Three years ago, after an argument at a bar with some fellow artificial intelligence researchers, Ph.D student Ian Goodfellow cobbled together a new way for AI to think about creating images.
When Yelp was a startup with just 15 employees, the office manager began to stock the kitchen with drinks and snacks to get everyone through the long afternoons. Juice, water, fruit, chips, and as much candy as could be stuffed into the small kitchen drawer.
As a kid, I was proud of my name. Ha-DEE-ya. I always loved the rhythmical quality of it, the middle syllable emphasized, almost a “ta-da” in its phrasing alone. I was Hadiya, or, in Arabic, “a gift,” the only one in the world, or at least in mine.
Pathological consumption has become so normalised that we scarcely notice it. There’s nothing they need, nothing they don’t own already, nothing they even want.
Not so long ago, nobody met a partner online. Then, in the 1990s, came the first dating websites. Match.com went live in 1995. A new wave of dating websites, such as OKCupid, emerged in the early 2000s. And the 2012 arrival of Tinder changed dating even further.
Three years ago, I packed my suitcases to move to Colombo, Sri Lanka as an Indian expatriate. In addition to the glossy silk saris and the gold jewelry I had been given for my wedding, I packed several small, sealed packets that carried their own significant emotional heft.
