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Jacinda Ardern replicated in unusual object

<p dir="ltr">Jacinda Ardern has had an unusual item named after her, after ecstasy pills pressed with her name were discovered being sold on New Zealand’s underground drugs market.</p> <p dir="ltr">The pink pills of Class-B methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) include a crude caricature of her face, with the<span> </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/ecstasy-pills-featuring-prime-minister-jacinda-arderns-name-for-sale/AAFICMYRMVQJTZJFD2337ADQWE/" target="_blank"><em>NZ Herald</em></a><span> </span>reporting that they are being sold for $NZD 30-40 each ($AUD 28-37) online</p> <p dir="ltr">When the publication asked the Prime Minister’s office for comment, they were directed to the police.</p> <p dir="ltr"><img style="width: 0px; height:0px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7846489/jacinda1.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/ec7fa88fc2e84160b2b0f2218cd3cf8c" /></p> <p dir="ltr"><em>The illicit ‘Jacinda Ardern’ pills have surfaced online. Image: NZ Herald</em></p> <p dir="ltr">A police spokesperson said the sale of the pills is “not something we’re aware of”.</p> <p dir="ltr">MDMA is a “party drug” that is especially popular with clubbers and summer festival goers.</p> <p dir="ltr">Community drug testing service Know Your Stuff online list of flagged pills doesn’t list the “Jacinda Ardern” pills, but the group warns that doesn’t mean taking it is risk-free.</p> <p dir="ltr">“If your pill does not appear on this page, this is not a guarantee that it is safe.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The discovery comes after New Zealand recently became the first country in the world to permanently legalise drug checks at large scale events, including music festivals.</p> <p dir="ltr">Know Your Stuff was appointed to run the<span> </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.ladbible.com/news/latest-ecstasy-pills-made-to-look-like-jacinda-ardern-found-in-new-zealand-20211220" target="_blank">pilot program</a>, offering drug-checking services at events and helping people know what pills they intend to consume actually contain.</p> <p dir="ltr">This year, the service has reported increasing incidents of people taking what they believe to be pure MDMA which was either just cathinones or contained just enough MDMA to “spoof” the tests.</p> <p dir="ltr">Synthetic cathinones, also known as “bath salts”, have a similar euphoric effect as MDMA but wear off faster and can lead to anxiety, paranoia, gastric distress, seizures or respiratory failure.</p> <p dir="ltr">Mephedrone, a cathinone commonly found in the country, has been linked to a number of deaths in the UK and Europe.</p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image: Getty Images</em></p>

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AI-system promises better art reproductions – but not yet

<div> <div class="copy"> <p>A team from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US is developing a new, deep learning-assisted system to reproduce art with a 3D printer to make more accurate, convincing reproductions. </p> <p>The system combines a process known as halftoning, which uses little dots of ink, and a layering technique that has 10 different colours, rather than the usual cyan, magenta, yellow, and black of 2D printers. This keeps the ink from blotting, which happens when too much is deposited on the printing surface, and it allows the printer to produce a wider range of tones. </p> <p>The technique, combined with a “deep learning model to predict the optimal stack of different inks”, results in “unprecedented spectral accuracy”, the team writes in a new paper, being presented this month at a <a rel="noopener" href="https://sa2018.siggraph.org/en/" target="_blank">computer graphics conference in Tokyo</a>. </p> <p>“If you just reproduce the colour of a painting as it looks in the gallery, it might look different in your home,” says Changil Kim, one of the paper’s authors. “Our system works under any lighting condition, which shows a far greater colour reproduction capability than almost any other previous work.”{%recommended 6743%}</p> <p>The researchers they hope the project will eventually make art more available, since “our reliance on museums to exhibit original paintings and sculpture inherently limits access and leaves those precious originals vulnerable to deterioration and damage”.</p> <p>“The value of fine art has rapidly increased in recent years, so there’s an increased tendency for it to be locked up in warehouses away from the public eye,” notes mechanical engineer Mike Foshey. </p> <p>“We’re building the technology to reverse this trend, and to create inexpensive and accurate reproductions that can be enjoyed by all.”</p> <p>The developers concede that there is still work to be done on the system, which they named RePaint, to truly render a van Gogh simulacrum. For starters, images like Starry Night use a cobalt blue that the ink library isn’t able to “faithfully reproduce”. </p> <p>But paintings – particularly oil paintings – are three-dimensional works. The brush strokes leave ridges and bumps that can reflect light, throwing off the rendering. Right now, the printer reads glossy reflections as white highlights, but the team has plans to incorporate recognition of “the rich spatially-varying gloss and translucency found in many paintings”. The system will learn to use surface reflection, rather than less colour, to reproduce the gloss. </p> <p>One other issue? Those glorious Monet water lilies look more like postage stamps, since the system’s reproductions are only a few centimetres across. The engineers are hoping to bring down the costs and time printing to accommodate larger reproductions. </p> <em>Image credit: Shutterstock            <!-- Start of tracking content syndication. Please do not remove this section as it allows us to keep track of republished articles --> <img id="cosmos-post-tracker" style="opacity: 0; height: 1px!important; width: 1px!important; border: 0!important; position: absolute!important; z-index: -1!important;" src="https://syndication.cosmosmagazine.com/?id=23508&amp;title=AI-system+promises+better+art+reproductions+%E2%80%93+but+not+yet" alt="" width="1" height="1" /> <!-- End of tracking content syndication -->          </em></div> <div id="contributors"> <p><em>This article was originally published on <a rel="noopener" href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/ai-system-promises-better-art-reproductions-but-not-yet/" target="_blank">cosmosmagazine.com</a> and was written by Samantha Page. </em></p> </div> </div>

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