MFT: This is time it is gotta be fun edition - Google Talk to Books

Well, that escalated quickly. I was never a fan of Google Books. Mostly because the things i was looking for were either partially available there or i have already found what i was looking for elsewhere. Just not my cup of tea.

But apparently, Google was all in reenacting the introduction from Pavement's "Conduit for sale". You know how it goes: I'm tryin', I'm tryin', I'm tryin', I'm tryin'... and so on.

Not that it was a big deal - but now Google is having my attention.

This is Talk To Books - an experiemental service that allows you to perform an alternative search with a little help of the mighty-mighty artificial intelligence (but not Bosstones). Which is even better than the real thing, apparently. Or at least "something completely different". Well, given the fact that traditional search features in Google Books were barely tolerable and irritating at best - that's a huge step forward. So - what is it all about?

Talk to Books is a part of Google's Artificial Intelligence Natural Language Processing tools known as Semantic Experiences. It uses word vectors to make sense of semantically similar phrases and calcutes its relations to each other. It learns the meanings of the words this way.

On the surface Talk To Books is a reinterpretation of the search engine with a bigger emphasis on the natural language queries instead of traditional keyword-based approach.

This means instead of matching keywords and relevance you get an approximate guesses in the form of quotes with manually filtered results selection.

It is not strictly tied to keyword-relevance but instead more to the meaning and the relation of the particular result to the query. This turns search engine element into a discovery tool - Talk to Books looks for possibly fitting statements to your input. Essentially, it "converses" with the user.

Here's what you can do with it. You can ask a question or just a write a statement or type some random words or even random character. The algorithm will find something fitting for the query by going through its vast database.

In other words - you get chunks of text that seem like the comply with the query but in reality are just a bunch of stuff with some tangential relation. Which is fine if you're here to have some fun. Basically, this makes Talk to Books really good at grabbing quotes out of context for the further collaging and jamming. 

For example, if you go for something minimal and broad - you will get an abstract chunk like this:

But if you type in something more substantial - you may get more elaborate search result:

While Talk to Books may be not as sharp and focused as traditional keyword-based approach - it can point out at something unexpected (especially if you ignore the filters altogether and let it rolls in the great big white world) or extract previously unnoticed insights. 

MFT: Cohen brothers - Raising Arizona - Lone Biker of the Apocalypse

I was watching Raising Arizona lately and it is still as good as it gets. One thing that stuck with me was the peripheral character known as Lone Biker of the Apocalypse AKA Leonard Smalls. He comes into the film as the solution for the problem.

He's there to catch the kidnappers and bring a semblance of justice. He's the harbinger of Doom for the protagonists of the story. For the entirety of his part in the film - he is presented as an ultimate badass. Even though he doesn't do anything in particular aside from looking really intimidating and making an imposing presense with a tangible sense of dread.

There are only two major episodes involving Leonard Smalls - coincidentally, his introduction and subsequent demise.

***
The introduction of the character is pitch perfect. He comes in a Herbert's dream after the main part of the story was kicked into the second gear. In a way, he's a manifestation of the guilt.

Leonard Smalls' Lone Biker is described as the ultimate force of doom that is so mean and unrelenting that it is just beyond any comprehension - a force of nature of sorts.

Let me describe him in detail. He's got dark brown hair, speckles of awesome and Frank Blue Eyes. He wears a skull necklace because of couse and also a skull tattoo with a sentence saying "mamma didn't love me". He also wears a military vest for practical awesomeness reason. There is some fur and spikes on the sleeves because that's the way it is when it comes to depicting a badass character. There hand grenades on his chest and shotgun holsters on his back.

He emerges from the fire. He blows up a rabbit with a hand grenade, he shoots a lizard with a shotgun and when he passes by poppies catch fire. And he's got little boots dangling on his side (I suppose there is a deleted scene where he conjures the spirit of Little Bootsm but whaddayaknow).

This leaves a lasting impression even though the character is disposed by the power of his own badassery. Too cool to stick around for his own good. Speaking of which.

