Link List #127: Grace Wales Bonner, weird capitalization, and the humans behind the machines of tomorrow - Friends of Friends / Freunde von Freunden (FvF)

Link List #127: Grace Wales Bonner, weird capitalization, and the humans behind the machines of tomorrow

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Link List #127: Grace Wales Bonner, weird capitalization, and the unseen humans behind the machines of tomorrow.

This week we’ve been reading about the human effort behind AI learning, Toni Morrison’s contribution to radical black tradition, and how traditional aphrodisiacs are enabling Nigerian women to talk about pleasure.

    • Are we living in an era of weird capitalization? From Ariana Grande’s ‘thank u, next’ to Zayn’s ‘iT’s YoU,’ a cursory look at the Spotify Top 200 would suggest a resounding ‘yes.’ In an article for Quartzy, Dan Kopf takes a look at the millennial hip-hop and pop stars playing hard and fast with grammatical norms.
    • Fresh from her first performance of When I Get Home, Solange sat down for a conversation with British-Jamacan designer Grace Wales Bonner for The Face. In the interview, the two women discuss devotion, boundaries, and the role of research in creative production.
    • Despite being branded “amoral” for giving women a platform to talk about sexuality, a new generation of entrepreneurs in Northern Nigeria are using traditional “Kayan Mata” recipes—aphrodisiac made of herbs, roots, spices, seeds, and fruit—to open up a conversation about female pleasure. Read more on The Guardian.
    • Writing for The New York Times, technology correspondent Cade Metz visited five offices in India where tens of thousands of workers are doing the often unseen job of teaching AI systems how to identify everything from potentially cancerous polyps in human bodies to the difference between pedestrians and cars.
    • “Toni Morrison was widely praised in mainstream media circles upon her death,” writes Konstantina Karageorgos. “But they failed to note the most enduring part of Morrison’s legacy: her enormous contribution to the radical black tradition.” Read more about the legendary novelist’s “elevation of black humanity” on The Jacobin.

Hopefully you enjoyed the reads from this week’s Link List, but if you’ve still got an internet itch to scratch, you can find more here.

Also, be sure to check out FvF Mixtapes for some tracks selected by our friends and favorite artists, and subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date with FvF stories.

Text: FvF Team

Photo: Mario Anzuoni for Reuters

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