#Because representation be damned unless it makes tons of money

[lily-s-world]

[the-girl-with-the-glass-heart]

Man im so pumped for when like a year or two from now when they remake tarzan and jane is black or some shit and conservatives get really pissed and make a bunch of racist memes and people keep clapping back with the same explanations and reasons they did for the little mermaid. the whole discourse becomes the new hot button topic that gets its own trending tumblr tag and it's all right wing youtube channels talk about. Then Disney makes a million dollars without actually caring about minorities, ya just race bend a white character then sit back and watch as your movie gets a trending tag and unconditional supporters and hate watchers and millions of trailer views. Then for years on black people will love this movie just as much as the og because they have so little representation they will defend it and it will become their definitive version of tarzan. Even the anti capitalist disney haters will see it just to support the actress and make racists cry. Hell, some people don't even want others to criticize the movie because so many racists have used critique to disguise their bigitry. As long as you can use black peoples anger and community to get people talking about your movie with out actually caring about minorities it's ok. Then the movie comes out and it's mediocre at best but the manipulation game works and it makes a shit ton of money. Then you prepare to do it all over again with the live action brave next year.

It will all start again.

Same arguments.

Same videos.

Same clap backs.

It makes me wanna rip my fuckin hair out, time is a flat circle.

For the record it is totally okay to defend halle, i want the best for her too and she needs to be defended, i'm not angry about that. I'm angry that this is a total lose lose scenario that isn't going to affect fucking anything and will all be repeated.

I just wish racists would get a grip already and realize the worlds not gonna be all that different in 30 years cause you complained about scientific accuracy of a mermaids skin. Like the ghost busters remake, everyone argued about that NON STOP and what happened?! NOTHING. World peace hasn't been acheived, the wage gap is still around, all it did was make people talk about the movie! we're all pawns in a terrible insufferable capitalist scheme using black peoples want for representation and outrage to add another dollar to the disney vault, and there's nothing we can do to stop it unless we just let fuckheads like the not my ariel crowd win.

I am so god damn tired.

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

Isn't there way more male villains though? And I doubt marvel are saying anything particularly deep about that. It just seems to be what it is.

that's like...the opposite of my point. for one thing, when we're talking about tropes and storytelling trends, we're not talking about, like, acts of nature, or other things that just are what they are; we're talking about fictional narratives, created by other people with their own biases and senses of what's normal and what isn't, and of course if the people creating those narratives tends to skew heavily cis straight white male, then you're going to get a lot of stories that reflect a cis straight white male point of view, right? if nearly all the people making the stories are white guys, you're going to keep getting stories about white guys, even if those stories increasingly fail to reflect reality. that isn't a thing that just happens.

you'll notice, too, that I was talking about numbers and trends, and that was my specific context for criticizing this storyline. tropes and trends, almost by definition, don't happen because of a single person's choices, or because of a single piece of work. they exist purely in the aggregate. they exist because nothing exists in a vacuum and it's really, really weird to act like it does, as if every piece of media must only be approached on its own merits or lack thereof without ever considering a larger context. I mean, shit, the MCU put a ton of work into building this probably-way-too-big-by-now interconnected universe, they want people to be fans of the whole damn thing, they want people to consider the whole context when it works, so of course it's reasonable to think on a larger scale when you're looking at themes.

and of course I'm not saying Kevin Feige et al. are deliberately trying to say something deep about women being unable to handle power. I think it doesn't matter because I'm not talking about what they're trying to say. I'm literally just talking about numbers: how many title characters have we had? what's the ratio of male title characters to female title characters? (remember, roughly a third of the title characters have been female, and that's if you're really stretching it.) how many of them have started out good and gone catastrophically bad before redeeming themselves at the last second through a sacrificial death? that few, huh? no, I don't think Marvel Studios is trying to make a deep poing here. I think Kevin Feige and various directors just don't care enough to recognize the unfortunate implications of some of their decisions, mostly because they don't have to, because it's obvious the money will keep coming regardless.

but that's the other thing, I wasn't talking about villains. I don't really...care? like, yeah, I'm sure the MCU has had more male villains than female ones, but that's a totally different discussion than the one I was having, because I was talking about title characters. protagonists. generally speaking, heroes. the characters the audience cares about and pays money to see. viewpoint characters. the ones we're supposed to sympathize with even when they screw up. the important ones. the ones where, you know, we talk about representation because that shit actually matters. and unless this Wanda isn't actually dead or we also end up with a male title character who is a good guy for a long time, turns catastrophically bad for one reason or another, and redeems himself at the last second by dying for the greater good, then I think it's pretty reasonable to look at it in terms of tropes and numbers and say that it's gross.

(I actually don't want them doing this with a male character either, or going the Ben Solo route with somebody who's mostly been a villain but then gets to be Not A Villain before heroically sacrificing themselves. I think it's a shitty, lazy storyline. way more interesting for the character to survive their heroic sacrifice and have to live with the consequences.)

[solarscholarsofmagick]

7 Feelings that Most Witches Can Relate To

1. Feeling shame when you forget about a holiday (again)

Let’s be honest; it happens to us at least once. Life gets busy and before you know it, you see posts on Twitter, saying, “Blessed Ostara!” while you are in the breakroom, scarfing down bagel bites while simultaneously trying your damnedest to get marinara sauce off your white shirt. What happens next can only be compared to the 5 stages of grief:

Denial: Maybe everyone was just posting stuff early. Maybe they’re in a timezone waaaayyy ahead of yours. You didn’t see anything posted about it yesterday, so there’s no need to look at a calendar, because you didn’t forget about the holiday.

Anger: It’s not your fault, it’s society’s fault. It’s not like there’s tons of advertisements about it in the media. No, everyone is hung up on Easter. The lack of accurate representation pisses you off and you’re prepared to scream from the top of your lungs about your beliefs.

Bargaining: Okay, so maybe you initially forgot about it, but you can totally make up for it. You still have time in the day to go to the store and buy some ingredients to make a quick meal as an offering. Wiping that stain off your shirt can kinda represent creating a clean-slate, can’t it?

Depression: You are legit the worst witch in the world. What kind of witch doesn’t even remember the major holidays. No amount of salvaging the day will erase the fact that you forgot about it in the first place.

Acceptance: Missing the occasional (or every) holiday isn’t something worth beating yourself up for, especially since they traditionally span three days or a week anyways. Even non-witches will forget about mainstream holidays. Besides, there’s always next year if you absolutely can’t do anything this week.

2. Trying not to destroy your bank account on a really cool crystal

For most witches, the fascination with what are essentially pretty rocks predates their official delve into the craft. When we do delve, however, that love (pretty much an obsession at this point) amplifies. So, when we go by that crystal kiosk in the mall, it becomes all too hard to resist buying that $50 bonsai tree with leaves of tiny jade shards. Sometimes it’s a jade tree, sometimes it’s a large amethyst geode, and sometimes it’s a hand-crafted obsidian dagger with an ornate elk-antler handle. However, the little voice in the back of your head desperately screams out that this money can be better used on food or on hoarding toilet paper (excuse our memeing). Who wins the argument? Hell if I know. *tries to sneakily slide card across the counter*

3. Not being sure which *witchy* aesthetic you want to represent

There are so many different aesthetics that you see witches portray on social media such as Instagram, Twitter, and even Tumblr. There are so many, and they’re all so damn cute, so finding one to truly commit to is about as difficult as choosing your starter in the first Pokemon game. (Charmander is the right answer to that decision, by the way). Those aesthetics include, but are not limited to:

The “traditional” witch- This aesthetic is typically described as Goth, witchy, or spooky. It can entail black lipstick, straight pitch-black hair, spider-web stockings, and platform boots that go up to your knees or thighs. There is nothing wrong with following this aesthetic. Go for it and relish in the fact that you can easily crush your enemies under your 5-inch platforms. And the fact that you are able to walk in them while normies just can’t seem to quite grasp the skill.

