Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える
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Cyborg
I was started down the train of thought to think about the idea of a cyborg based on a discussion with my colleague Colleen with regards to the changes we had been seeing in consumer behaviour. With that in mind I thought I would reflect on what my understanding of what cyborgs are. Cyborg in…
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Æon Flux + more things
Æon Flux Æon Flux’s surprisingly modern take on privacy and surveillance. | Slate – Æon Flux was a name that I hadn’t heard in at least a decade. I remember when it came out as I enjoyed cable TV in our student house. It fitted in with the wider cyber culture. The big beats and…
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East Asian beauty standards + more things
East Asian beauty standards YouTuber aini does good videos that analyse sociological and cultural subjects, so a video on East Asian beauty standards was inevitable. East Asian beauty standards are even more important now due to the cultural impact that they have: China Huawei building automotive ecosystem without making its own cars – Huawei will…
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Francis Fukuyama + more things
Francis Fukuyama Political theorist and author Francis Fukuyama wrote one of the mis-understood books of the late 20th century. The End of History (And The Last Man) was written in 1989 and the title and Francis Fukuyama have been misquoted endlessly since. At the 2020 Munich Security Conference Francis Fukuyama gave a talk about the…
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NORA
Last week I heard the acronym NORA mentioned with regards the kind of problems that Microsoft’s algorithm could solve. NORA stands for no one real answer. Search is already pretty good at answering questions like ‘what time is it in Osaka’ or ‘what is the capital of Kazakhstan’. In the mid-2000s NORA would have been…
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Patriotic Alternative + more things
Patriotic Alternative Patriotic Alternative wasn’t a name familiar to me when I first heard about them instigating a riot in Liverpool on Saturday night. It doesn’t take that much to create a ruckus in some of the poorer areas of Liverpool. I wasn’t particularly surprised by the burnt out police van; it sounds like a…
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Forbidden movies
The phenomenon of forbidden movies The idea of forbidden movies for me started as a child. There were certain things that I wasn’t allowed to watch. It was a big deal when I was allowed to stay up late on a Saturday night and watch Starsky & Hutch. But movies that appeared later, were never…
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Illicit finance + more stuff
Illicit finance RUSI put together a great presentation on the nature of illicit finance from the perspective of terrorism and terrorist states including Russia and the People’s Republic of China. The foundations of illicit finance seems to be the offshore financial structures that were build up by the United Kingdom in the post-war period to…
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How an oil refinery works + more things
How an oil refinery works Periscope films have managed to digitise a treasure trove of content. Back when I worked in an oil company I had to read around to learn how an oil refinery works a macro-level. I wish that I had seen this film How an oil refinery works put together by Shell…