Kamila Szewczyk prefers old software, as back then people understood something could actually be finished

No one can tell software developer Kamila Szewczyk that newer is better: She just fixed a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16, the old-school Linux window manager she favors partly because, she tells us, it is actually finished software.…

Study finds LLMs will smuggle biases into others even if they're scrubbed from training data

New research warns about the dangers of teaching LLMs on the output of other models, showing that undesirable traits can be transmitted "subliminally" from teacher to student, even when they are scrubbed from training data.…

Fun trompe-l’œil graph paper drawings.

UK chancellor tells US audience she is ‘not convinced that this conflict has made the world a safer place’

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Rachel Reeves has stepped up her criticism of Donald Trump’s war on Iran, describing it as a “mistake” that has destabilised the global economy and damaged living standards around the world.

In a marked fraying of the transatlantic relationship, the UK chancellor said Trump breaking off from diplomatic talks with Iran and launching airstrikes had not made the world a safer place.

She brought Irish Gaelic to Top of the Pops, featured on soundtracks including Titanic and King Arthur and showed that folk could find pop success
• Clannad singer and harpist Moya Brennan dies aged 73

Moya Brennan’s voice was an unusual instrument to arrive in the Top 20 in November 1982, especially on a Top of the Pops episode featuring the very different delights of A Flock of Seagulls, Eddy Grant and one-hit wonders Blue Zoo. As light as a leaf in the air, it provided a sacred counterpoint to the low, looming drones of a Prophet 5 synthesiser, and, in its breathy solo lines, guided the layered harmonies of her Clannad bandmates – her brothers and uncles – to somewhere new. A week later, Theme from Harry’s Game – the closing song on a radical Yorkshire TV series about The Troubles that played out over three consecutive nights – had jumped to No 5 in the charts, the highest ever position for a song sung in Irish Gaelic.

The lyrics were about the never-ending cycle of life, and how all things must pass, plucked from a proverb from a book of her grandfather’s, by her brother and bandmate, Ciarán. Even to non-speakers, Brennan’s voice sounded like a new kind of spiritual guide, much needed in the anxious early days of Thatcherism and only a few months after the IRA London park bombings. Her impact also expanded the transportive possibilities of traditional music in film and TV. Brennan’s voice became a mainstay of soundtracks, later among them ITV’s Robin of Sherwood series, Titanic and the 2004 feature film adaptation of King Arthur starring Keira Knightley, entering public consciousness in a way similar to how the avant garde output of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop had in the 1960s.

Mormon Wives star was accused of domestic violence by her former partner Dakota Mortensen

Prosecutors in Utah have declined to press charges against Taylor Frankie Paul, star of the reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, after she was accused of domestic violence.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Salt Lake county district attorney’s office said it would not be pursuing charges against Paul following a pair of domestic violence investigations stemming from allegations made by Paul’s former partner Dakota Mortensen.

Artists Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni, who work as NEVERCREW, have a knack for bringing the immensity of nature to developed urban spaces. Their colorful, large-scale murals take a playful tack when it comes to portraying animals, often merging them with other objects such as instant photos or, most recently, a plastic punch-out toy. “Souvenir,” completed this year in Vienna, combines motifs of a large bear with other Arctic components, such as icebergs, a seabird, and a steamship.

“The natural environment appears transformed, filtered, made artificial: it is no longer a space experienced through relationship, but a distant construction,” the artists say in a statement. The work is “almost a simulation reflecting a perception of nature progressively emptied of empathy…Nature becomes something to observe, arrange, organize, as if it were a separate object rather than a system of which we are an integral part.”

Over the past few years, NEVERCREW has completed numerous architectonic paintings that depict the fragile balance between humanity and nature—specifically wildlife. Whales, bears, and elephants are depicted inside of terrariums or bundled into fabrics.

The animals’ very presence on the side of buildings, where they are contained within the bounds of the architecture, is a reminder of the tensions between—one might even say the incongruousness of—daily human activities and city infrastructure. For Rebbechi and Togni, bringing nature into these spaces highlights the importance of sustaining the relationship between humankind and nature.

See more on the artists’ Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article NEVERCREW Explores Our Tenuous Relationship with Nature in Huge Murals appeared first on Colossal.

Hoe het zit met de problemen van het COA? Die stapelen zich, zoals ze dat zo mooi zeggen, op. In Ter Apel rinkelt de gemeentekassa dagelijks en in de stad (ja, echt) Hardenberg is de dwangsom inmiddels opgelopen tot meer dan 1 miljoen euro. In navolging daarvan besloot Epe vandaag om 63.000 euro boete op te leggen als het COA het Fletcher Hotel aldaar over een week niet heeft verlaten. Het bedrag kan oplopen tot een maximum van 11,4 miljoen euro. Hoppa. Alsof dat allemaal nog niet genoeg is gaat ook Almelo meedoen. Daar staat een prachtig hotel, gesitueerd in het oude Huis van Bewaring, waarin twee gezinnen van liefst 14 asielzoekers al enkele maanden illegaal gehuisvest worden. De mensen zijn door het COA in het hotel geplempt zonder overleg met de gemeente (ideetje van toenmalig minister Mona Keijzer) en daarover is de gemeente pissig. Dus: Handhavingstraject, oftewel een mogelijke DWANGSOM. Gelukkig voor het COA hebben de gemeentes als het aan minister Bart van den Brink ligt dadelijk helemaal niks meer over asielhuishouding binnen hun grenzen te zeggen. Hou vol COA!