The plant witch- These witches will wear lots of greens and often have floral or tree tattoos. Their social media is usually saturated with pictures of their green children. Their hands are more often than not coated in a thin layer of dirt, especially under their nails. They yearn for their own greenhouse or maybe just a really nice sunroom.

The bohemian witch- These witches fulfill an aesthetic similar to the hippie movement of the mid-1900’s. You can usually find them wearing comfortable, loose-fitting clothes, and, more often than not, barefoot. Their Instagram is typically full of yoga poses and soap that they just hand-crafted.

The closet witch– Because these witches are not open (or are actively hiding) their craft, it is not easy to spot one. You have to look closer to see the signs. Such signs will usually be in the form of crystal and/or symbolic jewelry.

Pro-tip: You don’t have to fulfill a certain aesthetic. The aesthetic is never what makes a witch a true witch. So go nuts and wear what you want to wear. Your personal style is your aesthetic.

4. Getting Roasted by Your Own Tarot Cards/Runes/Divination Method

We usually consult our cards when we need answers. However, sometimes, we already know the answers and are just in denial. In these times, we consult our trusty tarot cards to find the real answer, since the one in our heads is obviously not the right one. It can feel like a slap in the face whenever we do a reading, hoping/praying for a different answer, and receiving what we already knew or facts we wished we hadn’t discovered. In these situations, it can mean that something unpleasant is the result of our own actions or that we have to do something unpleasant in the near future. The cards do not care about your feelings. The cards care about giving you the answers you need and helping you.

5. Forgetting About the Jar That You Put Outside to Collect Rainwater

It’s supposed to be simple. You wait until it rains, you grab a jar, you put it outside, and, once it finishes raining, you bring it back in. But, no, it never ends up this simple. It all seems to go wrong at step 4. After we put the jar out, more often than not, we go on about our day and the jar leaves our mind… usually for a few days. By that time, however, the water has either been evaporated or it has been contaminated with dirt, pollen, or even bugs. Just like with forgetting holidays, we tell ourselves that we won’t forget next time, but you don’t need to consult your cards in order to know that, unless you set an alarm on your phone, the cycle will only repeat itself.

6. Being Overwhelmed in the Beginning

Witchcraft is such a broad, broad term. When you say that you’re going to “practice witchcraft,” it can mean a multitude of things. You could be performing a spell, praying to your gods, drawing sigils, astral projecting, divining, and much, much more. You quickly discover this when you start your journey into the craft and it becomes overwhelming. We are in an age where vast amounts of information is at our fingertips at any moment. You find yourself asking, “Where do I begin?” We tell ourselves, “Let’s find a guide!” Then, we see that there are hundreds of “beginner” guides to the craft in bookstores and thousands online. It’s stressful and there’s a pressure of picking one that had the “right” version of things. In the end, you just have to make a leap of faith and pick one that feels right to you. Build your craft from things that pique your interest. Or, like me, you can close your eyes and grab one off the shelf and go with that.

7. Being Exasperated with Incorrect Portrayals of Witches/Paganism/Magick

You’re just hanging out with someone or a group, or you’re just chilling by yourself, innocently checking out something claiming to be about witches or paganism or magick- or even those books or movies about Ouija boards and/or malignant spirits- and as you’re watching, you notice some things are wrong. Very wrong. In fact, if the people in this had any knowledge at all of magick or paganism, they wouldn’t be in this unfortunate circumstance to begin wi- hey, don’t go without closing the ritual prope- at least the salt is still lini- hey, don’t do tha– I don’t even care anymore, they had no respect or reason to even do this in the first place. If people look to these things as what practicing magick is like (there are some very ignorant people out there), then they are getting a lot of misinformation and downright insulting stereotypes and stigmas ingrained in their minds. No, not all spirits are bad and trying to kill you, maybe if you’d show some respect, Karen, things wouldn’t try to kill you or possess you or whatever the fuck is going on here.

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[purplesurveys]

786

Do you hate it when people rate their surveys "R" but none of the questions are R-rated?  Not really. It’s been a while since I took note of whatever rating a survey has and I don’t really analyze a survey if it has any R questions. Do you ever actively seek out R rated surveys 'cause you think they're fun? Only super early on as a teenager because accomplishing an rated R survey back then made me feel cool HAHAHAHA. Like I said though, I stopped caring through the years as I got older and got to experience typical grownup stuff. Have you ever taken the tests on sites like "OK Cupid" or similar? I’ve never even been on that website, so I dunno others like it. When was the last time you went out for a coffee/cup of tea? Sigh...March 2nd. I went to a nearby Starbucks to work on a business article and to extensively update a tracker that I was keeping for a class. Then because I still had work to do, but was feeling increasingly bad for overstaying at that Starbucks, I drove all the way to Gabie to stay at another coffee shop to continue working, at Coffee Bean this time. We had Yabu for dinner after and I had no clue it was gonna be my last coffee and Yabu date for a while. :/ Do you remember what TV shows you liked as a kid? (If you watched it) Yeah but all the surveys ask this damn question eugh so I don’t feel like directly answering this. I liked a ton of Nickelodeon and Disney shows, but I was super picky when it came to Cartoon Network because I vibed with mostly none of their shows.

Does stress ever affect you physically? If yes, how? It doesn’t really, actually. It hits me in other ways because I’d usually get cranky and will often cry when my stress peaks. I don’t get sick or lose weight or gain it or anything like that, and usually a one-time emotional release will help me deal with the stress. Who (in your opinion) deserves a medal and why? Frontliners do. Throw in better pay for them as well. Who was in power in your country the year you were born? Estrada. Not a very good president either. Though to be fair all of our presidents have been bad save for one; Estrada was just the worst of them all. In your opinion were they a good president/prime minister/leader? Just answered that question. Is gambling throughout your presidency good? Missing crucial meetings because you drank the whole night before and you’re hungover? Not entertaining courtesy calls with global politicians/ambassadors because you just didn’t feel like it? Yep, didn’t think so.  Do you own a coffee table? If yes, what is it made out of? Yes, my grandpa made it for my mom. It’s made out of wood but my mom painted it black so that it fit more with the ambiance she was going for. When did you last eat a parsnip? I don’t even know what that is haha, so I guess never. I tried looking for a Filipino translation but turns out we don’t even have a word for it, which just means it’s not a part of our culture at all. Is it just me or is TV seriously "dumbing down"? Not at all? If anything more and more creators have been using the presence and influence of TV to show representation and give important messages. Just look at Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Do you ever watch films and rip them apart for their innacuracies? Not really. I watch films to enjoy them, buuuut I wouldn’t shy away from hearing someone else point out mistakes, especially from historical movies. It’s always good to store some more trivia in your head haha. Do you prefer your partners to be taller or shorter than you? I’m already quite short so I’d prefer them to be taller. Can you smell anything? Not right now. Did you have a money box as a kid? What shape was it if you did? No. I had packed recess and lunch and I was seldom given money, so there wasn’t any reason for me to start saving anyway. When was the last time your stomach rumbled? Not sure. It hasn’t done that a lot these days because we have food all day long, so the last time was probably when I was still going to school. There are days that I had classes for like 5 hours straight, so getting food was impossible unless I stepped out of the classroom for a few minutes to grab a bite – which I didn’t like doing because I never wanted to miss out on any notes hahaha nerrrrrd. Are your nails long? It’s getting there, but they’re not distractingly long. Have you ever bitten a person for fun? Lol. Yeah, just my girlfriend when I’m feeling playful.

