May 22, 2020
AI Shakespeare, Non-Existent Words, and SimRefinery: Lux Recommends #230
Welcome to Lux Recommends #230, this week’s edition of what we at Lux are reading and thinking about (want to receive this by email? Sign up here).
Articles
The Rogue Experimenters: “Community labs want to make everything from insulin to prostheses. Will traditional scientists accept their efforts?” — Sam
This AI Poet Mastered Rhythm, Rhyme, and Natural Language to Write Like Shakespeare: ‘“Deep-speare” crafted Shakespearean verse that most readers couldn’t distinguish from human-written poems’ — Sam
Welcome to the ‘Rabbit Hole’: Machine Drift: “Which of my tastes, thoughts, and habits are really mine, and which were put there by an algorithm?” — Alex
When SimCity got serious: the story of Maxis Business Simulations and SimRefinery — Sam
Inside the Flour Company Supplying America’s Sudden Baking Obsession: “How King Arthur Flour found itself in the unlikely crosshairs of a pandemic” — Sam
Lockdown effects: Mt. Everest visible from Kathmandu after decades as pollution level goes down — Adam K
On the Washington National Cathedral there’s a well-hidden, but very official, carving of Darth Vader — Adam K
Books
Timelike Infinity by Stephen Baxter: “First there were good times: humankind reached glorious heights, even immortality. Then there were bad times: Earth was occupied by the faceless, brutal Qax. Immortality drugs were confiscated, the human spirit crushed. Earth became a vast factory for alien foodstuffs. Into this new dark age appears the end of a tunnel through time.” — Sam
Movies
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: “Based on the true story of a real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and journalist Lloyd Vogel.” — Adam K
Online Toys
This Word Does Not Exist: Randomly generates new words and their definitions, based on GPT-2. — Sam
Videos
Wave art installation in Seoul — Adam K
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