Fakest News

Experts agree that the growth industries of today include gaming and healthcare and clean energy. Each has impressive potential upsides, with demand steadily increasing and the possibility of a singular player uprooting the usual way of doing business. The hard part is picking that winner among the myriad of contenders, the one that against all odds will establish not just a beachhead but an actual beach. And it's no different in perhaps the biggest growth industry of all, that of fake news.

Call it what you will: fake news, conspiracy theories, the crazies coming out to play. By whatever name the roster of provably false or misleading ideas is growing faster than ever. As of this writing the "winner" in the field revolves around the last election. Despite audit after audit, review after review, even those whose goal it was to find fault can't seem to do so. No matter: believers gonna believe. No amount of evidence will make a difference to those who say it was stolen. Forget a faked moon landing, or the JFK assassination, or Paul being dead. None of those holds a candle to this baby. If the Big Lie were a company, it would be Facebook, Google and Amazon all rolled into one, with a dash of Tesla on top for good measure.

After that the pickings get slim. That's not to say that there aren't adherents to each, one group more convinced of the veracity of their pet cause than the next. It's just that outside of a troubled few individuals the ideas haven't really taken hold. Most revolve around COVID in all of its facets. The virus is actually a manufactured bioweapon? Genetic sequencing proves it has a natural origin. Bill Gates is putting microchips in vaccines? A goodie, but it never really got legs. The metal nose piece in masks is really a 5G antenna? Nope, but on reflection it actually might improve your cell phone reception and could be a future business opportunity.

There are so many of these rising and falling that the Associated Press publishes a regular weekly roundup called "Not Real News." Recent entries include a claim that COVID test kits had predetermined "positive" and "negative" swabs. Seems some test kits do have those swabs for quality control, but they're for checking the test, not people. Another states that the Nuremberg Code says that mask mandates are a war crime. Sorry, nowhere is that or anything close found in the code. And the one about the UK government banning Fox News? It is indeed true that the channel is not broadcast in London, but that's because no one was watching: there was such low viewership that Murdoch's company took it off the air themselves.

That sampling barely scratches the surface. The vast majority of the rest are not only demonstrably false, but prima facie bonkers. There's one that an elite cohort of reptiles rule the earth, another that Finland doesn't exist. Some believe that the headquarters for the illuminati is located under the Denver Airport, or that those trails that come from airplanes are poisonous chemtrails. Then there's the QAnon sect in Dallas that's floated the idea that Keith Richards is really JFK. One hardly knows where to begin.

Or consider the audio clip that went viral on WhatsApp. It said that the Ministry of Defense in the UK, to help feed those that were housebound due to the pandemic, was using Wembley stadium to bake a giant lasagna. "They're putting on the underground heating at Wembley, that's going to bake the lasagna, and then they're going to put the roof across and that's going to recreate the oven, and then what they're going to do is lift it up with drones and cut off little portions and drop them into to people's houses." It circulated so widely that the Football Association, English soccer's governing body, was forced to confirm it did not plan on making dinner for all. Shame. Might have been tasty.

As for the rest, Paul was just on the Colbert show, and I've been to Helsinki, so I can personally debunk that one. As to the thing about 5G antennas in your mask? It certainly sounds like something Apple might do. I might just sign on to that one myself.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to filter out the obvious noise. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Hot Cats

You're singing along with the cast of "Hamilton" on Disney Plus, or you're watching the latest Bond movie on HBO Max, or you're deep into the finale of "Yellowstone" on Paramount Plus. And just when it gets to the good part, whether that means King George or the meeting of SPECTRE or Beth saying "You are the trailer park. I am the tornado," the picture freezes and a little twirly thing pops up on the screen. You sit patiently for a few seconds, and if you're lucky, it picks right back up where it left off. If you're not, you have to bail out and restart the app and hope it reconnects. In either case you are not a happy camper.

