The New Politic

"History does not disclose the name of the first black person dragged onto a slave ship, the first..."

Sat, 25 May 2013 12:30:33 -0700

“History does not disclose the name of the first black person dragged onto a slave ship, the first black person held in newly constructed prisons, or the first black person forcibly recruited to work on a colonial plantation. But black people have been arriving late ever since, hoping that the slavers have left, the ships traveled beyond the horizon, the whip silenced, the work done, the suffering gone.
Black time—whether you call it colored people time (CPT) or African timing (AT) or the deliciousness of syncopation—black time is about delay, interruption, break: strategic lateness.
Black time is long time, deep time, waiting time, excavated time, time around time. The not-here, the not-yet-there, the it-will-be-coming, the it-has-been-to-come, the it’s-not-wasn’t-yet, the it-was-just-here-yet-to-be-now. The fold, the crease, the wrinkle, the tick that does not tock. The tock that does not talk. The silence that does not break. The breaking that will not be broken. The.
You-just-missed-it.
Black time is hungry time. Ravenous time. Gluttonous time. Cannibal time.
Black time is waiting time, time after the reservation, time after other people’s time, time cut by other people’s time, time as didn’t-see-you, time as can-you-wait, time as you-again, time as I-don’t-have-time-for-this-shit.
Black time is dropped consonants, slipped sounds, skipped beats, don’t-wanna-ain’t-gonna-coz-it-don’t-make-no-difference time. Black time is learned time, doing time, time done, time-to-do, time-never-done, time-undone. Time-served, time-to-serve, time-serving, time-unserved, time-put-off, time-for-time, pipeline-time, skipping-time, cut-time, time-cut, cutting-time.
I haven’t seen you for a minute.
Sorry I’m posting this late. I was running behind.
– Black Time, Keguro Macharia”

- via naranzarian (via liberatormagazine)

Quiet Babylon: Eton

Fri, 24 May 2013 17:51:03 -0700

Tony Little, headmaster of Eton College, emailed HuffPostUKand said the school does not favour “any particular political viewpoint”.

Eton College’s Exam Asks Boys To Justify The Army Shooting Protesters Dead

ThePMdeployed the army to a protest, killing 25. You are the pro-military Leader of the Opposition. Prepare your response, remembering that you have substantial ties to lobbyists and military contractors that you must maintain to win in the fall.

ThePMdeployed the army to a protest, killing 25 of your comrades. Describe how you would bring down the government.

ThePMdeployed the army to a protest, killing 25—including your daughter. Describe how you would get through the days ahead.

ThePMdeployed the army to a protest, killing 25. You are a political fixer. Describe the astroturf campaign you’d run to convince the public that blame falls on the protestors.

ThePMdeployed the army to a protest, killing 25. You are a journalist. Describe your plan of action for getting exclusive interviews or at least images of the grieving families. Tools you may use include phone calls, phone hacking, hidden cameras, grey-market drones, and whatever your imagination suggests.

ThePMdeployed the army to a protest, killing 25. You areCEOofTASERInternational. Prepare the sales pitch for your non-lethal compliance solutions. You may need seperate arguments for public and law-enforcement consumption.

ThePMdeployed the army to a protest, killing 25. You are an important talk radio personality. Prepare the outline of your 90 minute show, with particular attention to how this relates toHAARP, the New World Order, or Contrails.

ThePMdeployed the army to a protest, killing 25. You are one of the wounded. Describe your hospital stay.

ThePMdeployed the army to a protest, killing 25. You are one of the soldiers. Describe how you would work through yourPTSD, shame, and guilt.

via Quiet Babylon

"The reality? There is no Long Boom. There is parasitic capitalism instead. Rushed IPOs, cash-outs;..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:30:50 -0700

“

The reality? There is no Long Boom. There is parasitic capitalism instead. Rushed IPOs, cash-outs; for a snapshot, go watch Startup.com. And on came the DotCom Bust, or… a Short Crash. Caused by pretty much the same players that got bailed out ten years later in the global financial crisis. Just sayin’.

What also happens is that the Dutch sell off that whole division to a French military/telecommunications megacorp, and the software with 100K human hours on it becomes cannibalised to run the cameras for the Sydney Olympics, then abandoned. Because nearly every software project fails.

