shrinkrants:

Self-Help or Self-Governance? The Role of the Psy-Disciplines in Neoliberalism

Rodríguez’s research raises critical questions about the intersection of psychology, self-help, and societal norms within neoliberal cultures. He highlights the potential risks in the ongoing shift towards individualizing well-being and mental health, opening a fascinating conversation on the evolving influence of self-help and wellness technologies on our personal and communal lives.
“The neoliberal ideal is a subject that can ‘look after’ themselves, especially insofar as prevention is concerned, without needing to resort to public-state institutions (for health, unemployment, social services and so on).”
While the arena of mental health, self-help, and wellness have historically been seen as objectively separate from political debates, this research points to a historically significant connection between ideals of health and well-being and political and social structures. Specifically, Rodríguez points to mainstream psychology’s tendency towards the individualization of suffering and health being co-constituted within a neoliberal society.

zzkt:

mostlysignssomeportents:

Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

But it was too late: semiconductor production had taken a serious body-blow, and when Big Car placed its new chip orders, it went to the back of a long, slow-moving line. It was a catastrophic bungle: microchips are so integral to car production that a car is basically a computer network on wheels that you stick your fragile human body into and pray.

The car manufacturers got so desperate for chips that they started buying up washing machines for the microchips in them, extracting the chips and discarding the washing machines like some absurdo-dystopian cyberpunk walnut-shelling machine:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/desperate-times-companies-buy-washing-machines-just-to-rip-out-the-chips-187033.html

These digital systems are a huge problem for the car companies. They are the underlying cause of a precipitous decline in car quality. From touch-based digital door-locks to networked sensors and cameras, every digital system in your car is a source of endless repair nightmares, costly recalls and cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/quality-new-vehicles-us-declining-more-tech-use-study-shows-2023-06-22/

Keep reading

jareckiworld:

Simon Laveuve — « Station 9/4» (sculpture, made of plastic, wood, aluminum, paper, fabric, twine, 2019)

vizreef:

Apple Inc./Kodak QuickTake 100 // Digital Camera (US, 1994)

whitepeopletwitter:

shittymoviedetails:

Made a Barbenheimer sticker to celebrate Barbenheimer day!

link on my redbubble

ready for barbenheimer?

nurstein-deactivated20240206:

zegalba:

Blue Lava at Kawah ljen volcano, Indonesia

blueiscoool:

Crater Collapses in Iceland’s New Volcano Spewing Rivers of Lava

Iceland’s newest volcano, located in the Reykjanes peninsula, began erupting in early July, 2023. Now it’s throwing “spatter bombs’” of molten lava.

In Iceland, the world’s newest “baby” volcano is throwing a temper tantrum: It’s overflowing and spewing “spatter bombs,” or blobs of molten lava, into the surrounding crater.

The volcano formed on July 10, when an underground eruption opened a 1.7-mile-long (2.7 kilometers) fissure in the ground of Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula, southwest of the capital, Reykjavík. Leading up to this event, the region experienced a “seismic swarm,” during which more than 7,000 earthquakes shook the area starting on July 4, according to a statement from the Icelandic Met Office. Lava trickled from the fracture in the ground, and seismic activity decreased for about a week after the eruption.

On July 18, however, “there was a major shift in the vent activity overnight,” according to a post on the Facebook page of Rannsóknarstofa í eldfjallafræði og náttúruvá (the Laboratory of Volcanology and Natural Hazards), a research group from the University of Iceland. At around 11:30 p.m. local time, “the crater filled up to the brim with lava and the fountaining began to throw spatter bombs well beyond the crater rims.” Roughly three hours later, a small opening formed, allowing lava to spill over the crater, the post added. By early morning, a section of the crater’s rim had collapsed, releasing a river of lava to the north and west. The lava pouring from this crater is roughly 2,192 degrees Fahrenheit (1,200 degrees Celsius), the scientists said.

