absolutely.
well, that and the ways in which gerunding has been normalised

depends if you'd rather get angry notes from MR or NLR readers, but for my 2p, either way is fine. Working directly with the concept as Foster's certainly requires less expository writing in my opinion.

"idiocy of rural life" vs "isolation of rural life" on the other hand...

*I honestly can't tell if this is what ChatGPT inserts into every undergrad media theory paper, or colleagues who got PhDs 20 years ago assign a lot of Jenkins, Hall and Barthes and students try to make it work for their work without much context, but it certainly triggers my own strange nostalgia.

for reasons* I keep seeing students citing Jenkins et al on "participatory culture" and its taken me back to thinking about Larry Lessig circa 2006 and then to Aaron Swartz. The things the government hounded him to death over are now effectively standard business practices of Ai teams at big tech?

Who's writing the "From Counterculture to Cyberculture" style book on how we got from a 2000s free/remix-culture liberal dream that the Internet could break the corporate stranglehold on life to this moment of Tech Corporation actively trying to end life as we know it by seizing control of culture?

We’re not just planning for a digital future: we’re living in a digital present. How do we make a sustainable cultural memory?

@TJOwens.bsky.social & @ShannonMattern.bsky.social discuss in the #booktalk AFTER DISRUPTION.

🗓 Thurs Sept 25
🕖 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET
🎟️ www.eventbrite.com/e/1633230118...

2/2 "...With the added sophistication of television and computers, it becomes even more tempting for us to cope by staying indoors, glued to the expanding cornucopia of one-dimensional learning, and to neglect further the hard evidence which lurks all around us outside the walls."
- Grady Clay, 1979

"Cities continue to change, in response to access to and control over their energy supplies, as well as to their will to exploit and conserve. But our ability to penetrate our surroundings-to distinguish myth from reality, wish from fulfilment has only begun to cope with environmental change..." 1/2

I'm hoping for an Ai generated Orson Welles voice over that turns the entire film into a nearly three hour advertisement for Coppola branded wines.

who writes about the origins of 'data' as something a subject possess? In something like an ontological sense- in the same way that a subject (once) possessed a soul or personality, one now *has* data. Data that is to be guarded, protected or given at will? When did "my data" enter the zeitgeist?

Most reposting to remind fellow urbanists that you can now follow @city-journal.bsky.social on bluesky!

But, of course, also welcome more feedback on the editorial.
(come for the great art by Tom Schofield, stay for the non-sequitur, but maybe prescient, swipes at Larry Ellison and Oracle)

anyone reach out to poor Cameron Dixon, the civil servant at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency which apparently had to register the .gov domain?

get.gov/posts/2024-0...

semi-annual reminder that Japancakes covered My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" in its entirety and it is perfect.
All instrumental (the cellos and pedal steels work brilliantly) so you can put it on at your place of work today!

japancakes.bandcamp.com/album/loveless

will you be taking questions about that beautiful Rural Electrification Administration book cover?

wonder what the mood is over at the NSA this week.

Hot off the digital press, my article in @antipodeonline.bsky.social on Social Reproduction and the Housing Question onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I understand why a studio went with "A Complete Unknown" as the recognisable lyric to use as a title for a Dylan biopic, but I still think they should have gone with "Short Pants Romance."

Looks like there's a new influx of folks here, so boosting the @cplusc.bsky.social starter pack- if you want to hear about the best new ideas in climate and economic policy in the coming dark days, this is a good place to start! bsky.app/starter-pack...

The wonderful editors at City asked me to write an editorial for the latest issue. Here is what I had to say about Cities, computation and capitalism:
doi.org/10.1080/1360...

(lots of wonderful work I didn't have space to cite, but I hope it furthers a broader conversation and action)

Israeli forces have bombed another UN-run school in southern Gaza, killing at least 20 displaced Palestinians sheltering in the building, witnesses told Al Jazeera.

🔗: aje.io/otnvl2

Admittedly, I may be more excited about the "Drawing and Dreaming" version, but both look like absolute treasures.
a4kids.org/book/city/

and just when I was starting to think tech might just save us.

but also:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkg3...
"your job is to build and maintain those robots"

also with the "how are AIs *actually* going to remake cities" piece I'm working on this week :|