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Celerity

Celerity's Journal
Celerity's Journal
September 7, 2023

Anil Seth on why our senses are fine-tuned for utility, not for 'reality'



vimeo.com/436178171

https://aeon.co/videos/anil-seth-on-why-our-senses-are-fine-tuned-for-utility-not-for-reality

It’s easy to mistake our conscious experience for an ongoing, accurate account of reality. After all, the information we recover from our senses is, of course, the only window we’ll ever have into the outside world. And for most people most of the time, our perception certainly feels real. But the notion that our senses capture an objective external reality can be dispelled by considering something as fundamental as colour, which can be culturally influenced and, even within a single culture, leave the population split between seeing the same picture of a dress as black-and-blue or white-and-gold.

In this instalment from Aeon’s In Sight series, Anil Seth, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex in the UK, puts our imperfect relationship with reality in perspective. In conversation with Nigel Warburton, consultant senior editor at Aeon+Psyche, Seth argues that it’s not just that our perceptions provide flawed accounts of the outside world, but that our brains aren’t in the business of recovering the outside world to begin with. So it’s more accurate to think of our conscious experience as a series of predictions that we’re incessantly and subconsciously fine-tuning – a world we build from the inside out, rather than the outside in.

For more from Anil Seth, read his Aeon essay on the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness.
September 7, 2023

The sea was never blue



The Greek colour experience was made of movement and shimmer. Can we ever glimpse what they saw when gazing out to sea?

https://aeon.co/essays/can-we-hope-to-understand-how-the-greeks-saw-their-world





Homer used two adjectives to describe aspects of the colour blue: kuaneos, to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-grey’, notably used in Athena’s epithet glaukopis, her ‘grey-gleaming eyes’. He describes the sky as big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity). The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ (polios) and ‘blue-grey’ (glaukos) to deep blue and almost black (kuaneos, melas). The sea in its calm expanse is said to be ‘pansy-like’ (ioeides), ‘wine-like’ (oinops), or purple (porphureos). But whether sea or sky, it is never just ‘blue’. In fact, within the entirety of ancient Greek literature you cannot find a single pure blue sea or sky.

Yellow, too, seems strangely absent from the Greek lexicon. The simple word xanthos covers the most various shades of yellow, from the shining blond hair of the gods, to amber, to the reddish blaze of fire. Chloros, since it’s related to chloe (grass), suggests the colour green but can also itself convey a vivid yellow, like honey. The ancient Greek experience of colour does not seem to match our own. In a well-known aphorism, Friedrich Nietzsche captures the strangeness of the Greek colour vocabulary:



How is this possible? Did the Greeks really see the colours of the world differently from the way we do?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, too, observed these features of Greek chromatic vision. The versatility of xanthos and chloros led him to infer a peculiar fluidity of Greek colour vocabulary. The Greeks, he said, were not interested in defining the different hues. Goethe underpinned his judgment through a careful examination of the theories on vision and colours elaborated by the Greek philosophers, such as Empedocles, Plato and Aristotle, who attributed an active role to the visual organ, equipped with light coming out of the eye and interacting with daylight so as to generate the complete range of colours.



Goethe also noted that ancient colour theorists tended to derive colours from a mixture of black and white, which are placed on the two opposite poles of light and dark, and yet are still called ‘colours’. The ancient conception of black and white as colours – often primary colours – is remarkable when compared with Isaac Newton’s experiments on the decomposition of light by refraction through a prism. The common view today is that white light is colourless and arises from the sum of all the hues of the spectrum, whereas black is its absence.

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September 7, 2023

Russia is winning the information war (outside of the Western nations)



In Europe the struggle by Ukraine has largely been seen as a defence of universal norms. But around the world that view is far from universal.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/russia-is-winning-the-information-war


Keeping his distance: the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa (right), at a press conference in Kyiv in June with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy

https://www.socialeurope.eu/russia-is-winning-the-information-war

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February last year, there was a spike in articles praising the bravery of soldiers in Ukraine and their fight to preserve democracy. It appeared that the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts were falling short, as the public in the West saw Russian territorial claims as absurd. The United States and the European Union dismissed the clumsy and slow messaging from Moscow. Since then, many commentators and even political analysts have argued that Ukraine is winning the information war, while Russia only continues to lose support. Perhaps this claim is valid for Western countries.

