π₯ Discover this must-read post from Culture Latest π π Category: The Big Story,Culture,Culture / Digital Culture,AI as Americanizer π‘ Key idea: it all started, As these things often do, with Instagram advertising. βNo one tells you this if you're an immigrant, but accent discrimination is real,β a woman said in the video. Her own accent is a weak Eastern European one, so it took me a few playbacks to notice it.The ad was for BoldVoice, an AI-powered βdialect trainingβ app. A few clicks led me to Accent Oracle, which promised to guess my native language. After reading a long…
π Discover this trending post from Culture | The Guardian π π Category: Television,Television & radio,Culture,Tom Jones,Mary Berry π‘ Hereβs what youβll learn: In my own words: Tom Jones10.40pm, on BBC OneA beautiful and intimate trip down memory lane, as the Welshman watches, in his voice, smile-inducing snapshots from his life. From working-class life in Pontypridd to It's Not Unusual, his first TV show and a middle-aged comeback that led him to a knighthood β some highlights include his surprise success at a Glastonbury slot (βI didn't realize he had so much charm!β said one woman in the crowd), his…
π₯ Explore this insightful post from Culture Latest π π Category: The Big Story,Culture,Culture / Digital Culture,AI as Emotional Check β
Hereβs what youβll learn: Me: the founderUse Sol Kennedy To ask his assistant to read the letters his ex-wife sent him. After the couple split in 2020, Kennedy says he found their communication "difficult." He'd get an email, or a torrent of themβthings about their kids mixed with unrelated emotional traumaβand trying to respond would ruin his day. Kennedy, a blockchain technology founder and Silicon Valley investor, was undergoing treatment at the time. But outside of the weekly sessions,…
β¨ Read this awesome post from Culture Latest π π Category: The Big Story,Culture,Culture / Digital Culture,AI as Religion π‘ Main takeaway: To be human He longs for Sky Daddy. Something explains the inexplicable, someone deserves blame. No wonder then that in the ZIRP-fueled 2000s, when a new gospel of creationism spread, some people began to see technology as a kind of religion. On the eighth day, he created a mobile application that delivers our daily bread- That kind of thing.Startup founders and CEOs have become messianic figures. Giving alms has a new name: Effective altruism. Biohacking has become a…
β¨ Check out this trending post from Culture Latest π π Category: The Big Story,Culture,Culture / Digital Culture,AI as Kink β
Hereβs what youβll learn: I heard recently That a former friend was now in a strong relationship with Pedro Pascal. This was somewhat surprising, given that she's a lesbian and he's an AI chatbot, but what good is fluidity if not to explore untapped aspects of ourselves? Let's not be so strict about identities. I decided I wanted to participate in this.Thirty seconds of searching revealed a world of possibilities. There are dozens of companies that will let you…
π₯ Check out this insightful post from Culture Latest π π Category: The Big Story,Culture,Culture / Digital Culture,AI as Artist π Key idea: The AI ββkept getting things wrong. In one snapshot, Tiggy appears inexplicably exhausted. In another case, his back was very dry. When the director asked a show to give the back of Tiggy's head "frog-like skin," he superimposed the entire frog's face. The AI ββseems to resist photographing Tiggy naked, but Tiggy is not wearing clothes. When the director requested a "short, shirtless alien," he got an error message, possibly due to the tool's safeguards. βBecause I…
β¨ Read this insightful post from Culture | The Guardian π π Category: Television,Television & radio,Culture π Hereβs what youβll learn: TThe last time I reviewed something with Charlie Cooper as 'himself', he or she was visiting folklore hotspots around the British Isles as presenter of Myth Country. I was struck by the impossibility of pinpointing where his most famous creation, Curtan, in the brilliant and heartbreaking comedy βThis Country,β written by Charlie and his sister Daisy May, stopped, and the real Cooper began. Or, if you prefer, where the real Cooper stopped and Kurtan began. What were we to…
π Check out this insightful post from Culture | The Guardian π π Category: Food and drink books,Books,Anthony Bourdain,Culture,Food π Main takeaway: TThink Anthony Bourdain and a whole rush of TV memories come back. Here he is - in shows like Parts Unknown and No Reservations - prowling the backstreet corners and slum hideaways of parts of the world where celebrity chefs are too afraid to wander. In Beirut and Congo; tasting calamari and checking out graffiti in Tripoli; Gorging on rice noodles and cold bottles of beer with Barack Obama in Hanoi, Vietnam. One cycle follows another, and the…
π Explore this awesome post from Culture | The Guardian π π Category: WH Auden,Books,Culture,Poetry,Manuscripts and letters π‘ Key idea: The 'once in a century' discovery of a cache of lost letters reveals how English poet WH Auden developed a deep and lasting friendship with a Viennese sex worker and car mechanic after the latter burgled the home of the Funeral Blues author and was put on trial.York-born Auden, who was a prominent member of a generation of 1930s writers that also included Christopher Isherwood, Lewis MacNeice and Stephen Spender, described his unorthodox arrangement with the man he affectionately called…
π₯ Discover this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian π π Category: Books,Zadie Smith,Culture,Fiction β
Hereβs what youβll learn: How do you follow up a smash hit like White Teeth, which sold, as everyone now knows, for a six-figure sum while the author was still at university, and turned Zadie Smith into a literary superstar and multiculturalist at the age of 24? With a novel about a pot-smoking Chinese Jewish autograph hunter, of course, the perils of fame and the shallowness of popular culture come into play.The Autograph Man goes full throttle with three boys in the back of…
