Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has engrossed the mainstream culture, expanded AI's creative user base, and catalyzed economic, legal, and aesthetic issues that stir a lively public debate. Unsurprisingly, GenAI tools proliferate kitsch in the hands of amateurs and hobbyists, but various shortcomings also induce kitsch into a more ambitious, professional artists' production with GenAI. I explore them in this paper. Following the introductory outline of digital kitsch and AI art, I review GenAI artworks that manifest five interrelated types of kitsch-engendering expressive flaws: the superficial foregrounding or faulty circumvention of generative models' formal signatures, the feeble critique of AI, the mimetics, and the unacknowledged poetic similarities, all marked by an overreliance on AI as a cultural signifier. I discuss the normalization of these blunders through GenAI art's good standing within the art world and keen relationship with the AI industry, which contributes to the adulteration of AI discourse and the possible corruption of artistic literacy. In conclusion, I emphasize that recognizing different facets of artists' uncritical embrace of techno-cultural tr
The ``comma sequence'' starts with 1 and is defined by the property that if k and k' are consecutive terms, the two-digit number formed from the last digit of k and the first digit of k' is equal to the difference k'-k. If there is more than one such k', choose the smallest, but if there is no such k' the sequence terminates. The sequence begins 1, 12, 35, 94, 135, ... and, surprisingly, ends at term 2137453, which is 99999945. The paper analyzes the sequence and its generalizations to other starting values and other bases. A slight change in the rules allows infinitely long comma sequences to exist.
Since the report of the SAMPLE Collaboration suggesting the strange-quark contribution to nucleon magnetic moments, G_M^s(0), may be greater than zero, numerous models have appeared supporting positive values for G_M^s(0). In this paper the bizarre physics associated with G_M^s(0) > 0 is illustrated. Using new lattice QCD results, our best estimate for G_M^s(0) shifts slightly from G_M^s(0) = -0.75 +/- 0.30 mu_N, to G_M^s(0) = -0.62 +/- 0.26 mu_N.
The bizarre behaviour of the apparent (black hole and cosmological) horizons of the McVittie spacetime is discussed using, as an analogy, the Schwarzschild-de Sitter-Kottler spacetime (which is a special case of McVittie anyway). For a dust-dominated "background" universe, a black hole cannot exist at early times because its (apparent) horizon would be larger than the cosmological(apparent) horizon. A phantom-dominated "background" universe causes this situation, and the horizon behaviour, to be time-reversed.
Anti--de Sitter spacetime is important in general relativity and modern field theory. We review its geometrical features and properties of light signals and free particles moving in it. Applying only elementary tools of tensor calculus we derive \textit{ab initio\/} all these properties and show that they are really weird. One finds superluminal velocities of light and particles, infinite particle energy necessary to escape at infinite distance and spacetime regions inaccessible by a free fall, though reachable by an accelerated spaceship. Radial timelike geodesics are identical to the circular ones and actually all timelike geodesics are identical to one circle in a fictitious five--dimensional space. Employing the latter space one is able to explain these bizarre features of anti--de Sitter spacetime; in this sense the spacetime is not self--contained. This is not a physical world.
