Model Metropolis
On the dark side of SimCity: “Behind one of the most iconic computer games of all time is a theory of how cities die—one that has proven dangerously influential.” #link
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Tag: society
On the dark side of SimCity: “Behind one of the most iconic computer games of all time is a theory of how cities die—one that has proven dangerously influential.” #link
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“Carrie Lam is a Theresa May-like figure who seems to thrive on a performative stoicism, standing firm in the face of a self-inflicted crisis that a more capable politician would simply wiggle out of. She is a tragic figure in the same way that a pilot who points the nose of the aircraft at a mountain and refuses to listen to the passengers screaming for her to turn is a tragic figure. You puzzle over her motives while also wishing that someone, anyone, would throw her out of the plane.” Great analysis here on the protest the west has seemingly put behind it (because if the markets are untroubled…). #link
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Essentially the story of a journalist hung out to dry by their publisher. Shameful behaviour altogether. #link
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Jes Skolnik’s talk from this year’s MoPOP Pop Conference. #link
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Here’s a damning indictment of the smug, self-absorbed, ignorant parasitism of libertarian ideology as professed by the odious likes of Peter Thiel, Elon Musk et al. It’s a tad overwritten (self-indulgent meta-analysis and all) but worth the read nonetheless. #link
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A sobering contrast to my previous link. #link
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This article really bothers me, and I think it’s mostly to do with couching the movement to repeal the 8th Amendment in terms of ‘debate’ as suits the No side, which in the case of this campaign should be taken in the competitive sense: an art of persuasion, irrespective of facts.
The author, Colleen Brady, writes: “At the minute I feel as though there is no unbiased information readily available for the public. From where I am looking, the information available to people is either swayed one way or another.”
The thing is, this isn’t the Lisbon Treaty. It’s a healthcare issue, it’s a social issue, an awkward negotiation of complex needs. Looking for some kind of elusive, singular ‘objectivity’ is a fool’s errand. There are facts about particular aspects, and there are lies and untruths about same, and that’s all we can deal with. More…
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Needless to say they’re trying the same bull today, with similarly underhanded tactics. Don’t fall for their lies. (As an aside, kudos to what's usually a male-oriented website for publishing this; patriarchy affects us all.) #link
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“[Sensitivity] to the experiences of racial, cultural, sexual, and gender identities besides one’s own, and [being] attuned to the injustices that shape our world” is the best definition I’ve seen for the concept of ‘woke’, and this is a good essay about the related societal shift. It is ironic, though, that this article has since been affected by the very shifts it examines; that section about Aziz Ansari’s Master of None doesn’t sit too comfortably today next to the excoriation of Louis CK. #link
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More takedowns like this, please. See also: Doug Moore of Pyrrhon picks apart the faulty logic in Matt Harvey of Exhumed’s recent defence of those who claim to be apolitical while profiting off hate speech. #link
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An eight-year-old blog post on the impossibility of reasoning with those who hold their positions in bad faith: the racists and anti-choicers and the like who whinge about being on the wrong side of history in the making. But it’s even more relevant today, as upsetting as that is to accept. #link
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When you combine the refusal to take anything seriously with the refusal to take responsibility, this is what you get. #link
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It’s a trap I’ve fallen into myself, which is ridiculous because what am I if not working class? Also, like McInerney I wouldn’t articulate any distinction between the working class and the ‘lumpenproletariat’, since there’s as much if not more absence of consciousness to be found in the middle and upper classes. #link
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This is it. I can’t say it was my experience growing up as such, but one can’t avoid these toxic sentiments in society at large. #link
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MeFite kliuless put in the hard work, here. #link
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Read the whole thing. Patriarchy, toxic masculinity, etc is so fucking damaging, and men who can’t see that simply haven’t been looking hard enough in that particular closet. I guess for me, the door’s always been slightly ajar, not conforming as I do to the usual ‘man’ stereotypes (I don’t drink beer, I don’t like football, etc). But I still raise my voice and yell when I’m frustrated by situations, and I do not like that about myself. #link
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“When it makes sense,” said Stephanie McMahon. Which translates as ‘probably never’. We’re not even at the point where, say, ‘Darren Young’ the on-screen character reflects Darren Young the real-life openly gay man. Maybe that’s because he’s a face? WWE tends to save its better character development for its heels. #link
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O’Toole writes in The Irish Times about the persistence of Ireland’s “moral-industrial complex”. He doesn’t specify it (he brings up housing the homeless in hotels) but what is direct provision if not a direct descendent of the 20th-century institutionalisation of Catholic Ireland’s ‘undesirables’? We still have such a long way to go in this country. See also: Emer O’Toole in the Guardian on the church (and their apologists) feigning shock over the Tuam Babies scandal. #link
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When I worked at a certain major music and video retailer that no longer exists (the French would call it Ashemvay) I was more than happy to help people with disabilities who were shopping for items we stocked on the first floor, which was only accessible by stairs (not because it was a listed building, which is was and is, but because Irish disability legislation doesn’t mandate the provision of a lift). That’s not the point, of course; I’m sure they’d much rather have shopped for themselves. But we rarely think of that. #link
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Another one from the summer backlog, here; an emotive story from someone who was in the thick of that nightmare. #link
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So this David Starkey thing, eh? “The whites have become black”? Enoch Powell? “Jamaican patois”? That old chestnut about black people who ‘sound white’? Really?
Anyway, one thing that stands out for me from the Starkey furore — apart from the hole-digging of an ignorant man, desperately out of touch and out of depth — is the hypocrisy of his subsequent evisceration by the media. That’s the very same media that can’t look at itself and see how it fuels the very stereotypes that influence such misleading attitudes.
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