Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

A small new batch of my photos from various times

Sixth painting. There were grapes, now there’s wine!

I believe that the next big breakthrough will be based on the combination of generative AI with AI-driven depth map reconstruction from a single photograph. In fact, it already exists — MiDaS, and several others. Why this is interesting — essentially, it allows for integrating objects into the environment on the photograph in such a way that shadows, palette, and lighting are taken into account. Currently, this is challenging because, figuratively speaking, the AI does not know that the surface of the table in the photo is unevenly lit not just by chance, but because it is angled towards the light source in such a way, and that tree over there creates a shadow. With a depth map, this begins to make sense.

I don’t yet understand how to implement this right now, but it feels like it’s very much the near future. NVIDIA demonstrates recreating 3D from several photos — this is photogrammetry through AI, much faster and at first glance very accurate.

“Building and maintaining an empire usually required the brutal extermination of a large population and the harsh oppression of everyone who remained. The standard imperial toolkit included wars, enslavement, deportation, and genocide. When the Romans invaded Scotland in AD 83, they encountered fierce resistance from the local Caledonian tribes but eventually devastated the country. In response to the Romans’ peace proposals, the leader Calgacus called the Romans ‘robbers of the world’ and said, ‘robbery, slaughter, and raid they misname empire, they make a desert and call it peace’.”

Sapiens

Yuval Harari

Well, isn’t it just like a cat. Came in, laid down. Settled into the new place.

Says we’ll be writing the business trip report together

At different times in different locations, I captured various things for myself. I’ve gathered here all sorts that might claim artistic value and perhaps belong on a corridor frame.

On the desktop version, do not click on the photos in the previews, but directly on the album. FB’s preview doesn’t show all 70 pieces, just the first couple dozen.

Can you guess where each was taken?

Almost

1969, the Japanese magazine Shōnen Sunday published an illustrated article “Computopia” about a computerized world of the future. The illustrations feature a videophone, a virtual school teacher, automatic iron and vacuum cleaner, 3D television, a food-warming kitchen table, and a surgeon robot.

Illustrations by Shigeru Komatsuzaki, Toshio Okazaki

Rereading Sapiens. Interesting fact: it turns out that dinar, the official currency of Jordan, Iraq, Serbia, Macedonia, Tunisia, and several other countries, takes its name from the Roman denarius. Particularly interesting is that the Indians are to blame, who in the first century AD simply started minting Roman coins for their own purposes

attempt to fix the fifth