All posts tagged: Absurdity

The Utter Absurdity of Donald Trump and RFK Jr. Running as ‘Outsiders’

The Utter Absurdity of Donald Trump and RFK Jr. Running as ‘Outsiders’

Published by skeptic

One irony of the 2024 election is that, at a time when Americans profess exceptionally low faith in their government and institutions, their choices for president represent the most insider slate of candidates in at least a quarter century, and perhaps longer. The Democratic nominee is Joe Biden, the sitting president, a former vice president, and a former U.S. senator of 26 years. The Republican nominee is Donald Trump, who is the most recent former president. The leading third-party candidate, the ostensible alternative, is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is, well, exactly who his name suggests. This produces another irony: Trump, despite being literally the former president, and Kennedy, despite being literally a Kennedy, have both worked to depict themselves as outsiders. During his current campaign, Trump has often insisted that he’s being persecuted by the criminal-justice system for standing up for the little guy. “Be totally unafraid to challenge entrenched interests and failed power structures,” Trump intoned in a February campaign video. “Relish the opportunity to be an outsider and embrace that label … …

Venice Biennale’s Top Pavilions Capture Absurdity of Art Right Now

Venice Biennale’s Top Pavilions Capture Absurdity of Art Right Now

Published by skeptic

I have a favorite pavilion—if you’ll permit me a superlative, despite not having seen every single one. For five days, I ran around Venice pounding cappuccinos, my step count uptick fueled by FOMO. Still, this was not enough time to see everything I wanted. (Is it just me, or are there more good collateral shows than ever before?) Never mind—I can’t get the Austria pavilion out of my head. There, in the Giardini, the Ukrainian ballet dancer Oksana Serheieva rehearses at the barre. I watched for a while, mesmerized, before my biennial brain kicked in and asked “Why?” and “What does it mean?” I turned, as one does, to the wall text, which informed me that, during times of political upheaval, the Soviet Union state television station would play Swan Lake on a loop, in lieu of regular programming. The gesture was clear: Serheieva, in collaboration with artist Anna Jermolaewa, was rehearsing—for a Russian regime change. Related Articles Oksana Serheieva in Anna Jermolaewa’sRehearsal for Swan Lake(2024), in the Austrian pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Photo Lucas …

Oscar-winning director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi: ‘The world is full of mystery and absurdity’ | Film

Oscar-winning director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi: ‘The world is full of mystery and absurdity’ | Film

Published by skeptic

The winter sky in the opening shot of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist is a brilliant white, seen through a tangle of spindly tree branches. Set against a radiant orchestral score, the scene looks sublime. But then a dissonant note is heard in the music. Then another. Not everything is as it seems. “I started from a place of not knowing anything,” Hamaguchi says of his new film, which sets up a paradisal image of nature to then unsettle it. He speaks with a humility that belies his standing as one of Japan’s most celebrated auteurs. It was late 2021, he recalls; his previous film, Drive My Car, had been released (and would soon be the surprise hit of awards season, walking away with the Oscar for best international feature film). The musician Eiko Ishibashi, who scored Drive My Car, asked the director if he could provide background visuals for her tour. Hamaguchi, a longtime city-dweller, visited her at her studio in the countryside. Inspiration struck as he listened to her music against the sweeping landscapes. As well as a silent work, …

I’m teaching again after 20 years away. The tech is pure absurdity

I’m teaching again after 20 years away. The tech is pure absurdity

Published by skeptic

AlessandroBiascioli/Alam​y IT IS never a good feeling to open a new piece of software and realise that something terrible has happened. The kind of terrible that results in dozens of instructional videos, hundreds of entries in the FAQs and multiple, contradictory warnings from people online purporting to give “simple introductions” to the software in question. All of this and more happened to me when I found myself subjected to a learning management system (known not-so-fondly as an LMS) for teaching university classes in media studies. In a year when the US higher education system is imploding (more on that later), my… Source link

Happy Puppies and Silly Geese: Pushing the Limits of A.I. Absurdity

Happy Puppies and Silly Geese: Pushing the Limits of A.I. Absurdity

Published by skeptic

What is the happiest dog you can imagine? Is it beaming with joy on a celestial plane or frolicking in a field of psychedelic flora? If those images are hard to conjure, have no fear, or perhaps a healthy dose of it: Artificial intelligence can vivify even the most absurd scenarios in vibrant color, and on social media, some are seeing how far it can be pushed. Though A.I.-generated images can often unsettle with their uncanny realism — think the pope in a Balenciaga puffer jacket — many are finding joy in a new form of low-stakes image tinkering. This fall, ChatGPT released an update that allowed people to enter prompts for more detailed images than before, and it wasn’t long before some began to push the chatbot to its limits. In November, Garrett Scott McCurrach, the chief executive of Pipedream Labs, a robotics company, posted a digital image of a goose on social media with a proposition: “For every 10 likes this gets, I will ask ChatGPT to make this goose a little sillier.” …