Things I’ve read online of interest and value:
“Honestly, I think I would know if there were aliens”
18:11 April 20th 2021 ,
It’s a long time since I’ve read anything interesting about UFOs, but this article for NBC by Rizwan Virk, founder of Play Labs at MIT, seems to indicate that – while the area of ufology is generally mocked by scientists and big tech – there’s obviously something significant happening. Virk...
Denial and Delusion of the Thatcher Years
05:16 April 19th 2021 ,
As someone who grew up in Thatcher’s Britain, it’s hard not to see the parallels between how fragmented and bleak things seem now and how it was back then. I’m not the only one. Very good piece by Guardian columnist John Harris who notes how the visible decline of Britain...
Popular Opinion
11:42 April 12th 2021 ,
Frightening – and yet unsurprising – report explaining how Facebook is used by politicians to unduly influence public opinion through the creation of incredible numbers of fake comments and likes from a tiny number of users. The report is based around an interview with Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist...
Hauntology Defined
09:40 March 27th 2021 ,
An excellent definition of hauntology by the A Year in the Country site. “This is an area of culture where the use, appreciation and romance of often older electronic music technologies, reference points and inspirations segues and intertwines with the more bucolic wanderings and landscapes of exploratory, otherly pastoralism and...
Johnson’s Kulturkampf
07:56 February 20th 2021 ,
Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu’s How Myths of Britishness Are Turning Totalitarian shows how culture is currently weaponised in the UK to enable a right-wing government that engenders a condition of disillusionment and delusion leading to the sort if paranoia seen in the US. Jukes and Matharu view this as...
The Rise and Rise of Creativity
20:22 November 20th 2020 ,education philosophy
Utterly fascinating piece by Steven Shapin, Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, exploring the way in which creativity entered modern discourse. It’s quite shocking to learn that creativity was barely mentioned before the 1920s and that its adoption as a defining human characteristic can be traced back...
The Hatred of Video Games is Simply Suspicion of Youth
08:48 November 18th 2020 ,video games
Rather neat, germane piece by Ian Dunt about the way in which video games are stigmatised: Why should video games be seen as particularly addictive, compared to watching football, say, or soap operas? Both of these activities lead to people obsessively looking at a screen, day in and day out....
The Subjective Turn
06:44 November 17th 2020 ,philosophy
Fascinating article on Hegel, historicism and human nature by Jon Stewart in Aeon magazine. Today, we dedicate much of our lives to developing and asserting some sense of personal self-identity that is identifiable and separable from that of others. People have become increasingly creative in the ways in which this...