The Boring Wine Inn (3 @MichelinGuides stars)

Maybe the relevance of Michelin stars, and accompanying guide, would increase if,
Apart from losing the numbing down, bland-isation of any food innovation by chefs to a style that is either Boring in itself already or a quick to wear off gimmick, that obtaining or even striving for a star(s) often turns into, just to please the judges and don’t forget a bucket of salt (yes, don’t lie to me)
The wine list were innovative, too. By which I don’t mean that the wine list couldn’t have some classics but where the all but most insanely priced items (all tend to sit at some 4-8 times cost anyway, extortionistly – bring that down to 2-3x and your profits go throught the roof all the same) have something new. Fresh, beyond the well-trodden paths. The latter, being the average+ quality (if one’s lucky) of the go-with-the-flow (of up to and including last year’s fashion) appelations – with too many New World ones that are so cheap to get. Or from secondary regions of the Old World where the top can still be had at below-top priced – but still with according interestingness of taste. All from the mid-size to big merchants that don’t care anymore about their products and just want to shove as many boxes as they can at incumbent-tied-in margins. Their tell: Aggression towards any that want to offer something off the wine menu for connaisseurs.
As if the chef’s innovation that once was, is enough to stay at the level that once was, qua quality and freshness one wants from top rated places. News flash: The wines can add to the experience. Big time. If one doesn’t see that, well, off you go.
And it also goes for the wine pairing / selection by the glass; how better to showcase one’s innovative wine choices in perfect matches per course ..?
Why not feel free to ask customers for their wine sophistication and preferences? Only a handful of sommeliers seem to understand. Almost all, at the true top places, without food stars.
[One notable exception encountered, in a long life of many attempts…]
[Edited to add, elsewhere: this place. A drain on your balance, but then …! What great (9) dishes, what excellent wine choices and pairing, even in the ‘simple’ recommended wine pairing.]

So that in the end we may see the return of the true relevance of stars, and see less overhyped craze over joints that suddenly get overbooked way too long in advance and start to double their prices – for nothing of the new but only the already mundane that satisfies only those running after Keeping Up With The Jones’ (“Do you know this-and-that [ill-pronounced] wine maker? Isn’t he great oh we once tasted his [name a random year], I’m on a personal basis with him because I was at the camping on the mudfield next to his’.” – no joke, heard too often in literal or similar ways…) places. Ruining it for true believers from the humble beginnings.

Oh well, and:
[If you know where, you know what I mean. Wink wink and all. Bourgogne yes but which Clos’ ?]

Now you read me, now you don’t

As a pointer to what this is about…
You know, like the oldest tricks in the book, still going strong when all the world’s (worlds’?) arms’ races are going nowhere. As predicted. Where the title of course doesn’t reference a major part of the sec controls, stego.

But that’s a finesse point. Let’s be happy that research into faster horses continues, with results.

CU!
[Stylish; what’s hiding here ..? Even when you know where]

Eternal Life

Remember Castranova’s Synthetic Worlds? You should. If only because this, is, still, in The Atlantic [edited to add: with an intelligent comment/reply here] – because that is still around, it allows for comparison of origins, and the utopical futures as described in the book, with-or-to the current state of the world. Where we have both the ‘hardly any change noticeable in current-state affairs when compared with the moonshot promises of yesterday’ and the ‘look what already has changed; the whole Mobile world change wasn’t even in those rosy pictures’ and ‘hey don’t critique yet we may only be halfway through any major tectonic humanity shifts’.
Where the latter of course ties in with the revitalised [well there‘s a question mark attached like, what do you mean by that; is it ‘life’ and would we even want that] version in ‘singularity’ the extreme nirvana of uploaded, eternal minds. As if the concept of ‘mind’ or ‘intelligence’ would make any sense, in that scenario. And also, since this (pronounced ‘Glick’ one guru told me lately; the importance of continued education), where the distinction between ‘eternal’ and ‘forever in time’ clearly plays up as in this (same), against …

In circles, or Minkovsky‘s / Penrose‘s doodles [wormholing their value], the issue comes back to flatlander (i.e., screen) reality, if there is such a thing…
Oh well; leaving you with:
[Warping perspectives, in ‘meaning’, too; Salzburg]

