Publication Day! 'White Gold and Thirsty Communities: The Cold War, Apartheid, and the #Lesotho Highlands Water Project' is out TODAY! Can be found at all South African bookstores! exclusivebooks.co.za/products/978... (and in North America/Europe: www.rienner.com/title/White_...)

If you’re local, today I’ll talk about Curious George’s 19th c precursors & their “civilizing process”—and what it means to write a literary character’s “infinite biography”, with no clear start or end. 12:15-1:45, Dartmouth Hall 106, lunch available

they all glowed

Helen Frankenthaler in her studio, photographed by David Parks for Life magazine in 1956.

Pablo Picasso dans son atelier de Vallauris avec son modèle Sylvette David, 19 ans, by François Pages, août 1954.

‘It’s not that there aren’t real things to worry about. It’s that what you don’t know or can’t remember or will not face haunts you more.’ Gaby Wood on the excellent The Secret Agent for @lrb.co.uk

‘Cape Town is unique in Africa as it is actively trying to maintain a population of baboons… In other cities, troublesome primates are simply killed … the authorities are legally obliged to conserve baboons as part of natural heritage, but not at any cost.’ By @adamwelz.bsky.social

‘Named Spinosaurus mirabilis – meaning ‘astonishing’ Spinosaurus in Latin – the giant lived in what is now Niger … the new species is easily distinguishable … by the scimitar-shaped crest on its head. … “This find was so sudden and amazing, it was really emotional for our team,” said Paul Sereno’

Non-fiction cinema is now before and after Frederick Wiseman.

Venus - Akatsuki - From Aster Cowart (terrasabaea.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/DUVb6V

Maybe this is a task some of our well funded campus AI institutes could take on. (Ha.)

AI does not enhance “efficiency.” AI is a permission structure for a totalizing regime of austerity and labor immiseration.

Looking right at you from the center of her ravishing lace collar: a woman, painted by Frans Pourbus the Younger. Today was his day.

Roses are redde Noble are the manatees For a bettir future Teach artes and humanityes

Marcel Duchamp ~ Cover for Minotaure: Revue Artistique et Littéraire No. 6., 1934 #MarcelDuchamp #Surrealism #OPArt

German painter and sculptor Hermann Glöckner #Abstractart #Contemporaryart

Untitled by Harry Bertoia, 1937 https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137567

‘In … three months, the animals had cleared debris from the river without affecting water levels… “You can … see a lovely riverbed... They’re opening up little glades along the river edge… That will let sun into the river, encouraging vegetation and invertebrates to grow and fisheries to improve.”’

‘the reality of a consumer technology that serves as a collaborative confidante to would-be perpetrators … is new and troubling terrain. It had given a prospective predator something dangerous: an ally.’ By @mharrisondupre.bsky.social

‘The building’s historical value is crucial… There’s so much about that building that feels like a time capsule, like you’re back in the 1930s – the décor, the feeling when you walk in. “I’d love that feeling to be more inclusive… and to see a bigger nod to contemporary Kenya, and Nairobi...”’

Happy Lunar New Year! It is the year of the fire horse and so Gilbert Adrian’s 1945 Roan Stallion dress seems appropriately flame like as it rampages across the surface of black silk @metmuseum.org #FashionHistory 🗃️🪡

Happy Year of the Horse from the ARB! asianreviewofbooks.com?s=horse

Madonna appearing to Saints Anthony & George, although they are not paying a lot of attention to this miracle. George's dashing hat may prevent him from seeing it! By Pisanello, 1445.

Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea?

Henry Herbert La Thangue The Boat Builder's Yard, Cancale, Brittany

Lucian Freud, 1991 by R.B. Kitaj

Design for Three Chairs with Armorial Ornament on Backs, early 19th century, by Anonymous, British, 19th century Class: Drawings Medium: Graphite https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/386832

‘it is a matter of developing a materialist politics that is at once specific and general, and which addresses workers’ lives in the experientially accessible realm of market relations, and their potential in the experientially distant structure of ownership.’