What's your favourite tree? I don’t have one. What do you currently need to buy? A new charger for my phone. Mine finally gave up a few weeks ago and fortunately my sister has an old iPhone charger that I’ve since borrowed for the time being. The charger she has is from Miniso though and honestly I’d feel much better with an original Apple charger haha. Has kids TV ever frightened you? Nah. I got spooked easily as a kid so I generally avoided cartoons that were already known to be dark, like Courage the Cowardly Dog. Do you have any potted plants in your house? Yeah, several. My mom likes having plants around. Do you like solitude? I’ll need it sometimes, especially after a hectic or a big social event, so it feels really nice when I have it. I don’t always like to be alone though, and I mostly crave it when I need recharging. Is there any religion which intrigues you above all others? Buddhism. We never delved deeper than learning the founders and basic laws of other religions (considering I’m from Catholic school), and after hearing about the major religions, it was Buddhism that fascinated me the most. Do you use the PC to "chat" often? I had YM as a kid, if that’s what you mean. I chatted with friends on there all day long. Are you much of a gamer? I am not at all a gamer. I know it's a common question, but, why do you take surveys? It’s a way of getting in touch with myself and to release stress if I have to. It also serves as a distraction whenever there’s so much going on in my life. Do you like meeting or talking to new people via the world wide web? I don’t particularly enjoy it in that I seek it out. It’s just nice when it happens naturally. Do you often wear belts? Never.  When did you last say a nursery rhyme? A very long time ago would be a safe guess. Did you like climbing trees as a kid? No. Most trees here are crawling with fire ants or just insects in general, so I couldn’t climb them even if I wanted to. Do you still secretly like climbing trees, given the chance to do so? Ha Do you find it flattering or "cheesy" when strangers wink at you? Disgusting. I’d take a photo of them and make sure to blast them online. Do you ever shop online? Super rarely.

[middleagedangst]

A Penny for your Health?

You see it sitting there, on the countertop positioned conveniently next to the change dispenser. You sometimes reach your hand in and take from it because you’re lazy or selfish. Other times, you’ll empty your hand into it simply because it’s harder to open your pack of Marlboro Lights while carrying out your six-pack of Busch Light with change in your hand. I get it. No judgment here. What is this well of human generosity? The penny tray. Seen in all 50 states in nearly every gas station convenience store. The very idea of it is pretty great. Take a penny, leave a penny. Fucking genius. I mean why not drop a few cents in there anyway? It’s like a pay-it-forward savings account. It’s a way to be a good person while putting in the least amount of actual effort, an important quality of our American social contract. Besides, isn’t it better to help out your fellow man than to totally forget you even have that extra change until you either find it under the couch cushion next to a Dorito of questionable age or even months later in the pocket of last winter’s coat? Shit, it’s only a penny unless you’re one of those really rich motherfuckers that leave something bigger than a nickel.

I can’t remember a time that these trays didn’t exist, and I’m older than the SyFy channel and the original NES. As far as I’m concerned, the penny tray is a part of America, like NASCAR and cheating on your taxes. And the funny thing about it is anyone can use it, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, place in the economic strata, whatever gender pronoun you are, etc., without so much as an utterance of disdain or unfairness. It’s true. Never once have I seen protest from the skinheads, or the Black Panthers, Westbrook Baptists, the anti-war hippies, the ACLU, not even fucking Scientology. Nobody gives a flying rat’s ass that these things exist. So why the fuck can’t we have this same outlook on other things that might actually be of some use for the nation as a whole? Like, say, healthcare.

Healthcare coverage in the U.S. is pretty fucked up when you think about it. People usually get the best options through their employer, but just like friends with benefits, it starts out great but sooner or later it comes with some strings attached. For one, employers don’t have to offer group rates, or even offer coverage to employees working part-time or doing contract work. Even then if you do get coverage through your employer and you have a pre-existing condition, like diabetes, then the insurance company can tell you to get bent and deny service. Even better, when you do have insurance but they conveniently deny paying for treatment because something is out of network, or not covered by your plan as stated in the fine print that nobody reads. And don’t get me started on dental insurance. The people that usually need it the most, the poor and the elderly on fixed incomes, have trouble affording it and oftentimes rely on cut-rate plans or Medicaid (which has plenty of its own faults). On top of all this, private insurance doesn’t do a damn thing when it comes to controlling costs, because why can’t the medical and pharmaceutical industries rake in a fuck-ton of money from a chemically dependent consumer base that’s getting bent over and prison raped from a lack of options. It’s an awful lot like a strong arm robbery just for the privilege to get treated when you think about it. That’s capitalism’s influence for you. Anything else is unAmerican and downright evil, right?

There has been a lot of debate on what we can do as a nation and body politic that can help millions get healthcare that isn’t frustratingly shitty and increasingly expensive. For starters, some believe we should just leave the shit as it is and not change anything. Let the free markets reign supreme and the weak will die off leaving a healthy race of super citizens. Under this solution, you are free to choose the insurance company you want to pay your ransom to and they handle the rest. The companies dictate how much you pay and how much they pay or if they pay for any service or medication. Have you ever tried to negotiate what you actually get for your money? No? Didn’t think so. This solution is American as fuck so the argument should stop here, but what fun would that be just listening to one option and calling it a day. That’s like watching the same news channel all day.

Another solution is a more socialist approach in which you pass a law that levies a tax on all Americans earning income and then whatever government bureaucracy is in charge of the money pays out benefits to all Americans. The will of the people can then, through representation, effectively bargain for better prices and more expansive coverage because at that point our tax money is the only game in town. See, I know that’s not the American way, that’s the way of the rest of the civilized world’s way and how can the United States be special if we do the same shit the rest of the developed world does? We can't, and that’s why that commie shit isn’t welcome here.

Now I dare ask the question, what’s the fucking difference? Really. What is it? Because as far as I can tell, both possible solutions are the fucking same. You pay money into a big pot, where there are people hired or appointed into positions that control the money and payouts are dispersed on an as needed basis. When you get a bill from a hospital or doctor’s office and you only owe a fraction of the total, where do you think that money comes from? It sure as hell isn’t all the money you paid the company because that would be more like a rainy day savings account. No, other people paid their monthly bill allowing more money to be used for you. Everyone paying money to the insurance company helped you pay that bill. And just like the tray at the gas station, you’re okay with that. Sometimes, the insurance company doesn’t want to pay that much. Maybe it was an unhealthy month and there were a lot of claims, or the board didn’t think you were worth saving. Who knows. Either way, your bill was subsidized by your fellow policyholders. So to everyone that likes to say that they don’t want to pay for someone else’s healthcare “cuz, this is Amurica, and that’s commeynism,”- shut the fuck up because if you have insurance or pay taxes, you already do.

Can someone explain to me how buying healthcare coverage is different than paying a tax for the exact same or possibly even better outcome? Is the fact that you voluntarily pay money to a business for a servi™ce mean that you are freer? I can’t wrap my mind around how just because it's a business doesn’t mean the concept isn't a socialist idea. It just is.

Maybe there is a difference. Perhaps that difference is that a private corporation operates with profit in mind. These entities, especially in this day and age with boards of directors and publicly traded stock have more incentives to make money, meaning higher prices and fewer expenditures. Now, I’ll grant you that the government can be real fucking dumb, but these corporations are profiting on your desire to not be fucking sick while maintaining the right to deny coverage for any reason. Pre-existing condition? Fuck you, you’re a high priced liability. Cancer? We’ll pay some but you’re still getting stuck with a bill you most likely can’t afford. Want to see a healthcare provider that’s out of network? Fuck you too. These insurance companies can be real fucking assholes sometimes. In my opinion, by supporting this system, you give a tacit agreement to this shit continuing. So you’re an asshole too. Sorry. Guilt by association.