For a brief moment you forget (if you ever stopped to consider it in the first place) what is actually happening. You selected your choice from a laundry list of possibilities. Based on that, a file is retrieved at some data center in Ashburn, VA or Secaucus, NJ or Kansas City, MO, and pushed down a wire. It bounces off a switch in Duluth then Dallas then Detroit or some other combination before it makes its way down your street and into your house. Then it is has to fight with your son's Xbox and your daughter's Tic Tok videos to find its way to the screen in your family room. And at the same time you are watching, 100 million people are doing the same thing, just with different movies in different homes. So yeah, every now and again one of the countless pieces of tech in that very long chain might have a little electronic hiccup.

Or you just might have a cat trying to stay warm.

It's a story that begins, as do so many strange things these days, with Elon Musk. Most know the visionary entrepreneur for almost singlehandedly revolutionizing the automobile market with electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla. But he has other ventures in infrastructure (The Boring Company), energy (SolarCity) and aerospace (SpaceX). It is within this last field that our kitties come into play. For while SpaceX is known for its billionaires-in-space program, one of its other business angles is internet distribution via home based satellite dishes, through a subsidiary called Starlink.

The company has placed nearly 2000 satellites in low earth orbit, and has shipped over 100,000 systems to consumers in select markets. Their package consists of a small dish to receive the signal, and a router/terminal to get it to your TV and devices. While not as fast as fiber nor as cheap ($499 for the gear, then $99 a month for the service), if you live in a rural area with no or spotty service, it's likely worth it to be connected to the world. It's designed to be user friendly: all you need do is mount the dish, plug it all in, and you can be watching "Squid Game" in no time.

One big issue is that while the system works well, it is susceptible to weather. As it has to have a clear shot at the sky, obstructions like trees, snow and heavy rain can affect the signal and hence your viewing or online experience. To that end the dish has a built-in heater to melt any flakes that fall directly on it. And here's where the cats come into play.

Seems that felines have discovered that these high-tech antennas make lovely day beds. Smooth, about two feet wide, aimed upwards and heated, owners have posted pictures of cats curled up enjoying a rest. Doesn't hurt the cats, but that furry blockage can slow the signal down, resulting in that twirly icon popping up. Chase them off the dish, and you can get right back to see Beth snarl "Martinis have vermouth and are enjoyed with friends. I don't like vermouth, and these aren't my friends."

Steve Chen, one of YouTube's founders, is credited with uploading the first cat video many years ago. From that humble beginning the genre has grown to where there have been an estimated 25 billion views of similar fare. But in this case the tabbies are playing a different roll. And so if you have Starlink and your signal starts to fade, it's possible it's not too many cats online, but too many cats, well, on the line.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is not a cat person. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Faking It

Something about the person in the picture online looks familiar. Maybe he reminds you of the guy who lived in the apartment downstairs when you first graduated college. Or maybe she looks like the woman who staffs the sign-in desk at the gym. Perhaps he has a similar beard to your brother-in-law, or her hair is like your high school guidance counselor's. Either way, you're sure you've seen them before, just can't place the exact spot.

In fact, there is actually no chance that you have met him or her, even briefly. And when I say no chance, I mean it is an absolute 100% impossibility that you and they have ever crossed paths, have shared a coffee or have had a locker next to one another. Not when you lived in Chicago. Not when you worked for that little company in the village. Not when you were in the school marching band. And why am I so certain?

Because this particular person does not exist.

His or her picture is the creation of a Generational Adversarial Network, or GAN. Without getting too geeky, it's a computer program that treats each part of a person's face as a mathematical equation, and then tweaks it ever so slightly. Hair, eyes, nose, skin color, wrinkles, lips: each is merely a variable to be manipulated. And when you take those myriad elements, change each ever so slightly, than randomly recombine them, you wind up with a completely unique person who, well doesn't really exist. 

Former-Uber software engineer Phillip Wang created thispersondoesnotexist.com as an example of how it all works, and it does it in a flash. It's not always perfect: you can sometimes see mismatched earrings or strange hair or weird eyes. But in the scheme of things that doesn't really matter. It's both impressive and scary, as you think about how effortless the process has been made to create something fake, new, unique, and for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from reality. 