“The crater became unstable and collapsed,” Ingibjörg Jónsdóttir, an associate professor of geography at the University of Iceland and member of the lab, told Live Science in an email. “It had built up quite fast and it was filling up with lava on the inside, causing pressure to the walls. Not unusual as such but spectacular and of concern since there were people quite close by not long before it happened (in a closed area though).”

On the opposite side of the volcano, lava flowing south stalled and eventually crusted over, the post said. The area around the eruption site is uninhabited, and the eruption does not currently post a risk to infrastructure, according to the Icelandic Met Office. Firefighters in Grindavík, a nearby Icelandic town, have already contained the potential spread of fire from July 18’s lava spill, and they no longer believe it is a threat, according to the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service.

Scientists will continue to monitor the volcano’s behavior because future lava flows could ignite wildfires and reduce air quality in the region, according to the statement. Watch a livestream of the volcano on the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service’s website here.

By Kiley Price.

nobrashfestivity:

Unknown, Cyanotype, 1924

nobrashfestivity:

Louis Darget (French, 1847-1923)
Fluidic Thought-Image Photography
1896

(L)  Inscribed: “Photo… of thought. Head obtained by Mr. Henning, having a plate wrapped in black paper on his forehead while he played the piano. Opposite him on the piano was a portrait of Beethoven. Could this be that [same] portrait reflected by the brain onto the plate through the black paper. Comt. Darget”

® “Photograph of a Dream: The Eagle.” 25 June, 1896.
Inscribed: “Obtained by placing a photographic plate above the forehead of Mme Darget while she was asleep.”

Artblart

noosphe-re:

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.

Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto), Chapterhouse: Dune, by Frank Herbert

noosphe-re:

The Penrose diagram for the formation and evaporation of a Schwarzschild black hole including annihilation and entanglement transfer at the singularity—in this figure we also explicitly show the transfer of entanglement from the particles at the singularity and the particles outside the event horizon. A Hawking pair is created on the Cauchy surface Σ an and evolves to the surface Σ d where the ‘int’ Hawking particle has now reached the singularity at r = 0. Another Hawking pair is created at Σ b and evolves to finally reach the Cauchy surface Σ g where the ‘int’ particle is at the singularity. Now the two ‘int’ particles are both at the singularity where they are forced to interact with (for example) two entangled matter particles as shown in figure 3©. Consider the following three particular wavy lines: the black wavy line at r = 0 between Σ d and Σ g , the blue wavy line between the green particle at the singularity on Σ d and the black particle on Σ g , and the red wavy line between the green particle at the singularity in Σ g and the black particle on Σ g , these wave lines represent the dynamics of figure 3©. In the Penrose spacetime diagram. Finally, assuming full annihilation of the two green particles at the singularity, which happens for ω″ = ω′ = ω, we end up with two ‘out’ entangled particles on Σfin. (Akil, Ali & Dahlsten, Oscar & Modesto, Leonardo. (2021). Conditional entanglement transfer via black holes: restoring predictability. New Journal of Physics. 23. 10.1088/1367-2630/ac17bb.)

toyastales:

There is beauty in the murky depths of nature!

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

ms-cellanies:

:

‘People need to be riled up’: meteorologist names US heatwaves after oil and gas giants

CHEERS TO GUY WALTON FOR “OUTING” THE FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES

From the article:  

Walton has devised his own criteria for named heatwaves in the US, based on duration and extremity, on a one to five scale similar to hurricanes. Heatwave Chevron is classed as a four and is “historic”, Walton said. The meteorologist said he has a list of 20 oil and gas companies – including Exxon and Shell – for upcoming heatwaves and will turn to coal companies if he runs out of names.