I’m not saying government-funded healthcare is perfect. Far from it. Especially with the current government we have. They’ve lost money before and most likely will again. They’ve borrowed from social security. They’ve been openly corrupt. I get it. We shouldn’t really trust these motherfuckers with much, but it could be better than what we have now. The people united and holding those in power accountable through elections and protests. It is, after all, the job of the government to work for the people, for their betterment and safety, to regulate commerce between the states, and to work towards a common goal. All of those things government tax-funded healthcare can provide. Remember finishing the pledge of allegiance with “liberty and justice for all?” Think about the liberty you’d have not having to worry about the cost of being sick and the justice knowing that your fellow American chips in to help his neighbor because it is the morally correct and just thing to do. It still falls short of utopian but at least it's a step in the right direction. Do I think everything should be covered under the people’s insurance? No. I don’t. Sorry, but your penile implant will just have to wait until you can pay cash.

The health of the people shouldn’t be a for-profit industry. It belongs outside the realm of normal capitalist behavior. Healthcare is something that benefits us all. And the healthier the nation is, the more productive, the happier, and better off we can all be. Right now, the healthy are the ones who can afford it. Is that right? Depends on who you ask. Is it just? Not in what should be a united, civilized people. How can us Americans sit by and watch our fellow citizens fall sick, stay sick, and possibly die and not think that the system has failed somehow? It’s morally bankrupt. Also never forget that we as a nation pay more per person on average than many of the other countries with socialized medicine. So even at the very least, socialized medicine can save you a buck or two. And who doesn’t like to save money? It’s certainly less time consuming than clipping fucking coupons.

So just like the little penny tray, a new system of healthcare can be a benefit to everyone, not just those that can afford it already. You put in a little and other times take what you need without questions. It’s there when you need it and can make your day just that much easier. Let’s, as Americans, make the tray just a bit bigger and make things a little better for everyone. You’re already doing it and just didn’t realize it, comrade.

[sainapse-ai]

Making AI work in enterprises - avoiding the rapid-fire black-box AI trap of selecting models from pull down menu

While AI has emerged as a significant value driver in today’s digital economy, not all businesses are able to surmount the challenges associated with the traditional approach to data-driven solutioning. The key to delivering value with AI perhaps lies elsewhere — in this article, we look at how AI projects headed towards failure can be spotted early on, and how enterprises can, instead, take on a proven approach to implementing nimble, lean and scalable AI from the get-go.

Gartner estimates AI to deliver 2.9 trillion dollars of business value over the next few years. A McKinsey survey from 2019 shows us how.

Enterprises are adopting AI across functions with significant impact on their cost and revenue

(Source: McKinsey & Co. Global AI Survey 2019)

Data scientists (Harvard Business Review says it’s the most in-demand job these days) across enterprises are doing their best in this 5 step journey to identify AI use cases, and design solutions that would create impact and keep adding to AI’s business value.

Despite their best efforts however, estimates say 87% of machine learning projects never make it into production, and almost 80% projects take up to 6 months to even reach the production stage. Reasons behind this startling estimate range from ‘dirty data’ to lack of integration of AI findings into next step actions or decisions.

Source: Business Over Broadway, 2018

Attributing failure of enterprise AI to Dirty data sounds a bit like attributing one’s lack of productivity in winter to arctic blast. Enterprise AI must know what an enterprise inherently is and tune its AI to meet the needs of enterprises and stop expecting the enterprises to get magically redesigned to suit the AI algorithms

Let’s dwell on the dirty data for a moment. Data could get dirty because of multiple reasons

Lack of understanding of how data is born — are we expecting dimensional information that do not exist?

Does it get dirty in transit — are incentives aligned to dirtiness rather than cleanliness?

Does it get dirty in storage — is it getting mixed without reason? Are there processes that’s using this data without knowledge of the creator ?

Net net, data scientists can’t throw up their hands and expect someone to ‘clean’ the data (Reason 1), convince executives to change their processes and use AI in their decision making (Reasons 6 and 14), expect tons of support (Reason 3) while ignoring lack of clarity (Reason 4) — all because we as AI players and Data scientists have conjured up a model and are claiming success in a utopian world.

Studying the failure drivers closely, it’s evident that 10 out of 14 reflect a lack of understanding of processes and people that create and use the data.

Here’s our take on how we can fix it in two steps. First up, we need to embrace 4 home truths:

Data is only a symptom: business processes are the root cause. Let us therefore call them data generating processes (DGP). DGPs are generating both real signal (borrowing a telecom analogy) and noise. Temporary workers and new joiners inject errors unknowingly due to lack of process and system knowledge. If their number is 15% there is a way to learn as opposed to if such data generators constitute 60% of the population.

Treating symptoms is a hit-or-miss game: are we supposed to reject some signals from the DGP as noise, or does the model retrain to account for this time’s miss in the next one? Is the model scoring better by being trained on data generated from morning shifts, when employees are less tired than in the latter shift? Or should we re-think the training data set completely if 60% of population are temps and new hires always?

Data quality management (DQM)– yet another cost black-hole: According to McKinsey, leading firms spend over 74% of their employees’ time in non-value-adding tasks that pertain to data quality issues. Overfitting remains a problem in models currently in production and is one of the key reasons behind executives’ lack of faith (Reason 3,4 and 14)

The returns on dimensionality reduction — and why they lie untapped: Unstructured data will account for 93% of the data universe by 2022. Difficulty of modelling with unstructured data remains paramount — because sequential/unstructured data like language-based queries translate into massive, hyper-dimensional problem space, where intuitions of low-dimensional geometry begin to fail — as a result, models that give excellent results on structured data give mediocre returns on unstructured data. Remember the chatbots that pop up on sites of every bank and other enterprises these days? Beyond the Von Neumann menu, unless there is a live agent behind, they fail to truly understand — and start repeating the same trivialities.

Once we get this context — that data is just a symptom, overfitting is a problem (executives want resilience as much as accuracy and they are open for discussions on how to balance) and we need to watch for unstructured data as much or more than structured data, then we have reached a good place for cracking the enterprise AI problem already.

Following 3 steps can ensure reducing this damning 87% failure rate in enterprise AI:

Make the model account for DGP: Data is only a symptom, and underlying processes and behaviors and practices, the root causes. If we can study and map the data generating process and capture its nuances — like seasonality, boundary conditions etc., then selecting a model becomes relatively an easy task. Understanding DGP helps informing the model about source of signals and ignoring noise — thereby avoiding overfitting. Evolution of the DGP must also get captured in the model and therein lies the key to avoid failures associated with rapid-fire/black-box AI that selects models from pull down menus. Lastly, DGP also contains critical information about underlying data quality; this helps cut costs associated with DQM for enterprises.

Focus on dimensionality reduction: In analyzing unstructured data, dimensionality reduction holds key to making AI solutions lightweight, relevant and accurate in the business context. Dimensionality reduction is effectively a problem of learning representation. Reducing the problem space without losing signals is a challenge with most traditional dimensionality reduction techniques, like statistical correlation analysis and association analysis.

Close the loop on deployment: While data modelling can never be fully automated with existing technical capabilities, machine learning solutions must always close the loop. For example — if a chatbot fails to deliver relevant results to a user query, can the model recognize its inability to render required result with confidence, and consequently redirect the user to a live agent? Can the solution demonstrate some degree of self-awareness when a previously trained model begins returning irrelevant results?

