Category Archives: Deep Mind
Studying content moderation, disinformation, and deep fakes. Astroturfing, bias, and rumor control. – The CyberWire
At a glance.
Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab is assembling a guide to the different ways in which online platforms and services are responding to disinformation and misinformation. Produced by the Partnership on AI, the report seeks to catalogue "identifiable patterns in the variety of tactics used to classify and act on information credibility across platforms." The Partnership on AI's members include "Amazon, Facebook, Google, DeepMind, Microsoft, IBM, and Apple, as well as nonprofits like the ACLU and First Draft, news organizations like The New York Times, and academic and research institutes like Harvards Berkman Klein Center and Data and Society."
The Lab's first post on the topic "look[s] at several interventions: labeling, downranking, removal, and other external approaches. Within these interventions, we will look at patterns in what type of content theyre applied to and where the information for the intervention is coming from. Finally, we will turn to platform policies and transparency reports to understand what information is available about the impact of these interventions and the motivations behind them."
The University of Pittsburgh has announced the formation of the Pitt Disinformation Lab, a unit of the university's Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security. The Lab aspires to go "beyond passive detection and reporting to create a new, community-centered system of malign influence warning, understanding, and response."
The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook and Michigan State are conducting research they think promises to result in tools that might be able to reliably recognize deepfake images.
The Guardian has an account of an alleged attempt by a Republican-aligned US marketing firm, Rally Forge, to divide the opposing Democrats' vote by posts in social media that appeared to be in the interests of progressive (but not necessarily Democrat) candidates. The posts used images associated with progressive politics (red rose emojis, pictures of Senator Sanders and Representative Ocasio-Cortez) and various progressive memes against the corporate, two-party oligarchy and the corporate, capitalist wage system. Some Green Party candidates were endorsed by name, which triggered a Federal Election Commission inquiry into the posts' funding. The apparent goal was to shave the Democrats' share of the progressive vote by diverting it to third parties and candidates farther to the political left. Facebook permitted some of the posts but took down others as violating policies against inauthenticity, and it restricted Rally Forge's access to the platform. The Federal Election Commission looked into the matter but took no enforcement action. The Guardian regards both responses as inadequate to the astroturfing imposture and finds the incident troubling with respect to the FEC's ability to police political campaigning.
Other criticisms, these from the other end of the political spectrum, questioned, in effect, whether "non-partisan" should be interpreted as "viewpoint-neutral," "unbiased," "agenda-free," or other, similar, bona fides. The conservative American Principles Project (APP) complained to the Aspen Institute that the Institute's Commission on Information Disorder, begun in January with the mission of examining an American "public information crisis," is in the APP's view likely to produce a progressive hit piece in the guise of prescribing remedies for disinformation. The Commission is "elitist" and only nominally impartial, having a single Republican member. Two Commissioners are particularly singled out for mention in dispatches: Kathryn Murdoch, said to be a donor to PACRONYM, a progressive PAC itself accused of astroturfing during the 2020 election, and Prince Harry, who in an earlier Aspen session described the First Amendment to the US Constitution as "bonkers," which sounds as if he doesn't entirely approve of it.
These suggest, again, the inherent difficulties of deploying content moderation that most parties will find credible. OODA Loop has an essay on Chinese government trolling that suggests an alternative to content moderation: live with the disinformation. To censor, as Beijing does, is to cede to a government what's rightfully a citizen's responsibility: distinguish fact from opinion, truth from lies.
CISA, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, has taken up the old governmental function of rumor control (which is not censorship, but rather the classically liberal remedy of "more speech," albeit generously funded more speech) and published a graphic novel, Bug Bytes, that focuses on pandemic misinformation. It will be interesting to see how the novel's effectiveness will be measured, or at least assessed.
(To return to the Duke of Sussex for a moment, those curious as to what the First Amendment to the United States Constitution actually says that might have prompted the Duke of Sussex to judge it "bonkers" will find the text gratifyingly brief. We quote it in full: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." That's crazy talk. Or maybe the bonkers stuff is in the penumbra or someplace like that; it's always in the last place you look, isn't it?)
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Studying content moderation, disinformation, and deep fakes. Astroturfing, bias, and rumor control. - The CyberWire
From The Deep Sea, A Chance To Learn, Preserve on the Gulf Coast – Mississippi Free Press
Chris Lapniewski doesnt lose his focus, even as the screams of victory ripple out across the crowd nearby, almost deafening. The celebration is well-deserved. Catching a nearly 800-pound blue marlin is a rarity, even for seasoned anglers. If thats not enough, consider the hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line.
So it goes at the 25th Annual Mississippi Gulf Coast Billfish Classic, a perennial deep-sea fishing competition held in Biloxi. Countless teams of professional anglers gather at the docks outside the Golden Nugget Casino for a shot at piscine glory: to catch the biggest marlin, swordfish, tuna, wahoo or mahi mahi in the Gulf of Mexico. But to the side of the pier, onlookers watch a different team with their own distinctive goals.
For the field researchers at the University of Southern Mississippis Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, the tournament is more than a cultural event: it is an unbeatable opportunity to get a glimpse into the deep, vast ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico. For a quarter of a century, GCRL researchers have attended the Billfish Classic, intercepting the trophy leviathans while returning fishermen celebrate.
Lapniewski, a research scientist at GCRL, is no stranger to the process of breaking down fish for scientific inquiry. He scoops the eyeball from a swordfish as easily as one might shell a peanut, extracting the lensa perfect sphere, clear as crystaland depositing it into a bag.
Ive been doing this for six or seven years now, Lapniewski says.
As he speaks, a pair of teens slip through the barrier separating the labs tent from the crowd to get a closer look at his work. Its something I really enjoy. Ive seen myself doing it all my life. I grew up around this, in Bay St. Louis. He pauses to give the observers a better look at the gemlike lens.
Performing field research under the gaze of hundreds of onlookers is a unique experience for the scientists of GCRL, but its yet another opportunistic benefit of their partnership with the Billfish Classic. All of the researchers present relish the opportunity to show attendees how science is investigative and physicalnot merely something contained in a lab.
Some of us want to do it all, Lapniewski says with a smile. (Fieldwork) lets you see what you actually enjoy. Maybe you love it, maybe you hate it. Maybe it takes your career in a whole different direction.