What crushing existential fatigue?!

I return just in time to catch it, mid-2000. Joining the swelling ranks of a start-up that is in freefall and doesn’t know it. Being bribed with future shares that would never vest. Sitting through round upon round of redundancies, and being wracked with survivor’s guilt, until the whole façade falls down a year, and in swoops the investment company that will really profit from the whole collapse.

This is what makes a veteran. This is how eyes are forced open. This is how I become a mercenary software dev: pragmatic, scheming, taking the maximum money for the expected effort, and no longer fueled by the passion of programming. Joining another R&D division of a different geopolitically based megacorp, that is part tax write-off, part rich from the one-time sale of broadband to an entire country (Turkey) leaping into the futurepresent. It’s a great trick, as they say, that can only be done once.

There is a legend at this place of a room full of developers who’d been left with nothing to do for several months, as “resources” for a project always just about to start, so they wrote their own First Person Shooter game mod, sold it and quit. This is how the future succeeds, in spite of obstacles… for those guys anyway.

”

- anarchist futurism & the lie of history: part 1 - The State

killingdenouement: one of the best examples of #desifuturism...

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:39:31 -0700

killingdenouement:

one of the best examples of #desifuturism yet
(via Netizens Marvel at the Facebook-Themed Hindu Temple - DramaFever Blog)

murmurationfestival: For us, locomotives already have symbolic...

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:58:06 -0700

murmurationfestival:

For us, locomotives already have symbolic character because we met with them in childhood. Our children, however, will find this in automobiles, of which we ourselves see only the new, elegant, modern cheeky side. There is no more insipid and shabby antithesis than that which reactionary thinkers like Klages [insert contemporary name here] try to set up between the symbol-space of nature and that of technology. To each truly new configuration of nature—and, at bottom, technology is just such a configuration—there correspond new “images”. Every childhood discoveres these new images in order to incorporate them into the image stock of humanity.

- Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project 1927-1935

Late last week, India’s Minstry of the Environment and...

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:30:46 -0700

Late last week, India’s Minstry of the Environment and Forests released a statement banning “any person / persons, organizations, government agencies, private or public enterprises that involves import, capture of cetacean species to establish for commercial entertainment, private or public exhibition and interaction purposes whatsoever.”

In so doing, India became the largest of four countries to ban the practice — which includes Costa Rica, Hungary, and Chile. But the ministry didn’t stop there; their thoughtful reasoning behind the ban seems squarely aimed at the dozens of countries across the globe, like in Europe and the United States, where dolphin shows are big business.

“Whereas cetaceans in general are highly intelligent and sensitive, and various scientists who have researched dolphin behavior have suggested that the unusually high intelligence; as compared to other animals means that dolphin should be seen as ‘non-human persons’ and as such should have their own specific rights and is morally unacceptable to keep them captive for entertainment purpose,” reads the ministry’s statement.

via Tree Hugger

wolvensnothere: fineprintnyc: 3D Printed Robohand creates a...

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:57:20 -0700

wolvensnothere:

fineprintnyc:

3D Printed Robohand creates a functioning prosthetic at an affordable price -> http://goo.gl/rNxqZ

O.O HNNNNNNNNNNNGGG

[Put a 3D printed gun in that 3D printed prosthetic hand, and then maybe someone will blog about it.]

Unusual Use for an XO OLPC #12: Fake Bloomberg Terminal. I...

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:55:42 -0700

Unusual Use for an XO OLPC #12: Fake Bloomberg Terminal. I loaded up my iGoogle homepage with all the widgets and stuff from Google Finance, and made it the homepage on the OLPC. Now it’s almost a mini-Bloomberg terminal, focused on the student lending industry, right on my desk.

jomc: (via xkcd: Insight) !!!

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:52:41 -0700

jomc:

(via xkcd: Insight)

!!!

futurejournalismproject: Gender Balance in News Open Gender...

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:50:40 -0700

futurejournalismproject:

Gender Balance in News

Open Gender Tracking Project is a software program that collects digital content from news sources and analyzes gender balance within news organizations. The project was created by Irene Ros and Adam Hyland of Bocoup and Nathan Matias of the MIT Center for Civic Media.

