#latvian model

[nolee24]

aryana kiplyuks

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Top five EV brands in Latvia in the 2nd quarter of 2023. Source: e-transports.org

P.S. Tesla is only one unit behind BMW (whose BMW i3 model is mostly imported used from Germany. (New electric BMWs are very rare in Latvia, unlike Tesla electric cars.) Recently, new Tesla Model Y electric crossovers have been seen more and more often on the streets of Riga. Most likely, this year Tesla will win the first place in the electric car market and Tesla Model Y will become one of the most popular premium car models in Latvia...

Secondly, a couple of used car sales companies have appeared in Latvia, which have very well organized import business of slightly used and second-hand Tesla electric vehicles to Latvia and their technical maintenance...Second hand Tesla Model 3 and Model Y with LFP batteries have a very good chance of destroying the used diesel market...

[haggishlyhagging]

It took about two hours for Daina Taimina to find the solution that had eluded mathematicians for over a century. It was 1997, and the Latvian mathematician was participating in a geometry workshop at Cornell University. David Henderson, the professor leading the workshop, was modelling a hyperbolic plane constructed out of thin, circular strips of paper taped together. 'It was disgusting,' laughed Taimina in an interview.

A hyperbolic plane is 'the geometric opposite' of a sphere, explains Henderson in an interview with arts and culture magazine Cabinet. 'On a sphere, the surface curves in on itself and is closed. A hyperbolic plane is a surface in which the space curves away from itself at every point.' It exists in nature in ruffled lettuce leaves, in coral leaf, in sea slugs, in cancer cells. Hyperbolic geometry is used by statisticians when they work with multidimensional data, by Pixar animators when they want to simulate realistic cloth, by auto-industry engineers to design aerodynamic cars, by acoustic engineers to design concert halls. It's the foundation of the theory of relativity, and thus the closest thing we have to an understanding of the shape of the universe. In short, hyperbolic space is a pretty big deal.

But for thousands of years, hyperbolic space didn't exist. At least it didn't according to mathematicians, who believed that there were only two types of space: Euclidean, or flat space, like a table, and spherical space, like a ball. In the nineteenth century, hyperbolic space was discovered - but only in principle. And although mathematicians tried for over a century to find a way to successfully represent this space physically, no one managed it - until Taimina attended that workshop at Cornell. Because as well as being a professor of mathematics, Taimina also liked to crochet.

Taimina learnt to crochet as a schoolgirl. Growing up in Latvia, part of the former Soviet Union, 'you fix your own car, you fix your own faucet - anything', she explains. 'When I was growing up, knitting or any other handiwork meant you could make a dress or a sweater different from everybody else's.' But while she had always seen patterns and algorithms in knitting and crochet, Taimina had never connected this traditional, domestic, feminine skill with her professional work in maths. Until that workshop in 1997. When she saw the battered paper approximation Henderson was using to explain hyperbolic space, she realised: I can make this out of crochet.

And so that's what she did. She spent her summer 'crocheting a classroom set of hyperbolic forms' by the swimming pool. 'People walked by, and they asked me, "What are you doing?" And I answered, "Oh, I'm crocheting the hyperbolic plane."' She has now created hundreds of models and explains that in the process of making them 'you get a very concrete sense of the space expanding exponentially. The first rows take no time but the later rows can take literally hours, they have so many stitches. You get a visceral sense of what "hyperbolic" really means.' Just looking at her models did the same for others: in an interview with the New York Times Taimina recalled a professor who had taught hyperbolic space for years seeing one and saying, 'Oh, so that's how they look.' Now her creations are the standard model for explaining hyperbolic space.

-Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women

Photo credit

[beardedmrbean]

Under the striking glass vaults of the Grand Palais in Paris, world leaders and tech titans gathered for a two-day summit dedicated to artificial intelligence. The heart of the event space, tucked in between the Seine and the iconic Champs-Élysées, was organised like an exhibition hall packed with dozens of stands showcasing the various ways AI can be used.

