[A Pleasurable Headache] American rope, put there by American soldiers
Let’s get right into it, shall we?
Why it’s (almost) impossible to argue with the right
https://www.salon.com/2021/07/18/why-its-almost-impossible-to-argue-with-the-right/
Sophia A. McClennen at Salon with a great piece on arguing with the right. She argues that the impossibility is due to the fact that the right are consistently arguing with an invented or distorted view of the left, rather than a person. They are, in effect, arguing with themselves. It is a constant feedback loop with no end in sight.
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Lowing our computing impact: the environment, sufficiency and Gemini
https://whither.smol.pub/why-use-gemini
This may be a bit ‘inside baseball’ for some, but I found it fascinating. The post serves as a kind of round up and summarisation of low-tech computing. It touches not only on sustainable computing, but also on a version of the web free of bloat and needless bells and whistles, all of which have an environmental cost and impact.
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The toppling of Saddam’s statue: how the US military made a myth
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/toppling-saddam-hussein-statue-iraq-us-victory-myth
An excerpt from Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History by Alex von Tunzelmann. Here, the author details the events leading up to the toppling of the infamous Saddam statue, as well as ripping apart many of the myths that surround the event. This is juxtaposed nicely alongside Baudrillard’s idea of hyper-reality and how events in both Iraq wars were not what they seemed.
“As two hours of non-stop coverage of Firdos Square was beamed around the world that night, the news networks desperately wanted it to have a meaning. Wolf Blitzer of CNN described the footage as “the image that sums up the day and, in many ways, the war itself”. Over on Fox, the anchors agreed. “This transcends anything I’ve ever seen,” said Brit Hume. His colleague agreed: “The important story of the day is this historic shot you are looking at, a noose around the neck of Saddam, put there by the people of Baghdad.” But it was an American rope, put there by American soldiers.”
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The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
https://timharford.com/2021/07/the-tyranny-of-spreadsheets/
An excellent post by data and numbers guy, Tim Harford. Harford lays out a brief history of the spreadsheet, as well as highlighting our dependence on them. This dependence often occurs in situations where spreadsheets are being asked to do things they were not designed for. At one point, Harford talks about the use of Excel in genetics research, with disease names often abbreviated to March1 (aka Membrane Associated Ring-CH-Type Finger 1). Excel, reading these as dates, would corrupt the data.
“And yet when the genetics research community were wrestling with the autocorrecting genes issue, they resigned themselves to the hard truth that they would never wean people off Excel. Instead, the folks in charge — the Hugo Gene Nomenclature Committee — decided to change the names of the genes in question.”
So due to the ubiquity of Excel, and its Swiss Army Knife nature, genes have been renamed. Amazing.
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Three Cheers for Socialism
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/three-cheers-socialism
David Bentley Hart talks about the notion of Socialism and how it is presented in the West, particularly the U.S. The post itself is a severe roasting of the American media’s attitude to a system that would likely bring about positive change for so many people living under the American healthcare system.
“Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. They know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know little or nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like “socialism” and “capitalism.” Chiefly, what they have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms, and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state, than do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social-democratic institutions.”
Burn.
I would say that Britain is just as bad. The nation is rightly revered for our NHS, a true socialist invention. Yet any inkling of a socialist policy today would bring out the pitchforks.
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The Untold Stories of Wes Studi
https://www.gq.com/story/wes-studi-tommy-orange-profile
GQ with a beaut of a profile on a living legend, Wes Studi. As well as raising the profile of Native actors considerably this guy has lived an incredible life. Tommy Orange’s profile is a must read.
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Right, I’m off to brave the empty shelves of the supermarket, comforted by the fact that Brexit continues to be a fuck up and that time is a flat circle.
See you in two!