Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
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This week’s post follows on from last Thursday’s look at the selfie culture found within coffee shops of a certain standard.
Trying to account for what I witnessed, I was stuck by the notion that many of my fellow citizens seek refuge in new and improved realities. And these realities are socially and digitally engineered according to criteria that remain opaque to mere humans – including, arguably, the IT whiz kids responsible for the tech underlying these new cognitive dimensions. … Read more
Last week Jack got some much-needed exercise while negotiating Bangkok traffic en route to a rendezvous with Hippolyte Lafleur, a.k.a. Izzy Scoop.
Selections from Arno Petty’s Intelligencer and Weekly Gleaner
Alternate universe #1
Cutsie coffee shops: Where do they all come from?
After many years in the trendy Ari Samphan area, I’ve moved to quite another flavor of Bangkok neighborhood. Like Ari, however, this one comes replete with fashionable coffee shops, and, as with the Ari area, the trendier the physical plant the cuter it is – the more it’s garnished with flounces and flowers and filled with comely young ladies dressed to the nines and brandishing camera phones. … Read more
Last week Jack returned home after having his best pipe and his typewriter all shot up, and drank too much with some of Mu’s relatives, bisnet associates and assorted hangers-on. This week he cures his hangover en route to Shaky Jake’s in search of expert advice regarding his current situation.
Selections from Arno Petty’s Intelligencer and Weekly Gleaner
It’s nice to see Joe Biden tackling so many urgent issues right out of the starting gate, for one thing issuing executive orders that veer away from the previous administration’s willful abdication of any responsibility, past, present or future, for climate change.
It’s also encouraging to see him elevate his top science advisor to cabinet rank.
True or false? Respect for the authority of those with specialized training and experience is declining in inverse proportion to increasing respect for authoritarian … Read more
Last week we met Mu and learned the key to her libido. This week we meet all of her household, including a distinctive rhythm section and Mu’s sister, Bia.
Selections from Arno Petty’s Intelligencer and Weekly Gleaner
Digital social networking can sometimes resemble pandemic STD, harmful to individuals and groups everywhere. Digital echo chambers and the silo effect — too often products in part of deliberate manipulation — can divorce us from realities we might hold in common and, instead, set us at each other’s throat.
But while the relatively privileged classes allow themselves to be distracted, refracted and dangerously abstracted as they retreat into digital parallel universes, the truly disadvantaged of this world, denied the money … Read more
In line with much of the general population, I rarely get a full night’s sleep. Neither a world leader with many responsibilities nor a wild young lad, I’m merely an insomniac.
Recently – yielding to Sara’s incessant advice that I buy a smartwatch – I acquired an Apple Watch. I still wasn’t too sure why I’d done this, so Sara badgered me into loading it with an app called AutoSleep. Every morning, now, AI independently verifies my latest defeat in … Read more
This week we meet Mu, Jack Shackaway’s love interest and chief cultural critic.
Selections from Arno Petty’s Intelligencer and Weekly Gleaner
Thirteen days, one likes to think, till Trump vacates the White House.
Do we need a word to describe the irrational fear of Trump policy initiatives (otherwise described as ‘tweets’)? Maybe not. Many will argue that such a fear is in no way irrational, and hence may not be properly described as a phobia.
Whatever. I hereby present three phobias I’ve mentioned before on this blogsite. All three, I’ll suggest, will serve while we search for a more Trump-specific expression.… Read more