Climbing up the stairs in the building’s majestic nave, a display of flags decorated the railing, boasting the different nationalities taking part in the summit. At the top, a handful of key players gathered on Monday afternoon in the VIP lounge to discuss the impact AI could have on democracies.

But a few VIPs were missing. Representatives from some of the most influential companies in the sector including Open AI, Google and Microsoft played hooky.

Their absences were criticised by Meredith Whittaker, president of the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal who worked at Google for over a decade and helped organise mass walkouts, partly fuelled by the company’s handling of AI ethics, before resigning in July 2019.

“The large-scale approach to AI is damaging [societies],” she said.  

Security threats

“AI has profound consequences on our private lives,” Whittaker continued. To illustrate her point, Whittaker referred to the handful of telecoms companies in the US including Verizon and AT&T who fell victim to a sweeping Chinese-linked espionage operation known as Salt Typhoon in December last year. A vast amount of US users had their metadata taken as a result, and officials associated with both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s campaign ahead of the November presidential elections were targeted.

“From a security standpoint, what happened was a disaster. And it was made possible by backdoors [programmes that allow hackers to access a computer system or encrypted data remotely] being installed by authorities who were meant to be the only ones to access them,” the Signal president explained.

For Whittaker, AI was “born from the business model of surveillance”. And when it comes to hacking, “data can be used as a weapon” against US democracy.

The threat is undeniable for Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics, who shares Whittaker’s views. Rinkevics explained how, “due to the geopolitical and geographical situation” of his country, “Latvia has been exposed to cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns” in recent years. With Russia as its neighbour, Latvia and the other Baltic countries Estonia and Lithuania bore the brunt of cyber-attacks in recent years. EU member states have repeatedly been the target of Russian cyber-attacks in 2024.

Before he went into detail about the specific threats Latvia faces, Rinkevics stressed that “the priority is to protect critical infrastructure and monitor the situation in the Baltic Sea", where several undersea telecoms, power and data cables were sabotaged in recent months.

“With regards to democracy, AI has been used to meddle in elections, especially in Romania,” Rinkevics added. “In Latvia, we passed a law that requires [all content created by] AI to be labelled” so that people can identify when it has been used. Rather than being wary of the technology, Rinkevics believes “we need more expertise to understand exactly where cyber-attacks come from and how to better protect our democracies".

In a leap of faith, Latvia signed an agreement with Microsoft in December last year to develop a National Center for Artificial Intelligence. Its aims include promoting AI and other digital solutions to modernise the country’s administrative processes.

Need for global AI safeguards

From eerily accurate deep-fakes to social media accounts usurped by scammers for money, artificial intelligence has many faces. And that is partly why it is such a threat to democracies. “AI can make it easier to carry out cyber-attacks, which have become more sophisticated now that tools generating complex code can be used to this end,” warned Marie-Laure Denis, President of the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL).

Denis believes that solutions to protect democracies should stem from a diverse range of safeguards, starting with the general data protection regulation (GDPR), implemented in the EU since 2018 that sets out guidelines on how to collect and process personal information from people both within and outside of the continent. “We should develop a trusted AI tool to strengthen the protection of our rights,” she added. “Without guarantees, we can’t have trust. And without trust, we can’t develop AI in the long-run.”

But when it comes to AI and democracy, not all countries feel equally included in the conversation on regulations. Pakistani lawyer and online rights activist Nighat Dad intervened to point out global disparities. “Are our exchanges at this roundtable democratic? Are we talking about the whole world or just the democracies of the Global North?” Dad asked. She founded the Digital Rights Foundation in 2012, an NGO focused on protecting human rights defenders in digital spaces. “Moving forward without diverse voices is unimaginable. All democracies must be able to express themselves.”

Mathias Cormann, secretary-general of the OECD, echoed Dad’s remarks when he spoke of the need for “more effective international cooperation on AI”.

“We need a generalised governance framework to help us develop safe AI,” he said. “But right now, we are a long way from that.”

