A Genealogy of Silicon
Computers were fun once. They were fun in the way that rally cars are fun: for the people who got deeply into them, the real joy derived from learning how they worked.
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All My Friends Live in My Phone and So Do I
Very recently I found myself adrift, a ghost untethered from the world.
MoreA List of All Suspicious Deaths of Ferguson Activists
A string of deaths of prominent Ferguson activists and their relatives, as well as others who were murdered in a similar fashion, has left lingering questions about the circumstances. Given the recent detainment (with no justification given) of Iranian state TV journalist Marzieh Hashemi, who was working on a documentary about the murders, it’s worth […]
MoreChecked Out on the Grand Tour
by Tyler Walicek This fall saw the completion of my first transcontinental road trip: a two-month jaunt out of San Francisco that took my girlfriend and I along the snaking coastlines of Oregon and Washington and into the sylvan quietude of Vancouver, B.C., then on a cannonball run across the Midwest and the Great Lakes […]
MoreThe Ableist Logic of Primitivism: A Critique of “Ecoextremist” Thought
In his recent article for New York Magazine, Children of Ted, John H. Richardson ruminates on the recent rise of a fringe political movement centered on the writings of Ted Kaczynski, the ecoterrorist widely known as “the Unabomber.” On its face, Richardson’s article amounts to an eccentric human-interest story for a mainstream publication. Yet, in typical […]
MoreNo Apocalypse
by Michael Malloy (Twitter: @malloy_online) The world as we know it—the world of plastics, of cheap consumer goods, of the Internet—exists on a floated loan from the primordial past: a loan that has been silently accumulating interest. Our creditor, however, has not yet come to collect, and our deferments stretch on for lifetimes. We […]
MoreArt For Art’s Sake
The CIA’s Role in Promoting “Apolitical” Art by Alex Louis Musician and filmmaker Boots Riley recently tweeted: “Art for arts sake is never for arts-sake. It’s for the sake of the status quo. This is why the CIA funded Jackson Pollack” [sic]. As one might expect, this set off a swarm of tantrums from the commentariat, […]
MoreThe Big Game Theory
A bizarre and garish hunting arcade game is illustrative of our bizarre and garish system. by Tyler Walicek Recently, over a late-night drink in a generic and depopulated Seattle bar, I had a moment to myself to take in my surroundings. Beyond the pool table and the flirtatious cackling of a group of college kids sat […]
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