***
The final confrontation between Herbet and Leonard is notable for being well-orchestrated plausible fight where the superior blunt force is outwitted by cunning underdog. The dude's too arrogant to be cautious.

During the fight - Herbert shoots him in the arm and instead of blood - there's a spurt of fire coming out. After some nasty throwing around Herbert manages to pull the pin out of Leonard's chest grenades and so ends the glorious story of Lone Biker of the Apocalypse.

He blows up and one of his boots with a pair of baby shoes remains to commemorate the man. The heroes are safe and they will live happily ever after because reasons and also because this is the end of the story.

***

Learning New Words: Volcanic Explosivity Index

It is always a good thing to learn something new. Learning something new that is came out of nowhere and just happened regardless is even better. That's one of such cases.

I was going through the newsletters and newsfeed and one thing came to my attention. There was nothing of interest and then i went to Wikipedia and clicked "Random Article". I've got this thing - Volcanic Explosivity Index.

What it is? It is a logarithmic relative measure scale for volcanic eruptions. It goes from zero to eight. The criteria for assessing Explosivity are:

• Ejecta
• Plume
• Height of eruption
• Length of eruption

The descriptors of the eruptions are rather cool and can be used as a scale for anything.

Here it is:

• 0 - effusive, 
• 1 - gentle, 
• 2 - explosive, 
• 3 - catastrophic, 
• 4 - cataclysmic, 
• 5 - peroxysmic, 
• 6 - colossal, 
• 7 - super-colossal, 
• 8 - mega-colossal.

Imagine using it to describe an impact of some Mahler performance.

MFT: Jeffsum - Jeff Golgblum Lorem Ipsum

There is no thing less interesting than Lorem Ipsum. And that is the whole point of this thing. This type of placeholder text was never meant to be anything but a purely functional piece and for decades it was just that. 

It was infamous for being a lame word salad but no one really cared about it. There were jokes related to it - but it was never anything substantial. Mostly because - you can't really go far with a placeholder text. 

Then came The Internet and Lorem Ipsum generators became one of the staple of the WWW industrial complex. There are Lorem Ipsum generators of all walks of life. You can even fill out the site with a menagerie of different Lorem Ipsums and make some sort of conceptual art in the process.

Here's another take on this worn out concept. 

This is Jeffsum. It is Jeff Goldblum-themed Lorem Ipsum Generator. Why? Because "of course".  It is one of the many things The Internet had spawned to celebrate its memetic supreme entity known as Jeff Goldblum. With the help of this generator you can make a placeholder text made out of Jeff Goldblum's most iconic lines from different films. It will remain a placeholder text but it will be a little bit better because of the sacred Goldblum injection. You know what i'm talking about "Life finds a way", "Must go faster", "Checkmate..." and so on over and over and over again at random on an endless futile loop of nil. 

The placeholder text is contructed out of a random selection of Goldblum quotes. Because of the source of content and the scattershot nature of the combination - the resulting text doesn't seem like a traditional placeholder text and instead tends more towards a classic word salad. It is a Frankensteinian monster of the text - stiff, moderately lame and overly simplistic, but somehow with a nonsensical beating heart. It is fun to read texts like that. They don't make any sense, but you know where are they coming from and the dissonance coming from the unnatural combination of bits and pieces brings that particular curve on the mouth.

 

Here's an example:

"I gave it a cold? I gave it a virus. A computer virus. Did he just throw my cat out of the window? Must go faster... go, go, go, go, go! Is this my espresso machine? Wh-what is-h-how did you get my espresso machine? Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

While it is definitely moving in the right direction - on its own this Lorem Ipsum Generator is too stiff to deliver something mind-boggling. But it provides you with tools to make it work on your own. 

And so i was playing around with this generator for some time until i've managed to cull together one hell of a dada poem. Check it out:

"You know what? 

I was part of something special. 

Just my luck, no ice.

This thing comes fully loaded. AM/FM radio, reclining bucket seats, and... power windows. 

Yes, Yes, without the oops!  

So tell me - does it really exist?