“At this stage, we don’t know exactly where we’re headed when it comes to AI,” Latvian President Rinkevics concluded. “The priority for companies is to reap the benefits [of AI]. And the priority for countries is likely a little different. But in any case, we are a long way from having a global AI agreement.”

[wildersucht]

Y'all remember ODM? She was one hell of a toxic and annoying Latvian chick, glad Richard kicked her out at the end of 2022 tour, then she got serious mental breakdown that she documented with details on Insta Stories and , ended , her own modelling, career after Instagram and Facebook deleted her account cause she violated rules with her p*rn pictures, then seemed to become an escort or men just like her like that to buy her Rolex and Tiffany ring out of good heart and for her smile (sike). Chick destroyed her career and thought Richard will forever cope with her terrible attitude, annoying laughter and phone glued to her hand, she was his greatest fail and mid life crisis at its finest 🐸 #byefelicia #rammstein #rzk #richardzvenkrupse #richardkruspe #emigrate #olgademar #odm #olgamarackovska

[morning-star-stables]

Edits to one of the horse models. This one was called "war horse" and is on the taller/thicker side. These are all current edit progress and not necessarily final. May tweak in future.

In order:

Default asset (use as Boerperd/Canadian Horse)

American Saddlebred

Morgan/Welsh Cob D (Cob will have leg feathers to distinguish it apart)

Criollo/Barb (Criollo will have coat patterns of high white spotting and dilutions to distinguish it apart)

Georgian Grande/Nonius (former will have a wide range of coat colors to distinguish it apart)

Knabstrupper/Friesian Sport Horse (former will have spotted coats; latter will have leg feathers)

Wielkopolski/Latvian Warmblood (former will have a wide range of coat colors to distinguish it apart)

*Mule ("hidden"--wouldn't be available in normal gameplay; testing the possibility)

*Unicorn ("hidden"--wouldn't be available in normal gameplay; testing the possibility; would have leg feathers)

Ends with default asset again

*Don't know if/how I'd include these. I just wanted to test out if they were a possibility (I'd edit the conformation more for the mule if I did). I like when games have that one hidden, goofy model edit so I'd ideally have something like that, too.

[noahsteensonfilms]

What if when Patroclus died, he waited for his entrance to Elysium. Only that never happens. Only coldness, and blackness. There was no afterlife. He'll never see Achilles again.

READ "THIS IS ACHILLEAN" ON WATTPAD NOW

A MODERN ADAPTATION OF THE ILLIAD

FAMOUS MODEL/ SON OF EX-LATVIAN PRESIDENT PATRICK IS FORCED INTO A WAR IN THE BALTICS. FSOTUS AMBROSE FOLLOWS HIS LOVE INTO THIS WAR. BUT THE ENEMY DOES NOT LIKE THAT AMERICA IS GETTING INVOLVED.

'AMBROSE KENNEDY MUST DIE'

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

GWM Wey 03 ir plug - in hibrīds ar elektromobiļa sniedzamību

Kad Latvijas Gada auto konkursam tika pieteikts pirmais Great Wall Motors krosovers Wey 05, gandrīz pirmā doma bija - hei, vai viņiem nav kas mazliet mazāks un lētāks? Izrādās, tāds modelis ir. Wey 03 izskatās uz mata tāpat kā lielais brālis, taču ir par 20 centimetriem īsāks un par 20 000 eiro lētāks(..)

GWM Wey 03 is a plug-in hybrid with the reach of an electric car

When the first Great Wall Motors crossover, the Wey 05, was entered into the Latvian Car of the Year competition, almost the first thought was - hey, don't they have something a little smaller and cheaper? It turns out that such a model exists. The Wey 03 looks exactly like its big brother, but is 20 centimeters shorter and 20,000 euros cheaper (..)

