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When shirts cost $3,500
mostlysignssomeportents: An eye-popping parable about the benefits of automation: 200 years ago, it took 479 hours worth of labor to make a shirt (spinning, weaving, sewing), or $3,472.75 at $7.25/hour. It’s one thing to heart that the automatic loom brought about a huge economic boom, it’s another thing to contemplate just how difficult material objects…
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newyorker: In this video, Richard Brody discusses François Truffaut’s 1966 film “Fahrenheit 451”: As a futuristic science-fiction film, the project opens the door to abstractions—visual as well as intellectual—that had been remote from Truffaut’s earlier films. Critics and viewers didn’t forgive him for surprising them; the film remains audaciously surprising even now.
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cinoh: artspotting: Tibetan pattern book of proportions, Leaf 5 recto, (Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles)
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If you’re of the opinion that [feminist] agenda doesn’t belong in games, then, I don’t know, read Gamespot. Gaming journalist and critic Leigh Alexander, speaking at this week’s Games Now! lecture event in Helsinki, responds to Gamergate members in the audience. (The exchange starts around 58:10): “The idea that someone can be objective when they’re…
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Gilberto Gil’s extraordinary engagement with Brazilians [2005]
mostlysignssomeportents: We arrived in the middle of a concert. Gil was asked to speak. As he went to the mic, the tent fell silent. Hundreds were packed into a tiny space. Gil began to describe the work of the Lula government to support free software, and free culture, when a debate broke out. I don’t…
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New book on ‘Design Ethnography’ by Nicolas Nova
New book on ‘Design Ethnography’ by Nicolas Nova looks good.
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Call for Papers: Extrapolation special issue on Indigenous Futurism
jhameia: Extrapolation special issue on Indigenous Futurism, edited by Grace L. Dillon, (Anishinaabe), Michael Levy, and John Rieder. In the last decade and a half, a number of scholars have explored the way that SF throughout the last century and a half has borne a close relationship to colonial, and later postcolonial history, discourses, and ideologies.…
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One Week of Harassment on Twitter
I am grateful for femfreq’s perseverance. I will continue to attempt to be a better ally. femfreq: Ever since I began my Tropes vs Women in Video Games project, two and a half years ago, I’ve been harassed on a daily basis by irate gamers angry at my critiques of sexism in video games. It…