We were conscious of each of the 14 failure drivers while designing Sainapse. Sainapse conquers most of these failure drivers so that enterprises will not need to spend time and money on trying models and cleaning data. We have baked in capabilities to handle all forms of structured and unstructured data including text annotated images or mixed language messages. Sainapse accounts for length and breadth of enterprise customer support, service operations and even engineering support, internalizing quality management and cutting-edge dimensionality reduction techniques that turn any form of data into the right answers, instantly, on the first attempt.

[sableaire]

Why do people complain about a white Light but not a black L? Seriously, they could have been both asian or white or black and the Netflix show would still fucking suck. Are even Death Note fans complaining about the fact that Light is now "a white kid" because tumblr logic. People give too much credit to live action adaptations these days.

Sorry for taking so long to get to this, Anon - had a busy Friday, aha. 

I think ultimately the backlash against Light is that he’s, well… the face of the show. He’s the one we see in the trailer, and he’s the one we immediately see and go “Well, that doesn’t look right.” And seeing as a lot of people are already talking about this from a sociopolitical representation-in-media point of view, let me explain things from a storytelling point of view under the cut:

For me, the reason that a white Light isn’t working for me is because Light’s character at its core is so fundamentally Japanese. The idea of a ‘model student’ is so different between Japan and America, and Light Turner doesn’t fit the role Light Yagami is supposed to fill, in my head.

Further, the entire nature of Light Yagami’s motivation and drive depends upon the structure of the Japanese legal system, and how his ‘ascension to godhood’ should be interpreted changes if it’s shifted to America. His character was designed in and for a Japanese setting, so when it seems like Netflix just took “Light Yagami” as he is and threw him into an American setting with nothing but a name change to bolster it, it grates on me as a storyteller. To adapt a foreign work, you need to understand what environment the author was reflecting on when writing the work, and then you need to adapt it from that fundamental concept upwards, or the story will only ever pale in comparison to the original.

The reason The Handmaiden works so well as an adaptation of The Fingersmith is because it rewrote the setting, the characters, and the concepts from the ground up. If they just plopped the The Fingersmith into Korea, I don’t think I could have tolerated that.

Also, personal preference, but seeing Light out of uniform is really bothering me. Is Light Turner going to be in an academy or prep school or something, because if not, I take issue with that too. Speaking of which, the director of this live-action said that there’s going to be a ton of swearing and nudity?? Because let me tell you, Light Yagami prided himself on being Japan’s best and brightest, a true model student, so I really don’t know where they plan on slipping that in for Light Turner.

I recognize that in this review I am kind of torn between “they should have stuck closer to the original” and “they should have reinvented the original” but that’s basically the problem - Netflix doesn’t seem to have made the choice either. They wanted to be similar enough to use the name and just different enough to Americanize it a little. Like that, it’ll end up satisfying no one.

Anyway, L’s character, on the other hand, has not been featured as prominently in images or trailers. Heck, I didn’t know L was going to be black until I received this ask, but it doesn’t bother me, personally, as much because L’s character does not depend upon the Japanese culture or justice system. L’s character is a foil and antagonist to Light, and his motivations are pretty universal in it just being that he’s a world-renowned detective with one heck of a case, and he’s going to solve it. His character can exist in any form because, at heart, his character is a shared concept/drive between America and Japan.

Light’s entire sense of justice is the driving narrative of the plot, and that sense of justice is born out of Japan being a) a small nation with a number of densely populated cities, b) a highly collectivist society, and c) having an entirely different legal system and culture compared to the United States. 

a) America is huge? I’m not quite sure how well Light Turner’s going to work as Kira because he won’t be able to strike fear into an entire nation. If he’s operating on one state in the east coast, to start out with, California isn’t going to be trembling in fear. Frankly, I don’t have a lot of faith that Netflix put thought into the adaptation in this regard, and if they did, I wish they released a little more information acknowledging that element of adaptation.

b) Japanese culture, similarly to Korean culture, has a lot of unspoken social rules, and the feeling of society as a whole differs greatly from the United States, which is a country built upon the idea that you’re “free to be who you want to be” and upholds the individual. The idea of Kira, and Light Yagami’s power-trip, take on a different role in a setting like Japan, not to mention how Light’s proclamation that he intends to become ‘God’ almost depends on the Japanese setting. 

Consider this: God in America is typically the Christian God. When Light Turner proclaims that he intends to become ‘God’, he is saying this after being brought up in a highly Christian environment. He is saying this after attending a school system in which he pledges allegiance every day going “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” and that colors the god-complex in a completely different way. The sheer egoism of a teenager ‘becoming God’ in a Christian-dominated society that proclaims the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of God since childhood is enough for me to lose interest in the character. 

Light Yagami’s concept of godhood is, on the other hand, born from an environment dominated by Shintoism and Buddhism. I haven’t read or watched Death Note in years, mind you, so I can’t remember if Light seems to be Christian or not, but even if he is, that would make him a minority in Japan. Barely 2% of Japan’s population is Christian, and even with all the Roman-Christian symbolism in the manga, I can’t be sure without further research that it was all intentional, seeing as Neon Genesis Evangelion made use of Christian symbolism because they thought it looked cool. 

In the end, the character of Light Yagami is constructed and placed in a culture where ‘godhood’ is equated with ‘divinity’ found in nature, and the ‘purity’ of the natural order of things (edit: the inherent purity of natural things; I realized belatedly that my initial wording could be read several different ways). Even if the character itself is based upon Christianity and Christian concepts, how the Japanese readership would have accepted this character and the in-story Japanese society would have accepted Kira differs greatly from it would in an American context. It makes me wonder if, in the original manga, there was a sense that Light Yagami was trying to become ‘the natural order of things’ by becoming ‘god’.

IfI have to wonder, did Netflix realize this? Is this a purposeful change in nuance? Because there is a way to do this right, and if they did it right it could be amazing! But I know that at heart, this is likely a cash grab, and they took the story and the name and spilled it into an American setting and expected fans to follow along. (And if not, if this is actually a reinvention, I am disappointed in their marketing team for failing to generate positive interest.)

See, as a storyteller, I feel as though if the staff of this adaptation didn’t consider at least as much as I am doing in this post, they’re not doing the original work enough respect, and bottom-line, the character of “Light Yagami” was fascinating. The character of “Light Turner” is far from novel.

Speaking of which, the name “Kira” came from the Japanese pronunciation for ‘killer’ so what the heck are they going to do with that? 

c) Death Note was written at an interesting time, the original run going from 2003 to 2006. In the middle of that time period in 2004, Japan changed its legal system to include layman judges. That means that Death Note was conceptualized and written at a time where something akin to a jury system did not exist in Japan (and the current system still differs from a jury system anyway), and according to Wikipedia, the first notable lay-judge trial didn’t even happen until 2009. Even now, this system isn’t well-received because over 70% of Japanese people are uncomfortable with the idea of acting as a judge.

And it is in this kind of society, Light Yagami rises up. Light Yagami’s distorted pursuit of justice depends upon the closed-off legal system where solely the judges determine the guilt of the defendant, if the case even gets to court at all. I believe that at the time of Death Note’s writing, most cases in Japan were handled by a single judge unless it made it to at least the High Courts (which used three judges). Thus, when a criminal escapes conviction in this setting, it means that the existing evidence couldn’t legally convince, often, one individual. 

In America, Light Turner is a teenage guy who hasn’t even sat on a jury yet, and I’m not sure why, but that changes things for me. Escaping a court conviction in America usually means that a jury, a panel of civilians, wasn’t convinced. The circumstances in which a guilty individual goes free is either a result of money (either bribes or a really good defense lawyer) or implicit biases in the jury (if the jury and the defendant are part of the same ‘in-group’ such as race, religion, etc.), so Light Turner’s dissatisfaction with existing legal avenues for crime needs a different angle, or it just feels… childish.

