, the song starts out as an advertising jingle first, and turns into a hit later.
Post World War II Food — Wherein Megan E. Springate looks at some of the food created for consumption by American soldiers during the Second World War, and how that food was became a part of everyday life not just on the homefront but also further afield.
From the article:
Hormel estimates they shipped more than 100 million pounds of Spam during the war. Not all those who encountered it loved it – or even enjoyed it. Hormel kept a “scurrilous file” of hate mail from service members who were eating it three times a day. Others refused to even have it in their house decades after the war.
Meet the Italian ‘Fruit Detective’ Who Investigates Centuries-Old Paintings for Clues About Produce That Has Disappeared From the Kitchen Table — Wherein we learn about Isabella Dalla Ragione and her work with Renaissance paintings, why she's fascinated with the long-gone tree fruits depicted in those paintings, and how her work is helping cultivators bring some of those fruits back.
From the article:
The importance of agricultural biodiversity, Dalla Ragione says, can be explained with a very human metaphor—language. She likens biodiversity on a farm to expanding a vocabulary. Conventional agriculture, with its limited genetic range, relies on a narrow vocabulary: “Industrial agriculture created a few varieties that are very productive in very precise conditions, with a lot of chemicals and a lot of water. The new varieties may be bigger and have more consistent color, but they have very few genes—few words. Their genetic patrimony is very simple.
A Defense of Peer Review — Wherein Dan Elton looks at the history, uses, and abuses of the (admittedly flawed) process of peer review in scientific publishing and argues that instead of scrapping the process that scientists need to improve and augment it.
From the article:
The modern scientific enterprise is a complex system involving numerous interactions between the public, funding agencies, publishers, established researchers, and new researchers trying to move up through the ranks. While imperfect, at its best, peer review plays an important moderating role in many interactions within this system.
Should We Get Angry When Artists Sell Out? — Wherein Ted Giaoa looks at the history of musicians licensing their work to corporations, why they do it, and expresses the (I believe wrong) opinion that musicians shouldn't do that since it erodes the trust of their fanbase.
From the article:
Many managers now advised artists to put advertising placement ahead of all other ways of promoting songs—because a TV commercial launches a song more widely than radio airplay. In a total reversal of previous practices, the song starts out as an advertising jingle first, and turns into a hit later.
Post World War II Food — Wherein Megan E. Springate looks at some of the food created for consumption by American soldiers during the Second World War, and how that food was became a part of everyday life not just on the homefront but also further afield.
From the article:
Hormel estimates they shipped more than 100 million pounds of Spam during the war. Not all those who encountered it loved it – or even enjoyed it. Hormel kept a “scurrilous file” of hate mail from service members who were eating it three times a day. Others refused to even have it in their house decades after the war.