But a recurrent mistake is to treat narratives popular in the West as universal, as true for the whole world. The magnitude of posts, articles and information written in English in the ‘social media’ applications most prominent in the West—Instagram, Facebook, X—obscures the reality that about two-thirds of the global population live in countries that are neutral or Russian-leaning on the war. The Kremlin’s messages have never been addressed to the general public in the West. Russia tailors its propaganda to specific demographics, targeting in particular countries in South America, Africa and the Middle East.

Groundwork laid

Moscow laid the groundwork even before the invasion. Months earlier, it claimed Ukraine was led by ‘Nazis’ and that the country was in any case not legitimately sovereign but rather the subject of an unresolved territorial dispute. Since the war began, this propaganda has been flagged as false on the ‘social media’ apps familiar in the West, while former Soviet-bloc countries have gone to great lengths to curb the misinformation by banning Kremlin-sponsored media. This has however only encouraged Russia to change and improve its tactics. Now it targets encrypted platforms, such as TikTok or, notably, Telegram.

To reach particular demographics it uses domestic languages—Spanish for Latin America, Arabic for the Middle East—in articles and videos. Pro-Ukraine information tends to be overwhelmingly in English, French or German. Furthermore, Russia has resorted to deep fakes and artificial intelligence to enhance its propaganda efforts. Pro-Kremlin messaging thus gains more traction and popularity among its target audiences, not only thanks to the power of AI but also because it is tailored by language and application. And this is working: in 2022 among the 141 countries in the United Nations which voted against the Russian aggression, none of the African, Middle Eastern or South American states agreed to impose sanctions to give that vote bite.

Restricted spaces.................

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Countries and territories (in red) that have imposed or joined sanctions against Russia.

September 7, 2023

Charred-wood beach house sits among Amagansett's dunes on Long Island

https://www.dezeen.com/2023/08/06/amagansett-beach-house-starling-architecture-emily-lindberg-design/









US studios Starling Architecture and Emily Lindberg Design have collaborated on a minimalist home clad in blackened wood in the Hamptons village of Amagansett that starkly contrasts the surrounding dunes. The Amagansett Beach House was completed for a friend of Starling Architecture founder Ian Starling who grew up in California, but moved to the East Coast for school and then stayed for work.







Missing the beach, the client began a search for a property in Amagansett Dunes with Starling's help, and found a bungalow that was "frozen in the 1960s". "It was amazingly well located - in a wooded area, minutes away from both the beach and town center on an unpaved sand road," said Starling, although he noted that the layout was less than ideal. "The second floor was tucked underneath the gable and the ceiling was so low, you had to duck to walk around."



In its place, Starling designed a crisp minimalist house clad in timber treated with Shou Sugi Ban, the Japanese blackening technique. Intended as a "communal home" for gathering with friends, the building is organised around a central swimming pool built into a raised wooden deck.







All of the communal ground-level spaces face onto the pool-courtyard area through floor-to-ceiling windows and are connected to one another in a U-shaped layout. To the west is a double-height living room with glass panels reaching to the roof, while the dining room to the north features a fully retractable glazed wall.

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September 7, 2023

Edition Office uses concrete and copper to finish Australian apartment block

https://www.dezeen.com/2023/08/31/edition-office-concrete-copper-fenwick-street-apartment-block-australia/









Exposed concrete and perforated copper screens define this apartment block overlooking a valley in Victoria, Australia, which was designed by local architecture studio Edition Office. Located on a wooded site above the Yara or Birrarung River the project, called Fenwick St, replaces a former single dwelling with nine apartments, spread across three separate concrete "pavilions".









"We saw the site as an extension of the greater public domain that reaches out and down towards the Birrarung River and the valley beyond," Edition Office director Aaron Roberts told Dezeen. "The large mass of a singular joined building in this instance would not be sympathetic to the massing, scale and language of the surrounding buildings."







"Breaking the project down into pavilions allowed the project to read as a series of dwelling more in line with this scale," he continued. Positioned at each corner of the triangular plot, the blocks were separated by two "neighbourhood-scale" paths that connect and frame views across the site's axes.