Of course it didn't take long for others to borrow the idea and extend it. They use the same GAN process of subdividing something into its component parts, then making minute adjustments and putting the pieces back together to create a new composite. There are sites with cats that don't exist, beaches that don't exist and dresses that don't exist. In each case they look like they could: peruse any of them, and you could swear that you've seen that kitty or laid on that sand or remember an actress at the Academy Awards wearing that frock. But no. Refresh the screen, and a completely new and unique version of each pops up that also looks eerily familiar. Fool me once or twice or even three times, there is no shame in this case.

In some instances the fakes are almost realer than real. At a site that creates non-existent startups you find "Genity" a target marketing firm, whose Chief Person Officer is Aryon Rompre. Refresh it, and you get "Interoid" a property rental service, where you can get a professional level account for just $11 a month. Hit enter once more and up comes branding firm "Gradideo," which boasts a testimonial from Sema Kroa of the firm Sucent that says "Gradideo is the epitome of digital parenting." Who can argue with that kind of endorsement?

Likewise a site for made-up lyrics. All that's missing is the music: "Your love is so wild/you drive me like a train/Got me under your spell/ my heart goes boom, boom, boom." Or one for cities, where each looks like what you see when you fly cross country and look out the window. Or words. There's "endoptic," which it says means "relating to the sense organs of the gut, in particular the ducts." How about "cinchou," which is "a woman's uniform of black and white." Or "whizy" which is defined as "made or performed in a jazzy, lively, or impressive way even though it actually sounds silly."

Not that we needed other demonstrations, but all of this confirms that it's getting harder to tell fact from fiction. And so the next time you go online and see a snack or a music video or even a rental apartment that looks somewhat familiar and desirable, think twice before you send a deposit.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford does indeed exist. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Predictably Yours

 As you type a few letters to respond to an email, up pops a suggestion for the rest of the word or sentence. As you head to bed you ask your smart speaker to turn off the kitchen light, and it inquires if you want to turn off others on the same floor. After you finish a movie from your Netflix queue, it suggests additional films you might like. The Police used it as a title of a number one album, but the term can actually be credited to philosopher Gilbert Ryle: it makes you think there truly are ghosts in the machine.

Of course, it's not a really an independent entity nor an ethereal being. Rather, it's a blend of artificial intelligence and a massive database of choices. Based on your history of prior selects, the systems take a stab at what you might like as a follow up. It happens on YouTube and Amazon and Spotify: if you liked that one, there's a good chance you will love this one as well. That a computer can anticipate your next desire is either brilliant or creepy, and in truth a little of both.

There is another way of looking at it: you are simply boring.

We all have innumerable habits that enable those around us to predict what we will do or say or eat next. With some it's the same yogurt and fruit for breakfast, or a stop at Starbucks for a Venti decaf cappuccino with extra foam and a shot of hazelnut syrup and a sprinkle of cinnamon. If your spouse puts the former on the counter when they hear your shower finish, or the cashier recognizes you and punches in your order without you having to say anything, are they predicting the future? Are they analyzing the myriad choices you could make and then using deductive reasoning narrowing the funnel down to the most likely outcome? Or are they merely reacting to your lack of adventurousness? Rather than going from the top down that is the universe of possibilities, are they going from the bottom up, knowing you are you and ain't never gonna change?

Not to fret: you are hardly alone. A study published in PLOS Computational Biology assessed more than 3400 people from ages 4 to 91 as to how complex and random their thoughts were. It found that the ability to be "cognitively complex" peaks at 25. It thereafter begins a slow and steady decline to age 60, after which it starts to drop much faster. Note that this doesn't imply one's mental abilities are compromised in any way: not their memory, not their ability to reason, not their computational nor problem-solving skills. Only that their ability to come up with random, spontaneous ideas declines over time. 

On the flip side, being boring also means your mind may be freed up for other things. Studies from the Academy of Management and others demonstrate that being bored actually increases creativity. Sandi Mann, a senior psychology lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire in the U.K. and the author of "The Upside of Downtime: Why Boredom Is Good" says that at its simplest boredom is "a search for neural stimulation that isn't satisfied. And if we can't find that, our mind will create it." The theory is that if you don't have to expend brainpower to be creative in some areas it frees you up to stretch in others. And so boring people can actually outperform artists and others who have to be creative all the time. Basically, all that time saved in having a turkey sandwich everyday for lunch can translate into truly interesting ideas at dinner.

