It’s AI consciousness week here on the blog (see all posts tagged ai-consciousness) but it’s Friday afternoon so instead here are some links regarding cats.
1.
One man, eight years, nearly 20,000 cat videos, and not a single viral hit (The Outline, 2018).
Eight years ago, a middle-aged Japanese man started a YouTube channel and began posting videos of himself feeding stray cats.
26,000 videos today, most with about 12 views. Here is Cat Man’s channel.
Videos of what? With regards to content, a large number of the vids contain closeups of cats eating.
If you put all his videos into one big playlist and turned on autoplay, it would take you roughly six and a half days to reach the end.
This is what I strive for:
The big appeal here with these kinds of videos is that they exist for themselves, outside of time
I wish YouTube had a way I could just have these vids in a window all day to keep me company, like that Namibia waterhole single-serving website I hacked together. Background: I often work with a browser window open to a live stream of a waterhole in the Namib Desert.
2.
Did you ever play Nintendo Wii?
The Nintendo Wii has an inexplicably complex help system. A cat wanders onto the screen periodically. If you move your cursor quickly towards the cat, he’ll run away. However, if you are careful, you can sneak your cursor up on the cat, your cursor will turn into a hand and you can grab him. When you do, you get a tip about how to use the Wii dashboard.
From a simple efficiency driven point of view, this is a baroque UI that makes very little sense.
The embedded video no longer works so here’s another one: Wii Channel Cats! (YouTube).
pls more inexplicable cats in software x
RELATED 1/2:
Google Colab has a secret Kitty Mode that makes cats run around in your window title bar (YouTube) while your machine learning notebook churns your GPU.
RELATED 2/2:
Steve Jobs had this idea for Mister Macintosh, a mysterious little man who lives inside each Mac
–
One out of every thousand or two times that you pull down a menu, instead of the normal commands, you’ll get Mr. Macintosh, leaning against the wall of the menu.
As previously discussed.
3.
Domestic cats have 276 facial expressions.
Combinations of 29 “Action Units” such as AU47 Half Blink and EAD104 Ear Rotator and AD37 Lip Wipe.
FROM THE ARCHIVES, on the topic of cat communication:
- Cat telephone, 1929: a telephone wire was attached to the cat’s auditory nerve. One professor spoke into the cat’s ear; the other heard it on the telephone receiver 60 feed away.
- Acoustic Kitty, 1967: that time the CIA implanted a wireless mic in a cat and induced it to spy on Russians in the park.
Uh not good news for either cat I’m afraid to say.
4.
Firstly, Pilates is named for German-born Joseph Pilates.
Secondly:
In the Isle of Man, close to the small village of Kirk Patrick (Manx: Skyll Pherick), was once located Knockaloe Internment Camp, which was constructed at the time of the First World War. This catastrophic global conflict originated in Europe and lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. It is estimated that this war resulted in the death of over nine million combatants and seven million civilians.
And:
The internment of over 32,000 German and Austro-Hungarian civilians by the British state between 1914 and 1919 took place against a background of a rising tide of xenophobia and panic over “imagined” spies in the run-up and after the outbreak of war.
Joseph Pilates was travelling with the circus when war broke out in 1914 and sent to the internment camp in 1915.
The Isle of Man is known for its populations of striking tailless cats.
While there:
Why were the cats in such good shape, so bright-eyed, while the humans were growing every day paler, weaker, apathetic creatures ready to give up if they caught a cold or fell down and sprained an ankle? The answer came to Joe when he began carefully observing the cats and analyzing their motions for hours at a time. He saw them, when they had nothing else to do, stretching their legs out, stretching, stretching, keeping their muscles limber, alive.
Turns out Pilates is resistance training in more ways than one.
Read: The Surprising Link Between The Pilates Physical Fitness Method and Manx Cats (Transceltic, 2019).
It’s AI consciousness week here on the blog (see all posts tagged ai-consciousness) but it’s Friday afternoon so instead here are some links regarding cats.
1.
One man, eight years, nearly 20,000 cat videos, and not a single viral hit (The Outline, 2018).
26,000 videos today, most with about 12 views. Here is Cat Man’s channel.
Videos of what?
This is what I strive for:
I wish YouTube had a way I could just have these vids in a window all day to keep me company, like that Namibia waterhole single-serving website I hacked together. Background:
2.
Did you ever play Nintendo Wii?
The embedded video no longer works so here’s another one: Wii Channel Cats! (YouTube).
pls more inexplicable cats in software x
RELATED 1/2:
Google Colab has a secret Kitty Mode that makes cats run around in your window title bar (YouTube) while your machine learning notebook churns your GPU.
RELATED 2/2:
Steve Jobs had this idea for Mister Macintosh, –
As previously discussed.
3.
Domestic cats have 276 facial expressions.
Combinations of 29 “Action Units” such as AU47 Half Blink and EAD104 Ear Rotator and AD37 Lip Wipe.
FROM THE ARCHIVES, on the topic of cat communication:
Uh not good news for either cat I’m afraid to say.
4.
Firstly, Pilates is named for German-born Joseph Pilates.
Secondly:
And:
Joseph Pilates was travelling with the circus when war broke out in 1914 and sent to the internment camp in 1915.
The Isle of Man is known for its populations of striking tailless cats.
While there:
Turns out Pilates is resistance training in more ways than one.
Read: The Surprising Link Between The Pilates Physical Fitness Method and Manx Cats (Transceltic, 2019).