To the west, the largest block contains five apartments, while the block to the east contains an additional three and the block to the south a single two-storey residence. Each stepped form has been oriented so that the living, dining and kitchen spaces face outwards, with terraces taking advantage of expansive views across the landscape.

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September 6, 2023

Wisconsin Democrats combat impeachment of court justice with $4M effort

https://www.nbc15.com/2023/09/06/wisconsin-democrats-combat-impeachment-court-justice-with-4m-effort/



MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Democratic Party on Wednesday launched a $4 million effort to pressure Republicans to back down from impeaching a new liberal state Supreme Court justice being targeted after she criticized GOP-drawn legislative electoral maps and spoke in favor of abortion rights.

After investing nearly $10 million in electing Justice Janet Protasiewicz, the effort is meant to protect what Democrats hailed as a major political victory. The judge’s election tipped the balance of power in the state Supreme Court, giving Democrats the upper hand in state’s fights over abortion and redistricting.

“Republicans are holding a political nuclear football,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said in reference to impeachment. The effort will include digital and television ads, in-person voter outreach, and a website tracking where every Republican lawmaker stands on impeachment.

Protasiewicz is part of a 4-3 liberal majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. The escalating fight over her seat has implications for the 2024 presidential election in the battleground state. In 2020, the conservative-controlled Supreme Court came within one vote of overturning President Joe Biden’s win in the state. More fights over election rules that will be in place for the 2024 election are pending, and any disputes over the winner could be decided once again by the state Supreme Court.

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September 5, 2023

Trump's Truth Social Merger Granted One More Year To Close Deal

A long-awaited merger between a cash-rich acquisition company and former President Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social will have another 12 months to be completed after shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp voted for an extension, giving Trump’s company another chance at $300 million through the merger, which has faced regulatory setbacks.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/09/05/trumps-truth-social-merger-granted-one-more-year-to-close-deal/



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September 5, 2023

'One Piece' Review: Netflix Scores Big With Its Thrilling Adaptation

Given its abysmal history with live-action anime adaptations, it would be easy to dismiss Netflix’s take on the massively popular series off the bat. But that would be a mistake.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/one-piece-review-netflix-scores-big-with-its-thrilling-adaptation

https://archive.ph/4OWoX



There are more than 1,000 episodes of the wildly popular Japanese anime series One Piece. I, however, have never seen a single one. Sure, over the years I’ve seen glimpses of the show’s lead character, a pirate boy named Monkey D. Luffy, in his iconic straw hat. But it never struck me to peer further, to take the plunge and figure out exactly what this show was all about. After all, watching 1,000 episodes and counting is incomprehensibly daunting. It’s far easier to say, “Look at that guy in his funny little hat!” and be on your merry way.

But like all immensely popular international media, it was only a matter of time before it was Americanized and spat out into a live-action remake on some streaming service. This time around, that streamer would be Netflix, which is home to the highly anticipated eight-episode first season of One Piece, premiering Aug. 31. Given the platform’s abysmal history with live-action anime adaptations—not to mention the massive fanbase and lore that One Piece has generated so far over its 24-year run—it would be easy to brush off Netflix’s take as a low-quality imitation, one that’s as money-hungry as its bands of vicious pirates.

It turns out that judging Netflix’s One Piece based on its past mistakes would be as much of a mistake as judging a pirate based on the title of his chosen occupation (something Luffy himself often suggests in the show). The series is a sprawling, elegant work, one that carefully crafts its world and characters so as to ease newcomers into the One Piece lore, while never losing the spirit of its original anime artform. Each episode is packed—sometimes too fully—with adventure and an invigorating amount of relatively graphic violence and horror. Though its writing sometimes struggles to find a steady middle ground between the tweenage and adult demographics it’s trying to appeal to, One Piece consistently surprises thanks to its massive scope that suggests there’s danger around every corner.

With so much content to mine for a first season that is only eight episodes long, it’s a shock that One Piece is able to get right into the action without mucking around too much in needless exposition. Character backstories arrive when necessary and don’t overstay their welcome, often interspersed with action sequences to heighten the tension and emotional pathos— although to varying success when it comes to the latter. We’re introduced to Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy), a fearless young seafarer who set out to become a pirate after a childhood spent around their kind. Luffy’s youth was spent overhearing whispers about the One Piece, a legendary treasure hidden by Pirate King Gol D. Roger, and Luffy has vowed to be the one to find it.