OUTSTANDING MOVE

Y'all know what to do. Use Walton’s naming system. Make it catch on.

skeletalhistory-deactivated2024:

The Cramps , Human Fly short film by Alex de Laszlo (NYC, 1978)

rjzimmerman:

Extreme Heat Shows the Need for Another Kind of Climate Investment

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The good news: Investors are spending big on climate projects. Global warming helps make periods of extreme heat more frequent, longer and more intense, and it will continue getting worse unless humans essentially stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, scientists say. Venture  investing in climate tech has boomed since the post-Covid recovery began (though it fell, along with venture funding overall, in the first half of the year). And global public and private investment in climate finance, on projects ranging from decarbonizing architecture and transport to developing renewable energy initiatives, more than doubled from 2011 to 2021, to an estimated $850 billion, according to the Climate Policy Initiative, a nonprofit climate advocacy group. (It will top $1 trillion with the passage of the Biden administration’s sweeping climate bills, the European Union’s Green Deal and China’s low-carbon development initiatives announced in its latest five-year plan.)

The less good news: Addressing a source of the problem is no longer enough. The effects have arrived, and extreme heat has become the leading weather-related killer in much of the world. Some cities, homeowners and businesses are investing in low-cost hacks that can help make cities, which tend to absorb and re-emit heat more than natural landscapes, more bearable in the summer. Painting roofs white or another reflective color can cool structures down, making air conditioning units as much as 15 percent more energy-efficient, said Jane Gilbert, the chief heat officer of Miami-Dade County, Fla. Homes and businesses have to be retrofitted to stay cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, and Miami-Dade has secured millions in federal funding for that plan. Planting trees also adds vital shade to reduce temperatures on city streets.

Only about 7 percent of climate finance is focused on adaptation efforts, according to the Climate Policy Initiative. But more investors are becoming interested, Ms. Tonkonogy said. Last year, the organization partnered with LightSmith Group, a private equity firm, on a $186 million climate fund designed to finance climate resilience projects that could help communities adapt to and withstand the kinds of the extreme weather events that have become so frequent this summer.

rjzimmerman:

The Financial Sector Is Failing to Estimate Climate Risk, Say Two Groups in the UK - Inside Climate News

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

The financial sector is failing to grasp the risks of climate change to their customers and to the global economy, which has undercut the urgency to take action to reduce those risks by cutting emissions.

This is according to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in the United Kingdom, which issued a report this month, “The Emperor’s New Climate Scenarios.” The authors argue that many financial institutions, including pension funds, are relying on economic models that underestimate the cost of climate change.

Also this month, the environmental nonprofit ClientEarth said the world’s six largest accounting firms are failing to deliver on commitments to improve how they address climate change in financial reporting.

The actions from the actuaries and ClientEarth are part of a growing push from advocacy groups and regulatory agencies to increase disclosure of climate risks and improve the quality of forecasting of potential damages. 

The underlying idea is that corporations and pension funds are not adequately accounting for how climate change may harm their performance, which means customers and shareholders don’t know how much they are at risk, including the risk that their retirement funds could lose substantial value.

ClientEarth has been engaging with accounting firms for years to improve the ways that the companies calculate and report the climate risk of their clients. The nonprofit sent a letter in May that goes into detail about the concerns. This week, ClientEarth expressed disappointment that the firms do not seem to be serious about taking action.

“Investors are repeatedly demanding better reporting,” Robert Clarke, a lawyer at ClientEarth’s London office, said in a statement. “Standard setters have already said this is required under existing rules. It’s time the auditors step up and drive the necessary change.”

kafkasapartment:

Trees-Clouds, Texline, Texas, 2009. Mitch Dobrowner. Ink pigment print.

foone:

Does anyone remember what happened to Radio Shack?

They started out selling niche electronics supplies. Capacitors and transformers and shit. This was never the most popular thing, but they had an audience, one that they had a real lock on. No one else was doing that, so all the electronics geeks had to go to them, back in the days before online ordering. They branched out into other electronics too, but kept doing the electronic components.

Eventually they realize that they are making more money selling cell phones and remote control cars than they were with those electronic components. After all, everyone needs a cellphone and some electronic toys, but how many people need a multimeter and some resistors?

So they pivoted, and started only selling that stuff. All cellphones, all remote control cars, stop wasting store space on this niche shit.