Exploring the Delicate Balance of Life
To Lapniewskis side, Elizabeth Greenheck, a USM graduate student, is sifting through the gills of a colossal marlin for another kind of opportunist. She is hunting for parasites, so small the untrained eye might miss them as sea detritus. A crowd of children are gathered around the fish, larger than all of them combined.
A lot of these dont hinder the fish, she explains, half to this reporter and half to the surrounding children. But it can tell you a lot about the environment.
Even the most miniscule parasites tell the researchers at the research laboratorys endless stories about the nature of the Gulf ecosystem. Their presence at every level of the greater food web provides subtle clues to the delicate balance of lifeand the complicated relationships between organisms and environment that dedicated study reveals.
This is the primary goal of GCRLs decades-long partnership with the Billfish Classic. Jeremy Higgs is the research manager at the labs Center for Fisheries Research and Development. At times during the long, hot Saturday tournament, he is forced to serve as a bouncer for the research tent, as the crowd swells, overtaking the pier. With that accomplished, he returns to the careful extraction of freshly caught data.
Through the otolith, the earboneswe can get the age of these fish that are being brought to the dock, he explained. We take tissue to see their reproductive state. We collect stomachs, and there we have a chance to look at a snapshot of their diet. Its a small period of time, but it gives us more insight into what theyre feeding upon in their natural habitat.
This data quickly makes its way from speculative research to meaningful, real-world applications. All of this information is really important for future conservation and management of these species: the ages and the reproductive data that we collect go to bigger datasets. We provide that data to managers (like the Department of Marine Resources) and that ultimately helps with conservation, Higgs said.
This Is Our Mission
This is our mission, explains Dr. Read Hendon, director of GCRL in a later interview with the Mississippi Free Press. Conducting research and developing science programs to help the state, the region and the nation better understand our coastal and marine ecosystems, and (to improve) the sustainable and productive use of those resources.
Hendon made the transition from field research to administration years ago. A hint of regretful nostalgia lingers in his tone when he speaks about fieldwork. The biology of swordfish in the Gulf of Mexico is (still) so poorly understood, he explains. Protection of species like swordfish and marlin is impossible without an ever-growing understanding of their basic biology, and relationship to the broader ecosystem.
If you dont know how fast those fish grow, if you dont know at what age or at what size they reproduce, then thats a real large gap in our understanding of how we can successfully manage the species, Hendon said.
Other concerns exist: any resource extraction for the purposes of scientific inquiry has to be sustainable. Dr. Jill Hendon, interim director for the labs Center for Fisheries Research and Development explained in a later statement to the Mississippi Free Press. Through our research endeavors, we have a fairly good understanding of the coastal dynamic: the food web structure, life history characteristics, habitat use, etc. The dynamic of the offshore community is less well understood simply because it is more difficult to explore such a large system while still implementing ethical conservation measures, she wrote.
The difficulty in extracting valuable information about Gulf Coast species comes from more than the elusiveness of the fish themselves. If you look at Alaska, thats a fairly static system, Read Hendon said. But here, in the north-central Gulf, with the Mississippi River, the Pearl River and the Pascagoula River, our system can change hour to hour, week to week.
For the shifting ecological conditions of the Gulf, conditions are quite literally whichever way the wind blows.
Lapniewski, Greenheck, Higgs and the rest of the GCRL researchers remain at the pier through the sweltering day and into a cool and busy evening. Long after the crowd has begun to disperse, the scientists remain. Night sets in, and the team wields electric lamps to continue their work.
If Higgs is tired by the end of the day, it doesnt show. An angler has caught what promises to be the largest swordfish ever hooked in Mississippi state history. Fifteen boats still linger out in the waters, waiting to deliver their catches to be judgedand then dissected. Higgs wipes the sweat off of his brow and grins. He could do this all night.
The Old Man and the Sea
An enormous presence is missing from the days events, and his absence is on the mind of every researcher in attendance. Jim Franks is neither the founder nor the director of the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory. But he is the programs godfather: its oldest veteran, its public face, and a beloved guide to marine researchers young and old.
Franks sees himself in humbler terms. Our work is a multidisciplinary effortmany, many people working together, all with expertise in various aspects of biological research. Its always been a team effort, from fisheries personnel to our academics, he told the Mississippi Free Press in a phone interview days after the tournament, while recovering from health troubles at home.
Read Hendon is among Franks many admirers. He first came under Franks tutelage in 1995, when Hendon was only an undergraduate. Franks time at GCRL stretches back to the 1960s, a remarkably long tenure.
I cant imagine having a better first boss than Jim. He was so patient, an excellent teacher. He is 110% dedicated to what he does, Hendon said. Fisheries and marine biology is his life.
Franks has a deep understanding of the granular biology of individual species in the Gulf. But he also has a keen awareness of the greater ecosystemand humankinds relationship with it. Over the last couple of decades, theres been a great effort put forth by many regarding the effects of human interaction with marine resources in the Gulf of Mexicowith marine resources around the world, Franks explains.
That interaction includes fishing, of course, but extends to broader ecological catastrophe. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 is still fresh in the minds of all marine researchers on the Gulf. The largest marine oil spill in human history, the Deepwater Horizon devastated local ecosystems.
To Franks, the laboratorys work contributes to an understanding of the long-lasting harm the spill caused. But it also provides valuable data for benchmarking ifor whenanother man-made environmental catastrophe occurs. You have to get a feel for the status of those stocks, in case there is another spill. Hopefully thatll never happen, Franks said. But its ongoing. Its been ongoing since the Gulf oil spill.
Between Predator and Prey
The same information feeds into our understanding of the highest level of anthropocentrichuman-causeddisaster. Climate change is something of interest to every research scientist, in many respects. The research community has always been aware of some of those changes, but now I think its getting the attention it deserves, Franks explained. Now were understanding how humans influence it.
The reach of even the simplest scientific inquiry can be staggering, especially for those without a background in ecology. What could the shape and size of a swordfishs ear inform us about the global consequences of climate change?
Everything is interconnected, Franks replied. I still find it fascinating, too. Our system is so well-tuned to function at a level thats beneficial to the (sum) of its parts. Of course, that can be changed, he added. Its tightly knit: the interactions between predator and prey, the oceanographic conditions, hydrographic conditions if thats disrupted, it can all get off cue.