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 11.9

Beer Birthdays

Peter Barbey (founder, Peter Barbey & Sons Brewery, Reading, Pennsylvania; 1825)

Jack Curtin

Five Favorite Birthdays

Gail Borden; dairyman, inventor (1801)

Hedy Lamarr; actor, inventor (1913)

Carl Sagan; scientist, writer (1934)

Anne Sexton; writer (1928)

Ed Wynn; actor (1886)

Famous Birthdays

Spiro T. Agnew; disgraced U.S. vice-president (1918)

Benjamin Banneker; mathematician, astronomer (1731)

Hermann Conring; German philosopher (1606)

Dorothy Dandridge; actor (1923)

Sandra "Pepa" Denton; pop singer (1964)

Edwin Drake; discovered oil in Pennsylvania (1819)

Marie Dressler; actor (1869)

David Duvel; golf player (1971)

Lou Ferrigno; actor, bodybuilder (1951)

Tom Fogerty; rock singer (1941)

Robert Frank; Swiss-American photographer (1924)

J. William Fulbright; politician, fellowship creator (1905)

Gigo Gabashvili; Georgian painter (1862)

Bob Gibson; St. Louis Cardinals P (1935)

Whitey Herzog; baseball player (1931)

Allama Muhammad Iqbal; Indian poet, philosopher (1877)

Velimir Khlebnikov; Russian poet and playwright (1885)

Nick Lachey; pop singer (1973)

Bohdan Lepky; Ukrainian author and poet (1872)

Elijah Lovejoy; abolitionist (1802)

Phil May; English singer-songwriter (1944)

Roger McGough; English author, poet, and playwright (1937)

Arthur Rudolph; German scientist and engineer (1906)

James Schuyler; poet and author 1923)

Giles Gilbert Scott, English architect, designed red telephone box (1880)

Sisqó; singer-songwriter and actor (1978)

Mikhail Tal; Latvian-Russian chess player (1936)

Heiti Talvik; Estonian poet (1904)

Susan Tedeschi; singer-songwriter (1970)

Lio Tipton; actor and model (1988)

Mary Travers; folk singer (1936)

Ivan Turgenev; Russian writer (1818)

Tom Weiskopf; golf player (1942)

Hermann Weyl; German mathematician, physicist, and philosopher (1885)

Stanford White; architect (1853)

[theneverendingshow]

Lara Sugar and Casey via MetartX

[beardedmrbean]

KAUNAS - Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda condemned violations of NATO airspace by the aggressor and called for strengthening air defense in the Baltic countries following the crash of a Russian military drone in Latvia on Saturday.

“Lithuania condemns Russia's violations of NATO airspace and supports the allies affected,” Nauseda posted on X on Sunday.

“The new incident in Latvia shows that we need to strengthen the air defense of the Baltic States. The rotational model of air defense must be adapted as agreed at the [NATO] summit in Vilnius,” the Lithuanian leader stressed.

An unmanned aerial vehicle crashed in the Rezekne region on Saturday, the Latvian Defense Ministry reported.

The ministry pointed out that according to the initial data, this was a Russian drone of military significance and, according to the information available to the National Armed Forces (NBS), it flew into Latvian airspace from Belarus.

According to the ministry, the State Police and the National Armed Forces continue to investigate the circumstances of the incident, which was reported to NATO allies and respective EU authorities.

Foreign Minister Baiba Braze said that a representative of the Russian Embassy had been summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Monday.

"Russia's war in Ukraine requires us not to lose vigilance. Today, a similar incident happened in Romania. We are vigilant, decisive, cool-minded, weighing our next steps, involving allies," she said in a press release.

Fellow NATO member Romania said on Sunday that a Russian attack drone targeting civilian infrastructure in neighboring Ukraine overnight had entered its airspace.

Bucharest strongly condemned the "renewed violation" brought on by Moscow's "illegal attacks" while its foreign ministry said it had informed its NATO allies about the airspace breach.

[praxismatters]

THE EVENS ARTS PRIZE 2023

Exploring the critical imaginaries of AI The Evens Arts Prize 2023 is dedicated to artistic practices that challenge prevailing systems of knowledge and experiments new alliances between living beings and machines. 