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September 5, 2023

Violent protests after Quran burning in Sweden

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66706937



Three men have been arrested in connection with a violent riot following a Quran burning in Sweden. Unrest erupted after an Iraqi anti-Islam activist Salwan Momika set fire to a copy of the Islamic holy book on Sunday. Police said they detained 10 people for disturbing public order in the city of Malmo. Several vehicles were set on fire after about hundred people gathered in response to the burning. Mr Momika set fire to a Quran in Varnhemstorget, a main square in the city on Sunday afternoon. He has previously desecrated the Quran, in a series of anti-Islam protests, and his actions have caused diplomatic outrage across the Middle East.



A group of angry protesters tried to stop the burning, which resulted in a showdown between them and police. Officers said they were pelted with stones, while some demonstrators threw electric scooters at police vehicles. Several police cars were set on fire in Malmo's Rosengard neighbourhood, which has a a large immigrant population, and has experienced other violent protests in the past.

"I understand that a public gathering like this arouses strong emotions, but we cannot tolerate disturbances and violence like the ones we saw on Sunday afternoon," Malmo police area commander Petra Stenkula told local media. "It is extremely regrettable to once again see violence and vandalism at Rosengard." Scandinavia has witnessed a spate of Quran burnings this year. In June, Mr Momika set fire to a copy outside Stockholm's central mosque, as Muslims celebrated the first day of Eid al-Adha - one of the most important festivals in the Muslim calendar.



Swedish police had given Mr Momika a permit for the protest, in accordance with their staunch free-speech laws. It later emerged the incident was being investigated for incitement of hatred. In January, Rasmus Paludan, a politician from the Danish far-right Stram Kurs (Hard Line) party, burnt a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. Last month, neighbouring Denmark, which has also seen a several public burnings of the Quran, said it planned to ban public desecration of holy books. Sweden has pledged to explore legal means of abolishing protests that involve burning texts in certain circumstances.

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September 5, 2023

Chanel to outfit Brooklyn diner in pastels for perfume pop-up

https://www.dezeen.com/2023/08/30/chanel-brooklyn-diner-chance-perfume-pop-up/



Fashion house Chanel has announced plans to cover an iconic Brooklyn diner in retro pinks and greens to celebrate the launch of a new perfume. Exterior renderings depict the chrome diner wrapped in bands of mint green and light pink inspired by the pastel bottles of the CHANCE EAU FRAÎCHE Eau de Parfum (CHANCE). Called Lucky Chance Diner, the overhaul is part of a pop-up event for the new fragrance.



Retro-inspired signage and branding of the temporary Lucky Chance Diner name will be placed on the sides and windows of the building while a glowing, circular neon sign will sit on top. The same palette will carried inside, with a central countertop and bar stocked with perfume bottles and branded white and pink coffee mugs. The bar will be similarly clad in mint green with a speckled countertop. Guests will be ushered to the countertop or a booth in order to "delight in a special and personalized scent discovery", and then move to the back room, where a life-sized perfume bottle will be poised for a picture moment among other interactive features.



An outdoor garden will host games, diner-inspired snacks, and a pick-up window where guests can purchase a bottle of CHANCE. The fragrance is described as "a luminous expression that intertwines zesty citron, a jasmine heart and the ambery presence of a teak wood note to create an energizing trail". Located in Williamsburg at 225 Wythe Avenue, the space formally hosted the Wythe Diner for twenty years along with several other restaurants, including La Esquina, and Blank Street Coffee recently hosted a food truck at the space before closing earlier in 2023.



Reports have circulated previously of a new apartment building planned for the site. Chanel recently established its first brick-and-mortar store in Brooklyn, just around the corner from the diner. The brand also recently celebrated 100 years of Chanel No. 5 with an Es Devlin-designed installation and hosted Karl Lagerfeld's final show in an Alpine village set. The renderings are courtesy of Chanel. The Chanel Lucky Chance Diner pop-up will take place from 8 September to 10 September 2023.

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Gender: Female
Hometown: London
Home country: US/UK/Sweden
Current location: Stockholm, Sweden
Member since: Sun Jul 1, 2018, 07:25 PM
Number of posts: 49,916

About Celerity

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