The Billfish Classic, and GCRLs presence there, is not quite the same without the towering presence of Franks. But his students and colleagues are hard at work all the same, engaging with interested observers, meticulously exploring their glimpse into the depths of the Gulf with the same dogged curiosity they learned, in part, from Franks.
Late in his career, it is the cohort of students and researchers succeeding him that seem most important to Franks. He is old enough to have molded the careers of scientists now eminent in their own right. Theyre the next generation, he says, And thats why were trying to give them these hands-on experiences: so they can carry this work forward.
Back at the tournament, Lapniewski finds a moment in between processing a trio of billfish to reflect. For all the young field researchers insistence that others could better describe Franks significance, no one puts it more succinctly.
Everything he is, Lapniewski says, we are.
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From The Deep Sea, A Chance To Learn, Preserve on the Gulf Coast - Mississippi Free Press
India Inc can delve deep within and construct its own reality: Deepak Chopra to ETILC members – Economic Times
As per a study titled Influence of Spirituality of CEOs on Job Satisfaction of Their Respective Employees." by Venugopal N. published in IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) there is a statistically significant positive relationship between spiritual dimensions such as - transcendence, belongingness, self-esteem, naturalness and religiousness of the CEO and the job satisfaction of their employees.
A wholesome interpretation of leadership is inclusive of the true intent of those at the helm of business as the unlocking of real value is dependent on many subtle factors other than those of revenue, productivity and growth. Factors such as motivation, resilience and contentment not only lead to happy employees but to the realization of all financial objectives without compromising on ethics. And truly inspiring leaders of India Inc are fully aware of this correlation between pure potentiality and the factors we consider to be successful in the traditional terms. ETILC members had an in-depth discussion with Deepak Chopra on understanding consciousness as to enhance the capacity for intuition, creativity and conscious decision making.
"If thoughts are impulses of intelligence, then your body is a network of thoughts and all molecules are messengers of emotion"
Deepak Chopra
In the United States, the constitution mentions the pursuit of happiness and peace of mind. Both these phrases can be questioned. The former assumes that the fundamental state of ones being is unhappy and therefore one must pursue it. However, we know this to be untrue because a child can be happy without any reason whatsoever. Joy or ananda are totally different as you dont need a reason for it and everything flows from ananda shakti which leads to gyan shakti which leads to icha shakti. This leads to the spontaneous fulfillment of desire.
"How does one rate happiness versus spirituality?"
Manoj Mehta, CEO, MTC Group
"The mind that allows you to go beyond the human state is also responsible for limiting the effort as well. How do you navigate between the two"
Gaurav Malhotra, MD, Hansgrohe India
"The Japanese clearly are a race who defy their chronological age. What enables this?"
Dinesh Aggarwal
"Does the law of attraction really work"
Shashank Garg, Partner, Advani & Co
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India Inc can delve deep within and construct its own reality: Deepak Chopra to ETILC members - Economic Times
Investors say Eindhoven poised to become Netherlands No. 2 tech hub – TechCrunch
Eindhoven might not immediately spring to mind as a high-tech hub, but the Netherlands city is keen to position itself as a center for deep tech in Europe.
The Technical University of Eindhoven, High Tech Campus Eindhoven, and locally based corporates like ASML and Philips have been eyeing initiatives across Europe and applying what theyve learned to the regions strategy. Philips launched in Eindhoven in 1891 and played no small part in the municipalitys ambitions to become a tech hub.
Eindhoven produces a high number of patents per year considering its small population and has been home to an inordinate number of hardware startups. The local High Tech Campus has a high hardware focus, for instance.
Our survey respondents consider the city strong in areas like photonics, robotics, medical devices, materials science, deep tech, automotive tech, sustainability tech, medtech, Big Data, hardware and precision engineering. They are looking for more mature startups and scaleups focused on AI and hard tech.
Eindhoven is considered weaker in fintech and consumer products, and it exists in a small region with limited global visibility.
Over the next five years, one respondent said, Eindhoven will have evolved to the Netherlands second-largest tech ecosystem, behind Amsterdam. On a European scale, Eindhoven will have entered the top 10.
To learn more about Eindhoven, we queried the following investors:
What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
High-tech systems, photonics, robotics, medical devices.
Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Lightyear, Bio-TRIP, EFFECT photonics, Nemo Healthcare, Sorama.
What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?
Fully dedicated.
Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Steef Blok, Harm de Vries, Piet van der Wielen, Andy Lurling, Mark Cox.
Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?
More mature, more focused on inclusive development, less quality coming from university spinoffs.
What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
High-tech systems and materials, the real high-tech and deep tech stuff that either leads to scientific breakthroughs or turns scientific breakthroughs into companies. Lithography makes a major contribution to that, as well as medical devices and production technologies.
Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Nearfield Instruments, Optiflux, Dynaxion, AlphaBeats, Incooling.
What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?
They focus mainly on high-tech machine building and software development, AI.
With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?
Largely unaffected.
Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?
More integrated between AI and hard tech and production.
What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
The pros are high-tech systems, collaboration culture and excellent startup ecosystem; The cons are that its a small region with limited visibility globally.
Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
LionVolt, DENS, Lightyear, Morphotonics.
What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?
They focus mainly on high-tech machine building and software development, AI.
With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?
Others will move in! Housing is extremely expensive but the demand for a skilled workforce is extremely high. If people move to surrounding areas, within 30 km, housing prices skyrocket all over.
Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
BOM (thats us!), Braventure, Brainport Development, TNO.
Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?
Leading worldwide in several technology areas, mainly, high-precision, roll-to-roll processing atomic layer deposition, material handling, industry 4.0, silicon processing equipment.
What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
The region is strong in deep tech, automotive tech, sustainability tech, medtech, Big Data, hardware and precision engineering. Most excited by sustainability tech and deep tech. The region is weak in fintech.
Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Lightyear, Incooling.
What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?
Conservative, non-risk-taking there are so many subsidies they dont need to take risks, so once the tech risk is gone, they are good, but they are not global enough; hardware.
With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?
Hardware is hands-on people are still moving in! We have a housing crisis!
Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Innovation Industries.
Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?
More mature startups and scaleups on the scene!
What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
The region is strong in sustainable cities, health and well-being, and education.
Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
FruitPunch AI, AlphaBeats, Vaulut, Lightyear, Serendipity.
What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?
Mainly hardware; LUMO Labs has an early-stage software focus.
