prior probability

That is the title of this well-reasoned essay by Joanna J. Bryson, a computer science professor at the University of Bath. (Also, check out her TEDxCERN Talk below on the question, “Is A.I. changing us?”) Here is an extended excerpt from Dr Bryson’s excellent essay:

There is in fact no question about whether we own robots. We design, manufacture, own, and operate robots. They are entirely our responsibility. We determine their goals and behaviour, either directly or indirectly through specifying their intelligence, or even more indirectly by specifying how they acquire their own intelligence. But at the end of every indirection lies the fact that there would be no robots on this planet if it weren’t for deliberate human decisions to create them.

The principal question is whether robots should be considered strictly as servants—as objects subordinate to our own goals that are built with the intention of improving our lives. Others in this volume argue that artificial companions should play roles more often reserved for a friend or peer. My argument is this: given the inevitability of our ownership of robots, neglecting that they are essentially in our service would be unhealthy and inefficient. More importantly, it invites inappropriate decisions such as misassignations of responsibility or misappropriations of resources.

Shout out to Armin Chosnama, who introduced us to Tyler Vigen’s wonderful spurious correlations website. Below is just a small subsample of over 30,000 such correlations. File under “bullshit statistics.”

Did you know that landlocked Oklahoma is bordered by six separate States? The hand-painted map of Oklahoma pictured below, which was drawn by artist and fellow polymath Jerry M. Wilson, is the first installment of a series. Check out more of his beautiful hand-painted maps via Reddit here and his homepage via Tumblr here.

Image credit: Jerry M. Wilson (u/ironandredwood)

Inspired by Leonard Bogdonoff‘s project to scrape Instagram to create a universal and searchable database of street art from around the world, we conclude our series on Cuban graffiti artists by including the following non-Instagram compendia of Havana street art:

1. Brendan Sainsbury’s list via Lonely Planet (five images).
2. Sarah Laskow’s list via Atlas Obscura (seven images)
3. Barbara Maseda’s list via culturetrip (ten images).
4. Public Art Havana via the Public Art App (ten images).
5. Havana street art walk via triposo (14 images).
6. Cuban street art via Pinterest (55 images).

Take a look before this art disappears. All of Havana’s street artists are now threatened by a new censorship law called “Decree 349” …

Photo credit: Karim Amar

Did you know that March 25 used to mark the beginning of the new year in Britain and in her North American colonies? Rebecca Onion explains why in The Boston Globe. Here is an excerpt from her fascinating essay:

This March 25 will likely pass quietly, another chilly Tuesday in early spring. But in the Boston of 300 years ago, the day would have been very noteworthy indeed: It marked the start of the new calendar year. The Colonists, as Britain had for centuries, celebrated the change of the year in late March—the Feast of the Annunciation, or Lady Day. Rents were due, contracts began, and obligations renewed on March 25, the “New Year.” *** Under the Julian system, New Year’s tended to vary from country to country; Britain preferred to mark it on March 25, a Christian holiday, rather than the original Roman New Year’s Day of Jan. 1. (March 25 was traditionally the date when Mary found out about her pregnancy, and familiarly known as “Lady Day.”) So through the 1600s and into the 1700s, continental Europeans had agreed to turn their calendars over on Jan. 1, but the British world continued to mark the beginning of a civil and legal year three months later.

The street artist we have featured in our last few posts, Yulier P. (@yuliergraffiticuba), was detained by the Cuban police in August of 2017 under an obscure urban planning decree that makes it illegal to build without a permit or deface public monuments. (Shout out to Amnesty International for denouncing this arbitrary arrest.) This urban decree (Decree No. 272, which was signed into law by Fidel in 2001), however, does not authorize the government to arrest violators, only to impose fines. In other words, there is a small gap in Cuba’s fascist legal system, since Decree 272 does not really apply to street artists. Is this legal gap the real reason why the Cuban government enacted Decree 349 in 2018–in order to give the government the legal authority to criminalize street art and prosecute street artists like Yulier P.?

If you are in DC this weekend, we will be presenting our analysis of Cuban Decrees 272 and 349 and the criminalization of street art in Cuba at the 4th National People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference this afternoon (23 March). Shout out to Professor Tony Varona for inviting me to speak and to the American University Washington College of Law for holding this excellent conference. The full npoc program is available here.

In response to the criminalization of his unauthorized public murals, Cuban graffiti artist Yulier P. found this ingenious and defiant micro-street art solution:

The murals of Yulier Rodriguez Perez (@yuliergraffiticuba) began to appear on the streets of Havana in 2014. In the words of Deni Ellis Béchard, “He soon established himself as one of the most prolific street artists in Havana, signing his tableaus Yulier P. He often painted … on walls so deeply weathered that his images instantly resembled ancient frescoes. He wanted to remind the people who lived there that it was possible to have a voice and to express their struggles. ‘Cubans have been indoctrinated to fear speaking out. I don’t understand this, since this is a socialist project, created by the people.'” That was before the Cuban government decided to criminalize unauthorized street art …

Image credit: Yulier P

As if existing levels of repression and economic hardship were not enough, the Cuban government has now begun to criminalize street art under a recently-enacted dystopian decree. We will be blogging about the criminalization of Cuban street art in the next day or two.

Image credit: Yulier P.