Scientists have named a newly discovered beetle genus Luffy, inspired by the stretchy hero of the manga and anime One Piece。 The insects have unusually long, slender mandibles, antennae, and mouthparts that resemble Luffy’s rubber-like ability to extend his body
We present a photometric and dynamical study of comet C/2010 U3 (Boattini), which was seen active in prediscovery data as early as 2005 November at a new inbound record heliocentric distance $r_{\rm H} = 25.8$ au. Two outburst events around 2009 and 2017 were observed. The coma and tail of the comet consist of dust grains of $\sim$10 $μ$m in radius, ejected protractedly at speeds $\lesssim$50 m s$^{-1}$ near the subsolar point, and are subjected to the Lorentz force, solar gravitation and radiation pressure force altogether. The prolonged activity indicates that sublimation of supervolatiles (e.g., CO, CO$_2$) is at play, causing a net mass-loss rate $\gtrsim$1 kg s$^{-1}$. To sustain the mass loss, the nucleus radius has to be $\gtrsim$0.1 km. The color of the cometary dust, similar to other long-period comets, is redder than the solar colors, but we also observed potential color variations when the comet was at $10 < r_{\rm H} < 15$ au, concurrent with the onset of crystallisation of amorphous water ice, if at all. Using publicly available and our refined astrometric measurements, we estimated the precise trajectory of the comet and propagated it backward to its previous pe
We present new Keck/HIRES observations of six red giants in the globular cluster NGC 2419. Although the cluster is among the most distant and most luminous in the Milky Way, it was considered chemically ordinary until very recently. Our previous work showed that the near-infrared Ca II triplet line strength varied more than expected for a chemically homogeneous cluster, and that at least one star had unusual abundances of Mg and K. Here, we confirm that NGC 2419 harbors a population of stars, comprising about one third of its mass, that is depleted in Mg by a factor of 8 and enhanced in K by a factor of 6 with respect to the Mg-normal population. Although the majority, Mg-normal population appears to have a chemical abundance pattern indistinguishable from ordinary, inner halo globular clusters, the Mg-poor population exhibits dispersions of several elements. The abundances of K and Sc are strongly anti-correlated with Mg, and some other elements (Si and Ca among others) are weakly anti-correlated with Mg. These abundance patterns suggest that the different populations of NGC 2419 sample the ejecta of diverse supernovae in addition to AGB ejecta. However, the abundances of Fe-peak
A new work has been proposed in this paper in order to overcome one of the main drawbacks that found in the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) systems, namely Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR). Furthermore, this work will be compared with a previously published work that uses the neural network (NN) as a solution to remedy this deficiency. The proposed work could be considered as a special averaging technique (SAT), which consists of wavelet transformation in its first stage, a globally statistical adaptive detecting algorithm as a second stage; and in the third stage it replaces the affected peaks by making use of moving average filter process. In the NN work, the learning process makes use of a previously published work that is based on three linear coding techniques. In order to check the proposed work validity, a MATLAB simulation has been run and has two main variables to compare with; namely BER and CCDF curves. This is true under the same bandwidth occupancy and channel characteristics. Two types of tested data have been used; randomly generated data and a practical data that have been extracted from a funded project entitled by ECEM. From the achieved simulatio
We describe an example of a $C^\infty$ diffeomorphism on a 7--manifold which has a compact invariant set such that uncountably many of its connected components are pseudocircles. (Any 7--manifold will suffice.) Furthermore, any diffeomorphism which is sufficiently close (in the $C^1$ metric) to the constructed map has a similar invariant set, and the dynamics of the map on the invariant set are chaotic.
For a long time it has been established both experimentally and theoretically that $Ω_c^0$ is shortest-lived among the four singly charmed baryons which decay weakly. The situation was dramatically changed in 2018 when LHCb reported a new measurement of the $Ω_c^0$ lifetime using semileptonic $b$-hadron decays. The value is nearly four times larger than the previous world average of $τ(Ω_c^0)$ and it is confirmed by the most recent LHCb measurement with the prompt production. In this viewpoint article, we review the status and point out that heavy quark expansion (HQE) fails to apply to $Ω_c^0$ to the order of $1/m_c^4$. By demanding a sensible HQE for $Ω_c^0$ will lead to a lifetime of $Ω_c^0$ longer than $Λ_c^+$.
A very high activity of Cygnus X-1 on 1999 April 19-21 was recorded by BATSE Large Area Detectors onboard the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory. The peak luminosity was one order of magnitude higher than the normal luminosity of Cyg X-1. This fact can be critical for models of the hard state of Cyg X-1. The longest outburst lasted ~1000 s and demonstrated very unusual temporal and spectral behavior which indicates the presence of two emission components. One component is relatively soft (with a cutoff below 100 keV) and highly variable, and the other one is hard (extending above 100 keV), with much slower variability.
A radial velocity (RV) survey to detect central stars in binary systems was carried out between 2002 and 2004. De Marco et al. (2004) reported that 10 out of 11 monitored stars exhibited strong RV variability, but periods were not detected. Since other mechanisms, such as wind variability, can cause apparent RV variations, we monitored 4 of the 10 RV-variable stars at echelle resolutions to determine the origin of the variability. Although RV changes are confirmed for all four stars, none of them can be ascribed to binarity at this time. However, only for IC4593 is wind variability able to explain most (though not all) spectral variability. For BD+332642, no wind and no pulsations appear to be the origin of the RV changes. Finally, M1-77 and M2-54, both known to be irregular photometric variables, exhibit dramatic RV and line shape variability of the hydrogen and HeI absorption lines, as well as large RV variability of weaker lines, which do not change in shape. There is no satisfactory explanation of this variability, though a combination of wind variability and pulsations is still the best guess at what makes these stars so variable. We suggest that luminous central stars are ill
The spaces in the title are holomorphic function spaces on the unit disk containing a function with the bizarre property that, although it can be approximated in norm by polynomials, it cannot be approximated by the partial sums of its own Taylor series, nor by any linear combinations thereof. The search for concrete examples of such spaces leads to an elementary problem about convergent series that is still unsolved.