With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?
Stay.
Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Nard Sintenie, Frank Claassen, Hans Bloemen.
Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?
Competing on a global scale.
What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
The region is strong in deep tech and health. Im excited about opportunities for cooperation between different companies. Its weak in seed investment.
Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Lightyear, AlphaBeats, Carbyon, FruitPunch, Serendipity.
What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?
Tech investors are mainly government-regulated constitutions or angels. Focus on scaleup.
With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?
They will stay; working from home has some benefits but meeting people in an inspiring environment gives the best synergy.
Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
LUMO Labs, HighTechXL, Andy Lurling, Sven Bakkes, John Bell, Guus Frericks, Bert-Jan Woertman.
Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?
Leading in the world.
What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
The region is strong in building sustainable and resilient cities and a platform between cities/society and tech market.
Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Digital Toolbox (a Serendipity spinoff), Amber (mobility), Active Esports Arena and other portfolio companies of LUMO Labs.
What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?
Through LUMO Labs, there is a focus on societal investments; the rest is investment in high tech due to the big industries (VDLK, ASML, NXP, Phillips).
With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?
Work at home or mix in the office and at home.
Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
A combination of accelerators (LUMO Labs, HighTechXL, Braventure) and Brainport (ecosystem management) supported by the Eindhoven University of Technology and big corporates.
Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?
Leading in the world on societal/systemic change moving from high-tech toward impact (more software and digitization).
What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Its strong in high-tech equipment, hardware, photonics, additive manufacturing, lighting, electronics, semiconductor technology and health tech, and weak in consumer products and apps.
Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Lightyear, ELEO Technologies, EFFECT Photonics, SMART Photonics, PhotonFirst, Amber.
What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?
There is a relatively low number of investors in early stage.
With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?
They will stay. Eindhoven is a hot spot with many cultures, international tech community and great infrastructure, while it feels like a village.
Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Nard Sintenie, startup founders, HighTechXL.
Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?
Worldwide dominance in high-tech hardware scaleups.
What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
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Investors say Eindhoven poised to become Netherlands No. 2 tech hub - TechCrunch
What should you read in the summer of 2021? Here are the best books. – Berkeleyside
Summer reading. Photo: Creative Commons
School is out, summer is almost here, browsing is back and libraries and bookstores have reopened. So what better time is there to pick up a book by a Berkeley writer?
Three very famous Berkeley residents all have new tomes this summer: Michael Lewis, Alice Waters and Michael Pollan. A number of other prominent Berkeleyans do too, including Malcolm Margolin, the founder of Heyday Books and author of the iconic The Ohlone Way. Heyday is about to publish Margolins memoir of the 50 years he spent deep hanging out, with California native communities. Grant Faulkner, who as the executive director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) cheers hundreds of thousands of authors to write a complete novel each November, is publishing a collection of short stories in July. Bill Issel, best known for his academic history books, has just published the second book in a trilogy set in World War II-era San Francisco. And Joan Steinau Lester, a white woman who married a Black man before the landmark 1967 Supreme Court ruling legalizing interracial marriage, has a memoir of those times. Here are nine recently published and about-to-be-published books by Berkeley authors worth checking out.
My Good Son by Yang Huang
Huangs third book explores the scope and limitations of parental love. Set in China in 1990, it centers on Mr. Cai, a tailor, and his son Feng, who is floundering academically and cant pass his university entrance exams. Desperate to see his son succeed. Mr. Cai makes what may be a Faustian pact with Jude, a gay, ex-pat customer. Even though Feng wants nothing more than to be a fashion designer and work in his fathers business, Mr. Cai convinces Jude to sponsor Feng to study in the U.S. What could go wrong? Plenty. Huang, who grew up in Chinas Jiangsu province and participated in the 1989 student uprisings before moving to the East Bay and taking a job at UC Berkeley, explores differences between American and Chinese cultures, how fathers and sons relate to one another, sexuality, family expectations and more.
Traitors by William Issel
I first stumbled upon Bill Issels work when I read the iconic book he co-authored with Robert Cheney: San Francisco, 1865-1932: Politics, Power, and Urban Development. It still holds a place of importance on my bookshelf. Issel, who lives in Berkeley and is an emeritus professor at San Francisco State University, is still exploring heady issues (he is writing about the competition between the Catholic Church and the Communist Party from the Russian Revolution to the end of the Cold War) but has also ventured into fiction. He has just published Traitors, a novel set in San Francisco in 1942, the second book of a trilogy. It is based on true events and Issel combed FBI files and private and public archives to come up with the story. The novel opens four months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor when an assassin shoots the German American president of the isolationist group America First. A trio of San Francisco detectives and a local FBI officer must hunt down the killer. Was the assassination politically motivated? Will uncovering the truth incite more violence?
All the Comfort Sin Can Provide by Grant Faulkner.
Faulkner, the executive director of Berkeleys National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story, writes about people wrestling with who they are, who they want to be, he said in an authors note. In a series of short stories, Faulkner looks at how people mess up, how they hurt themselves and others, how they seek out grace and look for salvation. As Jung said, Faulkner writes, inside of every alcoholic theres a seeker who got on the wrong track. Written over a span of decades (he wrote one story just a week before he turned in his manuscript), Faulkner takes readers from Arizona highways to Iowa in the wintertime, to New York corporate suites.
Dominus by Steven Saylor
For 30 years, Steven Saylor, who splits his time between Berkeley and Austin, TX, has been writing about ancient Rome. His first book, Roman Blood, came out in 1991 and launched a 13-book series featuring Gordianus the Finder, a sleuth of ancient Rome. The books traced 40 years of the Roman Republic from Ciceros first murder trial to the assassination of Julius Caesar.
Saylors second series, The Roma Trilogy, follows the fortunes of the Pinarius family over 1,000 years, from the reign of Marcus Aurelius when Rome was just an inconsequential settlement on the Tiber River up to Constantine the Great, who made Christianity the state religion and moved the imperial capital to Constantinople (modern Istanbul).The Pinarius family sees it all: the madness of Caligula, the decadence of Nero, the Golden Age of Rome, wars, plagues, famines. Dominus, the last book in the Roma trilogy, will be published on June 29.
