No, you're crying.
Updates
As mentioned in the last edition, Disconnect by myself and Gav Heryng was recently released via ComiXology Submit and Mallet Productions. The comic, a one shot, is the second in a loose ‘war trilogy’ that also encompasses the recently re-released Go Home.
The first review for Disconnect rolled in during the last week from James Ferguson over at Comic-Con. It’s always a relief when a reviewer seems to sync up with the intentions of the book and gets what you were going for.
Hopefully there will be some more reviews forthcoming, potentially after the Christmas rush. Stay tuned!
Links
Remember, don’t buy anyone a Ring camera for Christmas (or anytime really).
“Once you’re enrolled in Neighbors—and remember, you have to be if you’re using any Ring hardware—your videos or data could be shared with law enforcement agencies when requested. This sort of thing wouldn’t be terribly different than any other tech company’s practice of giving cops user data if presented with a warrant, but as Motherboard reported earlier this year, Ring has hundreds of once-secret partnerships with police forces around the country, partnerships that gave cops access to a “portal” where they could access video from Ring cameras in exchange for providing Ring with free advertising. The device’s owners must give permission to share these videos with police, but it’s also unclear how users might be compelled to share it. “
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Annalee Newitz argues in the NY Times that a better internet is waiting for us. I really hope so.
“Twitter and Facebook executives often say that their services are modelled on a “public square.” But the public square is more like 1970s network television, where one person at a time addresses the masses. On social media, the “square” is more like millions of karaoke boxes running in parallel, where groups of people are singing lyrics that none of the other boxes can hear. And many members of the “public” are actually artificial beings controlled by hidden individuals or organizations.”
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The Bullet Journal blog had a good piece up about slaying depression and anxiety. This year has been the first year I’ve stuck with the Bullet Journal. It has kept me sane. If you have a source of truth you can always go back to, make it pen and paper.
“While depressed or anxious, if you’re not paying attention, our thoughts can seem like these omnipotent all powerful truths, that feel mystical, daunting, ethereal, and unconquerable, but this anxiety log helped me dispel that myth completely. The Anxiety Log made the impossible and ethereal conquerable, and it took all the mystery and power out of anxiety, humanizing the demon, in turn putting myself in the position of power. It did this by helping me identify and giving me concrete and quantifiable data to notice where and when I was experiencing anxiety.”
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Speaking of pen and paper, Jeff Gordinier at LitReactor talks about the liberation and consternation of writing an entire book old school:
“I would procrastinate with the furious intensity of a worker ant, but I would accomplish nothing. People seem confused when I tell them that I produced a book by hand— “but how?! and why?!” asked my friend Adam—whereas the truth is that it was the only way I could ever bank on finishing it. Limit me to nothing but a pen and a notepad, and I will generate thousands of words of copy. Allow the carnival of 21st-century distraction to sneak into my sightlines, and all is lost—I will cannibalize the small portion of time that I’ve been granted.”
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Holly Gramazio has written an excellent series on games and ‘How to Play’. The first part is here and you should read them all.
“Travel games like My Cows help to pass the time, and they get players noticing the world around them while allowing for different engagement levels. They can also get surprisingly competitive. I once played My Cows with members of a company I’d been freelancing for, on a slow train journey from Bristol to London; I won, and was never invited to work for the company again. “
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I’ve said it before and the trend continues - Call of Duty continues to use trauma and fear as cheap tricks.
“It all goes back to the beat with the mother and her baby, the exemplary beat of the exemplary mission. Players are left in the dark, quite literally, during a tense house raid conducted by British operatives. With night vision and laser sights, navigating through tight spaces in this house is meant to invoke fear and uncertainty. Even something as simple as opening a door exerts power—do you exercise brute force by bursting through, or play it slow and safe? Whichever way you choose in one instance won’t matter, as a woman on the other side of the door spots you and runs towards a crib.”
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Weird GPS glitches and mysteries abound in Shangai harbour.
“Nobody knows who is behind this spoofing, or what its ultimate purpose might be. These ships could be unwilling test subjects for a sophisticated electronic warfare system, or collateral damage in a conflict between environmental criminals and the Chinese state that has already claimed dozens of ships and lives. But one thing is for certain: there is an invisible electronic war over the future of navigation in Shanghai, and GPS is losing.”
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Finally, comes this piece from Jacobin about the recent General Election result here in Britain:
“It didn’t have to be like this. We got 40 percent of the vote two and a half years ago, with Corbyn as leader. There were over 12 million votes for a radical agenda. But when, in the run up to this context, supposed leftists characterized Brexit voters as “racist miners” and called on us to replace them with “urban progressives,” they were listening too much to their own restricted, middle-class social circles and alienating the many.”
If you want to know why it’s been a shorter newsletter this week, here’s why. I’ve been in something of a funk and a daze since Thursday evening (when that exit poll rolled in). I’m at a loss as to what to do, say, think or feel. Maybe I’ve had blinkers on and this is the final ‘mask off’ moment for this country where it reveals its true face. Or maybe Brexit really did cut across everything else as the issue that defined this election. Either way, we’re saddled with a Tory government for the next five years now. Five more years of austerity, cuts to public services, a racist buffoon in power and a potential carving up of the NHS on the horizon too.
“There’s no dressing up the result. Appealing to a spirit of resistance seems a little trite when we’ve just suffered such a defeat. The fight even to keep things the same will be much harder. But by way of consolation, at least now we have more comrades to cry with, more comrades whose pain is our own and more comrades who will win, some bright, future day.”
See you in two!