And then Walmart and Target and Circuit City and Best Buy ate their lunch. Those companies were already running big stores that sold cellphones and remote control cars, and they had more leverage to get lower prices and selling more stuff meant they had more reasons to go in there, and they couldn’t compete. Without the niche electronics stuff that had been their core brand, there was no reason to go to their stores. Everything they sold, you could get elsewhere, and almost always for cheaper, and probably you could buy 5 other things you needed while you were there, stuff Radio Shack didn’t sell.

And Radio Shack is gone now. They had a small but loyal customer base that they were never going to lose, but they decided to switch to a bigger but more fickle customer base, one that would go somewhere else for convenience or a bargain. Rather than stick with what they were great at (and only they could do), they switched to something they were only okay at… putting them in a bigger pond with a lot of bigger fish who promptly out-competed them.

If Radio Shack had stayed with their core audience, who knows what would have happened? Maybe they wouldn’t have made a billion dollars, but maybe they would still be around, still serving that community, still getting by. They may have had a small audience, but they had basically no competition for that audience. But yeah, we only know for sure what would happen if they decided to attempt to go more mainstream: They fail and die. We know for sure because that’s what they did.

I don’t know why I keep thinking about the story of what happened to Radio Shack. It just keeps feeling relevant for some reason.

neil-gaiman:

neoretrobibliomartini-x:

rhp162:

When my kiddo finally decided (at age 20) that it was time for (most of) his enormous Lego collection to go, it was a gut-wrenching moment for me (goodbye childhood!). However, we used this service, which was simple and hassle-free.

This is wonderful to know.

mostlysignssomeportents:

Baby shark

joelpersels:

strawlessandbraless:

Blanket Octopus ( Tremoctopus violaceus) - so unbothered they’re actually immune to jellyfish stings

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss

📷 source: X

roguetoo:

The Restart Page - Free unlimited rebooting experience from vintage operating systems

henk-heijmans:

Boy looking at UFO graffiti, 2009 - by Joe Baran, American

silver-tongues-blog:

silly-jellyghoty:

cop-disliker69:

oligopspispopd-deactivated20221:

alarajrogers:

jv:

guerrillatech:

This is akin all those hot takes about the 2k bug being an hoax:

“Remember when they told us every computer was going to crash on 1/1/01 and there would be chaos and then nothing happened?”

Yeah, I remember. And I’m sure every programmer and sysadmin that contributed the billion person/hour global effort to prevent it also remembers.

No one talks about acid rain anymore, either. And that’s a very good thing.

see also START and START II, which significantly reduced nuclear stockpiles

International cooperation is actually so effective that most people don’t even notice it happening, and then erroneously believe it can’t solve anything.

Fixing issues before they develop into actual disasters is such an underappreciated thing it hurts at all levels.

We don’t talk about acid rain because there isn’t any more acid rain because when acid rain started happening and we learned that the cause was mainly sulphur oxide and carbon monooxide from car exhausts, countries all over the world made it a law that car companies had to produce cars that produced less exhaust with better effectivenes (burning the fuel all the way to CO2 instead of the halfassed CO) and oil rafineries to remove the sulphur from the gasoline in the first place.

We don’t talk about computers crashing because of the turn of the century, because thousands of programmers worked very hard to write updates and patches for Every Single Program humanity as a whole used back in 1999 and then somehow managed to failtest, distribute, and update every single device and system, be it an online or offline one before the midnight of the 1st january of 2000.

On a much smaller scale, no one ever commenta or notices cleaners and housekeepers doing their job - be it at home or at whole buildings - because they always make sure that there’s nothing to notice. But don’t be fooled - at any point of your life you are one week of them not doing away from swimming in trash and filth with nothing to eat and nothing clean to wear. Only then you would notice.

