Photo (detail): Harald Rumpf

THE BIG PONDER #36The Street

Diverse Perspectives on Techno Techno Worlds

Photo (detail): © Jan Zipperer

City contours MannheimIt’s hip to be square

For many, Mannheim is just an annoying ICE stopover that makes the trip from Frankfurt to Stuttgart that much longer. And it could be argued that passengers on a train do not get to see this city on the Rhine and Neckar rivers from its best side. But author Jan Zipperer is confident that Mannheim has a lot to offer.

Photo (detail): © Kirill Zharkoy on Unsplash

Journalism in Russia“Distinguishing between Facts and Fiction”

The hope of an editor-in-chief that journalists in Russia may die of old age points out the risks facing the profession there. Journalist and media scholar Ksenia Luchenko writes about the gruelling business of reorting and free expression in her home country and the crisis of traditional journalism.
 

Photo (detail): © Normalizi.ng

Images and BiasWhat Do Normal People Look Like?

What is normal? And what constitutes a normal face? Our brains are constantly analyzing and classifying every face we encounter, and we as people are not alone in this. A whole field of science and technology analyzes these sub-attentive cognitive processes and breaks them down into statistical normalities. Through machine learning, facial recognition is even being used to categorize and predict human behavior.