Matt Colquhoun's Blog, page 69
August 19, 2020
Under Examination
In the UK over the last few weeks there has been an outcry over the decision to use “an algorithm” to decide the exam results of students whose school year was disrupted by Covid-19. (There are few things more insidious in the 21st century than a nondescript algorithm.) Whereas previously, in extenuating circumstances, a student’s “predicted grades” have been used when an exam or a course cannot be completed, this year, for reasons unknown, predictions are being sidestepped in favour of algorith...
August 16, 2020
August 14, 2020
Dream Meridian (Remastered)
I recently shared a version of this photograph that I’ve had floating around various hard drives since 2008. It was taken by my dad somewhere along the old Hull and Barnsley Railroad and I have always found it to be the most magical picture, capturing some dream vision of my adolescence.
Much like last time, this post is just an excuse to share a newer version of this same photograph. I emailed my Dad the other day and, on a whim, asked if he still had the original negative in his possess...
August 13, 2020
Accelerate the Metaverse: Epic Games and the Networked Individual Mindset
When Mark Fisher introduced his “Postcapitalist Desire” class to Apple’s Ridley Scott-directed “1984” Superbowl commercial in late 2016, he did so to pinpoint the moment that a new vision of the future was emerging.
That advert, he explains, would “seed the idea of many of the tropes that are now … standard in our imagining: the idea of top-down, bureaucratic control systems versus the dynamism of a kind of networked individual mindset.”
Epic Games — the company responsible for the i...
August 12, 2020
Assessed
I had a mental health assessment yesterday — I’m fine; I’m just looking for support on the NHS that isn’t CBT — and it was sort of disappointing.
I’ve written quite openly about my mental health escapades before but it has been a while. I gave an account of my bad run-ins with mental health professionals in Egress — from a shockingly inept school councillor to being patronised by GPs and having two pretty useless rounds of talking therapy — and I blogged about my triple chronotherapy when dea...
Le Voyageur
Shout out to Simon Sellars for posting this on Twitter the other day, I’ve been bumping it all week: Richard Pinhas’ short-lived band Schizo, with guest vocals from Gilles Deleuze reading aloud from Nietzsche’s The Wanderer.
Pinhas has an incredible back catalogue of music and he seems to have single-handedly kept the Continental philosophy publishing industry afloat. Whilst he is best known in philosophy circles for his recordings of Deleuze’s lectures, available at webdeleuze, I was r...
August 11, 2020
A Postcapitalist Battle of the Sexes
One of the comments that came up persistently following Aly’s reading list — and even in a comment on my own post [since deleted] — is that reducing accelerationism to some battle of the sexes is reductive and lame.
I’m not sure what those people think they are defending in saying this. If I was to emphasise Alex Williams’ original communist inflection on accelerationism, would these same commentators decry the reduction of accelerationism to the class struggle?
On Twitter, @CmonNowGir...
August 10, 2020
Cyberfeminist Beginnings, Cyberfeminist Ends
Beginnings
My mind is elsewhere as of late, but it would be remiss of this blog to witness some accelerationist drama on Twitter and then let it go unacknowledged.
okay fine I went and did it. would love to prepare supplementary material for this eventually!
— aly (@distortjp) August 8, 2020
But for now, consider this my contribution to The Pseud Question—a unitized reading list of Accelerationism & the inhumanities. Hope you enjoy!https://t.co/YrxdrTXkHQ
Aly recently posted an accelera...
August 9, 2020
No Nature, Not Ever
Nature is not a place to visit. It is home. #GarySnyder
— Life Quotes (@RTLifeQuotes) August 4, 2020
I’ve been thinking a lot about this Gary Snyder quotation recently and how it has been bastardised to become some generic caption for an inspirational poster in your dentist’s waiting room.
In every instance it is shared online — search “Gary Synder” on Twitter and 75% of tweets are replicating this line and anchoring it down with hashtags — it seems to invert its own logic by setting up a...
