1674 – Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society by Daniel S Milo (2019 book)

In this spirited and irreverent critique of Darwin’s long hold over our imagination, a distinguished philosopher of science makes the case that, in culture as well as nature, not only the fittest survive: the world is full of the “good enough” that persist too.

Why is the genome of a salamander forty times larger than that of a human? Why does the avocado tree produce a million flowers and only a hundred fruits? Why, in short, is there so much waste in nature? In this lively and wide-ranging meditation on the curious accidents and unexpected detours on the path of life, Daniel Milo argues that we ask these questions because we’ve embraced a faulty conception of how evolution–and human society–really works.

Good Enough offers a vigorous critique of the quasi-monopoly that Darwin’s concept of natural selection has on our idea of the natural world. Darwinism excels in accounting for the evolution of traits, but it does not explain their excess in size and number. Many traits far exceed the optimal configuration to do the job, and yet the maintenance of this extra baggage does not prevent species from thriving for millions of years. Milo aims to give the messy side of nature its due–to stand up for the wasteful and inefficient organisms that nevertheless survive and multiply.

But he does not stop at the border between evolutionary theory and its social consequences. He argues provocatively that the theory of evolution through natural selection has acquired the trappings of an ethical system. Optimization, competitiveness, and innovation have become the watchwords of Western societies, yet their role in human lives–as in the rest of nature–is dangerously overrated. Imperfection is not just good enough: it may at times be essential to survival. 

Read Excerpt: Natural Selection Can’t Explain This Bugs Bizzare Horn

1672 – Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World by Jörg Matthias Determann (2020 book)

The Muslim world is not commonly associated with science fiction. Religion and repression have often been blamed for a perceived lack of creativity, imagination and future-oriented thought. However, even the most authoritarian Muslim-majority countries have produced highly imaginative accounts on one of the frontiers of knowledge: astrobiology, or the study of life in the universe.

This book argues that the Islamic tradition has been generally supportive of conceptions of extra-terrestrial life, and in this engaging account, Jörg Matthias Determann provides a survey of Arabic, Bengali, Malay, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu texts and films, to show how scientists and artists in and from Muslim-majority countries have been at the forefront of the exciting search. Determann takes us to little-known dimensions of Muslim culture and religion, such as wildly popular adaptations of Star Wars and mysterious movements centred on UFOs. Repression is shown to have helped science fiction more than hurt it, with censorship encouraging authors to disguise criticism of contemporary politics by setting plots in future times and on distant planets. The book will be insightful for anyone looking to explore the science, culture and politics of the Muslim world and asks what the discovery of extra-terrestrial life would mean for one of the greatest faiths.

goodreads

Jörg Matthias Determann TW / academia.edu

1654 – You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It’s Making the World a Weirder Place by Janelle Shane (book 2019)

Hardcover, 272 pages

Published November 5th 2019 by Voracious

ISBN0316525243 (ISBN13: 9780316525244)

From Goodreads:

AS HEARD ON NPR’S “SCIENCE FRIDAY”Discover the book that Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Daniel Pink, and Adam Grant want you to read this year, an “accessible, informative, and hilarious” introduction to the weird and wonderful world of artificial intelligence (Ryan North).
“You look like a thing and I love you” is one of the best pickup lines ever… according to an artificial intelligence trained by scientist Janelle Shane, creator of the popular blog AI Weirdness. She creates silly AIs that learn how to name paint colors, create the best recipes, and even flirt (badly) with humans–all to understand the technology that governs so much of our daily lives.
We rely on AI every day for recommendations, for translations, and to put cat ears on our selfie videos. We also trust AI with matters of life and death, on the road and in our hospitals. But how smart is AI really… and how does it solve problems, understand humans, and even drive self-driving cars?
Shane delivers the answers to every AI question you’ve ever asked, and some you definitely haven’t. Like, how can a computer design the perfect sandwich? What does robot-generated Harry Potter fan-fiction look like? And is the world’s best Halloween costume really “Vampire Hog Bride”?
In this smart, often hilarious introduction to the most interesting science of our time, Shane shows how these programs learn, fail, and adapt–and how they reflect the best and worst of humanity.

