EP. 35: LIQUID METAL AI SEA SLUGS

No slugs were (hopefully) harmed in the making of sentient metals

This episode was so chock-block filled with visual references that we felt we’d be doing you a disservice without a visual accompaniment to our regularly-scheduled hyperactive musing.

For kicks, here's the mix we're listening to while we compose this. Sorry y'all, we are millennial AF!

if this doesn’t make you bop and shake your booty, we don’t know what to tell you

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First things first: some faxlore for you.

Fax machines are bizarre. One part printer, one part phone, one part experimental musical instrument—in exactly what space did fax machines present themselves as a solution? It’s a bit hard to determine. Regardless, true to the human condition, people found a way to bunk off on fax machines and create what could be considered a visually noisy, sort-of-analog-in-a-way precursor to memes. The online journal, re-coding everyday technology, provides an introduction to the world of Faxlore. And if you image search the term on Google, you’ll find even more examples. The surviving faxes we came across mostly revolved around skewering workplace culture (often with pointed messages).

we’ve always been at odds with capitalism haven’t we

Figma’s State of Designer Report—but is it really tho?

Figma’s suspiciously cute and child-like illustrations!

Our red flags went into high alert as we perused through this odd document Figma released called the “State of the Designer report.” The idea of the “report” is that it is taking the pulse of Figma’s “community” (i.e. customers) and offering insights as to the state of their work/life/etc. What did they find? Well, again this “report” seems to have “found” that—wow!—people love remote working and working in teams using collaborative software! Can you believe it? Inconsistencies and sketchy practices abound in the methodology (for instance—the study omits the USA entirely and presents results from the rest of the world, with a relatively small sample size—but why?).

Overall, the interesting thing with this was getting a peek into Figma’s courting of—not designers, though they claim to be such a designer-friendly business—but of management. The document’s insights and takeaways are all these kind of like management-friendly nuggets to help downsize and disempower designers while still squeezing the maximum amount of labor value from them. A great reminder that none of these companies (as cute and friendly as they may present themselves) are your friend.

Finally, something POSITIVE (??) around AI: AI learns from sea slugs. (??)

fig. 1: a sea slug

One of the issues that tends to plague AI (though for how much longer, that’s TBD) is something called the “stability-plasticity dilemma.” What tends to occur is that when AI regenerates an output, it can overwrite information that might actually be beneficial or desired for the output. Teaching AI the two elements of habituation and sensitization can potentially make for a smarter AI, according to this article published by Purdue University. And perhaps if these elements can be trained into hardware that works with AI software—in the case of this testing, nickel oxide (a quantum material), then AI experiments could be conducted more efficiently. Does this mean someday we will have sentient metal? Is that what this is about?! Can’t wait for the future where every metal object can reason with the power of AI sea slugs. That’s an AI future we can get behind! Or in front of? That we are looking forward to? That we accept as inevitable, probably?

Nickel oxide being stimulated into mimicing forms of learning observed in the sea slug. This shit goes crazy

All Spectacle

Reese’s Pieces x Heath Ceramics??

In case you missed it, Kim Kardashian is one of the three cover models for 2023’s GQ Man of the Year. We get analytical with the portrayal of Kim K as 80s power lunch CEO but brought into the no-nonsense realm of 2023. What does it mean to see mega-celebs embrace deep unreality, fantasy, plastic, and junkfood? Is this another example of the twisting of culture away from self-improvement (through nutrition, denial, exercise, natural things) into a model of actualization based on excess (fantasy, hedonism, etc)? [Helen loves this tie choice (so strong).]

you can eat your cake, have it too, and on top of that, eat cheetos

Yet another bad dating app featured on TechCrunch ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Have you heard of the dating app Hatched? Probably not, because it’s ~gross~. Somehow they managed to get a write-up in TechCrunch—though write-up may be a strong way of putting it—it felt like they literally just printed the press release. Anyway—so, naturally we took the opportunity to poach these eggs. Or crack them? The egg metaphors running throughout the app concept get so out of hand, you honestly might lose your eggs—and then some.

How about…no

And that’s the visual recap! Ep. 36 is almost ready to go, where we have a special guest accompany us on yet another random conversation across three states. ~Stay tuned!~