Now it’s time to do that thing again and make sure that we don’t kill our whole planetary ecosystem within the next century.

nightmaresfrom-93-deactivated20:

dreaminginthedeepsouth:

The Fascinating Science of How We Think Not with the Brain But with the World

“Our minds are all threaded together,” the young Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary at the dawn of the twentieth century, “and all the world is mind.” Meanwhile in Spain, the middle-aged Santiago Ramón y Cajal was birthing a new science that would both greatly expand our knowledge of the brain and greatly contract our understanding of the mind. Over the following half-century, in its noble effort to render comprehensible what William James so poetically termed the “blooming and buzzing confusion” of consciousness, neuroscience would become both a great leap forward and a great leap back. Again and again, its illuminating but incomplete findings would be aggrandized and oversimplified into a sort of neo-phrenology that incarcerates some of our most expansive human experiences and capacities — love and grief, intelligence and imagination — in particular brain regions with particular neural firing patterns.

A century later and half a millennium after Descartes cleaved Western consciousness into its disembodied dualism, we are only just beginning to reckon with the growing understanding that consciousness is a full-body phenomenon, perhaps even a beyond-body phenomenon.

In  The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain ( public library),  Annie Murphy Paul explores the most thrilling frontiers of this growing understanding, fusing a century of scientific studies with millennia of first-hand experience from the lives and letters of great artists, scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs. Challenging our cultural inheritance of thinking that thinking takes place only inside the brain, she illuminates the myriad ways in which we “use the world to think” — from the sensemaking language of gestures that we acquire as babies long before we can speak concepts to the singular fuel that time in nature provides for the brain’s most powerful associative network.

[MORE]

retroscifiart:

Black & white illustrations by Moebius‬. Reference for some of these: doorofperception.com

kittesencula:

fuzzkaizer:

VOCU - VTE-1600B Compact Tape Echo

“Vocu stands for Vivid Output and Capable Unit. This is a super refined and compact tape delay that can be used in any application, from studio to live guitar rigs. This is one of my pride-and-joy pieces, and it sounds and works incredibly well.

• Uses the same loops as the Roland Space echo range – a full-featured tape echo that’s a little larger than a paperback book
• Accepts mic, instrument or line level inputs
• Has three delay modes – 150-600ms, 500-1600ms and a combination of both short and long heads
• Has mix/wet-only switch (Cue/Mix Direct) for use as an effects send, controls for Master Level, Echo Time, Repeat and Echo Level as well as Input Level
• The Flutter control engages an off-centre plastic wheel against the pinch roller to introduce extra warble and a sense of a machine that’s less well-maintained
• The Flutter lever will rest at the mid point giving a sensible level of flutter, or can be pushed harder against the pinch roller for momentary bouts of extra warbliness)
• POWER: It takes a 15v centre positive power supply ”(not included – enquire, we may have something suitable)“

cred: reverb.com/TRS - Music Equipment Trading Post

Liquid Lens Rupture

geometrymatters:

Spiral-shaped signals of neural activity - Geometry Matters

The human brain is a complex organ responsible for various cognitive functions. Scientists from the University of Sydney and Fudan University have made a significant discovery regarding brain signals that traverse the outer layer of neural tissue and form spiral patterns. These spirals, observed during both resting and cognitive states, have been found to play a crucial role in organizing brain activity and cognitive processing.

The research study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, focuses on the identification and analysis of spiral-shaped brain signals and their implications for understanding brain dynamics and functions. The study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans of 100 young adults to observe and analyze these brain signals. By adapting methods used in understanding complex wave patterns in turbulence, the researchers successfully identified and characterized the spiral patterns observed on the cortex.

Our study suggests that gaining insights into how the spirals are related to cognitive processing could significantly enhance our understanding of the dynamics and functions of the brain. —Associate Professor Pulin Gong

Continue reading

wolfliving:

*Stacey Higginbotham:

Plan for death at the start of building your connected device

This week brings us the tale of yet another connected device that may become a useless chunk of scrap because its maker is going out of business. In this case, the affected product is the VanMoof e-bike, which cost buyers $5,000 and requires a working app for many of the bike’s functions.

VanMoof has gone into the Dutch version of bankruptcy, and owners of the product have been told that if the servers shut down, users will have no way to get a security key needed to operate many of the bike’s features. For buyers of connected products ranging from home hubs to sous vide cookers, the end of a connected device company often means the end of a functioning product.