‘Years ago [OpenAI] developed a technology that was 99.9 percent accurate in detecting work generated by the company’s ChatGPT. Senior executives had internal debates about whether to let educators have access to the tool. They opted not to.‘

‘At least 23 African countries, including … are now generating over 5% of their electricity from solar energy… Prices have fallen both for solar panels and batteries, mostly from China, enabling households and businesses to rely on solar plus batteries…’

no, it simply isnt. People are talking about capital using gAI as an excuse to conduct mass lay-offs, about students losing learning because theyre being lied to about gAI in education, about the mass theft of the work of artists and authors to train LLMs, about CSAM and nonconsensual sexual images.

The reason why AI sucks is its not bringing down the rent, it is not bringing back creative jobs, it is not making health care cheaper, it is not solving climate change. Who was seriously thinking the challenges of our time were solved by Large Language Models run by tech bros?

Man I'm so goddamn sick of ai. "Wahhh you can't have a reasonable conversation about ai on here," yeah maybe be mad about the two year parade of scam artists and financial charlatans and environmental ruiners who have radicalized everyone against the spell check that agrees with you

As day draws to a close, landscape at sunset, 1522, by the extraordinary Albrecht Altdorfer of Regensburg. It’s been his day today.

With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows

On 2nd March at 17:00 (GMT)/12:00 (EST) we will discuss a pre-circulated paper titled “La Negrita”: A History of African Girlhood in the Spanish Caribbean Slave Trade” by Dr. Elise Mitchell. Dr. Mitchell will introduce the paper for discussion. kingsearlymodern.co.uk/race-and-the...

Fulvio Roiter. Piazza San Marco 1983 © Fondazione Fulvio Roiter.

Portrait of a seated lady, three-quarter length, in an elaborate and gold-embroidered costume, possibly Caterina Savelli, Principessa di Albano by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1654)

“abstract art is still being made; it is one option among many others. But that is … the difference: for Newman and frenemies it was everything… Today not only is Abstract Expressionism ‘a thing of the past’, but abstraction appears as a historical interlude more than a world-historical necessity.”

‘“the FDA’s traditional approach to regulating medical devices is not up to the task of ensuring AI-enabled technologies are safe and effective… We’re relying on manufacturers to do a good job at putting products out. I don’t know what’s in place at the FDA represents meaningful guardrails.”’

‘the chatbots were no better than Google … at guiding users toward … diagnoses or helping them determine what they should do next. And the technology posed unique risks, … presenting false information or dramatically changing its advice depending on slight changes in the wording of the questions.’

My contribution to Super Bowl Sunday is this Jewish Aramaic incantation bowl with a demon on it. From Nippur, Mesopotamia, circa 6th-7th century CE. Truly a super bowl.

Saint Francis comforted by a Angel, c.1620 by Francesc Ribalta

Gertrude Abercrombie. Three Cats (1956)

“He quotes from letters he has consulted in Augustus’ handwriting (the first emperor was apparently terrible at spelling) … And even the gossip sometimes has a provenance: ‘When I was a boy … I used to hear … from my grandfather, who in turn had heard it from court insiders.’”

‘It took enormous intelligence and decisiveness to paint so purely. Her earliest works are hardly more crowded than her maturest ones.’

‘About 80% of data-annotation and content moderation workers are drawn from rural, semi-rural or marginalised backgrounds. Firms deliberately operate from smaller cities and towns, where rents and labour costs are lower, and a growing pool of first-generation graduates are seeking jobs.’

‘While … the remote operator isn’t directly controlling the vehicle’s driving responses, it … goes to show how autonomous vehicles still rely substantially on human intellect. Fleet response agents may determine what lane a vehicle should pick, or propose a “path for the vehicle to consider”’

Head of a Woman, designed 1877-1898; woven before 1923. Designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Manufactured by Morris & Company www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

Girl with hat and cape in profile https://botfrens.com/collections/109/contents/28594