The Jury is composed of Daniel Blanga Gubbay, Artistic Co-Director, Kunstenfestivaldesarts; Nicolas Bourriaud, Artistic Director, 15th Gwangju Biennale; Elena Filipovic, Director and Curator, Kunsthalle Basel; Matteo Pasquinelli, Associate Professor in Philosophy of Science, Ca’ Foscari University; Gosia Plysa, Director, Unsound. The Jury Chair is André Wilkens, Director, European Cultural Foundation. Artistic Director:  Anne Davidian, curator.

Focus of the Evens Arts Prize 2023 The widespread use of AI applications, particularly in the form of text-to-image generators and large language models, has sparked intense scrutiny and debate. These discussions, fueled by both excitement about their potential and concerns about their biases, bring to the forefront crucial questions about human subjectivity, autonomy, and agency.

Technical systems are deeply intertwined with social systems, shaping our lived experiences, aspirations, and politics. Together with artists, how can we better understand and address the impact of AI and the broader constellation of digital technologies and algorithmic politics? What new imaginaries and alliances can we cultivate between living beings and machines?

The new edition of the Evens Arts Prize seeks to highlight artistic projects that explore alternative cosmologies and epistemologies, question human exceptionalism, and shed light on issues such as surveillance, manipulation, extractivism, digital governance, justice, care, and responsibility in the age of machine intelligence. Of particular interest are practices that experiment with AI to challenge prevailing systems of knowledge and power asymmetries, mobilise technologies towards emancipatory community outcomes, and envision democratic futures.

The laureate is selected by an independent jury from a list of nominations put forward by representatives of major European cultural institutions.

The Nominators of the Evens Arts Prize 2023 Ramon Amaro, Senior Researcher in Digital Culture, Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam; Zdenka Badovinac, Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Lars Bang Larsen, Head of Art & Research, Art Hub, Copenhagen; Leonardo Bigazzi, Curator, Foundation In Between Art Films, Rome; Mercedes Bunz, Professor Digital Culture & Humanities, King's College, London; Francesca Corona, Artistic Director, Festival d'Automne, Paris; Julia Eckhardt, Artistic Director, Q-02, Brussels; Silvia Fanti, Artistic Director, Live Arts Week /Xing, Bologna; iLiana Fokianaki, Founder, State of Concept, Athens; Cyrus Goberville, Head of Cultural Programming, Bourse de Commerce | Pinault Collection, Paris; Stefanie Hessler, Director, Swiss Institute, New York; Mathilde Henrot, Programmer, Locarno Film Festival; Nora N. Khan & Andrea Bellini, Artistic Directors, Biennale Image en Mouvement 2024, Geneva; Peter Kirn, Director, MusicMakers HackLab, CTM Festival, Berlin; Inga Lace, Curator, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga; Andrea Lissoni, Director, Haus der Kunst, Munich; Frank Madlener, Director, IRCAM, Paris; Anna Manubens, Director, Hangar, Barcelona; Anne Hilde Neset, Director, Henie Onstad, Høvikodden; Nóra Ó Murchú, Artistic Director, transmediale, Berlin; Maria Ines Rodriguez, Director, Walter Leblanc Foundation, Brussels; Nadim Samman, Curator for the Digital Sphere, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Andras Siebold, Artistic Director, Kampnagel, Hamburg; Caspar Sonnen, Head of New Media, International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA), Amsterdam; Marlies Wirth, Curator for Digital Arts, MAK, Vienna; Ben Vickers, Curator, Publisher, CTO, Serpentine Galleries, London.

The Evens Arts Prize The Evens Arts Prize honours artists who engage with contemporary challenges in Europe and shape inspirational visions for our common world. Far from reducing artistic practice to a function – whether a social balm or a political catalyst – the Evens Arts Prize supports aesthetically and intellectually powerful work that pushes the understanding of alterity, difference, and plurality in new directions, questions values and narratives, creates space for silenced or dissonant voices, and reflects on diverse forms of togetherness and belonging.

The biennial Prize is awarded to a European artist working in the fields of visual or performing arts, including cinema, theater, dance, music; it carries a sum of €15,000. The laureates are selected by an independent jury, from a list of internationally acclaimed artists, nominated by representatives of major European cultural institutions.

