White
Author Kate Morton urges us to be a white knight not a white elephant, "In real life turning points are sneak. They pass by unlabeled and unheeded...and are only uncovered later, by historians..."
White flag: When asked for his advice on facing the world today that is full of job displacements, Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton – known to many as the “Godfather of AI” – said in a podcast in June: “Train to be a plumber.” #whiteboard
“Julian Pintat, a freelance English-to-German translator has watched his 15-year career gradually unravel. Specializing in high-stakes fields like medical technology and pharmaceutics, his expertise has been repriced as an AI cleanup service. On a recent job, translating an operating manual for an oil rig, AI mistranslated “scale”—a mineral buildup—as both a musical scale and a device for measuring weight. Fixing such basic flaws, which now constitutes 95% of his work, often takes longer than translating from scratch, he says—a frustrating reality that has halved his income and put life plans including marriage and starting a family on indefinite hold. With Google Translate and later DeepL having burst onto the scene years before ChatGPT—professional translators have been feeling the effects of artificial intelligence longer than most. “I’m the canary in the coal mine,” Pintat says.”
Source: Time
White goods: The country where you can only drive white cars as all other colors are banned. #whitecoateffect
“For the dawning age of the self-driving car, transportation engineers from North Carolina State University are proposing the addition of a fourth “white light” whose function would be to alert humans to simply “follow the car in front of them.
That’s because to leverage the full potential of autonomous cars means to also embrace their ability to act as a kind of hive mind.”
Source: Popular Mechanics
White smoke: ‘Relentless negativity’ around sponsorship must end, say national museums. #whitelist
“Imagine a monochromatic world in which everyone is the same color: White. In a sense, that’s what pop culture, the history we’re taught in school and even religion often ask us to do by way of whitewashing. In short, whitewashing is “editing reality so Whiteness stays centered,” says Rebecca Irby, a race-equity practitioner and founding partner and board president of the PEAC Institute.”
Source: RD
White lotus: ‘It’s silent but does the heavy lifting’: the soft power of the white shirt. #whiteglove
“While white sneakers are classic, the style needs to be switched up. It’s like tailoring never goes out of style but you go from oversized to short, to long to fitted. It doesn’t mean the jacket is wrong, it’s just about the silhouette,” says fashion strategist, Sarah Rutson.”
Source: SCMP
White suffragette: AI bots are telling more little white lies than ever. #whitehall
“I never lie. Except when declining an invitation – then I always lie.
Once, my fiance, Jared, and I were invited to a dinner we didn’t want to attend. We were worn out from traveling, and some of the other guests required a lot of energy to be around. I replied in the group text that we already had plans – but we were “so sorry to miss!” Jared, sitting next to me on the couch, gawped.
“That’s a lie!” he said. Then, amazed and a little horrified: “You lied so fast.”
Of course I lied! Wasn’t it more polite to make up a fake excuse than say you simply don’t feel like it?”
Source: The Guardian
ICYMI - White Noise, White Heat, White Books
“When we try to imagine color, it may be necessary to erase from our minds all pre-established categories and return to a blank state. The box of twelve crayons we are given to draw with when we are small children shapes our perception for better or for worse - it is from them that we garner concepts like “the color of water,” “flesh color,” and so on. But what if such parameters did not exist, and the words we had to describe color were far fewer? Would we see color the same way we do in today’s world?”
― Kenya Hara, White, 2010
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