Is this my espresso machine? Checkmate... 

Jaguar shark! I gave it a cold?

And the clock is ticking. 

Forget the fat lady! 

...

King Kong? Do you need a manager?"

Somehow this kind of Lorem Ipsum generator seems like a very natural thing to do. You have two things that doesn't really make sense and together they still don't make any sense but are a little bit more satisfying for some arcane and otherwise nondescript reason.

***

P.S.: For me, Jeff Goldblum will always be Ed Okin from "Into the Night" - a kafkaesque displaced character bumbling through the comedy of menace. Anyways. Here's another side to this weird Internet's fascination with the persona of Jeff Goldblum. 

MFT: Brizzly - a social site without all that pesky social stuff

It is fascinating how over the course of couple of years citizens of the internet had went first through sheer fascination with all this social networking and then as quickly became disenchanted with them and started looking for something more fulfilling.

Amidst of that search - a new trend had emerged - anti-social networks. This is one of the examples.

Brizzly is a social media blogging platform that is all about defying its purpose. It was developed by Jason Shellen. Brizzly is like Twitter, if Twitter was a non-comformist antisocial iconoclast scum. It intentionally takes the concept of sharing your thoughts and opinions in a completely untapped dimension. The one where it is not supposed to be. There is no community, no trends, no drama, no terms and condition - nothing, zilch. You can't even register. You can only use it.

Here's what Brizzly does: you can type a text there and you can post it. That's it. But instead posting it - the text doesn't really go anywhere. It just disappears. This service is a digital equavalent of screaming into the void. And it is really good at that.

I respect that kind of attitude. It takes a whim and a gut to go there. Last year, i've reviewed similarly mean-spirited blogging platform TXT.FYI - Brizzly does something similar but from a different standpoint.

The thing with Brizzly was that it was originally conceived as a third-party interface shell for Twitter. It had a couple of features that were unavailable for Twitter and a distant aspiration of being more than just a reinterpretation of somebody else's intellectual property. Alas, it was bought by one legendarily incompetent big tech company and successfully EA'd for sake of much more important "potentially game-changing" thing known as AIM.

Then in August 2018, Jason Shellen had bought Brizzly back and remade it into an anti-social platform it is today. And it is much better that way.

Part of Brizzly's charm is in the fact that it is what it is and doesn't try to be something else. Social media tend to be frustrating and not really effective at what they are supposed to do - make connections and provide platform for expression. After a while you realize that no one really cares about anything but themselves and you can't even moderate your newsfeed.

So instead of perpetuating woes of social media - Brizzly just takes this element out of equation and presents you with a pure tool for futile expression. It is useless but sometimes you need a thing like this to let it out and release something from your system. In a way, Brizzly is weirdly therapeutic.

BSPH: Whiteouts from John Kenneth Muir's review of M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" (2008)

I like reading John Kenneth Muir's reviews. He's one of the best when it comes to writing thoughtful balanced reviews of various films. His texts are goldmines for those who dig peculiar details in film criticism. 

Anyway - he's doing M. Night Shyamalan retrospective series of reviews now (leading up to the Glass opening and subsequent review, i suppose). A couple of days ago he had posted his re-review of Shyalaman's divisive 2008 outing "The Happening". 

As you remember - this was the film about plants getting angry at people and releasing some kind of toxin that made people killing themselves real hard. To he honest, this premise is a misanthropist wet dream. The film is a stilted and numb and complete opposite of Zulawski. This is the film that Andrei Tarkovsky would've liked to direct - I'm serious. 

Anyway - that's not what this post is about. This post is about formatting. Or to be exact - about one formatting peculiarity of Kenneth's review. You see - some parts of his review were whited out. The reason for that is unclear as the whiteout parts don't really contain anything that can be considered as a spoiler - just some subjective thoughts on the subject. I guess it is nothing more than a routine formatting mishap. But what a fascinating one. 

The majority of whiteouts are nothing specials - just long white bars with a shorter one at the end of the paragraph. More fragmented paragraphs are more visually diverse but they are few and far between.