If the only reason Light Turner turns into an egomaniac is because he’s a decently smart teenage guy who gets a new, deadly toy, I won’t be able to find him interesting. Also, on that note, Light Yagami is pretty much one of the smartest guys in his nation - that’s part of his appeal. America as a setting has a disadvantage in that, both geographically and culturally, because it’s pretty damn hard to be ‘smartest teenager in the United States’, especially when there isn’t really a way to judge that in the American education system, and also because ‘super-smart’ in America still suffers from lingering connotations of ‘weak nerd’ rather than bringing you great social status amongst teens.

Basically what I’m getting at is that if Netflix was going to do this adaptation of Death Note, they had to have rewritten the character of Light from the ground up as well as completely reshaped the commentary within it, or we lose a lot of nuance to both Light’s character and the story. Sure, the show isn’t out yet, so maybe Netflix did rewrite the adaptation like that, but in that case I would disapprove of how they went with the marketing, and I would still question why they didn’t consider casting an Asian-American guy.

A lot of people are saying, “Well, it’s in America. Why can’t Light be white?” but to them, I ask, “Well, it’s in America, multicultural and diverse. Why can’t Light be Asian-American?” It would also be insight to an interesting cultural perspective which could potentially feed into the protagonist’s egoistic philosophy.

Anyway, if there are any glaring errors I made above, I apologize. I have not read or watched Death Note in many years, and I didn’t feel like doing so just to write this post, ahaha.

[lifelibrariesandlemontrees]

Book Review: All For The Game Trilogy

Synopsis:

Neil Josten is the newest addition to the Palmetto State University Exy team. He's short, he's fast, he's got a ton of potential—and he's the runaway son of the murderous crime lord known as The Butcher. Signing a contract with the PSU Foxes is the last thing a guy like Neil should do. The team is high profile and he doesn't need sports crews broadcasting pictures of his face around the nation. His lies will hold up only so long under this kind of scrutiny and the truth will get him killed. But Neil's not the only one with secrets on the team. One of Neil's new teammates is a friend from his old life, and Neil can't walk away from him a second time. Neil has survived the last eight years by running. Maybe he's finally found someone and something worth fighting for.

Review:

Okay, so first things first: I fucking love this series. It’s a ridiculous premise, and if you’re easily offended or triggered you might want to avoid it. But if you’re not? I definitely recommend it. I first read it like, a year ago or something and I honestly don’t know why its taken me so long to rave about it on here.

The second thing I will point out, is that clearly I only have the image and summary for the first book given above. That’s because I 1. couldn’t find a good picture of all 3 books, and 2. Don’t really feel like they’re three separate books anyway. They technically are, and they’re sold that way, but ultimately I find that each book flows into the next so that it’s less of three distinct books and more of one story broken into three parts. Does that make any sense? I swear it did in my head. 

I saw these books recommended on Tumblr, and chances are that if you’re reading this review you probably have too. But maybe you’ve never picked it up. Maybe you’ve been hesitant, wary of independent authors or bad Tumblr recommendations. Maybe you just thought it sounded stupid, to which I tell you- yeah, it sounds that way. Believe me, this entire series sounds like the kind of unrealistic, overly-dramatic bullshit that I hate, but it’s SO. GOOD. 

I think it’s in the characters. There’s a full cast of wonderful, well developed characters that you’re going to fall in love with (Except for Seth. I can’t really make myself give half of a damn about Seth, but idk man some people like him. You might too???). The plot line is a little out there, but the writing just makes it work? It’s like some kind of literary magic. I don’t care much about sports or gangs or illegal activities and yet I find myself deeply in love with a book series centered around all of these things.

But like I said before, there are the characters. As much as the story is focused around the illegal gang drama and the sports and such, the story is also very much focused on the characters, Neil in particular, and their relationships with each other. Each character is fleshed out, well-rounded, and unique, complete with both positive and negative traits and everything in between. 

As a fan of romance stories, I especially like the unique aspects of this book in which the romance is very subtle and slow burn and, unless you’ve seen all the fan art and stuff, might not expect it, until suddenly BAM. Tis’ upon you. Once it is, it deals very heavily ( and refreshingly, tbh) in issues of consent, stressing it’s absolute importance. On the representation front, this book comes complete with several examples of homosexuality and one demisexual character, which isn’t something I’ve seen much of in literature. If you’re waiting for him to explicitly state that he is, that’s not going to happen, but it’s clear in his behavior and the author has confirmed it on her blog. 

(As a fun- fun?- fact, my spell check is losing its mind over the word “demisexual”. It wants me to change it to “bisexual.” Like...sorry spellcheck, can’t do that.)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that these books are ridiculous and beautiful, and while I’m not telling you who the main love interest is, I will tell you that it’s a pretty great (if somewhat unconventional) love story. Also there’s a huge Tumblr cult-following and it’s pretty damn active, so that’s fun. 

Definitely check this series out. Laos, as an added bonus, it’s REALLY cheap on Amazon. Definitely worth the money. 

[a-weird-rusted-android]

I have a bunch of those11 questions meme behind so I guess I’ll just mass post the answers here.Sorry I’m not actually putting in new questions but it took me 1 hour and a half just doing these and I kinda have to study

Tagged by @therandommeerkat

1) If someone wrote music about you, what genre do you think it would be in? Be as specific or as vague as you want. Not necessarily a style you favour, but one that would suit you (though these will probably align, but maybe not) Idk maybe I'd be some kind of folk song? I'm not even a big fan of folk but I feel like it would suit me somewhat

2) A place that, ideally, you'd be most at peace. Don't be afraid to be mundane A nice cozy room with a fire and me buried under a ton of blankets. The TV is on as almost background noise and I have a cat on my lap

3) Describe an artwork you'd like at your house. Maybe include a picture. And/or a story. Why that artwork? It doesn't have to be deep I'd like to have one of those Escher drawings that make your brain stop working like it's a room that expands forever but it also inside itself. I think they look really cool

4) If you could create your own social media site, what would it be about? Or your own webthing, more widely speaking Dunno. Maybe some sort of forum for people with common interests but I'm not sure what kind of mechanics I'd put in

5) A pet peeve, something that just gets on your nerves. The more pointless, the better I have this teacher who doesn't have any sort of accent at all, except for one word. The word “libro” (book). She says it like “libbro”. And doubling the b's is like a common accent in some areas of the South but she never does it on any other word than that. If she had an actual accent it wouldn't bother me but this is terrible. It's like if someone with a perfect English accent used y'all'd've

6) If you could spend a day somewhere in the past an no one would question your presence, where and when would you go, and what would you do? I could give a thought-out, serious answer to this but I'll just say I'd like to see a dinosaur

7) Describe a sensory feeling or memory of meaning to you I don't remember the name but there are these sort of cherries that are very bright red and they aren't sweet but kind of sour and my grandma used to have a tree of those and in spring me and sometimes a friend would try to take as many as possible of those while being too short to reach most of the branches and unable to climb up on the actual tree. Good times

8) Do you keep a diary? No. Never really seen the point

9) Do you have a collection of anything? If you had unlimited funds, would you start one? The only collection I have are the Pokemon cards I used to buy in elementary school and if I had unlimited funds I think that's what I'm most likely to start collecting again

10) If you could specializa in literally anything, like, on a college level, what would it be? ...but what about a degree in Pokemon

