Werd I/O

[The Oxford Clarion]

I grew up in Oxford, and the Eagle and Child is one of my favorite pubs from back home. I'm also a longtime critic of certain big companies, Larry Ellison's Oracle among them. So imagine my dismay when I heard this:

"The masterplan is “a place for brilliant people to come together”. The Eagle & Child is to be the in-house bar for Ellison’s new Oxford outpost, the Ellison Institute of Technology. EIT has been set up to “accelerate innovation” in four areas: health and medical science, food security and sustainable agriculture, climate change and clean energy, and government in the age of Artificial Intelligence. Its £1bn campus is under construction at the Oxford Science Park. This week it announced a £130m investment in the University of Oxford as part of a “long-term strategic alliance”."

I mean, to be fair, it might be good. And it seems to have CAMRA's seal of approval. And there's something to be said for upgrading the city center's food possibilities (the pub grub situation has not been inspiring), as long as it remains both physically and financially accessible to all.

This is the bit that's most eye-rolling to me:

"Why is a Californian billionaire funding an Oxford pub, even one where Tolkien and Lewis once conversed? The answer lies on the Eagle & Child’s upper floors.

Ellison Scholars will be graduates and undergraduates “passionate about solving humanity’s most serious problems”. At least 20 will be appointed each year, working at EIT’s £1bn campus with the Faculty Fellows on solving the world’s problems through technology."

We'll have to wait and see, but forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical.

#Culture

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[Annalee Newitz at The Believer]

Boots Riley is a national treasure. I loved this interview with him in The Believer:

"BLVR: Do you think that all expression is propaganda?

BR: The word propaganda got popularized in different ways at different times. But our generation knows it as a derogatory word for what other countries do. However, in the 1980s, if you were to call Red Dawn—which was my favorite movie at the time—propaganda, people would have been like, Oh, you’re crazy. That’s just freethinking.

[...] BR: Yeah. We think anything could happen because it’s in this other reality. You need some connections to what is happening on our world for people to question it as they’re watching. When it’s in space, you have the possibility of saying, OK, cool, a rebellion seems natural. I want to make movies where people don’t just theoretically agree to rebel if the moment is right. I want them to look at where they are right now and ask themselves whether they agree."

The full interview is worth your time.

#Culture

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[Jillian D'Onfro at The San Francisco Standard]

On one level, this piece about tech workers leaving the industry behind and doing something more culturally meaningful is quite nice:

"Andrew Wasilewski, who managed to live “very frugally” on his layoff package while launching the Faight Collective, a music and art community in the Lower Haight, signed the lease for the space mere weeks after his last day of work in tech sales."

But then you find yourself asking: how does an artist community pay a lease on the Lower Haight? How do any of these folks live like this, even for a while, in one of the most expensive cities in the world?

And the answer is obvious, and a little sad, and perhaps not very empowering after all.

#Culture

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[Jon Hicks]

I love this sort of thing:

"Usborne's The Detective’s Handbook and The Guide to the Supernatural captivated my imagination in equal measure. This site is an imagined combination of those books – an engaging thematic prompt for me to overcome the quandary of 'what to draw?'. The order and frequency of new chapters will be random - the intention is to have a bit of fun with it!"

The web needs more whimsy, and this is so incredibly well-executed. (Well, maybe not incredibly - Jon Hicks's work is reliably amazing.)

Absolutely I plugged this into my feed reader so I can follow along. I'm already delighted.

#Culture

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[Chris Person at Aftermath]

"Over the years, forums did not really get smaller, so much as the rest of the internet just got bigger. Reddit, Discord and Facebook groups have filled a lot of that space, but there is just certain information that requires the dedication of adults who have specifically signed up to be in one kind of community. This blog is a salute to those forums that are either worth participating in or at least looking at in bewilderment."

What an amazing index of indie forums still going strong on the web.

I'd love to do a survey of what they're powered by, and in turn, I'd love to read interviews of the product / engineering leads for each of these platforms. Are they individual developers, keeping the lights on out of love? Are they thriving companies? Something else? I'm fascinated that there's these corners of the web that haven't changed all that much in decades, but are full of life, supported by platforms that surely must have to evolve to deal with threats and abuse at the very least.

I love all of it. This kind of thing is what makes the web great.

#Culture

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[Bop Spotter]

"I installed a box high up on a pole somewhere in the Mission of San Francisco. Inside is a crappy Android phone, set to Shazam constantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's solar powered, and the mic is pointed down at the street below."

