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☆ Opinion | Mike Pence’s Hell Is Ours Too
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( Frank Bruni | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Mike Pence, God love him, did the latter, and that sealed his doom. But that’s not the only moral of Pence’s miserable polling and early exit from the contest for the Republican presidential nomination, which is, incredibly, even less appetizing for his departure. He did something else that was just as dissonant with the mood of his party — with the mood of America, really. An exchange involving Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy in the Republican presidential debate last August in Milwaukee foreshadowed that. Pence took aim at his much younger rival’s perversely exuberant negativity, schooling him: “We’re not looking for a new national identity.

Persons: Donald Trump, Mike Pence, MAGA, that’s, maniacally, Pence mellowly, That’s, Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy, “ Organizations: Republican, White Locations: Milwaukee

☆ With Bamboo and Jade, Silkpunk Rebuilds History
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-22 | by ( Shannon Liao | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The floating ships in the fantasy role-playing game Honkai: Star Rail are populated with traders, gourmets and literati who surf their texts on jade abacuses. The game, from the Chinese company miHoYo, combines a taste of the Qing dynasty with gifts of the digital age — holographic bonsai and teleportation gateways for instant travel. “We call it Eastern fantasies, silkpunk, that kind of vibe,” Fish Ling, miHoYo’s senior director of global business development, said this year, showing off the ways its newest video game wove cybertech into a tapestry of ancient culture. Cyberpunk and steampunk were terms popularized in the 1980s to describe science fiction or fantasy worlds that explore rebellion against authority and the ramifications of technology, whether through body augmentations in near-future dystopias or brass vehicles in Victorian-era settings. The offshoot silkpunk is a more recent creation by Ken Liu, a speculative fiction author whose Dandelion Dynasty series features a throne made of bamboo and silk with intricate jewel-like clockwork and a kite built from similar materials.

Persons: Fish Ling, miHoYo’s, Ken Liu

☆ AI-Driven Cataclysm Could Rock the Job Market: Top Economist
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-18 | by ( Aki Ito | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +33 min

Over the course of three conversations this summer, Acemoglu told me he's worried we're currently hurtling down a road that will end in catastrophe. "There's a fair likelihood that if we don't do a course correction, we're going to have a truly two-tier system," Acemoglu told me. "I was following the canon of economic models, and in all of these models, technological change is the main mover of GDP per capita and wages," Acemoglu told me. In later empirical work, Acemoglu and Restrepo showed that that was exactly what had happened. "I realize this is a very, very tall order," Acemoglu told me.

Persons: who's, Katya Klinova, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Acemoglu, Johnson, we've, he's, we're, Power, James Robinson, —, Robinson, David Autor, Pascual Restrepo, Restrepo, John Maynard Keynes, Simon Simard, Lord Byron, Eric Van Den Brulle, hasn't, it's, Gita Gopinath, Paul Romer, Romer, What's, Daron, GPT, Asu Ozdaglar, It's, Mark Madeo, Tattong, Erik Brynjolfsson, Brynjolfsson, There's, Yoshua Bengio, Yuval Noah Harari, Andrew Yang, Elon Musk, I've, That's, Aki Ito Organizations: Getty, MIT, of Technology, Hulton, London School of Economics, Stagecoach, Technology, —, International Monetary Fund, Microsoft, Asu, Companies, Computer, Greenpeace, Communications, Big Tech, Workers Locations: Silicon Valley, America, Boston, Istanbul, Turkey, Acemoglu, England, United States, Britain, Australia

☆ These 3 science fiction stories inspired Elon Musk and explain his business choices — but critics say he's missing the point
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-22 | by ( Kai Xiang Teo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

These stories' focus on great men and amazing technology defying the rules could explain his business choices. Elon Musk is one of the most divisive tech and business personas of our time, and there is much chatter about what shapes his beliefs and business choices. Beyond these, however, a consistent source of influence from his childhood to today is his self-professed love of science fiction. "That is Musk's guide for living, yet he is using that guide to justify doing the very thing that the story is opposed to," she added. Elon Musk loves "Deus Ex" and its cyberpunk styleElon Musk appears to be a huge fan of the 2000 science fiction video game, "Deus Ex."

