Dylan’s mind and other diversions

Can AI tell us anything meaningful about Bob Dylan’s songs? What was uncovered when computer scientist Prashant Garg  fed Dylan’s official discography from 1962 to 2012 into a large language model (LLM), building a network of the concepts and connections in his songs. The model combed through each lyric, extracting pairs of related ideas or images. For example, it might detect a relationship between ‘wind’ and ‘answer’ in ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ (1962), or between ‘joker’ and ‘thief’ in ‘All Along the Watchtower’ (1967). By assembling these relationships, we can construct a network of how Dylan’s key words and motifs braid together across his songs. asked an artificial intelligence to sift through every word Dylan ever wrote?

 

The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin reveals how maps were central to the other-world building she was so famous for. Fans will find much to enjoy here, including the opportunity to walk around enlarged screen prints of well-known maps from books such as Earthsea and Always Coming Home. They will also have the chance to pore over unpublished maps and artworks from the Le Guin Foundation archive.

“After more than 200 years of sharing a unique blend of weather, wit and wisdom, we’ve made the very difficult decision to write the final chapter of this historical publication. The 2026 Farmers’ Almanac will be our last edition. ” NB: Not to be confused with the even older Old Farmers’ Almanac.

An Australian charity shop purchase of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit could be worth tens of thousands. A woman who bought a copy of The Hobbit from an op shop in the 1990s says even then she suspected it could be worth a considerable amount — experts now say she could be sitting on a first edition copy, worth tens of thousands.

New exhibition at the British Library in London: Secret Maps. “Some of the maps on display reveal hidden landscapes, offering insight into places long forgotten or erased from official histories. Others are purposefully deceptive…”

Strike a Pose! 100 Years of the Photobooth, a new exhibition at The Photographers Gallery brings this side of the last century of photography into focus. Celebrating the centenary, the show will highlight the journey of the photobooth and some of its major fans throughout the decades. To mark the occasion we spoke to artist, photographer and professor Rafael Hortala Vallve and designer and lecturer Corinne Quin, the founders of Autofoto, alongside Taous Dahmani an art historian, writer and curator at The Photographers Gallery, to explore the continued relevance of the analogue in contemporary photography.

As with the Holocaust, denialism about the atrocities of October 7 is running rampant, especially among “progressive” groups.

 

 

 

 

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1 Response to Dylan’s mind and other diversions

  1. johnwreford's avatar johnwreford says:

    I would love to understand more of Dylan’s lyrics.

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