We are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto by Alice Waters
Alice Waters is the doyenne of eating locally and seasonally, a philosophy she showcases at Chez Panisse and proselytizes with The Edible Schoolyard Project. Her new book, We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto, explores those ideas and connects them to climate change, social unrest and inequality, In the book, Waters writes about the perniciousness of fast food culture where convenience and low-cost are more important than everything else. The embrace of disposable culture is sickening our world, Waters writes. She encourages people to slow down, to watch and appreciate what is around, to eat foods that are ripe and in season. Following that rhythm rather than one of fast consumption will improve peoples health as well the health of the planet, writes Waters.
The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis
In a full-page ad in the New York Times for Michael Lewis new book, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, the publisher asks, Where did we go wrong? And how can we get it right? After all, as the ad states, In 2019, a panel ofpublic health expertsjudged the U.S. to be more prepared for a pandemic than otherG7 nations. And we all know how that worked out. Michael Lewis explains why in just 300 pages and spotlights the heroic efforts of a handful of medical scientists working behind the scenes to move the country toward an effective response to the COVID pandemic.
So why DID we go wrong? Its well understood that one of the principal reasons the United States fumbled the response to the COVID pandemic was the incompetence, denial, and foot-dragging of the Trump administration, and the President himself. But Lewis, and the many public health doctors he profiles in The Premonition, make clear that other factors loomed large as well. Almost pathological risk-aversion and ass-covering by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The innate inefficiencies and distortions of the countrys for-profit health care system. The decentralized US public health care system thats not a system at all. And resistance to essential public health measures by a disbelieving and sometimes hostile citizenry. (Continue reading this review on Mal Warwicks Blog on Books.)
Loving Before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White by Joan Steinau Lester
Joan Steinau was just 22 in 1962 when she heard a man play the guitar at a camp in the Catskills. He called himself Julie, short for Julius Lester, and he would soon become Joans husband. She was white, from a middle-class Connecticut family. He was a Black man from Nashville, Tennessee, a son of a Methodist minister. They fell in love, drawn together by their mutual interests in writing, music, and politics and moved to New York City at a time when the world was often hostile to interracial relationships. Lesters memoir, Loving Before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White, explores her marriage to a man who rose to prominence in the civil rights movement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, her quest to define herself as an independent woman and writer, and the personal and political forces that pushed the couple apart. (They had two children and divorced in 1970). Lesters book continues to the present and also explores her own awakening, how she pushed to be published, (Her first book, The Future of White Men and Other Diversity Dilemmas came out in 1994 and addressed race, white privilege, diversity and equity), how her growing feminism helped her realize she wanted to be with women. Like an armchair Red, I became an armchair lesbian, writes Lester, who now lives in Berkeley with her wife, Carole Johnson.
Deep Hanging Out: Wanderings and Wonderment in Native California by Malcolm Margolin
Since the early 1970s, Malcolm Margolin has been wandering around Californian Native communities talking to people, collecting their stories, and creating lasting friendships. He has also written frequently about native lives, starting with his 1978 book, The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area and through Heydays News from Native California. Deep Hanging Out is a collection of 30 articles Margolin has written over the years brought together in one place for the first time. He writes about pre-contact hunting, the quest of Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino to bring Ohlone food, both traditional and reimagined, to the wider public, the cultural revival salons Heyday hosted, explorations of traditional native practices and wisdom, and how various American Indians are working to review their language, among other topics. Margolin is a wonderfully clear writer who brings readers right next to him. Who can resist a line like this? So how did a balding, bearded, Jewish guy from the other side of the country end up serving acorn mush to a cluster of Indian elders? Let me try to explain. Deep Hanging Out will be released on July 6.
This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan last wrote about the power of psychedelic drugs in his 2018 book, How to Change Your Mind. The Berkeley author and professor of journalism at UC Berkeley is still interested in mind-changing matters. But in his new book, This Is Your Mind on Plants, Pollan delves into three plant drugs: opium, caffeine, and mescaline. Trying the drugs (or avoiding their consumption in the case of caffeine), Pollan asks why humans constantly seek out changes in consciousness. If we love getting high so much, why have we passed so many laws restricting the use of drugs and psychoactive plants? In This is Your Mind on Plants, Pollan once again delivers a great read that brings together memoir, participation, science and history. Available July 6.
In My Mothers Footsteps: A Palestinian Refugee Returns Home by Mona Hajjar Halaby
This memoir explores the lives of two women: Zakia Jabre Hajjar, who fled Palestine after the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the Arab-Israeli War that followed, and her daughter Mona Hajjar Halaby, who was born in Egypt in the 1950s and also had to leave that country. While her mother eventually moved to Geneva, Switzerland, Halaby moved to Berkeley and became a teacher. In 2007-2008, Halaby took a sabbatical from Park Day School in Oakland to teach conflict resolution in Ramallah. Much of her knowledge of Palestine had come from the stories her mother had told her and Halaby used that year abroad to learn more about her roots and trace her mothers journey. In the spring of 2008, Halabys mother, then 84, came to Palestine, her first visit after 59 years of exile. The two went to Jerusalem to find Hajjars house. It was still standing but they were only able to visit the garden. In 2015, three years after my mother died, and a year after my Palestinian husband died, I was able to enter my mothers house with the help of an Israeli friend. Needless to say, it was a bittersweet experience, said Halaby. In My Mothers Footsteps, Halaby vividly describes Palestinian landscapes, foods and the lives of people who live under military occupation, as well as her familys personal history. Available as an e-book, audio book and print-on-demand on August 5.
Hope and the Sea by Magda Portal. Translated by Kathleen Weaver
Few in the U.S. know and appreciate Magda Portal, a Latin American avant-garde poet, as much as Kathleen Weaver. The Berkeley resident published a biography of Portal, Peruvian Rebel: The World of Magda Portal, with a selection of her poems, in 2009. Now Dulzorada Press is issuing the first English translation of Hope and the Sea, translated by Weaver. The poetry book came out in Lima, Peru, in 1921 and was immediately praised. Already an acclaimed poet by the age of twenty-three, Magda Portal became a key participant in the political and intellectual milieu surrounding the Peruvian journal Amauta, eagerly absorbing the winds of change sweeping across the continent and embodying them within her own intensely personal experience, according to the publisher. Portal fought for the equality of women and the rights of the poor and was instrumental in forming the first mass political party in Peru. Weaver, who teaches English at Berkeley City College, has co-edited a number of anthologies of womens poetry and translated many books from Spanish.
