Month: August 2018
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The particular gift
It is the particular gift of genre fiction to assume a different background to the mainstream and so delineate character from a different angle. Science fiction carries this change of perspectives to extremes. By changing what counts as figure and what as background, the characters can be seen in ways otherwise impossible – and so,…
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Note to self
“This thing we do is not in the nature of a service industry. As a creator, please yourself first. An audience will show up or they won’t. That’s their call. It’s on you to produce the kind of work you want to see in the world.“ Warren Ellis, saying exactly what I needed to hear…
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The aesthetics of decentralisation
Despite the cacophony of political conjecture, the story of blockchain so far is a tale of financial speculation, in which the cash rewards reaped by bankers and venture capitalists are largely a result of the techno-utopian hype. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The prospect of decentralizing control does not absolve us of…
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Free market bullshit
David Graeber’s on tour, plugging his new book on the remarkably successful and resonant “bullshit jobs” hypothesis. Snipping this from an interview with him at Dissent Magazine: Brooks: And this also helps to explain why market enthusiasts are wrong in their claims that it’s impossible or unlikely that capitalism will produce bullshit jobs. Graeber: Yes,…
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Roamin’ roads, redux
The WaPo [via the good folk at Moving History] reports on some interesting research which comes to a conclusion that (I hope) no regular reader here would be surprised by: current geographical levels of population and prosperity in Europe correlate strongly with the Roman road network laid down around two millennia ago. Dalgaard and his colleagues…