Fragments

I hung out with my pal Matt yesterday. We collected some materials from the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Re-use and, raccoon-like, decided to make art from trash.

Matt applied some gesso to some art board we picked up at Artist and Craftsman Supply, and we got to cutting.

We decided to make two collages, and to play a game. I began with the first one, and Matt began with the second. Then we took turns. In the second round, I added to the second collage, and he to the first, and we alternated in this way for 40-ish turns.

And the resulting collages

Pittsburgh takes lenten fish fry season seriously. Consult every Friday until fish fry season ends.

I've been reading artists and poets who experiment with computers in their work, and recently that's meant John Cage. I've been opening his delightfully inventive Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) at random lately. It's a fun book; the composition, color, and even the font of each "diary" entry are based on aleatory operations. I picked up a mint used copy at the delightful Topos books last year, but only just got around to reading it.

I opened to this page after watching the cruelty that unfolded in the White House yesterday, during which our adolescent leaders berated and bullied the leader of Ukraine , a vulnerable country under attack by a rapacious larger power. So much imperative in the belligerent demands for resources, so much obedience and deference demanded without offering so much as a word of respect in return.

          If you're poor, it's illegal. If you're
   rich, you're automatically within the law

And, later

                                 Syntax, like
 government, can only be obeyed. It is
 therefore of no use except when you
    have something particular to command
    such as: Go buy me a bunch of carrots.

sigliopress.com

Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) – siglio

Siglio publishes uncommon books that live in the rich and varied space between art and literature. Driven by its feminist ethos, siglio champions uncategorizable, unwieldy, and expansive works by artists and writers who invite readers to see the world anew by reading word, image, and page in unfamiliar ways. Founded by Lisa Pearson in 2008 in Los Angeles and now located in a barn in the Hudson River Valley, Siglio has published more than forty critically acclaimed books by artist-writers including Joe Brainard, John Cage, Sophie Calle, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Madeline Gins, Karen Green, Dick Higgins, Dorothy Iannone, Ray Johnson, Jess, Bernadette Mayer, Adam Pendleton, Nancy Spero, and Cecilia Vicuña. In addition to critical accolades, Siglio books have earned design and translation awards, as well as a devoted readership.

This "Dear Colleague" letter , sent by the Department of Education to institutions of higher education late last week, is exactly what you would do if you were trying to use the logic of liberalism in the service of a narrow authoritarianism.

www.ed.gov

U.S. Department of Education Directs Schools to End Racial Preferences

The U.S. Department of Education has sent a Dear Colleague Letter to educational institutions receiving federal funds notifying them that they must cease using race preferences and stereotypes.

And as easily as it fell in line with progressive orthodoxy, the academy twists itself in knots to bow to the reaction against it.

A colleague of mine, the inimitable Max Chis, sent me a link to this study the other day. It measures popular generative AI models against baseline cognitive tests.
TLDR: everyone's favorite new pals are all demented.

www.bmj.com

Age against the machine—susceptibility of large language models to cognitive impairment: cross sectional analysis

Objective To evaluate the cognitive abilities of the leading large language models and identify their susceptibility to cognitive impairment, using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and additional tests. Design Cross sectional analysis. Setting Online interaction with large language models via text based prompts. Participants Publicly available large language models, or “chatbots”: ChatGPT versions 4 and 4o (developed by OpenAI), Claude 3.5 “Sonnet” (developed by Anthropic), and Gemini versions 1 and 1.5 (developed by Alphabet). Assessments The MoCA test (version 8.1) was administered to the leading large language models with instructions identical to those given to human patients. Scoring followed official guidelines and was evaluated by a practising neurologist. Additional assessments included the Navon figure, cookie theft picture, Poppelreuter figure, and Stroop test. Main outcome measures MoCA scores, performance in visuospatial/executive tasks, and Stroop test results. Results ChatGPT 4o achieved the highest score on the MoCA test (26/30), followed by ChatGPT 4 and Claude (25/30), with Gemini 1.0 scoring lowest (16/30). All large language models showed poor performance in visuospatial/executive tasks. Gemini models failed at the delayed recall task. Only ChatGPT 4o succeeded in the incongruent stage of the Stroop test. Conclusions With the exception of ChatGPT 4o, almost all large language models subjected to the MoCA test showed signs of mild cognitive impairment. Moreover, as in humans, age is a key determinant of cognitive decline: “older” chatbots, like older patients, tend to perform worse on the MoCA test. These findings challenge the assumption that artificial intelligence will soon replace human doctors, as the cognitive impairment evident in leading chatbots may affect their reliability in medical diagnostics and undermine patients’ confidence. No additional data available.