Kickoff For January 13, 2025
Two weeks into 2025 and reality hasn't melted down yet. Give it time; the year's still young! No need to throw in the towel yet, if only because I've got a few things here that will entertain and enlighten you (if only a bit).
With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:
The Unfettered Selfishness of Digital Nomads — Wherein James Grieg explores the darker side of the world of the country-hopping, have laptop/will travel set which has become so prominent over the last decade or so.
From the article:
In recent years, digital nomad culture has converged more closely with a right-wing movement, which, as Quinn Slobodian details in his book Crack-up Capitalism, aims to protect the free market from democratic interference, to carve out zones exempt from taxes and regulation, and to use the threat of capital flight to ward off progressive economic policies. A certain kind of digital nomad is the vanguard of this campaign, a seasteader on dry land, always looking for cannier ways to elude governmental oversight and ready to bounce at the first sign their interests may be threatened.
Living In a World of Declawed Souls — Wherein Alison Flake Matoso explores the idea of mediocrity, why it seems to be so widespread these days, and how to break out of its cycle.
From the article:
Occasionally I will meet someone who is truly Alive—it is rare enough to make an impression. But otherwise, we seem mostly to be getting by like this fat gray cat. We move about, we seem occupied, but underlying boredom and apathy haunt our busyness.
'We were just trying to get it to work': The failure that started the internet — Wherein we learn about the first (shaky) steps taken on what would become the internet, and how the people behind it developed the basis of online communication technologies that we use today.
From the article:
While the openness of the internet allows experimentation and new uses, the lack of control can lead to compromises. Arpa kept some control of the Arpanet. That way they could make sure that everything worked, make decisions about which protocols were required, deal with issues such as site names and other issues.
Could Steampunk Save Us? — Wherein Joshua Rothman explores that question, and ponders how adopting the core ethos of steampunk might just change our relationship with technology and technology's consequences.
From the article:
But what if the world really is constructed that way? In that case, it could be a mistake to put too much faith in digital perfection. We might need to fiddle with our technology more than we think. And we might also want to see it differently—less as an emanation from the future, and more like an inheritance from the past, with all the problems that entails.
Why ghosts wear clothes or white sheets instead of appearing in the nude — Wherein Shane McCorristine ponders the reasons, in most accounts, spectres are either wrapped in sheets or are dressed as the living and comes up with some interesting answers.
From the article:
You could adopt an idealist position and say that the clothes were metaphysical ideas bound up with the immortal identity of the wearer – the identity of the ghost meaning something more than simply the apparition of a soul-force.
The art of stealing — Wherein we learn about an audacious art heist from a museum in Rotterdam, the cross-border hunt for the thieves, and the eventual fate of the paintings that were taken.
From the article:
Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse, Monet, Meijer de Haan and Freud. On television they are talking about a loot worth hundreds of millions of euros. The amount is not important to her. The pictures are evidence against her son and destroying the evidence seems like the only way she can help him.