A psychoanalytic reading of social media and the death drive
Richard Seymour's The Twittering Machine has moved to the top of my to-read list thanks to this highly entertaining review, best summarised with this quote: "Rather than wondering ponderously if this is 'cancel culture' or whatever, we might ask ourselves: Why the fuck were all these people tweeting? What were they thinking? What were they hoping to accomplish? What was the cost-benefit analysis that led them to think continued participation in social media was a good idea?" (Bookforum)
The battle over dyslexia
I struggled with writing essays in school, barely scraping English GCSEs. Since school I've taught myself to write for zines and blogs using typewriters and computers. School being in the 80s, I was never diagnosed but usually say I'm probably a bit dyslexic, part of my bundle of Autistic traits. So I found this article about whether dyslexia even exists as a diagnosis really interesting, the implication being the teaching methods don't fit the student, rather than the student being "broken" in some way. Worth a read if this affects you. (Guardian)
How big oil misled the public into believing plastic would be recycled
It seems everyone in the waste industry knows most plastic can't be recycled, yet for some reason we assume it can be. Turns out the oil industry has been lobbying for and promoting pointless plastic recycling schemes to distract from the urgent need to reduce our plastic usage. A long and damning expose. (NPR)
It is unclear what rich people are for.
This is a sports article on a sports website about the ownership of a sports team. But the first paragraph is universal. One day our descendants will look back with bemusement at how we allowed a tiny minority of unqualified fools to become stupidly rich. (Defector)
When you browse Instagram and find former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's passport number.
We all kinda know you shouldn't post a photo of your boarding pass online because… reasons? This chap found Tony Abbott's pass and decided to see how much he could hack it. (Mango PDF Zone)
Paul Lansky – Mild und Leise (1973)
Came to my attention because Radiohead sampled a chord progression (45 seconds in) for the track Idioteque, this is a really nice piece of very early computer-generated music composed on an IBM mainframe around the time of my first birthday.