Noble Black edition

When first, Santa (the real one !!!) his (hey, not ‘her’ – isn’t that wrong by not being utterly iconoclast, or is gross distortion of History by such destruction of artefacts a crime against humanity?) helpers shouldn’t be blackened chimney sweepers (as they have been known to be, not people of African descent, since at least 50 years) because even in their fine dress and with important President&CEO-plus-1 level jobs and maintainers of the kindred-laws certainly over parents too, they were by definition slaves or so. Oh? Weren’t they the ones with rods to enforce the rule of naughty or nice laws? Didn’t they have the nice jobs, with obvious jealousy-inciting quality of work and management culture, being all gay (sic) and joyous whereas most of the children they would have met, and their parents, would be (sometimes literally starving) poor and probably without steady jobs ..?
And now they are changed to Spanish noblemen (qua clothes, zero ladies around because they would be unfit to work ..?) of the 16th century. Because now they’re
(claimed to be… yes really, to fit the crime-against-humanity PC only handful of, almost exclusively, one little (yes) city (literally)
whereas even those of colour (any) don’t see any problem with the original)
completely unrelated to slavery. Of course. Would one be allowed to influence public-anything let alone childrens’ festivities when being so utterly stupid? Where does open democracy break down for terrorists? Here.
Moreover, as noblemen, the new helpers are white. But of course. Otherwise, one would again distort History. And then, what jobs are there now for those of African descent, in the fun occasion? None.

Whatever. Don’t get mad, get even …? Plus:
[White factory – paint should be the only distinction and not implicate anything; Rotterdam of course]

Aïe! Missing the Point

Yet again, some seem to not understand what they’re talking about when it comes to transparency in AI…
Like, here. Worse, this person seems to be a rapporteur to the European Economic and Social Comittee advising the European Committee. If that sounds vague – yes it does even for Europeans.

For the ‘worse’ part: The umpteenth Error, to consider that the secrecy of algorithms is the only thing that would need to change to get transparency about the fuctioning of a complete system.
1. The algorithm is just a part of the system, and the behaviour of the system is not determined in anything close to any majority part by the algorithm – the data fed to it, and the intransparent patterns learned by it, are. The transparency needs to be about the algorithm but much more about the eventual parameters as learned throughout the training time and the training/tuning after that. [Update before press release: There seems to be an erroneous assumption by some way too deep into EC affairs that the parameters are part of the ‘algorithm’ which is Newspeak at its worst, and counterproductive certainly here, and hence dangerous.]
2. The algorithm can just be printed out … If anyone would need that. One can just as easily run an AI code analyser (how good would that be? They exist already, exponentially increasing their quality, savvyness) over the source- or decompiled code.
3. The eventual parameters … not so much; they’re just there in a live system; unsure how well they are written out into any file or so (should be, for backup purposes – when not if AI systems will get legal personhood eventually (excepting the latter-day hoaxes re that), will a power switch-off be the same as attempted murder, and/or what would the status of a backup AI ‘person’ be ..?).
4. Bias, etc. will be in the parameters. The algorithms, mostly-almost-exclusively will be blank slates. No-one yet knows how to tackle that sufficiently robustly since even if the system is programmed (algorithm..!) to cough up parameters, the cleverer systems will know (?) how to produce innocent-looking parameters instead of the possibly culpable actual ones. Leads into this trickery by AI systems, have been demonstrated to develop (unintentionally) in actual tests.
5. How to trick AI pattern recognition systems … the newest of class breaks have just been demonstrated in practice – their theoretical viability had been proven long before – e.g., in this here piece as pointed out only yesterday [qua release; scheduled last week ;-]. Class break = systemically unrepairable … [ ? | ! ].

Let’s hope the EC could get irrelevant just that little less quickly by providing it with sound advice. Not the bumbling litlle boys’ and girls’ type of happythepreppy too-dim-wits. [Pejorative, yes, but not degrading: should, maybe not could, have known better ..!]