Update June 19: We added two more books to this list after publication,
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What should you read in the summer of 2021? Here are the best books. - Berkeleyside
Inside the elite UK tech event attended by the rich and famous – CNBC
LONDON Hundreds of the biggest names in European tech rubbed shoulders with politicians and wealthy investors on the lawns of the Soho Farmhouse private members club in rural England at what was one of the first major tech events to happen in over a year.
Attendees of the annual Founders Forum event on Thursday included the former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron (who lives just up the road), ex-Finance Minister George Osborne, and the past and present U.K. tech ministers: Ed Vaizey and Oliver Dowden, respectively.
Google's Matt Brittin and Salesforce's Zahra Bahrololoumi, the European bosses of the Silicon Valley heavyweights, showed up, as did the general manager for TikTok in Europe, Rich Waterworth, who previously ran marketing for YouTube on the continent.
Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Zoom co-founder Eric Yuan beamed themselves in from the U.S. for video interviews, while DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman resurfaced after he exited the company in controversial circumstances to join Google. Mike Lynch, who is fighting extradition to the U.S. on fraud claims after selling his software start-up Autonomy to HP for over $11 billion, was also in attendance. Palantir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp was due to attend but had to drop out after the U.K. pushed back the date for its full lockdown easing.
"Everyone I want to meet in Europe is here," reads a quote from Schmidt on the event's website. "Founders Forum has emerged as the go-to destination for tech in Europe."
The founders and CEOs of apps like Monzo, Wise (formerly TransferWise), Citymapper, and many more also turned up to network and listen to talks on everything from existential risks that threaten to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth to hiring top talent in artificial intelligence.
Elsewhere, venture capitalists from firms with billions of dollars at their disposal such as Sequoia, Index Ventures, Atomico and Balderton were also present, as were some of the U.K.'s most active angel investors.
For many, it was the first in-person tech event they've been able to attend in over a year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Throughout the day, people kept saying how "weird" it was to be there as they fist-bumped and elbow-bumped one another. Everyone had to record themselves taking a Covid-19 test and getting a negative result in an app developed by Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus before they were allowed to attend.
Lastminute.com co-founder Brent Hoberman.
Founders Forum
Branded as "something like the Davos of tech" by The Guardian newspaper, Founders Forum is put on by serial entrepreneur and investor Brent Hoberman.
The former Eton and Oxford student, who co-founded Lastminute.com and the recently listed Made.com, is well-known for having one of the most impressive networks in the European tech scene. Many of his friends and investors are invited to Founders Forum each year.
The organizers describe it as a private network of the world's top-tier entrepreneurs, CEOs and investors from technology, media and digital.
Previous guests have included Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, former Apple design boss Jony Ive, broadcaster David Attenborough, and former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. Prince William, a member of the British royal family, has also attended.
Normally held at the five-star Grove Hotel, this year marks the first time Founders Forum has been held at Soho Farmhouse. Aston Martins, Maseratis, Range Rovers and Teslas could all be spotted in the car park on the day of the event.
"To have an event there is crazy money," a member of Soho House, which owns Soho Farmhouse, told CNBC, asking to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the discussion.
For some, one of the highlights of the day was witnessing British jet suit inventor Richard Browning flying around a few feet above the ground.
After being fed throughout the day, guests were treated to grilled lobster and strawberries and cream in the evening. On their way home, they were given goodie bags containing products from the likes of Cowshed and Charlotte Tilbury.
Timothy Armoo, CEO of Fanbytes, a company that helps brands advertise through social video, told CNBC he enjoyed the event.
"The quality of the conversations remained very high which was quite pleasing," he said.
"With this being the first major event that people have been to in a while, there is the danger that it becomes more of a 'catch up' session for friends, but that wasn't the case at all. Meaningful connections were fostered, and that's what you're looking for when you go to these events. I also really admired how they handled social-distancing rules. People were respectful, and the pre-process of taking tests was quite comforting."
Correction: This report was updated to delete an incorrect reference that Facebook's Nicola Mendelsohn was in attendance.
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Inside the elite UK tech event attended by the rich and famous - CNBC
Inside the fight to reclaim AI from Big Techs control – MIT Technology Review
Among the worlds richest and most powerful companies, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple have made AI core parts of their business. Advances over the last decade, particularly in an AI technique called deep learning, have allowed them to monitor users behavior; recommend news, information, and products to them; and most of all, target them with ads. Last year Googles advertising apparatus generated over $140 billion in revenue. Facebooks generated $84 billion.
The companies have invested heavily in the technology that has brought them such vast wealth. Googles parent company, Alphabet, acquired the London-based AI lab DeepMind for $600 million in 2014 and spends hundreds of millions a year to support its research. Microsoft signed a $1 billion deal with OpenAI in 2019 for commercialization rights to its algorithms.
At the same time, tech giants have become large investors in university-based AI research, heavily influencing its scientific priorities. Over the years, more and more ambitious scientists have transitioned to working for tech giants full time or adopted a dual affiliation. From 2018 to 2019, 58% of the most cited papers at the top two AI conferences had at least one author affiliated with a tech giant, compared with only 11% a decade earlier, according to a study by researchers in the Radical AI Network, a group that seeks to challenge power dynamics in AI.
The problem is that the corporate agenda for AI has focused on techniques with commercial potential, largely ignoring research that could help address challenges like economic inequality and climate change. In fact, it has made these challenges worse. The drive to automate tasks has cost jobs and led to the rise of tedious labor like data cleaning and content moderation. The push to create ever larger models has caused AIs energy consumption to explode. Deep learning has also created a culture in which our data is constantly scraped, often without consent, to train products like facial recognition systems. And recommendation algorithms have exacerbated political polarization, while large language models have failed to clean up misinformation.
Its this situation that Gebru and a growing movement of like-minded scholars want to change. Over the last five years, theyve sought to shift the fields priorities away from simply enriching tech companies, by expanding who gets to participate in developing the technology. Their goal is not only to mitigate the harms caused by existing systems but to create a new, more equitable and democratic AI.
In December 2015, Gebru sat down to pen an open letter. Halfway through her PhD at Stanford, shed attended the Neural Information Processing Systems conference, the largest annual AI research gathering. Of the more than 3,700 researchers there, Gebru counted only a handful who were Black.