11) And last, and most morbid, how would you like to be remembered when you're gone? On a physical and an intellectual level There is a monumental tomb in an old cemetery. It is made of strange, black stone. Some being that could be an angel if angels were raffigured as they are in the Bible is on top of it, looking down on humanity with empty, eerie eyes, too many eyes. No one knows who let that thing be built. There is no picture of me, only my initials carved in a corner. No one is sure what my real name was. No one is sure who I was, or how I died. There are multiple legends going around, including that I was the spawn of an eldricht being that came from another reality and that the statue is in truth a representation of my real form, and that it comes to life every second Thursday of the month, to find those who blemish the existance of pizza with pineapple and turn all of their socks into sentient creatures

Tagged by @morganalefan

1) Post-apocalyptic universe, fantasy world, hyper technological future or anywhere and anytime you want in the past: which do you choose? Hyper technological future where we also developed magic and found aliens so it's some sort of futuristic fantasy instead

2) If you knew a ghost was haunting your home, what would you do? I would be terrified but also not enough to be bothered to do something about it

3) Whitches: do you think they are valid, do you not share their beliefs but still respect them, or are they just some delusional airheads? (answer sincerely. Don't worry, I'm bound not to harm anyone with my craft ;3 ) Oh well I don't really believe a lot in this kind of things but I see no reason to not respect other's beliefs

4) Let's talk about food: does it make you happy? Is it just a mean to survive? Do you have an unhealthy relationship with it? Food is fucking important to me ok

5) What's your plan for the zombie apocalypse? Do you even HAVE a plan?? ...I'll figure it out when the zombie apocalypse comes. I'm shit at sticking to plans anyway

6) Think any given race an any given class of any given rpg you have ever heard of. Which do you choose? You must stick with it forever! Well Pokemon is an rpg too so yeah I'm going to be a Pokemon trainer. You have awesome pets and travel around and get paid a fuckton of money for everything you do

7) You are given an unlimited amount of money and no restrictions to create your own tv series! What is it about? Do you both write and direct it? Do you call famous actors you like to starr in it or do you cast some promising aspiring actors the world had never heard of? I was hearing a while ago this idea of making a tv series of the Silmarillion and yo. I would fund the fuck out of this. First season is all about the Valar and Melkor arguing and repeatedly fucking shit up and then we have like a lot of other seasons for the real thing. Because let's face it if we gonna do this we have to make things a lot less fast paced than that book because it would be a mess. Well I'm fine both with new and famous actors. I mean for Galadriel I'd still probably want Cate Blanchett because I can only see her that way now but maybe also another actor for when she's younger

8) What's comforting to you? Knowing this Friday and Sunday school's gonna be closed. Very comforting

9) Do you fear climatic change and natural disasters? Yes

10) I want you to feel good about yourself: tell me something you like about yourself. It could be a personality trait, a physical feature, a specific talent you have, something you did you are proud of... Aw thank you. Well the other day I was at my aunt's and she has this cat who is kinda shy around people and I managed to get close to it and pet it and I felt really accomplished

11) And now, tell me something about one of your passions! Anything! (I can't think of any other questions...) (kiddin', I care about you) I love writing. I really love it. It's beautiful how stories just come to life under your fingertips. I adore writing. I don't have about 50 word documents with maybe one sentence written absolutely not

Tagged by @thxstral

1) What TV/book/movie character do you think you're most similar to? What character to do you wish you were more like? Most similar to... I don't know. I'd like to be someone more like Clint Barton. Not the strongest person around and overall pretty chill but willing to lend my help when there's need for me

2) What was the first career you wanted as a kid? I'm not really sure... Maybe superhero or something

3) Would you rather have magic in an ordinary world, or be ordinary in a magical world? Ordinary in a magical world would also kinda imply I would still have some sort of magic so I'd go with the second one. On the other side, I could actually be a superhero if I went with the first one. Mmm

4) If you could live in the world of any music video for a day, what would it be and why? Do anime openings video count as music video for the song because I might just throw myself in a random YuGiOh opening

5) Who was your childhood enemy? (or frenemy) I wasn't cool enough to have an enemy tbh

6) If you could gain any skill with no effort on your part, what skill would you want and why? The skill of remembering things perfectly after having read them once. Why you ask? I'm a student that's why

7) Can you speak any languages besides your native language? Well my native language is Italian so. I mean. Yeah

8) What was the last book you read cover to cover? Ugh I haven't had time to read a lot of things recently. I can tell you what the last book I started was (Licia Troisi's new book) but I'm not sure I remember the last book I actually finished reading. I think I reread the first Harry Potter a while ago but

9) Would you rather be roommates with a ghost or an alien? Depends on the ghost, depends on the alien. Like if it's vendicative murderous ghost vs Spock I'd say Spock. If it's the ghost of Oscar Wilde vs Alien then I might prefer the ghost of Oscar Wilde a little

10) What do you think your superpower would be vs. what would you want them to be? I mean probably I'd have the power to turn invisible because of course I'd have something that can't actually be useful unless I do something like going around butt naked in the middle of winter. What I'd want is probably just some good old super strength. It seems damn useful both as a potential superhero and in my day to day life

11) Someone offers you a briefcase full of cash in exchange for you faking your death and going completely off the grid. Would you take it? GIVE ME THE MONEY

[dtoxxworld]

Dir:  Steve McQueen

Based on: Widows By Lynda La Plante

Screenplay: Steve McQueen, Gillian Flynn

Cast: Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Daniel Kaluuya, Michelle Rodriguez, Cynthia Envo

  PROS

This movie was done with such purpose that it fails to register a single con as far as I am concerned.

It has so much similarities with The Wizards of Oz that I find it funny not many have pointed that out. Viola’s character is mos def Dorothy with her damn dog IMO. She has three people join her quest to find her money. The scare crow is most definitely the Crow and also some stuff she says is all scripted so similar to the Crow in the Wizards of Oz.. It is oddly similar in so many other instances I felt strangely in some multi universe rewatching it.

This is a connosieur’s movie through and through. There is absolutely every indicator of it in the visuals. It has Hitchcock movie style shots, the shot with Viola and Alice through a split screen and also their reflections on the mirror. It pans out perfectly. Every CU shot too, 360 degree angle shots, darkly lit scene, scenes shot through the lens of a rain bit window etc. It felt exciting to watch, though not everyone would notice that unless you work in film. I also loved the symbolic shots, like how the Director placed Viola’s darkness against the whiteness of the world, speaking volumes visually. I could ramble on and on on what I loved from the visuals honestly.

Between this and Ocean’s 8 I think my new favorite micro-genre of movies is female-centric heist films. Except where Ocean’s 8 just makes me want to eat brunch and be gay and do crimes, this movie makes me want to burn the fucking patriarchy to the ground and dance naked around the flames. That’s probably my own issue. A film of this pedigree – Steve McQueen directing and also co-writing with the unstoppable Gillian Flynn, starring Viola Davis – feels like a recipe for success

I love that each of the women get to be shown using their own experiences and skill sets to try to pull off the subterfuge. Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) speaks Spanish to another Latina woman when she’s trying to get information. “It’s my first week of work and my boss…” and the woman helps her, just like that. Because women have to stick together. Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) makes up a story about being a mail-order bride, complete with tears and rapid Polish-speaking, to get a woman at a gun show to help her purchase the guns for the job. And Veronica uses her appearance of wealth and status to infiltrate their heist location with ease. The only reason this scheme even gets off the ground is because of women helping other women at every turn.

Steve McQueen’s directing means that not only is the pacing an exquisite slow burn, but each moment of increasing tension is also so visually beautiful to watch. Veronica wears a ton of white, and the juxtaposition between her posh, sleek white apartment and the grim darkness of the warehouse and alleys where they’re planning their crimes is an unsubtle, but effective, representation of these different worlds colliding.

