People Deserve Beautiful Things
The SDBA program introduced an interesting discussion about design standards in renovation. It happens to be something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about.
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Culture & Language
Asafoetida, That Most Revered, Elusive Culinary Stank
Sometimes, the spices you can buy on the shelves at Trader Joe’s just aren’t cutting it and you need something stronger, darker. Danker.
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Madame Butterfly at the Michigan Opera
Review of a performance currently playing at the Detroit Opera.
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Midjourney Parameters: Style & Chaos In Speculative Urbanism
Imagining cities and their infrastructure using artificial intelligence, and playing around with some of the weirder parameters in Midjourney to see what we can squeeze out of the generative AI platform.
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UAW: What We Stand To Gain, Vs. Lose, From The Threat Of A Strike.
Why do we always talk about strikes in terms of the bad it would do to the economy? What if instead we talked about the benefits and economic growth that would result from companies meeting labor demands?
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How ChatGPT Saved Me While Traveling
Hiking up an Icelandic glacier is already pretty daunting, but it can be made a bit less daunting with an AI assistant. It can’t help you climb, but it can explain some missing puzzle pieces.
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TED Countdown Detroit: Sustainability’s Problem With Elitism and Respectability Politics
Al Gore, McKinsey alums, and half of the Ivy League descends on Detroit this week to tell the peasants about sustainability and decarbonization. Just kidding, it’s a for-profit, invite-only event that costs $4,000– no peasants will be invited.
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Unpacking AI Training Biases in Midjourney
Artificial intelligence can produce imagery of whatever you ask it for. The question is: How accurate is the AI’s interpretation? In some cases, it sounds like it’s based more on the prejudices and stereotypes held by the people who design and train the model. That’s a big problem.
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Book Review: A Children’s Bible, by Lydia Millet
A review of a 2020 novel by Lydia Millet that integrates climate fiction into the classic Bildungsroman.
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Travelogue: Reykjavik, þú lítur vel út!
This week, we departed the land of fire and smog for a land of fire and steam– where we will
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