Påtrillade godbitar

Quote of the Day: Control Over the Internet Is the “Struggle of Our Generation” | Mother Jones (via new-aesthetic)

Empathy for military robots could affect outcomes on the battlefield | PBS NewsHour, via @GarethOwenLloyd

Julie Carpenter, a Ph.D. in education at the University of Washington, interviewed 23 explosive ordnance disposal personnel who regularly used robots on the job. She found that the soldiers often anthropomorphized their robots, assigned them human attributes such as genders and names, and even displayed a kind of empathy toward the machines.

"They would say they were angry when a robot became disabled because it is an important tool, but then they would add ‘poor little guy,’ or they’d say they had a funeral for it," Carpenter said.

"These robots are critical tools they maintain, rely on, and use daily. They are also tools that happen to move around and act as a stand-in for a team member, keeping Explosive Ordnance Disposal personnel at a safer distance from harm."

Evolution keeps all its weirdest experiments way down in the ocean’s depths. But secretly, they’re its very favorite ones.

Your waste of time: Icelandic Glacier in New York

To give people an up-close and personal experience with the effects of climate change, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has brought chunks of glacial ice from Iceland to New York.

Eliasson’s display, titled Your waste of time, is made up of pieces of ice that have fallen from Iceland’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull. The ice chunks chosen are estimated to be about 800 years old.

The purpose behind Olafur’s exhibition is to bring people closer to the effects of climate change. Eliasson believes people are not in touch with the effects of climate change because they cannot see it for themselves. Thus, by bringing broken off pieces of glacier to New York, Eliasson hopes to connect people to the changes on our planet.

These chunks of ancient ice are currently on display at MoMA PS1’s EXPO 1:New York exhibit where they are being kept in a refrigerated room. Despite the display’s theme of environmental awareness, critics point out that it requires a great deal of energy to transport and preserve the ice. Regardless, the fragments of the Vatnajökull glacier represent the consequence of our ever-changing world.

The pieces of ice will be on display until September. Then, the fragments of glacier will do what they would have done naturally: melt.