Persons: Elon Musk, Isaac Asimov's, Douglas Adams, he's, dystopias, Napoleon, William MacAskill, Walter Isaacson, Musk, xAI Douglas Adams, —, Adams, Jill Lepore, it's, Hari Seldon, Jonny Diamond, takeaways, JC Denton Organizations: SpaceX, Guardian Locations: South Africa

☆ The story behind this playful rooftop portrait
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Rebecca Cairns | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Hong Kong’s humidity – already oppressive – was intensified in the dark, maze-like alleyways of an unruly enclave known as Kowloon Walled City. Greg Girard, courtesy of Blue Lotus GalleryA ‘strange, vertical village’Girard first visited Kowloon Walled City in 1986 while on a shoot at the nearby airport. As such, the Walled City remained technically subject to Chinese rule, though this was never enforced. The site of the Walled City has since been transformed into a public park, which opened in 1995. Ongoing interest in the Walled City is, Girard suggests, because of the spirit it encapsulates: the aptitude for survival even in the harshest of circumstances.

Persons: –, Greg Girard, wasn’t, ” Girard, ”, Girard, Greg Girard ., ’ Girard, “, Ian Lambot, Lambot, Girard — Organizations: CNN, Kai Tek International, Lotus Locations: Hong, Kowloon Walled City, Walled City, Walled, Tung, Hong Kong, British, ”, “, City, Girard

☆ Christian Petzold May Be the Best German Filmmaker You’ve Never Heard Of
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-03 | by ( A.J. Goldmann | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“Afire” was not the film that Mr. Petzold set out to make. After presenting his 2020 film “Undine” in Paris, Mr. Petzold and Paula Beer, the film’s lead (she also stars in “Afire”) came down with Covid-19. While convalescing in Berlin, he binge-watched films by the French New Wave director Éric Rohmer and read stories by Anton Chekhov. In that first pandemic spring, Mr. Petzold’s thoughts turned to summer and to summer films, a genre that, according to him, has not properly existed in Germany since “People on Sunday” (1930). “And then I thought about the aftermath, National Socialism, which destroyed everything: the German summers, the German youth, the German bodies, the poetry.

Persons: ”, Petzold, Georges Simenon’s, Paula Beer, “, Mr, Éric Rohmer, Anton Chekhov, Rohmer’s, Pauline Organizations: French New, “ Locations: Paris, Berlin, Germany, Wannsee, Weimar

☆ Josh Kline’s Survival Art for 21st-Century America
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Jason Farago | Emma Goldberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The real predecessor of an art of American consumer culture, with its shiny surfaces and its dirty undersides? It’s Jeff Koons — who also uses obviousness, directness and a proud anti-critical stance in the service of an “accessible” art. GOLDBERG Well, so much of Kline’s work says outright: What’s the point? can generate something really beautiful, then maybe Kline’s work is to generate something really human. FARAGO There’s an important work that’s not at the Whitney: a video called “Hope and Change,” which caused a minor sensation at the 2015 New Museum Triennial.

[1/2] Ukraine's First Lady, Olena Zelenska, attends the opening event of Europe's largest tech conference, the Web Summit, in Lisbon, Portugal, November 1, 2022. REUTERS/Pedro NunesLISBON, Nov 1 (Reuters) - In an emotional appeal, Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska urged tech workers from around the world on Tuesday to create innovations to stop Russia and help save people in her war-torn country. Describing technology as a "battlefield" in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Zelenska said that technological equipment such as drones and missiles were being used to "kill people," not to save them. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's vice prime minister who also runs the ministry of digital transformation, will also speak. Reporting by Catarina Demony, Sergio Goncalves and Pedro Nunes in Lisbon Editing by Matthew LewisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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