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You is the perfect book for anyone curious about what the robots in our lives are thinking.
“I can’t think of a better way to learn about artificial intelligence, and I’ve never had so much fun along the way.” – Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals

Janelle Shane’s humor blog, weirdness.com, looks at, as she tells it, “the strange side of artificial intelligence.” Her upcoming book, You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How AI Works and Why It’s Making the World a Weirder Place, uses cartoons and humorous pop-culture experiments to look inside the minds of the algorithms that run our world, making artificial intelligence and machine learning both accessible and entertaining.

According to Shane, she has only made a neural network-written recipe once — and discovered that horseradish brownies are about as terrible as you might imagine.

1640 – Tales from the Loop (TV Series 2020-)

timespace coordinates: 1955 > early 1980s Mercer, Ohio. Mercer is home to the Mercer Center for Experimental Physics, an underground facility known as the Loop. It is there where researchers attempt to “make the impossible possible”.

Tales from the Loop is an American science fiction drama web television series based on the art book of the same name by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag (536). The series premiered on Amazon Prime Video on April 3, 2020. All eight episodes of the first season were released simultaneously. (wiki)

David Baird from the B.C. Catholic characterizes the series as “a set of loosely interrelated meditations upon ephemerality, the impact of technology, and human vulnerability infused with a mild science fiction savour” and considers it “a beguiling fusion of forward-looking nostalgia”.

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

1611

Italian photographer Massimo Listri captures some of the most wondrous and bizarre collections gathered throughout history in Cabinet of Curiosities, a new XXL edition from Taschen. (via colossal)

1610

The work of Pierre Richard (1802-1879)

The artist book “Grimoires illuminés”, presents a work unknown to this day, of a peasant from Lorraine, France, who, in the middle of the 19th century, conjured his terrors and his illuminations with a masterful creation, partly produced in Moselle in asylum seclusion.

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There are 3 “grimoires”, or magic books, known. These were acquired in the 1990s by a bookstore in Metz, then sold to collectors in 2010. These grimoires, with around 750 plates, are made up of drawings, monograms , decorated circles, scenes of the Passion, alphabets and other cabalistic writings. A publication of Editions Artulis published by Halle Saint Pierre is available in a limited edition in their bookstore.

Anonymous Works

1608 – District 9 (2009)

timespace coordinates: The film is partially presented in a found footage format by featuring fictional interviews, news footage, and video from surveillance cameras. The story, which explores themes of humanity, xenophobia and social segregation, begins in an alternate 1982, when an alien spaceship appears over Johannesburg, South Africa. When a population of sick and malnourished insectoid aliens are discovered on the ship, the South African government confines them to an internment camp called District 9. Twenty years later, during the government’s relocation of the aliens to another camp, one of the confined aliens named Christopher Johnson, who is about to try to escape from Earth with his son and return home, crosses paths with a bureaucrat leading the relocation named Wikus van der Merwe. The title and premise of District 9 were inspired by events in Cape Town‘s District Six, during the apartheid era.

District 9 is a 2009 science fiction action film directed by Neill Blomkamp in his feature film debut. It is a co-production of New Zealand, the United States and South Africa. The film stars Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, and David James, and was adapted from Blomkamp’s 2006 short film Alive in Joburg. (wiki)

imdb  /   rt   /  Future   /  the-art-of-district-9

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Alive in Joburg (2005)

timespace coordinates: In 1990, Johannesburg is home to a number of extraterrestrial refugees, whose large spaceships (estimated to be nearly one kilometre in length) can be seen hovering above the city. When the visitors first arrived, the human population was enamored with, among other aspects, the aliens’ advanced “bio-suits”, and welcomed them with open arms. However, the aliens later began moving into other areas of the city, committing crimes in order to survive and frequently clashing with police. Playing as a documentary, the film continues with interviews and footage taken from handheld cameras, which highlight the growing tension between Earth’s civilian population and the extraterrestrial visitors.

According to individuals “interviewed” in the film, the aliens were captive labour (slaves or indentured servants), forced to live in “conditions that were not good” and had escaped to Earth. Because the film takes place in 1990, while apartheid was still in effect in South Africa, the aliens were forced to live amongst the already-oppressed black population, causing conflict with them as well as the non-white and white populations.

All of the interview statements which do not explicitly mention extraterrestrials were taken from authentic interviews with many South Africans who had been asked their opinions of Zimbabwean refugees. (wiki)

imdb