The program collects data on who is writing the articles and who the articles are written about. It also measures audience response data directly associated with specific articles (like how many times a post is shared in social media). The goal of the program is to make news sources aware of content diversity (or lack thereof) so organizations can work toward maintaining a balanced set of voices.

For the most part, women are currently being underrepresented in digital media.

Client: Arctic Perspective Initiative Size: 100 sqm Location:...

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:36:16 -0700

Client: Arctic Perspective Initiative

Size: 100 sqm

Location: Arctic Circle

Detailed project description is under construction.

"Delina and Diesendorf recommend the statutory creation of two new institutions in particular: • A..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:30:33 -0700

“

Delina and Diesendorf recommend the statutory creation of two new institutions in particular:

• A special Ministry for Transition to a Low-Carbon Future as the principal agency of rapid mitigation activities to conduct technical requirement studies, set and enforce production goals [for renewable energy technologies], institute efficient contracting procedures, cut through the inertia and ‘red tape’ inhibiting institutional changes, and serve as the coordinating agency for all transition activities.

• A separate institution, independent of the Executive and the above Ministry, reporting directly to Parliament/Congress and the community at large, to prepare a transition timeline specifying the period when executive control starts and ends; to conduct appropriate checks and balances; to scrutinise government/executive actions, especially those of the Ministry for Transition; and, through legal powers, to ensure that the government/executive sticks to its transition mandate.

So it’s your basic balance-of-powers set-up: a single coordinating agency and a watchdog to keep it honest. The delicate dance here is to hand over extraordinary power to the executive branch on the premise that it can and will be handed back after a set period of time.

Among the many dangers in this approach is that executives are not generally inclined to give up power once it’s been granted them. And it’s not like the climate situation will be any less dire in 10 years, or 20. Once you switch over to wartime government in the face of a foe that cannot surrender and never stops, how do you ever switch back? (The parallels to the “war on terrorism” should be obvious here.)

Delina and Diesendorf acknowledge that the WWII mobilization comparison is not perfect, because climate mobilization will be even more difficult and more complicated. (Whee!) It will also involve state and provincial governments, along with civic and private institutions. It will also, crucially, involve international coordination and enforcement. It will eventually have to go beyond particular economic sectors and address the larger issues of population and consumption. “Getting all these acts done in a coordinated and democratic/participatory manner,” Delina and Diesendorf write, “is definitely a huge challenge.”

”

- What would ‘wartime mobilization’ to fight climate change look like? - Grist

The receiver (boiler) glows brilliantly during acceptance tests...

Sun, 19 May 2013 14:39:22 -0700

The receiver (boiler) glows brilliantly during acceptance tests at Solar One in April, 1982.

"Extraterrestriality thereby becomes a point of transvaluation through which this variation over..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:30:50 -0700

“

Extraterrestriality thereby becomes a point of transvaluation through which this variation over time, understood as forcible mutation, can become a resource for speculation. It should be understood not so much as escapism, but rather as an identification with the potentiality of space and distance within the high-pressure zone of perpetual racial hostility.

It is not that black subjectivities are waiting for science-fiction authors to articulate their lifeworlds. Rather, it is the reverse. The conventions of science fiction, marginalized within literature yet central to modern thought, can function as allegories for the systemic experience of post-slavery black subjects in the twentieth century. Science fiction, as such, is recast in the light of Afrodiasporic history.

Afrofuturism therefore stages a series of enigmatic returns to the constitutive trauma of slavery in the light of science fiction. Isolating the enigmatic phrase “Apocalypse bin in effect” from the 1992 Public Enemy track “Welcome to the Terradome,” Mark Sinker’s 1992 essay “Loving the Alien” argued that this lyric could be interpreted to read that slavery functioned as an apocalypse experienced as equivalent to alien abduction: “The ships landed long ago: they already laid waste whole societies, abducted and genetically altered swathes of citizenry… . Africa and America—and so by extension Europe and Asia—are already in their various ways Alien Nation.”

”

- “The collective trauma of slavery as the founding moment of modernity” / Kodwo Eshun and Afro-futurism » onlineJournal | The Liberator Magazine

The Crowded Bazaar

Fri, 17 May 2013 03:07:28 -0700

“The crowded bazaar” is, Mr. Grau and Dr. Kipp of the Foreign Military Studies Office conclude, a recipe for “combat in hell.”

