sapphireshorelines

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The Story of Pupu (1998), dir. Kensaku Watanabe

#film blog #japanese film #asian cinema #lesbian film #lgbtq movies #the story of pupu #kensaku watanabe #absurdist comedy

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Something bright, then holes is how a girl, newly-sighted, once described a hand.

I planned to write a book about the color blue. Now I’m suddenly surrounded by green, green gagging me pleasurably, green holding onto my hips from behind, digging into the cleft, the cleft that can be made. You have no idea what kind of light you’ll let in when you drop the bowl, no idea what will make you full.

The water is perfectly still, as if we pressed the planet on pause.

The barbed wire is lovely tonight and the sparrows don’t mind its tangle.

One by one the floodlights wink on, abolishing night, soon all the colors will be illumined by artificial light, thus separating us from our ancestors.

The fireflies have dried up too, so the kids have been bringing their own in jars.

It’s been hot, the violets are tired. The daisies are peeling, and my whole hand is shaking.

A sad dusk here, the water swollen with debris.

those who believe in a compassionate wilderness, those whose bodies beget an absolute forgetfulness.

I could sink into a certain comfort here, just disappear / Yet I sense the goddess

The garden has peaked, the flowers sagging like hoses out of their cement enclosures.

Yesterday a rose burst forth inside me, today the rose fled, the world suddenly colorless.

September’s brought a calm purple flowering, the shadows thick on the water.

I hosted a flood here, it changed my contours the way only water can.

The cut on my mouth was shaped like a country

You came to salt the earth and you salted it, but I was too tired of mourning

Maggie Nelson, Something Bright, Then Holes

#poetry books #poetry notes #poetry #maggie nelson #something bright then holes

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This is the dream, tho?

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half a year ago, i took a course on the ethics of AI and i cannot stop thinking about the fact that it at no point came up that there might be some ethical problems in the production of this new technology, in particular in light of the climate crisis.

i do not wish to imply that artists do not also have legitimate concerns about the way their work is being used for free by big corporate machines that then earns money on it by claiming that they have invented a tech that makes art "magically" appear. but i think the most concerning thing about AI by far is the environmental impact of the technology as well as its contribution to climate change.

at the current state, a study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts shows that training an AI model emits 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, which is roughly the same as what is emitted by flying back and forth between New York and San Francisco (two American states) 300 times. The airplane industry is currently, rightly, under a lot of scrutiny for contributing to climate change, so why are we not talking about this new emerging technology that makes airplanes seem climate friendly?

and this is not all, because as well as contributing heavily to climate change, AI is also detrimental to the environment as the mining of rare earth minerals releases toxic gasses into the immediate surroundings of the mine, negatively affecting both the environment and the people living there. of course, AI is not the only technology that relies on rare earth minerals, but it consumes a lot of them and is a technology in rapid growth which means that the environmental impact is only going to get worse.

in conclusion, AI is a huge contributor to climate change and to environmental pollution and the only reason, I suspect, that it is not on the top of people's minds when they think about AI is that we tend to imagine it as some sort of bodiless cloud. this means that we neglect to consider the large data centres that actually make up the body of AI or the long production chain that lead up to the final product.

sources: in writing up the above text, i consulted the first chapter of Kate Crawfords book Atlas of AI and the article below from Earth.org

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Ada Limón, from "To the Busted Among Us", Sharks in the Rivers

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“Lord Byron gets up at two. I get up, quite contrary to my usual custom … at 12. After breakfast we sit talking till six. From six to eight we gallop through the pine forest which divide Ravenna from the sea; we then come home and dine, and sit up gossiping till six in the morning. I don’t suppose this will kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try it longer. Lord B.’s establishment consists, besides servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it… . [P.S.] I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Circean Palace was defective … . I have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane. I wonder who all these animals were before they were changed into these shapes.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley on the lifestyle of Lord Byron (via timemarauder)

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Melissa Stein 

#poetry

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“What makes a poem a poem, finally, is that it is unparaphrasable. There is no other way to say exactly this; it exists only in its own body of language, only in these words. I may try to explain it or represent it in other terms, but then some element of its life will always be missing. It’s the same with painting. All I can say of still life must finally fall short; I may inventory, weigh, suggest, but I cannot circumscribe; some element of mystery will always be left out. What is missing is, precisely, its poetry.”

— Mark Doty, from Still Life With Oysters and Lemon

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“I can’t write, I’m desperate for solitude with you. All the rest is dark, boring, you-less.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, from Letters to Véra tr. by Olga Voronina & Brian Boyd

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#palestine

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April Snow (2005), dir. Hur Jin-ho

#film blog #asian cinema #korean film #april snow #hur jin ho

[sapphireshorelines]

April Snow (2005), dir. Hur Jin-ho

#film blog #asian cinema #korean film #april snow #hur jin ho

[sapphireshorelines]

April Snow (2005), dir. Hur Jin-ho

#film blog #korean film #asian cinema #april snow #hur jin-ho

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Maggie Nelson, from Something Bright, Then Holes

#poetry

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Unishe April (1994), dir. Rituparno Ghosh

#film blog #asian cinema #women in film #rituparno ghosh #indian films #bengali film

[sapphireshorelines]

Unishe April (1994), dir. Rituparno Ghosh

#film blog #rituparno ghosh #bengali cinema #indian films #asian cinema #women in films