As surveillance goes, I'm into it. I appreciate the commentary:

"Heard of Shot Spotter? Microphones are installed across cities across the United States by police to detect gunshots, purported to not be very accurate. This is that, but for music."

I don't give it much time before someone figures out where it is and tries to mess with it, though.

#Culture

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[David Allen Green at The Law and Policy Blog]

"In essence: this endorsement is a masterpiece of practical written advocacy, and many law schools would do well to put it before their students."

This is a fascinating breakdown of Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala Harris: not just the what of her endorsement, but the linguistic how. As David Allen Green says, it's worth studying.

It comes down to this:

"The most effective persuasion is often to lead the listener or reader to making their own decision – and to make them feel they are making their own decision."

Taylor Swift's endorsement really matters, and was clearly planned carefully. This wasn't a dashed-off Instagram description, and I'll certainly be learning from it.

#Culture

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[Vanessa Thorpe in The Guardian]

“Art is about reaching out. So I think it’s wrong to allow one strata of society to have the most access.”

This is an older article, but it resonated with me so much that I wanted to share it immediately.

This is so important, and a sign of what we've lost:

“I went [to art school] because the government of the day paid for me to go and I didn’t have to pay them back. There was a thrusting society then, a society that tried to improve itself. Yes, of course, it cost money. But so what? It allowed people from any kind of background to learn about Shakespeare, or Vermeer.”

A culture where only the rich are afforded the space, training, and platform to make art is missing the voices that make it special.

The same goes for other spaces: newsrooms where only the wealthy can serve as journalists cannot accurately represent the people who depend on it. Technology without class diversity is myopic. Above all else, a culture of rich people is boring as hell.

Art school - like all school - should be free and available to everyone. It's tragic that it's not. We all lose out, regardless of our background.

#Culture

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[Sarah E. Needleman and Ann-Marie Alcántara at the Wall Street Journal]

"Earning a decent, reliable income as a social-media creator is a slog—and it’s getting harder. Platforms are doling out less money for popular posts and brands are being pickier about what they want out of sponsorship deals."

For many kids, becoming an influencer has become the new becoming a sports star: in enormous numbers, it's what they want to be. More broadly, if you dare to say that it's not a real job, you're likely to be drowned out by complaints and contradictions.

But it isn't, and this article makes it clear:

"Last year, 48% of creator-earners made $15,000 or less, according to NeoReach, an influencer marketing agency. Only 13% made more than $100,000."

Of course, some people really did shoot to fame and have been doing really well. But there aren't many Mr Beasts or Carli D'Amelios of this world, and the lure of being famous has trapped less lucky would-be influencers in cycles of debt and mental illness.

This is despite having sometimes enormous followings: hundreds of thousands to millions of people, with hundreds of millions of views a month. The economics of the platforms are such that even at those numbers, you can barely scrape by.

I like the advice that, instead, you should cultivate a genuine expertise and use social media to promote offsite services you provide around that. It might be that a following can land you a better job, or help you build up a consultancy. Trying to make money from ads and brand sponsorships is a losing game - and thousands of people are losing big.

#Culture

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This list of the New Scientist's favorite science fiction books is brilliant. The books I've read that are included here are some of my favorites of all time; the others are on my to-read list. What's your favorite?

#Culture

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"In interviews with The 19th, a dozen Black fans of country discussed reconciling their love for the music with its racist, misogynistic past, as well as the pervasive image of White men who continue to dominate the mainstream industry. They are hopeful that Beyoncé and “Cowboy Carter,” released Friday, will help elevate Black country artists and serve as a bridge for more Black people to feel comfortable listening."

It's a superb album: musically and thematically breathtaking. Even if you might not ordinarily listen to Beyoncé (the "why" of which might be worth examining in itself), you really owe it to yourself to check it out. #Culture

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"Journalists write stories about incomplete events but there is always a mandate to write more. To write the next post that shows the breaking news. Authors write books that, when published, cannot be changed. An author can write another book, but the story is in print. No such mandate exists in blogging."

I am unashamedly a blogger, have been a blogger for over a quarter of a century, show no signs of moving away from this rather worrying disposition, and I truly love this framing.

Blogs are thinking-in-progress. A blog is never done (although you can always choose to walk away). It's lovely. I wish more people had one. #Culture

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"A trove of leaked emails shows how administrators of one of the most prestigious awards in science fiction censored themselves because the awards ceremony was being held in China."

What's remarkable here is that they weren't censored by the government - instead this trove of emails suggests it was their own xenophobic assumptions about what was necessary to be acceptable in a Chinese context that shut authors out of one of the most prestigious prizes in science fiction. This includes eliminating authors whose work that would have been eligible was actually published in China.

There's a dark comedy to be written here about a group of westerners who are so worried about appeasing a government they consider to be censorial that they commit far more egregious acts of censorship themselves. #Culture

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"You’ve got to offer your content to the hellish, overstuffed, harassment-laden, uber-competitive attention economy because otherwise no one will know who you are. [...] The commodification of the self is now seen as the only route to any kind of economic security."

In the new economy, every artist must also be an entrepreneur. In doing so, they compromise their intentions; a world where everyone is just shilling is one free from the purity of ideas and discourse. There is no such thing as being discovered or being heralded on the merit of your work alone. You've got to sell. #Culture

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A lovely interview with Winnie Lim, whose deeply human, beautifully-written blog is one of my absolute must-reads.

This spoke to me, except substitute Oxford for Singapore: "I felt very alienated and lonely as a young person in the 1990s. It was incredible to discover the internet and know there is an entire world out there, that there are actually many people living diverse lives that were not visible or encouraged in Singapore."

Winnie and I both worked at Medium at different times, and yet both have a very strong own-your-own-domain philosophy. Her blogging story is really similar to mine, even if the content of her blog is very much her own.

Just a complete pleasure to read. #Culture

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Joe Sacco, the graphic journalist who wrote Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza, and Safe Area Gorazde, has started a new series, The War on Gaza.

It's accompanied by this statement from Fantagraphics:

"We want to state clearly and emphatically that we stand with the innocent people of Gaza. At the same time, we emphatically condemn the massacre of innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7 as a war crime and acknowledge with deep regret the grief and trauma Jewish people are enduring in its aftermath; but this barbarous act does not warrant Israel to commit its own war crime and to inflict exponentially greater grief and trauma in return." #Culture

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"So when we wonder where all the websites have gone, know it’s the curators we’re nostalgic for because the curators showed us the best the web had to offer once upon a time. And the curators— the tenders, aggregators, collectors, and connectors— can bring us back to something better. Because it’s still out there, we just have to find it."

For what it's worth, that's what I'm trying to do to share these links with you: highlighting interesting pieces, often from independent writers publishing on their own sites. I really appreciate the other curators I subscribe to, too.

Let's all connect and learn from each other! #Culture

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I think Chuck Tingle is awesome and proves love. This was a disappointing decision by the Texas Library Association, which is hopefully a learning moment for every organization like it.

Chuck's description of the intersectional challenges at play here is in-depth and well-stated. And there's this important statement:

"let me be very clear for the 100th time: i am a real person. this is not a joke. i am not playing a character. i am really autistic and bisexual. tinglers are sincere and they are not ‘so bad theyre good’. they are just good. camp damascus is not ‘my first serious book’ because my queer erotica is serious. my art is important and real." #Culture

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Every single one of these titles looks beautiful: I'm excited to put them on my want-to-read list. I don't think I read a single graphic novel last year, and I love them.

I'm grateful to Ritesh Babu for putting this list together. It's the kind of thing that makes a genre accessible: someone's subjective deep dive into something they love that other people might not have had the time or exposure to get into as much. Just lovely. #Culture

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Charles Stross on tech oligarchs trying to build the torment nexus:

"SF authors such as myself are popular entertainers who work to amuse an audience that is trained on what to expect by previous generations of science-fiction authors. We are not trying to accurately predict possible futures but to earn a living: any foresight is strictly coincidental."

The CIA famously funded the Iowa Writers' Workshop to guide American literature in a non-didactic, less revolutionary direction. I wonder if there's a future in funding science fiction writers to create stories with more utopian themes for leaders to draw inspiration from in the future. #Culture

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Every image here is stunning. #Culture

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Before there was Succession, there was Peep Show. A brilliant piece of TV that launched a bunch of careers. If you haven't seen it, give yourself the gift of checking it out. #Culture

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I know people who worked with Douglas Adams and I'm incredibly envious of them. He seems like someone I would have really enjoyed meeting - and his books (all of them) were a huge part of my developing psyche. This story seems so human, so relatable. Trapped by his success, in a way. #Culture

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A less-discussed problem with book bans: publishers will self-censor, as they did here by requiring the removal of the word "racism" in the context of internment camps. #Culture

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I found this interview fascinating: definitely a writer I look up to, whose work I both enjoy and find intimidatingly raw. And who happens to have a very similar day job to me. #Culture

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