A very special shout-out goes to Brian Tyree Henry and especially Daniel Kaluuya as his brother and enforcer. Kaluuya is on some next-level terrifying here, as his huge eyes stay cold and reptilian while terrorizing folks who have done his brother wrong. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so afraid of a regular dude just standing still in a movie – maybe Lakeith Stanfield in Get Out?

At first I was a bit disappointed that the film forced Viola Davis to portray Veronica as so hard, to the point of being cold and unfeeling. There’s a long cultural (racist) legacy of portraying black women as emotionless, or the strong silent type who never show their suffering. But at the very end, when Veronica runs into Alice and smiles, I was trying to figure out why the movie would end this way; why would the final shot be her smiling face? And it hit me. It’s because Veronica is only cold and ruthless when navigating her husband’s world – when she is finally out from under that weight, and living life on her own terms, she is free to express herself. She’s taken control of her own life for the first time in years, and it looks radiant on her.

  CONS

Yeah i know I said I did not find anything wrong mainly because of the dope visuals and the direction McQueen took with the story plot but I got some stuff I would love to point out though..

His scenes felt rushed and the violent scenes were somehow obligatory and lazy. This is my opinion though because I expect blood and gore when we are in combat mode but instead I saw some attitude of on to the next which felt careless.

Plus, I have this problem where I kind of hate Michelle Rodriguez because her face like…never moves? Which feels like it should be the very first prerequisite required to be an actress, but what do I know. Anyway, the good news is that I hate her much less in this than anything else I’ve ever seen her in. She always does that unbothered look in so many of her roles in films it gets kinda disturbing.

  Anyway, if you love Heist movies, this is a sure thriller. Think Oceans 8! This is just that.

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WIDOW Dir:  Steve McQueen Based on: Widows By Lynda La Plante Screenplay: Steve McQueen, Gillian Flynn…

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Making AI work in enterprises – avoiding the rapid-fire black-box AI trap of selecting models from pull down menu

While AI has emerged as a significant value driver in today’s digital economy, not all businesses are able to surmount the challenges associated with the traditional approach to data-driven solutioning. The key to delivering value with AI perhaps lies elsewhere – in this article, we look at how AI projects headed towards failure can be spotted early on, and how enterprises can, instead, take on a proven approach to implementing nimble, lean and scalable AI from the get-go.

Gartner estimates AI to deliver 2.9 trillion dollars of business value over the next few years. A McKinsey survey from 2019 shows us how.

Enterprises are adopting AI across functions with significant impact on their cost and revenue

(Source: McKinsey & Co. Global AI Survey 2019)

Data scientists (Harvard Business Review says it's the most in-demand job these days) across enterprises are doing their best in this 5 step journey to identify AI use cases, and design solutions that would create impact and keep adding to AI’s business value.

Despite their best efforts however, estimates say 87% of machine learning projects never make it into production, and almost 80% projects take up to 6 months to even reach the production stage.  Reasons behind this startling estimate range from ‘dirty data’ to lack of integration of AI findings into next step actions or decisions.

Source: Business Over Broadway, 2018

Attributing failure of enterprise AI to Dirty data sounds a bit like attributing one’s lack of productivity in winter to arctic blast. Enterprise AI must know what an enterprise inherently is and tune its AI to meet the needs of enterprises and stop expecting the enterprises to get magically redesigned to suit the AI algorithms

Let’s dwell on the dirty data for a moment. Data could get dirty because of multiple reasons

Lack of understanding of how data is born – are we expecting dimensional information that do not exist?

Does it get dirty in transit – are incentives aligned to dirtiness rather than cleanliness?

Does it get dirty in storage – is it getting mixed without reason? Are there processes that’s using this data without knowledge of the creator ?

Net net, data scientists can’t throw up their hands and expect someone to ‘clean’ the data (Reason 1), convince executives to change their processes and use AI in their decision making (Reasons 6 and 14), expect tons of support (Reason 3) while ignoring lack of clarity (Reason 4) – all because we as AI players and Data scientists have conjured up a model and are claiming success in a utopian world.

Studying the failure drivers closely, it’s evident that 10 out of 14 reflect a lack of understanding of processes and people that create and use the data.

Here’s our take on how we can fix it in two steps. First up, we need to embrace 4 home truths:

Data is only a symptom: business processes are the root cause. Let us therefore call them data generating processes (DGP). DGPs are generating both real signal (borrowing a telecom analogy) and noise. Temporary workers and new joiners inject errors unknowingly due to lack of process and system knowledge. If their number is 15% there is a way to learn as opposed to if such data generators constitute 60% of the population.

Treating symptoms is a hit-or-miss game: are we supposed to reject some signals from the DGP as noise, or does the model retrain to account for this time’s miss in the next one? Is the model scoring better by being trained on data generated from morning shifts, when employees are less tired than in the latter shift? Or should we re-think the training data set completely if 60% of population are temps and new hires always?

Data quality management (DQM)– yet another cost black-hole: According to McKinsey, leading firms spend over 74% of their employees’ time in non-value-adding tasks that pertain to data quality issues. Overfitting remains a problem in models currently in production and is one of the key reasons behind executives’ lack of faith (Reason 3,4 and 14)  

The returns on dimensionality reduction – and why they lie untapped: Unstructured data will account for 93% of the data universe by 2022. Difficulty of modelling with unstructured data remains paramount – because sequential/unstructured data like language-based queries translate into massive, hyper-dimensional problem space, where intuitions of low-dimensional geometry begin to fail – as a result, models that give excellent results on structured data give mediocre returns on unstructured data. Remember the chatbots that pop up on sites of every bank and other enterprises these days? Beyond the Von Neumann menu, unless there is a live agent behind, they fail to truly understand - and start repeating the same trivialities.

Once we get this context - that data is just a symptom, overfitting is a problem (executives want resilience as much as accuracy and they are open for discussions on how to balance) and we need to watch for unstructured data as much or more than structured data, then we have reached a good place for cracking the enterprise AI problem already.

Following 3 steps can ensure reducing this damning 87% failure rate in enterprise AI:

Make the model account for DGP: Data is only a symptom, and underlying processes and behaviors and practices, the root causes. If we can study and map the data generating process and capture its nuances – like seasonality, boundary conditions etc., then selecting a model becomes relatively an easy task. Understanding DGP helps informing the model about source of signals and ignoring noise – thereby avoiding overfitting. Evolution of the DGP must also get captured in the model and therein lies the key to avoid failures associated with rapid-fire/black-box AI that selects models from pull down menus. Lastly, DGP also contains critical information about underlying data quality; this helps cut costs associated with DQM for enterprises.

Focus on dimensionality reduction: In analyzing unstructured data, dimensionality reduction holds key to making AI solutions lightweight, relevant and accurate in the business context. Dimensionality reduction is effectively a problem of learning representation. Reducing the problem space without losing signals is a challenge with most traditional dimensionality reduction techniques, like statistical correlation analysis and association analysis.

Close the loop on deployment: While data modelling can never be fully automated with existing technical capabilities, machine learning solutions must always close the loop. For example – if a chatbot fails to deliver relevant results to a user query, can the model recognize its inability to render required result with confidence, and consequently redirect the user to a live agent? Can the solution demonstrate some degree of self-awareness when a previously trained model begins returning irrelevant results?                                                                                                                                                     We were conscious of each of the 14 failure drivers while designing Sainapse. Sainapse conquers most of these failure drivers so that enterprises will not need to spend time and money on trying models and cleaning data. We have baked in capabilities to handle all forms of structured and unstructured data including text annotated images or mixed language messages. Sainapse accounts for length and breadth of enterprise customer support, service operations and even engineering support, internalizing quality management and cutting-edge dimensionality reduction techniques that turn any form of data into the right answers, instantly, on the first attempt.