How on earth could Virgin Atlantic have been surprised that this urinal would be offensive? Pissing into a woman’s mouth? Hello? (via Gianna)
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Let me show you how art and culture drive technological development.
Let me show you how art and culture drive technological development.
How on earth could Virgin Atlantic have been surprised that this urinal would be offensive? Pissing into a woman’s mouth? Hello? (via Gianna)
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At last week’s AI STORIES workshop, Gabriele de Seta led a workshop exploring Butterflies.ai, a social media platform where all the users are AIs. Gathering a group of researchers in a room for a few hours to explore and discuss a specific genAI platform turns out to be a really […]
When I studied literature we mostly read the classics. Great literature, the canon. But that’s not necessarily what most people actually read. What if instead of comparing AI-generated literature to the literary canon, we tried comparing it to super popular and commercial forms of literature instead? Like the folkebøker that […]
Synthetic media is a current popular term for AI-generated videos, texts and images. I think the first use was only a few years ago in 2018, but I couldn’t find an overview of its use so thought I’d cobble one together here, mostly because I like Elena Pilipets and her […]
OpenAI plans to charge $20,000 (USD) a month for an AI agent that can do “PhD level research”. Maybe all the PhDs and postdocs recently fired by DOGE should band together and sell their services as “AI agents” – apparently some people will pay more for robots than people. At […]
This is my original Norwegian draft of an essay published in the Danish foreign policy magazine Udenrigs today as part of a special issue on AI and foreign policy. I argue that AI is influencing the way we tell stories, and more seriously, that there is a risk of this […]
In 2022 I learned about FAIR data, the movement to make research data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reproducible. One of UiB’s brilliant research librarians, Jenny Ostrup, patiently helped me make the dataset from the Machine Vision project FAIR in 2022 – I wrote a little bit about that in my […]
Frank
Today in a Dutch newspaper a brief interview with the designer of this toilet. The designer is a woman who confesses maybe having been a bit naive, but never even having thought about the possibly offensive and/or derogatory aspects of her toilet, certainly not about any sexual implications that it might have.
As an aside, this urinal started out life as a washing basin, with a tab for its nose and the tab handles for eyes. The designer wanted to go even more minimal with her design and everything fell in place for her when she turned it into a urinal.
Personally I can see why this design is offensive to some people, but it reminds me more of something out of the Little Shop of Horrors, rather than having an immediate and outright derogatory meaning. Freud would have a field day, but I would have some serious reservations about peeing in that urinal.
Werner
I actually like this one better than the VA one in terms of offensiveness …
http://postarchives.entensity.net/031204/image.php?pic=pray.jpg
Jill
Well. Rather that than the mouth, I guess, but…
Realising that urinals are an aspect of culture I have little exposure to, I found urinals.net, which collaboratively documents urinals.
At first glance, the women’s urinals look pretty stupid, but if you read the instructions for the one at Texas A&M you’ll see that they’re designed so you can squat over it instead of sitting down on it. That’s sensible – so often you’ll hover over a yucky seat anyway, why not build em for hovering.
Personally I’ll take an Asian squat toilet over a grubby Western public toilet any day.
Norman
I guess there’s one advantage at least that those pushing affirmative apartheid in Australia will have problems removing?
Jill
What, not having to get your buttocks dirty to have a pee? I did once find a site that explains how to pee standing up. Without devices. For women, that is. I had a go in the shower once but I guess I didn’t have the patience to perfect the technique.
lostlog
The Duchamp vs. Warhol Remix
Unfortunately they are dropping it. IMO it’s a brilliant idea.