Due to the Covid-19 pandemic there has been a vast increase in conspiracy theories being spread. Tanya Basu at MIT Technology Review wrote an article titled How to talk to conspiracy theorists—and still be kind. The tips are based on insights from experts and r/ChangeMyView subreddit moderators.
In an interview with Bruno Latour by Nikolaj Schultz, Bruno Latour discusses why critical zone scientists have a different epistemology compared to other scientists:
Epistemologically, they are far from the other sciences that I have been following for many years. And since they underline the discrepancies between their observations and the chemical reactions, it means that they are redescribing and rematerializing the question of territory, which we simultaneously try to redescribe and rematerialize in political and social theory. This is also where there is a link between Lovelock’s discovery, the political question of geosocial classes and critical zones.
Read the full interview here.
An article on Vox by Terry Nguyen explains a recent rise in the use of a slideshow feature on the photo sharing platform Instagram to distribute messages of social justice by activists.
The 10-image carousel, which Instagram launched in 2017, has been repurposed by activists, independent artists, advocacy groups, and well-meaning individuals as a means to educate and inform the masses, one slide at a time. Consider it something like PowerPoint activism. Over the past few months, these slides have migrated their way into my Explore page or been reposted on Stories of my friends and followers; in fact, these posts became so popular that I encountered similar designs and sentiments across multiple Stories. The most striking graphics stood out in my feeds, almost like an advertisement.
The article further details how creators are “co-opting popular design aesthetics from brands” in order to draw attention to their slideshows.
Hu, who previously worked as the global design director for Nike Sportswear, had spent two weeks in June collaborating with two other artists to piece together copy, art, and design for a carousel on police abolition (he purposefully included a clear indication to swipe left on the first graphic). The artists sought to subvert Instagram’s algorithmic tendency to prioritize photographs by merging images of flowers and nature with informative text.
Read the full article here.
Living in the Netherlands now for over two years I cannot begin to explain how amazing the cycling infrastructure is. It’s in the little things such as the traffic lights, as explained in the following video:
Three new videos from Vox give a good synopisis of some of the events playing in the world right now:
Each video is about a very different, yet at the same time these three phenomena are linked by common themes. Which lives matter? Who decides? And who decides who decides?
From an article The New York Times titled “Big Tech’s Domination of Business Reaches New Heights”:
The tech companies’ dominance of the stock market is propelled by their unprecedented reach into our lives, shaping how we work, communicate, shop and relax. That has only deepened during the pandemic, and as people shop more frequently on Amazon, click on a Google or Facebook ad or pay up for an iPhone, the companies receive a greater share of spending in the economy and earn ever larger profits. This is why investors have flocked to those stocks this year at the expense of the scores of companies struggling in the health crisis, and are betting that their position will be unassailable for years.
The Markup reports on some internal documents of Google they have obtained that help train employees to not use certain words which could trigger regulators:
As Google faces at least four major antitrust investigations on two continents, internal documents obtained by The Markup show its parent company, Alphabet, has been preparing for this moment for years, telling employees across the massive enterprise that certain language is off limits in all written communications, no matter how casual. (…) The taboo words include “market,” “barriers to entry,” and “network effects,” which is when products such as social networks become more valuable as more people use them.
My knowledge of the British suffragettes seems to be completely wrong. Fascinating how their movements used different tactics to draw attention on the street and from the camera.
British suffragettes in the early 20th century used spectacle and drama to draw attention to their fight to win women the vote. They delivered public speeches, marched, displayed colorful banners, and got thrown in jail, all in an effort to pressure legislators to extend suffrage to women.
See more in the following video from Vox, “How British suffragettes fought for the vote”.
Sarah Jeong at The Verge writes about what she calls the ideology “information-nationalism.” According to her this ideology has two main assumptions:
- When your country acknowledges human rights abuses, you are made weak
- You can weaken rival nation-states by exposing their human rights abuses
And that information-nationalism “is not about mythologies or misinformation. When you play the game of information-nationalism, you don’t slander your enemies; you tell the truth about them, while hiding the truth about yourself.”
In her article she gives a lot of examples of how this explains recent controversies in the relations US-China relations such as the forced sale of TikTok. Read her full article here.
The album Your Queen is a Reptile from Sons of Kemet has a fantastic vibe and energy. I’ve been listening for a while now, but I only now discovered this great promo clip for the album.
See also this brilliant interview from the BCC with the band’s leader Shabaka Hutchings.