Once a small meeting about a niche academic subject, NeurIPS (as its now known) was quickly becoming the biggest annual AI job bonanza. The worlds wealthiest companies were coming to show off demos, throw extravagant parties, and write hefty checks for the rarest people in Silicon Valley: skillful AI researchers.
That year Elon Musk arrived to announce the nonprofit venture OpenAI. He, Y Combinators then president Sam Altman, and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel had put up $1 billion to solve what they believed to be an existential problem: the prospect that a superintelligence could one day take over the world. Their solution: build an even better superintelligence. Of the 14 advisors or technical team members he anointed, 11 were white men.
RICARDO SANTOS | COURTESY PHOTO
While Musk was being lionized, Gebru was dealing with humiliation and harassment. At a conference party, a group of drunk guys in Google Research T-shirts circled her and subjected her to unwanted hugs, a kiss on the cheek, and a photo.
Gebru typed out a scathing critique of what she had observed: the spectacle, the cult-like worship of AI celebrities, and most of all, the overwhelming homogeneity. This boys club culture, she wrote, had already pushed talented women out of the field. It was also leading the entire community toward a dangerously narrow conception of artificial intelligence and its impact on the world.
Google had already deployed a computer-vision algorithm that classified Black people as gorillas, she noted. And the increasing sophistication of unmanned drones was putting the US military on a path toward lethal autonomous weapons. But there was no mention of these issues in Musks grand plan to stop AI from taking over the world in some theoretical future scenario. We dont have to project into the future to see AIs potential adverse effects, Gebru wrote. It is already happening.
Gebru never published her reflection. But she realized that something needed to change. On January 28, 2016, she sent an email with the subject line Hello from Timnit to five other Black AI researchers. Ive always been sad by the lack of color in AI, she wrote. But now I have seen 5 of you 🙂 and thought that it would be cool if we started a black in AI group or at least know of each other.
The email prompted a discussion. What was it about being Black that informed their research? For Gebru, her work was very much a product of her identity; for others, it was not. But after meeting they agreed: If AI was going to play a bigger role in society, they needed more Black researchers. Otherwise, the field would produce weaker scienceand its adverse consequences could get far worse.
As Black in AI was just beginning to coalesce, AI was hitting its commercial stride. That year, 2016, tech giants spent an estimated $20 to $30 billion on developing the technology, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.
Heated by corporate investment, the field warped. Thousands more researchers began studying AI, but they mostly wanted to work on deep-learning algorithms, such as the ones behind large language models. As a young PhD student who wants to get a job at a tech company, you realize that tech companies are all about deep learning, says Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a computer science professor who now serves at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. So you shift all your research to deep learning. Then the next PhD student coming in looks around and says, Everyones doing deep learning. I should probably do it too.
But deep learning isnt the only technique in the field. Before its boom, there was a different AI approach known as symbolic reasoning. Whereas deep learning uses massive amounts of data to teach algorithms about meaningful relationships in information, symbolic reasoning focuses on explicitly encoding knowledge and logic based on human expertise.
Some researchers now believe those techniques should be combined. The hybrid approach would make AI more efficient in its use of data and energy, and give it the knowledge and reasoning abilities of an expert as well as the capacity to update itself with new information. But companies have little incentive to explore alternative approaches when the surest way to maximize their profits is to build ever bigger models.
Link:
Inside the fight to reclaim AI from Big Techs control - MIT Technology Review
International Yoga Day: 6 tips for de-stressing the overthinker in you – wknd.
The mind loves to drift. It will either entertain itself with daydreams, anxiety about the future or rumination over the past. Sometimes, this pattern can get out of control when an overwhelming thought takes over our mind, and thats when we start overthinking. Heres how you can avoid this.
1.Practise Yoga Asanas
Gentle yoga that focuses on relaxing stretches doesnt take a lot of energy. It can be done anywhere, in any mood, and is still rewarding. Yoga creates a sense of relaxation as deep stretches release endorphins that uplift your mood. Even 5-10 minutes of stretches done while taking deep breaths can do the trick. Practising simple asanas is an excellent place to get started. It improves both your physical and psychological health.
2. Check your posture
How you position your body can have a tremendous influence on your state of mind. So, if depressive thoughts are bothering you, your posture may naturally close in, making you smaller as you slouch. If its fear or anxiety, then you may be fidgety or restless. It helps to pace around for a bit and then sit again with a comfortably upright spine. Back bending poses in yoga like cobra, locust and bow poses are excellent to maintain a good posture.
3. Practise Breath Awareness
Once youve set a good posture, you can do some deep breathing. Its a great way to stimulate the vagus nerve, which activates the relaxation response in your body. Overthinking is often a result of an underlying stressor. Deep breathing is a simple but powerful technique that allows your body to switch from stressed to relaxed mode. So, use it often; you can practise 10-20 deep breaths. Just make sure youre not on a full stomach.
4. Practise Gratitude
Our minds are hard-wired to think more about adverse events. So, if you have two positive experiences in a day and one negative experience, youll still think about the latter. That is why we need to think about the positive aspects of life consciously. It requires a little effort as it doesnt happen naturally. Practising gratitude is one way that we can bring our focus back on the positive. A daily gratitude meditation practice can be of great help.
5. Build a Meditation Practice
Meditation is simple training of your mind, and as a bonus, its immensely relaxing. Just like we train our body by staying physically active, its essential to train our minds daily through meditation. Without meditation, we are constantly being pulled around by our senses, going wherever they take us. But with regular mindfulness practice, we can gradually develop more control over what we pay attention to or what kind of thoughts we prioritise.
6. Create a Vata-balancing Lifestyle
In Ayurveda, thoughts are governed by Vata Dosha, which is a mix of air and other elements and its imbalance causes anxiety or overthinking. An excellent way to balance Vata is to strengthen the Earth aspect of our personality. Since air is light and constantly changing, an excellent way to balance it is to create stability and structure by having a fixed routine and set meal times. Weight training, grounding activities like gardening can also help balance Vata.
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International Yoga Day: 6 tips for de-stressing the overthinker in you - wknd.
Validation and clinical applicability of a deep learning system for retinal disease (Tuesday, 10th August 2021) City, University of London – City,…
In July 2016, Moorfields announced a formal collaboration with the artificial intelligence company, DeepMind.
