Photogrammaton

Turbo Pascal and a database add-on were part of an 80s-era text-analysis-and-generation program that was devised by lit professor Hugh Kenner and CS professor Joseph O’Rourke. I implemented that, on a single-board-computer running a CP/M derivative called (IIRC) Z-System, and I had a great deal of fun playing with it.

Some years later, I worked it into a commentary on generative AI that I wrote for Fast Company. My article mentions James Joyce, because the original BYTE article did. My piece omitted to add that my experiments also included mixing Henry James with a spot of Victorian porn.

I enjoyed being reminded of all of that by the Turbo Pascal piece.

Fast Company piece (from September 2022, before the release of ChatGPT): https://www.fastcompany.com/90784449/machine-writing-is-beco...

The plaque is identical in two of the photos (one from Ireland, one from Luxembourg), and the wording is identical in those two plus a third (from Western Australia). That makes me curious.

How much time did I just spend on clicking links and reading comments? I love that I have almost no idea.

This leaves me without words, and I only listened to the first track.

Hugh Kenner is good on a surprisingly wide range of things. This is a publisher's description of a book called The Counterfeiters, first published around 1968:

"Wide-ranging enough to encompass Buster Keaton, Charles Babbage, horses, and a man riding a bicycle while wearing a gas mask, The Counterfeiters is one of Hugh Kenner's greatest achievements. In this fascinating work of literary and cultural criticism, Kenner seeks the causes and outcomes of man's ability to simulate himself (a computer that can calculate quicker than we can) and his world (a mechanical duck that acts the same as a living one)."

Kenner also co-authored a relatively early text generator, called Travesty, that would analyze a source text in terms of n-grams (e.g., 4-letter combinations) and then generate something new to match it. This was published in Byte magazine in 1984.

I've been following Alex Wellerstein off and on for a few years now, since I discovered that he was a science adviser for a crazed nuclear-history TV series called Manh(a)ttan, so I read this post about NUKEMAP when it originally appeared. I wonder whether the situation with Google Maps is any different now. I'm not a developer, so I don't need to know. I'm just curious.

Some newspapers in the 1970s used the Atex publishing system. The now-defunct Dallas Times Herald, a daily, used it when I worked there, roughly 1978 to 1980. The Atex system there relied on custom terminals--that is, supplied by Atex, not off-the-shelf from another manufacturer--and Atex terminals could be among those shown in the screenshots. Unfortunately, I don't remember much about how the Atex terminals looked, and (call me lazy) I haven't looked for photos.

Right you are. In the 90s, ESPN covered each stage with a nicely edited but short recap, about 30 minutes each as I recall. Not much, but better than nothing. The race has since moved around, and coverage of each stage has expanded--which, incidentally, coincides with the gradual expansion of cable channels and streaming.

I wonder whether Netflix will boost American interest in the Tour de France. Something of the kind happened with Formula 1. Interest in it here (I’m in NYC) was generally so-so, whether or not one of the races occurred here. But the 2019 launch of the Netflix documentary series Formula 1: Drive to Survive roughly coincided with the expansion of American F1 races, of which I think there are three this season, and there are now American F1 fangirls. Re the TdF, America hasn’t paid much attention in the past except when a major contender was an American, as with Greg LeMond, Lance Armstrong, and a few others. Now, however, Netflix is running a documentary series about this race, called Tour de France: Unchained. That may do the trick. On the other hand, a TdF race will never occur here, so it remains to be seen whether interest will rise regardless of that.

Fangirls ref: https://airmail.news/issues/2023-5-27/girls-just-want-to-f1 [subscriber only]

This is the Tragedy of Delamination all over again. I coined the phrase half in jest, modeled on a TV-ad phrase (the tragedy of psoriasis, as I recall), after it turned out that a commercial airline flight went down near JFK Airport two months after 9/11 because a carbon-fiber failure allowed its tail to snap off. Now it looks as if a carbon-fiber failure allowed Titan’s pressure hull to implode. Admittedly, we don’t know yet. But a lot of effort will go into finding out, because (as in that plane crash) lives were lost.

For me, the story was a little too elaborate for its own good. (The film is based on a novel and may have tried to keep too much of its source.) But it addresses a lot of issues. And the rugged landscapes of the film, which was shot in Tasmania, are just the place for an elusive creature to roam. Besides, Willem Dafoe plays the title character. There's a trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgfB9kebFNI

As for thylacines themselves, they've been discussed here and elsewhere. They're probably extinct, but they haven't really left, since they turn up in film and fiction, and they may be coming back, if de-extinction works.

My not very substantive response is that I like the project name. Maybe lots of text generators can come up with wordplay involving Subject ! and Subject 2, but I think you've already got one running.