As multimodal foundational models start being deployed experimentally in Self-Driving cars, a reasonable question we ask ourselves is how similar to humans do these systems respond in certain driving situations -- especially those that are out-of-distribution? To study this, we create the Robusto-1 dataset that uses dashcam video data from Peru, a country with one of the worst (aggressive) drivers in the world, a high traffic index, and a high ratio of bizarre to non-bizarre street objects likely never seen in training. In particular, to preliminarly test at a cognitive level how well Foundational Visual Language Models (VLMs) compare to Humans in Driving, we move away from bounding boxes, segmentation maps, occupancy maps or trajectory estimation to multi-modal Visual Question Answering (VQA) comparing both humans and machines through a popular method in systems neuroscience known as Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA). Depending on the type of questions we ask and the answers these systems give, we will show in what cases do VLMs and Humans converge or diverge allowing us to probe on their cognitive alignment. We find that the degree of alignment varies significantly depen
Every LCA group has a Haar measure unique up to rescaling by a positive scalar. Clausen has shown that the Haar measure describes the universal determinant functor of the category LCA in the sense of Deligne. We show that when only working with LCA groups without allowing real vector spaces, any conceivable determinant functor is unique up to rescaling by at worst rational values. As a result, no transcendental real nor p-adic regulators could ever show up in special L-value conjectures (as in Tamagawa number conjectures or Weil-etale cohomology) if anyone had the, admittedly outlandish and bizarre, idea to try to circumvent incorporating a real (Betti) realization of the motive.
Are you, with your perceptions, memories and observational data, a Boltzmann brain, namely a fleeting statistical fluctuation out of the thermal equilibrium of the universe? Arguments are given in the literature claiming that this bizarre hypothesis needs to be considered seriously, that all of our data about the past is actually a mirage. We point to a difficulty in these arguments. They are based on the dynamical laws and on statistical arguments, but they disregard the fact that we infer the dynamical laws presupposing the reliability of our data records about the past. Hence the reasoning in favor of the Boltzmann brain hypothesis contradicts itself, relying on the reliability of our data about the past to conclude that that data is wrong. More broadly, it is based on incomplete evidence. Incomplete evidence notoriously leads to false conclusions.
Single Transferable Vote (STV) is used to elect candidates to the 76 seat Australian Senate across six states and two territories. These eight STV contests are counted using a combination of ballot scanners, manual data entry and tabulation software. On election night, some properties of the set of cast ballots are determined by hand. This includes the first preference tallies of each party. This technical report considers whether there are some properties, such as individual candidates' first preference tallies, that, if assumed to be accurate, imply a portion of the election outcome. The paper also presents an interesting example showing that the rules of STV tabulation used for the Australian Senate can allow bizarre behaviour, such as votes increasing in value over time.
An overview of the behavior of materials at high pressure is presented, starting from the effects on single atoms driving electronic transitions and changes in periodic trends. A range of high-pressure-induced phenomena in the solid state are then discussed building on the atomic changes, including bizarre electronic structures, electrides, compounds of noble gases, changes in elemental miscibility, and strange structural and bonding configurations. In the final section, the field of high pressure superconductivity is discussed, as high pressure phases have generated immense study and excitement as some of their critical superconducting temperatures approach room temperature.
More often than not a lunch time conversation will veer off into bizarre and uncharted territories. In rare instances these frontiers of conversation can lead to deep insights about the Universe we inhabit. This paper details the fruits of one such conversation. In this paper we will answer the question: How many cows do you need to form a planetoid entirely comprised of cows, which will support a methane atmoosphere produced by the planetary herd? We will not only present the necessary assumptions and theory underpinning the cow-culations, but also present a thorough (and rather robust) discussion of the viability of, and implications for accomplishing, such a feat.