Or not. If the last 2 years have taught us anything it's how easy it is to try new things, but then just as quickly to make them routine. Be it what we wear, what we eat, how we work or what we do after hours, they've all been upended, and then just as quickly solidified back to the new business as usual. It's so much easier to stay home and watch Netflix than go out. And now our excuses for not doing or trying new things can be rationalized not in our resistance to change but in public health. Put another way, we can now say we are not being boring, we're just being safe.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to try things. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Color Me Very Peri

 Trends come in two flavors. There are those that gather the data from a specific time period, letting us know the direction we've been heading. It can be as consequential as inflation or as pointless as a Tik Tok dance move. Either way the report is based on past behaviors, and helps to illuminate where we are in any given area. Its most common summation is a line graph that is jagged and heading up or down, showing that we are doing whatever "it" is more or less often, that "it" is gaining or losing ground. Or as the title of a long-ago collection of Doonesbury cartoons put it, "We're eating more beets!"

The other type is the trend as dictated by influencers or style makers. It is less a look back than a look forward, more of a prediction than report. Those that identify these trends aim to drive the market rather than summarize it. It might be the height of heels, or the expected growth of drive-thru restaurants. These are as much projections as wishful thinking, hoping to be in a position many months hence when they can say "See? I told you so!"

While the first group is objective and empirical, the second is subjective and speculative. And that means the second can't be wrong at the outset, only in hindsight. Different people look at the same base and project different outcomes, not all of which will prove correct. But at the beginning? Well, one guess is as good as another.

Take the expected trends in color. Each year the seers of shades name the tones that they feel will be the dominant ones over the next 12 months. You might see the pick and their associated palettes in clothing, in home furnishings, in accessories. And while they may be based on focus groups and research, there's also a lot of emotional guesswork, based on the tenor of the times and the gestalt in which we are in.

So in that light it's probably not surprising that three different arbiters came to roughly the same place. Sherwin Williams, Benjamin Moore and Behr are three of the major paint manufacturers. Their very business is color. In cans and bottles they provide the physical stuff to make that tone come to life. Still, it can hardly be considered collusion when once they processed all that we have been through of late that they each came to the same conclusion: that people want something calming and peaceful, in this case a tranquil shade of green.

Of course being competitors they each have their own take to a very similar set of tones. Benjamin Moore calls theirs October Mist 1495, which they describe as a "gently shaded sage" which "evokes the silver-green stem of a flower." Meanwhile Sherwin Williams goes a touch darker with Evergreen Fog SW 9130, "a versatile and calming hue, a chameleon color of gorgeous green-meets-gray, with just a bit of blue." And Behr went the other way, brightening the base up a bit with Breezeway, "a relaxed and uplifting sea glass green expressing peace and tranquility for forward movement." 

Put them side by side an there is no doubt they descend from a common root. For a brief moment you might think there is unanimity in the world, that we do all see things similarly, that indeed things are not black or white but perhaps shades of well, green. But don't get too comfortable, because here comes Pantone.

What a dictionary is the language, Pantone is to color. It provides the common reference point and universal system of defining and replicating colors. Say an apple is "red" and there are a thousand, no, a million possibilities. Say an apple is Pantone P 49-8 C and there is but one Jonathan that looks that way. And so when they speak, it carries a bit more weight in the discussion.

And the Pantone 2022 color to be watched? Another moss tone it's not. It's a brand new swatch designated as 17-3938 Very Peri. It's a light purple, or as described by the Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute Leatrice Eisman, it "Encompasses the qualities of the blues, yet at the same time possessing a violet-red undertone." Going further, Eisman says "Very Peri displays a spritely, joyous attitude and dynamic presence that encourages courageous creativity and imaginative expression." That's a lot of baggage to hang on a purple chip, but she obviously thinks it's up to the challenge,

So the fight is joined. Will it be the earth tone gang of October Mist, Evergreen Fog and Breezeway, or the dynamic newcomer of Very Peri? Let's meet back here in a year's time, and check your closets, walls and sweaters to see who is the winner, and who is merely, well, green with envy.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford doesn't have a favorite color. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.