This collaboration involves the sharing of >1,000,000 anonymised retinal scans with DeepMind to allow for the automated diagnosis of diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy (DR) on retinal optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging.
In my presentation, I will describe the development and clinical validation of this system, with a particular focus on the challenges of validating automated segmentation of three-dimensional imaging modalities such as OCT, particularly in the context of challenging, morphologically complex, retinal disease.
Pearse Keane is a consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital, London and an associate professor at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology. He is originally from Ireland and received his medical degree from University College Dublin (UCD), graduating in 2002.
In 2016, he initiated a formal collaboration between Moorfields Eye Hospital and Google DeepMind, with the aim of developing artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for the earlier detection and treatment of retinal disease.
In August 2018, the first results of this collaboration were published in the journal, Nature Medicine. In May 2020, he jointly led work, again published in Nature Medicine, to develop an early warning system for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), by far the commonest cause of blindness in many countries.
In October 2019, he was included on the Evening Standard Progress 1000 list of most influential Londoners and in June 2020, he was profiled in The Economist.
In 2020, he was listed on the The Power List by The Ophthalmologist magazine, a ranking of the Top 100 most influential people in the world of ophthalmology.
Attendance at City events is subject to our terms and conditions.
City, University of LondonNorthampton SquareLondon EC1V 0HBUnited Kingdom
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Validation and clinical applicability of a deep learning system for retinal disease (Tuesday, 10th August 2021) City, University of London - City,...
Physical works out the dark side of the mind in an honest way – Metro US
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The world of 1980s aerobics takes on a new kind of form in Apple TV+s latest dark comedy starring Rose Byrne, Physical. Instead of focusing on the outward benefits of fitness, this series from creator Annie Weisman is more than skin deep, taking a deeper look at eating disorders and negative self images.
Byrne plays Sheila, a housewife in San Diego unhappy with her appearance. Audiences right away get a front row seat to inside Sheilas mind, and the way that she talks to herself. Whether its comparing her looks to a friend, chastising herself for wanting to eat dessert or carbs, or spending her life savings on gorging on burgers whenever she feels out of control, its a new look at eating disorders that hasnt been shown before. It shows the high- functioning and exhausting side of living with a constant magnifying glass up to yourself where you are your own worst critic.
Sheila and her husband (Rory Scovel), a once-radical idealist turned college professor, are thrown for a loop within the first few episodes of the series and in an effort to raise more money and spark a new curiosity, Sheila embarks in the world of aerobics, which eventually helps her find her own voice. The hilarious narration is coupled with Sheilas inner thoughts, and perhaps what is most provoking about this series is just how relatable our own dark thoughts and feelings can be.
Weisman sat down with Metro to discuss the personal influences that led her to create Physical.
Being a personal story, what parts of your life was Physical drawn from?
I had really struggled for decades with eating disorders and it was something I didnt share privately or publicly. It was a quiet part of my life. I just reached a place of feeling fed up with the struggle and decided to try and express it on paper. I had a lot of fearthe illness is really good at telling you that if you share it, it will define you and destroy you, and none of that is actually true.
I think anyone whos in any kind of recovery will tell you that these things thrive in shame and they thrive in secrecy and actually sharing the story has been really liberating and has really connected me to other people. So, that was the impulse that started [with me] wanting to tell the story and then the decision to put it in this unique world came separately. I really wanted to be able to tell the story through an unexpected lens.
Right away we see Sheila talking to herself very negatively, and thats something that stood out to me as not often shown on TV.
I think when people think about eating disorders, they think about the behavior, and really its the thoughts and ideas and the voice that it comes fromat least for me. I really hadnt seen anything on screen that represented how I experienced the struggle, so I wanted to explore that distance between what I projected to the world and how I felt on the inside, which was so different.
I knew people had no idea how much I reserved the rage, anger and pain I felt for myself. So, that was part of the inspiration for the show to accurately represent the way this disorder manifested in me, which was this real divide between the exterior and interior. I just tried to be authentic about it. Ive found as Ive started to share it and as Ive started to share it with the creative collaborators that people related to that feeling. Its something that I thought I was really alone with, because it was so private, but as Ive started to share it, people are sharing with me that it feels familiar.
Another misconception is that someone who is petite might not experience these thoughts and feelings.
Exactly. Rose is the real dream actress for this part in so many ways: She understands that this makes you excellent at disguising how you feel on the inside. You would never know that someone who to everyone else looks so comfortable in their skin and beautiful would have this self-image and would beat themselves up in this way. Its a lie that women tell themselves, its how they feel on the inside and its not how it looks on the outside.
At its core, it isnt solved by changing the way you look. Its only solved by tapping into your true emotions and changing the way you feel. Thats what the journey of this show is about, we start in a really dark place where theres such a divide in her and then were moving towards this more integrative self where she takes that and stops beating herself up with that voice and starts unleashing it where it belongsout in the world.
That shift is definitely seen when Sheila starts to teach aerobics herself.
Thats absolutely right. Its not about doing aerobics, its about finding her voice as a teacher. Its about harnessing that tough inner voice and using it to inspire others.
What would you tell women on their own journey to realizing who their true self really is to expect from watching Sheilas journey from start to finish?
Well, I hope people who struggle with the same kind of divide will see themselves and find some comfort like I did and can share that experience with others. I also hope they see and understand that what you think is your biggest weakness can actually be your biggest strengththat was my experience in writing and getting it out. Tapping into something that I was ashamed of made me feel more powerful. I hope people who watch it feel that way too.
What went into creating the look and feel of the time and the world of aerobics for the show?
Its set in the world I grew up in, San Diego in the 70s and 80s. I really wanted to depict this Southern California world that was going though this change. We get to depict beach culture, we get to depict mall culture, we get to depict the new world of fitness culture that we take for granted nowthese radical spaces for women collectively working out at a time when that was still a taboo for women for be sweating and building muscles in public. So we get to play with building that world as it was just beginning.
What are you most excited for audiences to see in the series?
Im just really excited for people to see Roses performance because I think she is going to blow peoples minds. Even big fans of hers, I dont think anyone has seen her play this kind of central, layered and dynamic role and I think what shes capable of and her fearlessness is going to really blow people away. Im really excited to share that.
The first three episodes of Physical premiere on Apple TV+ June 18.
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Physical works out the dark side of the mind in an honest way - Metro US