But it doesn’t have to be this awful for consumers. By planning for failure, startups (and large companies like Amazon or Facebook) can kill their products better.

— VanMoof promises users that their connected bikes will get “better and better” through software updates. What they don’t advertise is that without their servers, the bike may not even work. 

In the case of VanMoof, a rival connected e-bike company has created an app that will purportedly unlock the VanMoof bikes and provide some functionality. But relying on a competitor to hack together some software to control a device made by another vendor and hoping that, as a user, you can download your security key from the VanMoof servers, before those servers are shut down, is not an ideal scenario.

It’s the equivalent of rushing through your home as a fire burns, trying to grab people, pets, important papers, and heirlooms while the walls crumble. Folks with go bags or even a sense of what to take first are in a far better position if the worst happens. And by now, every company building a connected device needs the equivalent of a go bag or at the very least, a checklist.

Design your business model and device differently

It starts with the design. When designing the physical product, designers need to think about graceful degradation. Put physical buttons on the device. Make sure the product functions as a bike, a juicer, an oven, or whatever else even if the additional software-based or connected features fail. When it comes to making decisions about the chips and services used in the hardware, consider ongoing maintenance costs and how long that hardware will get necessary security updates.

I’ve seen startups run into issues after they chose a hardware platform that required monthly payments that increase based on the device usage. One of the services was associated with keeping the product secure, so the device makers had the best goals in mind but realized too late that the initial design decision obligated the company to make annual payments that would rise as more people purchased and then used their devices.

Understanding the cloud architecture costs and decisions made when designing a connected device’s software and apps also matters. Unlike with dumb physical hardware, where calculating the cost of any good sold ends once the device ships, connected devices have a continued ongoing cost more commonly associated with software.

Software gets around the ongoing cost issue by charging a licensing fee or charging for the product as a service. Hardware providers are trying to offset these ongoing costs with additional subscriptions, or in some cases by offering a SaaS model and throwing in hardware as part of a monthly fee.

Escrow funds, not source code

Any company selling a connected device should understand the monthly cost of supporting their servers and apps, and set aside the appropriate dollar amount to ensure that service providers get paid — even if the company runs into trouble. This means any product must have an escrow account with six months or a year of ongoing device upkeep fees allocated.

This means if a startup goes out of business, it has the funds to notify people that the connected device they spent money on will stop working after a set time as opposed to it just going dark on a random April night (hello, Insteon). Bigger companies may not need an escrow fund, but they, too, should kill underperforming devices with long lead times, discounts, and perhaps even refunds. Those strategies should be part of any initial planning for a new connected device.

We often hear of users demanding that companies put the source code for connected devices into escrow, so that users can run the code on their own servers and keep their devices operational. This strategy has three flaws.

The first is that the source code may not be enough to keep a device running, especially as elements like secure keys and certificate subscriptions are now part of connected device designs.

The second flaw is that not every device is suited for some side-loaded open source code. Meta is dealing with this as it pulls back from its connected video calling device, the Portal. Because the Portal has mics and cameras that a hacker might want to use to spy on users, Meta doesn’t want to let people load software onto the product to keep it working; it represents too much risk. Instead, it would rather shut the devices down entirely.

Third, opening up the source code may make it easy for a select few to run a device, but it’s not something the average consumer can or will do. So when thinking about escrow, think funds, not source code.

Learn from Amazon and others

There are examples of device deaths done right. Amazon actually provided a good example this year when it announced the end of its Halo wellness devices. Amazon made the announcement in April, and told consumers that 96 days later, the devices would stop working.

This was a relatively short amount of time, but Amazon promised full refunds to anyone who had purchased any of the devices within the prior 12 months, and immediately stopped charging subscription fees associated with Halo devices. It also refunded any unused prepaid Halo subscription fees and said it would delete all data associated with Halo devices without requiring the consumer to take any additional steps.