Take a look:

Reappropriation of a scanning aftifact in Roman Jacobson's "Six Lectures of Sound and Meaning"

In 1978
Roman Jacobson
published a book titled
Six Lectures of Sound and Meaning

 In 2014
I've been reading a scan of it
and found a few blots on several pages.
Very interesting blots.
I've cropped'em and looped'em
And here's what i got:

MFT: Motocross Madness - Wall of Death Invisible Cannonball Bouncer

I'm often puzzled why videogames don't use the ability of conjuring leaps of imaginations in their mechanics more often. I mean - if you can do something outlandish and surreal - why not? That's why i'm enjoying so much various compilation of out of bounds areas and other arcane videogame stuff.

Case in point - this video.

This is a compilation from the game "Motocross Madness". It depicts player interaction with the level limitation mechanism colloquially knowns as "The Wall of Death". It functions as an in-game invisible bouncer. The player can move beyond the wall and even drive a bit on top of it but at some point he gets bounced back like a cannonball straight to his demise.

Watching a compilation of futile attempts of going beyond is fascinating. You know there is no point in trying and there is nothing really out there but it is somewhat endearing.

Found Poetry: Dunkirk Small Boat Fleet

I was cleaning up the apartment with the TV on to make some background noise. It was run-of-the-mill operation - getting the dust and litter out of the system in a manner of destructive, cleansing meditation. While doing that i've noticed that there is a new Christopher Nolan flick playing - "Dunkirk". I didn't cared much about the film when it came out and to be honest, i couldn't care less at that particular moment. There were things much more important then watching this booming extended Benny Hill sketch reedited into a Jodorowsky-like non-sequitir Monty Python sketch.

And then the electricity was shutdown and i was left at my devices. It was right in the middle of the evening so i was also left alone in a complete darkness. It was frustrating. Like an air being let out of the balloon. And so i started to think and one of the things i've been thinking about was Dunkirk evacuation. I thought i should read a little bit more about it. So when the power was back up - i've made a little research and read some stuff about Dunkirk events.

One of the things that i've found really fascinating were so-called Small Boat Fleet also known as Dunkirk Little Ships. As you know - those were the civilians who reached out to help with the evacuation of the troops of the beach. It was a ragtag fleet of boats of all types. The most interesting thing about them were the names of the ships. Coupled together - it was a sight to behold.

There were ships called "Count Dracula", "Feasible", "Grey Mist", "Jeff", "Lady Gay" and more. There was also another thing i have noticed - the list was oddly poetric. If you read through the list - it will appear like an odd poem of its own. Barely sensible, but a poem nonetheless. Here's my take on this phenomenon:


Abdy Beauclerk, Aberdonia, Advance, 

Alusia, Aquabelle, Aureol (previously Kitty)

Beatrice Maud, Bessie, Bluebird, Blue Bird, Bounty, Bou Saada Breda (previously Dab II)

Brown Owl;

Cabby, Cachalot Challenge, 

Chantecler, Chico Chumley - Count Dracula;
Daphne, Davia, Dawn, Defender, Diana, Dianthus, Dragonfly, Dowager
Elsa II Ena Endeavour Eothen, Ethel Maud - Fairwind;

Feasible now Meloy?

Felicity, Ferry Nymph, Felicity, Firefly; Forty Two

Gay Venture

Gentle Ladye, Guide of Dunkirk (now called the Girl Guide);

Glala now Mahalia - Grey Mist

Hilfranor -
Inspiration: Jeff, Jovial.

Lady Cable, Lady Gay, Lady Lou - Landscaper

Lazy Days;

Letitia 

Maid Marion;
Mimosa Moonraker

Naiad Errant Nancibelle 

New Britannic, New Windsor Castle;
Noneta

Omega;

Ona II Orellana
Papillon, Patricia, Polly, Pudge
Quest;
Rapid One, Resolute;
Sea Mew; Sundowner; Smolt

Thark Tom Tit

The King;
Vanguard;

Wanda Warrior, Wayfarer, Windsong.