And thus it is that the U.S. military hires Afghan-American civilians to pretend to sell plastic bread and meat on the streets of a shipping container village in California, in order to prepare its forces to successfully navigate the urban inferno.

via Edible Geography

"Isn’t it funny how all these attempts to make a better world turn out to be ways of making a more..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:14:43 -0700

“

Isn’t it funny how all these attempts to make a better world turn out to be ways of making a more expedient workforce? What are Special Economic Zones and their Charter City children if not playgrounds for economic experimentation? What is the history of globalization if not the history of corporations setting up operations in territories that offer them unregulated freedom to innovate on their production practices? I hear they are doing wonderful cutting-edge work in Bangladesh around high density rapid-construction factory architecture, even if it is occasionally catastrophically buggy.

How come the innovations are all crushingly, depressingly the same? We’ve thoroughly innovated in the area of long hours, harsh work conditions, abridged employee rights, and poor safety standards. Maybe it’s time to try something else. Where are the SEZs that are collectivist utopias? Where are the SEZs that abolish paid work altogether? Why isn’t there a matriarchal SEZ?

If we’re going to have Farsight Reservations, surely we can do better.

”

- A Utopia of One’s Own - Medium

slavin: “DELIVERY workers tramp through tunnels under Gaza —...

Thu, 16 May 2013 05:06:54 -0700

slavin:

“DELIVERY workers tramp through tunnels under Gaza — carrying bags and buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The famous fast food has gone underground as Palestinians order the takeaways from Egypt.

Boxes and bags emblazoned with Colonel Sanders famous red and white logo move swiftly through the smuggling tunnels that run beneath the border.

The fried food has to make its subterranean journey across as there is no KFC restaurant in the Palestinian region.

Israeli restrictions on Gaza crossings make it difficult to open an international fast food branch in the area.”

"The ISS crew wasn’t shy about explaining its reasons for switching. There are “dozens of laptops” on..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:06:24 -0700

“The ISS crew wasn’t shy about explaining its reasons for switching. There are “dozens of laptops” on the space station, some of which are already running various versions of Linux, like RedHat and Scientific Linux. In recent years, every single one of those laptops that runs Windows has gotten a virus at one point or another.”

- The International Space Station Is Abandoning Windows for Linux | Motherboard - Imagine a Stuxnet variant for the ISS (via iamdanw)

I thought about titling this post, “Google Glass: The Beginning of White Flight from Smartphones,”...

Mon, 06 May 2013 18:19:40 -0700

I thought about titling this post, “Google Glass: The Beginning of White Flight from Smartphones,” but instead I’m going to propose a new term, status flight, to describe what happens when elites abandon a status symbol that’s lost its signifying power after becoming too quotidian and ubiquitous. This isn’t to say there aren’t some real “white flight”-type elements here; accessing the Internet via mobile phone is more common for Black and Latina/o usersthan for white users, for instance, and it’s no coincidence that the first Glass-related Tumblr I saw was White Men Wearing Google Glass. (There’s now a Black Men Wearing Google GlassTumblr too, though as I write this, it features only one picture of one man; White Men Wearing Google Glass presently has 27 pictures, though Sergey Brin appears more than once.) At the same time, I worry about extending boyd’s “white flight” metaphor too far; I also want to capture the simultaneous race, gender, and class dynamics that feed into this phenomenon. While class dynamics are a part of what boyd describes in her paper, this seemed to be lost on some readers of my App.net piece—so though I’m ambivalent about using a new term, I thought I’d test this one out. Status flight therefore describes when people of higher status (in this case, privileged white technophile men) dissociate themselves from something that has become too closely associated with people of lower status (in this case, pretty much everyone else).

There are plenty of people out there, I’m sure, who will see the digirati’s enthusiasm for Google Glass as plain old Brand New Gadget Fetishization, nothing more. But technology isn’t neutral, and neither is its fetishization; Google Glass is no exception.

Status Flight and the Gendering of Google Glass

betaknowledge: Bitish SAS during Gulf War I with their Baird...

Mon, 06 May 2013 03:03:19 -0700

betaknowledge:

Bitish SAS during Gulf War I with their Baird goggles (via)