I don’t know how one encapsulates the paradoxical “glacial/speed-run” feeling of these last 12 months, but the Goog gamely tries in these heartfelt three minutes. For more about the questions that preoccupied the world, check out The Year in Search site.

I mean, AR is cool and all, but have we considered a trash bin with some duct tape on it as a helmet? 😂

[Via]

…or about the year, at any rate. This is <chef’s kiss>:

Excellent follow-up in a reply:

Researchers at Google, Facebook, and the University of Washington have devised “a fully automatic method for converting a still image into a realistic animated looping video.”

We target scenes with continuous fluid motion, such as flowing water and billowing smoke. Our method relies on the observation that this type of natural motion can be convincingly reproduced from a static Eulerian motion description… We propose a novel video looping technique that flows features both forward and backward in time and then blends the results.

The results are rather amazing.

Lobe, the startup Microsoft acquired from UI star Mike Matas & co., offers a way to feed training data into an ML system via one’s browser. I have no idea how precise and/or general the applications could be, but regardless it makes for a fun & interesting demo.

I really enjoy Google’s super-cheeky internal discussion list, Terrible Ideas. Folks are celebrating one whale 🙄🤷🏻‍♂️ of a terrible idea, executed 50 years ago today. Behold, the exploding whale of Oregon:

Update: OMG, they’ve actually renamed the park “Exploding Whale Memorial Park.”

With so many of us being nervous wrecks from election-related stress, I thought you might enjoy this small thing of beauty from the land of my ancestors. And may God hold us all in the palm of His hand.

Amazing Grace 🇺🇸 from across the Atlantic on the west coast of Ireland pic.twitter.com/b9wOiNZmwA

— Patrick Dexter (@patrickdextervc) November 3, 2020

Please, won’t you join me in enjoying the gourd-based cover of Toto that you can’t possibly have known you needed? 😌

Or if pastries are more your jam, donut mind giving this a listen:

Election mood. 🤞

“Let us to it pellmell. If not to Heaven, then hand in hand to Hell…” — Richard III

If you want to make world-bending images in the style of Inception…

…then this three-minute vid’s for you:

 

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Cooperative of Photography (@thecooph) on Oct 15, 2020 at 10:17am PDT

[Via]