The 2011, 2019 and 2021 editions were curated by Anne Davidian and celebrated Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Eszter Salamon, and Sven Augustijnen as laureates of the main prize, while Eliane Radigue and Andrea Büttner received the Special Mention of the Jury.

More about the Prize

📷 from Atlas of Anomalous AI, edited by Ben Vickers and K Allado-McDowell, Ignota Books, 2020

[unhonestlymirror]

You were kidnapped.

Half an hour later, the kidnappers sat you down on the side of the road because they got really tired of you talking about ____

About what?

.

Oh, that's easy. We just start talking about humanism as a well-rounded imperialism, then we go in retrospect and look at Plato as a follower of the Persians. If that doesn't work, we'll start talking about Churchill's demonic traits.

Other comments:

The fact that the war on drugs does not help society and only makes it worse.

The same is for the "Nordic model" in providing sex services.

That people ventilate the rooms too rarely.

I tell and show a video with the complete washing cycle of the dishwasher.

How exciting it is to study company annual reports and look for signs of unreported income.

About the role of Smiltēns in the development of Latvian hockey.

That, in general, what is called a role-playing game nowadays should be more correctly called a pretend-playing game, because a "role" is when the same person performs different functions in different contexts (boss, doctor, housekeeper, politician), but the player is usually expected to be another person's embodiment...

About the diversity of nature -> protected habitats -> their management.

About breastfeeding and the care and upbringing of babies. I could finally tell someone everything I've learned in the last 10+ years.

Nothing. I would be happy to just sit quietly for half an hour

About continuous grammar correction and teaching how to say things correctly.

About cats

The fact that the Middle Ages were not a mountain of backwardness and dark ages

About God

[goalhofer]

Famous January 31, 2023 birthdays.

Lynn Carlin Wolfe (American actress), 85

Daniela Bianchi Cameli (Italian actress), 81

Jonathan Banks (American actor), 76

Nolan Ryan (American baseball player & executive), 76

Glynn Turman (American actor), 76

Matt Minglewood (Canadian singer & songwriter), 76

KC (American singer), 72

Johnny Rotten (British singer & songwriter), 67

Kelly Lynch Glazer (American model & actress), 64

Giorgos Gasparis (Greek basketball player & coach), 58

Dexter Fletcher (British actor & director), 57

Minnie Driver (British-American actress)(pictured), 53

Patricia Velásquez (Venezuelan actress & model), 52

Othella Harrington (American basketball player & coach), 49

Ariel Pestano (Cuban baseball player), 49

Preity Zinta (Indian actress & businesswoman), 48

Bobby Moynihan (American voice actor & comedian), 46

Kerry Washington Asomugha (American actress), 46

James Adomian (American comedian & actor), 43

Justin Timberlake (American singer & actor)(pictured), 42

Jānis Sprukts (Latvian hockey player), 41

Vernon Davis (American football player), 39

Josh Johnson (American baseball player), 39

Mario Williams (American football player), 38

Marcus Mumford (American-British singer & guitarist), 36

Jacob Markström (Swedish hockey player), 33

[uupiic]

Finally had the "hey, we know you were looking at these things, so here are the things!" online shopping fuckery happen to me :')

Was looking at some TV sets during Xmas, because. well. I'd like to have a TV at some point in my life again. And I was comparing their prices across Latvian stores in separate tabs, as one does in this case.

And yesterday I get a cheerful e-mail from the first shop I was in (the one of my internet provider, so no wonder about the mail) that is offering me those exact two models I was comparing, for cheaper than the other stores had them.

I'm not buying anything right now, not until I've finished paying off the fridge, but just the fact that this happened :')

[voguecovers]

Vogue Türkiye, December 2024 / January 2025

Latvian model Aivita Muze, photographed by Jorin Koers

❛ Aivita wear Bottega Veneta, Gucci and Cartier. Fashion editor Ceylan Atinç Tanriverdi. Head of content Deborah Zakuto