Francis Spufford once said that Bletchley Park was an attempt to build a computer out of human beings so the credit for this metaphor belongs to him. But it can be generalised to any bureaucracy. They are all attempts to impose an algorithmic order on the messiness of the world, and to extract from it … Continue reading The Vatican is the Oldest Computer in the World
Tag: blogs
Everywhere Connected, Yet Unable To Connect
"Just as we need certain things to suck in order for others to register as cool (Beavis and Butthead, 1994, MTV), so too must we experience resistance or difficulty in order to understand the nature and depth of our own desires......Frictionless exchange almost always involves an unseen toll. One of the most insidious features of … Continue reading Everywhere Connected, Yet Unable To Connect
Blog Diet: A Starter List For Your RSS Reader (Updated Spring 2022) by Warren Ellis
"People keep asking me where I find stuff, or where to start with an RSS reader.I exported my subscriptions, and damn, there are a LOT of dead blogs out there. I’m actually shocked at how much of my list is now gone. (And how many sites have shut off their RSS!) Here is a selection … Continue reading Blog Diet: A Starter List For Your RSS Reader (Updated Spring 2022) by Warren Ellis
How-to: Be a Darknet Drug Lord
"[The advice in this article can be adapted to suit the needs of other hidden services, including ones which are legal in your jurisdiction. The threat model in mind is that of a drug market. The tone is that of a grandfather who is always annoyingly right, who can't help but give a stream-of-consciousness schooling … Continue reading How-to: Be a Darknet Drug Lord
Write: More Frequently, Less Long
"I don’t care what it is. Blog posts. Novels. Google docs. Articles. Wiki pages. Write more of them, but make them shorter."-Mike Crittenden, "Write 5x more but write 5x less." critter.blog. October 2, 2020. This is probably the best writing advice I've heard. Maybe you've noticed. I tend to write long. I'll try to make … Continue reading Write: More Frequently, Less Long
Newsletters & The Web
"My friend Lucy once told me that she falls in love with the way that someone thinks…and that’s what newsletters make possible for me; they’re a record of how strangers see the world...[But] I guess there’s something about newsletters that bugs me, and I can’t put my finger on it...[proceeds to put finger on it, … Continue reading Newsletters & The Web
Farewell to Beyond the Beyond
"It’s the writerly act of organizing and assembling inchoate thought that seems to helps me. That’s what I did with this blog; if I blogged something for “Beyond the Beyond,” then I had tightened it, I had brightened it. I had summarized it in some medium outside my own head. Posting on the blog was … Continue reading Farewell to Beyond the Beyond
5 ANTI-MANIFESTS — ALIENIST MANIFESTO
...Police-state crematoria...Cyberflesh...Life must be boring before it can be lived...Because language is the most important aspect of death, they taught themselves to amputate in silence...the hallucinated futures of a lunatic...Walt Whitman didn’t kill Che Guevara."5 ANTI-MANIFESTS — ALIENIST MANIFESTO I may not understand the words, but I get your meaning.
Cormac McCarthy’s Tips on How to Write a [Great Blog Post]
"Finally, try to write the best version of your paper: the one that you like. You can’t please an anonymous reader, but you should be able to please yourself. Your paper — you hope — is for posterity. Remember how you first read the papers that inspired you while you enjoy the process of writing … Continue reading Cormac McCarthy’s Tips on How to Write a [Great Blog Post]
45 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Blog
"Always be networking. Always." —"45 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Blog – Which You Can Use to Grow Yours to 225,000 Visits / Month, Like We Eventually Did." CodeInWP.com. April 27, 2019. Good advice if you want to drive traffic to your site, become an "influencer," make money off your blog, or … Continue reading 45 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Blog
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