Actual Science Fiction
A hundred years from now half the cops will have psych degrees and we’ll look back on today like a horror show. (the movie “Bright” is not actually ...
Category: ideas
epistemology, philosophy, theology, religion
Wheels of fortune
Smart people become irrational around technology. We want absolutes, purity and simple answers; whether it’s being anti-GMO or bullish on AI, the impulse ...
a gxg rule, unintended consequences
gender fluidity is top of mind. it’s been neglected. it’s revolutionary. so every discussion of people from latin america must recognize gender flui...
Living with doubt
Real Americans reject fake news. Chain restaurants advertise authentic recipes. Products in automated hypermarkets are touted as organic. Intricately staged and...
the carnivalesque and Trump rallies
In addition to being campaign events for an institutional political party and its candidate for POTUS, rallies can also be carnivals. links and citations below....
maps, transport, migration, economy
Most of the cities serviced by the bus line below are in the top 10 counties for agricultural production in California. A California seen from the border, salid...
down whence it came
The unconscious in Edward Albee’s writing process by Larissa MacFarquhar: When the idea presents itself to him, he will turn it over in his mind once or t...
epidemics, as seen in zombie movies
the victim becomes the victimizer. human contact – the very thing that makes us human – kills us. it’s a total and absolute threat to the human condition....
RNC acceptance speech staging & backdrop imagery 2000-2016
background images used for opening / arrival of candidate based on archival footage posted to YouTube: 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 read responses to this post ...
keeping the hamsters alive: clickbait and the information market
google just served me up the following “news” without knowing my full identity: this appears to be their default offering for an English speaker in ...
A real-life driving game
A game: the more distance you keep from other cars on the freeway while adhering to the speed limits, the more points you earn. With networked vehicles reportin...
Ghost in the Shell
Emily Yoshida makes a subtle argument for the changing political context of art: Japanese audiences, unlike American audiences, don’t understand Motoko to...
Authenticity
Julio Perez: Authentic is just an earlier interpretation.
La cultura circula
Karan Mahajan: Shakespeare remixed Boccaccio. Dostoevsky loved Dickens. Marquez said, “Graham Greene taught me how to decipher the tropics.” Mohandas Gandhi, a ...
Certainty is a contact sport
Nicola Twilley: The LIGO team includes a small group of people whose job is to create blind injections—bogus evidence of a gravitational wave—as a way of keepin...
A movie about the “war on drugs”
At the end of the excellent movie Sicario, Benicio del Toro puts a gun to Emily Blunt’s face and tells her that she should move to a small town where the ...
who wore it better
l: Yelle – Ba$$in, May 2015. r: FKA Twigs – M3LL155X, August 2015.
confessionals
Confessional – Wikipedia The priest and penitent are in separate compartments and speak to each other through a grid or lattice… The priest will usually s...