Oh, and:
[Already at a slight distance, it gets hazy what goes on there; from the Cathédrale]

Small Mob Rule

Dat is dus grote onzin: De @telegraaf zit er (weer) dik naast, in dit stuk. “DOKKUM – Er gaapt een reusachtige kloof tussen de provincie en de Randstad. Thema’s als genderneutrale toiletten, de nadruk op ’diversiteit’ en vooral het debat over de kleur van Zwarte Piet worden door een kleine culturele elite in met name Amsterdam aan de rest van Nederland opgedrongen, terwijl de meeste burgers in de regio’s hier helemaal niet op zitten te wachten.”
Nee Telegraaf, dit is volslagen onzin, over de rand van leugen.
Want het is slechts een miniem klein-handjevol (inderdaad) bewoners van de Randstad – die oh zo sosialisties nog een tweede huis op het platteland hebben omdat ze alles en iedereen zo lang hebben getreiterd dat ze nauwelijks belasting betalen ‐ die de landelijke stemming bepaalt. Terwijl de andere 99,995% van de Randstedelingen ‘ook’ gewoon normaal is, hoor.

Dus stop ff die terreur van het klootjesvolk i.e. T-“journalisten” quod non, die inkt verspillen met zulke grove onzinkoppen. Of, om hen in hun eigen moreel vermogen aan te spreken: Bek houwe.

[Geen plaatje vandaag. Té boos over zulke idiotie.]

ennials Nuisance

Yeah, got it, something seems amiss.
That thing being X. As per here.
Only question now is: Why for Pete’s sake (that’s not a good answer) would anyone want to be binned into any category like that!?
As if you’re nothing if not reduced to the furthest bland’ed statistic ..? As if you have no life except for what you’re told to have to the broadest of consumerist-dunce craving marketeers ..?

I don’t know. If you seek utter stupidity to be poured over yourself, feel free to be an <whatever>ennial or so. To the sane (which might be the few): Run away!

Oh, and:
[Case(not -mate) in point; France]

@Sloterdijk_P thinking about bites

No, you uncultured species, he was not onto the physically edible kind…
But the kind that comes up when considering that for Spheres parts I-III (heartily recommended, to read and study them fully to full understandig of every bit of it …!), this right honourable gentleman (‘person’) used some, estimated, 1.250k (yes as in 1.25M) words.
Or, as that would be called for German philosophy, a sound bite.

Out of the physically-inverse (?) of Plato’s Aristophanes’ speech’s whole human (lost), the spheres turned into foams in all their intertwined physical plus completely-moreover abstract space references, are being realised in writing, in bites… Feels a bit (huh) like going from 140 to 280 and noboby really understands any of that number(s) in the first place. Both mundane – why not 291 ..? – and meta – how is ‘280’ different from ‘1’ or what is the nous of any number ..?

Now I’m rambling… Leaving you with:
[Something-something- Heraclites so completely ill-understood; Prague]

Stop dads

When you read too much (ahead) into it…
By means of this court ruling. Where a father was forbidden to post pics of his (was it 2- or 3-yr old) son on Facebook or any other socmed platform, by request of the kid’s mom, since even when the father posted in quite tightly closed circles, Fubbuck has in its terms and conditions that it might use the pics for commercial purposes. Since the latter can not be ruled out and in the interest of protecting the child’s interests, the court ruled such, advising the dad to show the pics to friends op his home compu if he’d really want to.
[What need would the father have to do that? one can ask. Benign or perverted?]

From which we learn, if – very very big if – that indeed we should consider the need and purpose of posting on socmed in the first place. If it is content that one wants the world to see, it’s OK. If some part of that content, or the purpose of the post, would not be OK → get out. If the purpose of the post would be to show off (e.g., one’s cool-dadness – pityful! but see how the other 99.999% of posts anywhere are for that purpose and that alone…), really nothing may cure you (sic).

So now, what about this post …? And:
[Since it’s no longer the site banner: Rightfully and intentionally out in the open; Barça]

Awaiting Asibot

All Are Ardently Awaiting – stop, semantics go over syntactic alli – the release of Asibot, as here.
Because we all need such a system. The inverse of Dragon Naturally (into Nuance, too little heard of as well!) combined with a ghost writer, as it were / is / will be. When prepped with one’s own set of texts, should be able to generate useful ground work for all those books you have been wanting to write for a long time but couldn’t get started.
Now, would such a system be able to extract hidden layers, stego-type of themes, that are in your texts that you aren’t even aware of ..? What kind of services would be interested most? Oh, that one’s answered before I finished typing; the three-letter abbrev (uh?) kind of course.

Still, would very much want to meddle with the system… Plus:

[If applicable to music, sunny Spring days in Saltzburg, too for …]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord