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Wally
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Tim Bray on Glass.
Google employee Tim Bray says something disquieting about Google Glass: > **Do They Meet a Need?** Seems pretty obvious to me; I’m damn sick of hauling out my mobile to find out what time it is, or to check on... Continue reading
Posted 57 minutes ago at Wax Banks
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(including failure)
> When obtaining any magical result (including failure) always think of several explanations for it. These explanations should contain at least one each of the following types: > 1. An explanation based on the parameters of the magical system that... Continue reading
Posted May 11, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Commodifying dissent, a few years on.
Tom Frank's first book, The Conquest of Cool -- a cleanup of his dissertation, if I remember right -- is about the deadly co-optation of counterculture rhetoric by megacorporations. His writing from that time is still worth reading. Here's some:... Continue reading
Posted Apr 5, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Another try, with InvisiClues.
Is America better off with 10M people watching Fox, 5M watching MSNBC, and 5M watching CNN? Or with everyone watching Cronkite? Hint 1: Which came first, the emancipatory revolutions of the Sixties or cable television? Hint 2: Which had a... Continue reading
Posted Apr 5, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Attempting to paraphrase Morozov on O'Reilly et al.
The shift from 'free software' to 'open source software' should be treated as yet another example the neutering of a radical political program in the name of commerce, not as a small neutral unique rhetorical shift among a small group... Continue reading
Posted Apr 5, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Morozov on O'Reilly.
Haven't yet sorted my thoughts on Evgeny Morozov's extremely protracted bludgeoning of Tim O'Reilly. The Metafilter thread is here, and its bog-standard MeFi snark/cynicism is less out of place than usual -- have a look. Bear in mind, though, the... Continue reading
Posted Apr 5, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Muskrat Jamboree 2013.
A whole bunch of women in pink hair dye and rainbow clothes and pins featuring the guy who plays Moriarty on Sherlock came in to Luna a moment ago and I thought, 'Oh, a nerd convention of some kind. No... Continue reading
Posted Mar 22, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Troll?
Weeks ago there was a weird discussion board thread about how this guy's dad had died and now he's uncommunicative and very late delivering on a $50K Kickstarter, so (the consensus was) It Is Therefore Right and Good that people... Continue reading
Posted Mar 20, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Judt.
"...it was a distinctive quality of the Obama campaign that it offered not just particular legislation or programs, but a radical recasting of the mood of politics in a democracy dangerously detached from its own founding virtues. His complete failure... Continue reading
Posted Mar 20, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Quick thought inspired by Aaron Swartz.
From the Slate piece: Swartz didn't know Stallman personally, but he was inspired by the programmer’s morals, and by the fact that he’d fostered an organization that took ethics seriously while also getting things done. In 2002, Swartz saw Stallman... Continue reading
Posted Mar 18, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Small ideas loosely joined.
Being annoyed by (indeed, noticing) hipsters is participating in hipsterism. OK, so hipsters fetishize childhood -- theirs in particular, which is why the 80s are all of a sudden this period of aesthetic revolution -- we know this and so... Continue reading
Posted Mar 18, 2013 at Wax Banks
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i'm writing a thing, here are two things from it.
7. consider too that miles was in the studio doing *bitches brew* as fripp et al. put the finishing touches on *in the court of the crimson king*. which album was the more deeply 'psychedelic,' not to mention the more... Continue reading
Posted Mar 16, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Trane day.
My man Mike and his beautiful wife Luana had a baby daughter – future hippie Nobelist footballer no doubt – and I was so proud and glad for them; every time my friends have babies I get this feeling like... Continue reading
Posted Mar 5, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Having difficulty staying with Judt's Postwar...
...because Europe in the immediate aftermath of WWII is harrowing to read about. If this isn't one of the saddest, scariest, deadliest, craziest moments in history then I can't bear to read any more history. The writing is very fine... Continue reading
Posted Mar 3, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Harmoncountry Conclusion.
Won't talk at length about it today, but the Harmontown tour of the Hip United States ended strongly in Portland, San Francisco, and at the Egyptian in L.A. That said, an extraordinary underlying ugliness made it hard to listen to... Continue reading
Posted Feb 25, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Miracle year: 1981.
The miracle year for flicks is 1984, but for genre fiction it's 1981, which brought two volumes of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, John Crowley's Little, Big, and Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. Jesus! Imagine being a lover of... Continue reading
Posted Feb 24, 2013 at Wax Banks
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I'm not watching the Oscars...
...but I know they're going on now because everyone in my Twitter feed is talking about the Oscars, or not talking (what's up Farhad). And it sucks, because the Oscars suck -- they celebrate bullshit, tackily -- and my Twitter... Continue reading
Posted Feb 24, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Cloudy and fitful: a little bit of quantum.
Finished John Polkinghorne's Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction last night between bouts of dishwashing and playing Letterpress. I recommend it to interested nonscientists, as Polkinghorne makes it all the way through the main text without leaning on mathematical formalism... Continue reading
Posted Feb 14, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Still Bad.
Steven Berlin Johnson comes in for a vicious beating in The (impressively redesigned) New Republic this week. I'm reminded of the deep shock I felt reading Everything Bad Is Good for You in 2006: here was a grown man (who'd... Continue reading
Posted Feb 5, 2013 at Wax Banks
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Flop Flip
Posted Jan 24, 2013 at Wax Banks
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'The royal "your mama."'
I've been very sick for a couple of days, and taking care of my very sick son for a couple days before that. It's been podcast time. Dan Harmon (creator of *Community*) and Jeff Davis ('suit-clad gadabout,' formerly of *Whose... Continue reading
Posted Jan 13, 2013 at Wax Banks
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if on a summer's day a readerer
I read a bunch of Cosmicomics while visiting a two-years-older friend at college; I was a senior in high school and had never driven as far as Cornell, which I liked well enough. He recommended the book. I stole it.... Continue reading
Posted Dec 30, 2012 at Wax Banks
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Mendicants, folklore, the witch craze, Wayne LaPierre: an analogy.
In the late 16th century, Christian monks made their first inroads into the mountainous regions of the European (sub)continent, leaving behind the comparatively cosmopolitan culture of the late-medieval plains cities. They were stunned to find a Weird mishmash of paganism,... Continue reading
Posted Dec 28, 2012 at Wax Banks
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This is the title of the post I wrote in Word 2013.
This is the material that everyone will read, love, enjoy, perhaps cry about. This is the closing. This is extra Continue reading
Posted Dec 14, 2012 at Wax Banks
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Throw up in mouth. Be surprised that you taste something at once familiar, personal, and bracing. Call it art. Suck.
Posted Dec 1, 2012 at Wax Banks
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