The ease of refunding customers was only available to Amazon because it was the sole retailer of the Halo devices, which isn’t the case for every connected product, but it was clear that Amazon wanted to get out of the Halo business quickly and with minimum consumer fuss. So it made it incredibly easy.

Finally, Amazon asked consumers to ship the devices back for recycling and made doing so free, going far beyond what most companies are doing with dead devices.

Amazon isn’t the only company that has ended its products’ lives early. The German company behind the Neato vacuum, Vorwerk, shut down the vacuum division this year. But it also said it would maintain a staff of 14 people for the next five years to ensure the security and functioning of the vacuum’s cloud software and app. Vorwerk further said that it would provide replacement parts for up to five years.

I’ve seen other companies kill their devices with discounts for replacement gear and long lead times. That’s the bare minimum, but it can still be frustrating for consumers. For example, I own a set of Arlo connected video cameras I purchased in the summer of 2017. In January of this year Arlo said it would classify my cameras as end of life as of April 2023, which means they would lose several features including free 7-day video storage, firmware updates, and email notifications.  

Since the reason I chose those cameras in the first place was that I got a 7-day window to see my videos before they were deleted without paying for a subscription, I was nonplussed about the short notice but frustrated that my cameras were going to die after only six years. After user outrage, Arlo said that it would continue with 7-day video storage until July 2024 before the devices would lose security updates and that functionality. For me, this means the cameras I paid $220 for in 2017 would work for seven years.

Expiration dates for smart devices

Had I know all of that when buying my cameras, I probably would have been fine with the cost/benefits tradeoff. But others may not have. And this is why in today’s day and age, every single device should come with a guarantee that the device will work for a set number of years.  

Companies can go beyond this date, but they need to establish minimums that get displayed on the box and for devices sold online, at the point of sale. This includes how long the device will get new features and essential security updates. The UK has already enshrined this idea in regulations that will take effect in April next year.

Additionally, knowing the device expiration date can help companies figure out how much money they should set aside in the escrow accounts. It also ensures that when another company buys a connected device maker, they can’t simply shut it down. Connected devices have been around long enough that we understand the challenges they pose for business models and the challenges that result when those companies fail.

It’s past time we start doing something about it.

brucesterling:

*The good old days of the 1990s

funstealer:

Undercover S/S05
“But Beautiful II" Jacket

thevaultoftheatomicspaceage:

yodaprod:

obsessedbyneon:

More systematic ceilings for the heavenly 80s office feel. 1989

Scan

1989

modokix:

“kaminari-zoku”
collage on notebook series 010
handmade collage + painting
IG = @tsunzaku

hecckyeah:

HEY. @staff LISTEN TO US. LISTEN TO YOUR LOYAL USERS. DO. NOT. I REPEAT DO NOT GIVE THIS SITE AN ALGORITHM.

the whole reason I use this site is because it DOESNT have one. PLEASE. I swear you will lose half your user base if not more.

vizreef:

Metasonix // Vacuum Tube Drum Machine (US, 2010)

Recommended reading: it’s quirky manual PDF

cherrie01:

roguetoo:

A new color view of Mars

chaotic-archaeologist:

Material culture of the modern archivist: various tools and trash that result from the processing of archival papers.

ALT

1) Label maker, 2) label backing, 3) coated paper clips, 4) rubber bands removed from documents, 5) metal fasteners removed from documents, 6) sticky notes used as temporary box labels, 7) scissors , 8) box label sticker backs, 9) X-Acto knife, 10) archival letter opener, 11) mechanical pencil, 12) staple remover

txttletale:

one of the core premises of marxism–in fact, i’ll argue thecore premise, if you had to boil it down to just one thing–is that advancements in the means of production will create both a proletarian class and the means by which it can liberate itself. marxism is not about ‘undoing’ capitalism, and if you believe your socialism or anarchism is about ‘returning’ to something, you’re not left-wing, you’re nakedly reactionary. the marxist view on new divisions of labour and extractive technologies should not be ‘how do we destroy or revert this’ but ‘how do we turn this advancement towards our common betterment and liberation’

dasswerke:

Roland, “The Synthesizer” Electronic Music Guide, 1978.

dasswerke:

Naumann Architektur, FNP Architekten, S(ch)austall am Eiswoog, 2004.

meme-conservation:

nudityandnerdery:

saunteringvaguelydownwards:

gallusrostromegalus:

dasklaus:

squareallworthy:

eightyonekilograms:

keynes-fetlife-mutual:

regexkind:

sufficientlylargen:

regexkind:

Erogenous Bosch or whatever his name is

That’s the one who got really turned on by nearly everything. I think the artist was Heterogenous Bosch.

That’s the one who was composed of many different organs, none of them alike. You’re thinking of Endogenous Bosch

That’s the one whose artistic process took place wholly within his body. I think you meant Androgynous Bosch.

That’s the one of indeterminate sex. I think you meant Cacophonous Bosch.

No, that’s the noisy one. You were probably thinking of Euphonious Bosch.

That’s the brass instrumentalist. You’re thinking of Hierophanius Bosch.

No, that’s the one that’s a physical manifestation of the diveine, you’re thinking of Eponymous Bosch.

That’s the one who named all his paintings after himself. I think you mean Anonymous Bosch.

No one knows who that one is.

Conservationists here at the TACM are excited to learn that a novel subspecies of the Scalia Variations meme has been found thriving in the wild.

vizreef:

NTT MC-D8 Public Telephone (Japan, 2016) // CGI model by Mei Kawamura

xenobotanist:

Be like birds

Learn

Adapt

Defeat

postpunkindustrial:

Just a reminder.

Kraftwerk took cycling very seriously

Podcast special: Did Cycling Kill Kraftwerk?

emmaklee:

grabsomeironmeat:

• Shimoo Design

staff:

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we’re using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

1. Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.
2. Provide high-quality content with every app launch.
3. Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.
4. Retain and grow our creator base.
5. Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.
6. Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Keep reading

oneheadtoanother:

memewhore:

garyrea:

thejaymo:

How did anyone ever live without the Internet?

Then, there is the “internet”- lower case, low quality junk. Noise masquerading as information. Swipes pretending to be infatuation. Passive misery making its rounds in the name of social awareness and disconnect fronting for social connection. And I am no longer on the “internet.” I am no longer interested in who said what to whom and who didn’t, all the while life passes by nonchalantly; time is indifferent to your spending habits. It is important, for our own sanity, since being online is as necessary to modern living as the toilet we piss in, we make the distinction between time spent on the Internet and time spent on the “internet,”

Internet vs “internet,” and non-internet things | mehretbiruk.com

The Filmomat is made out of laser-engraved acrylic glass. The process chemistry (500mL for each step) is stored in three acrylic tubes, which are surrounded by a waterbath. A powerful 650W heater brings the waterbath to the correct temperature. Throughout the whole developing process, the waterbath is kept at the desired temperature with 0.1° accuracy. Two digital temperature sensors inside the waterbath and the chemistry tanks ensure accurate temperature measurement.

Separated from the heated waterbath is an additional 7-liter containing compartment, which is used for rinsing steps. Just fill it with fresh water and the Filmomat will draw from it for rinsing and presoaking. No water connection is required for using the Filmomat! The water in this rinsing-reservoir is not heated - you have to fill it with pre-warmed water beforehand. Used water is drained through a waste-water-exit, which can be connected to a discharge or a collection tank by a hose. Used chemicals are always pumped back into their storage tubes. Once you are finished, you can drain them by the drain valves on the right of the machine.

The film is loaded into a processing tank, which can be connected to the Filmomat by a spill-free quick coupling.

(via https://www.filmomat.eu/filmomat)

visenyaism:

ALT

View on Twitter

we made it yall you are speaking to tumblr user uncredited author of unconfirmed viral post

nihillist-blog:

Repo Man (1984)

whybray:

carvalhais:

The engineers of the future will, in a few keystrokes, fire up an instance of a four-quintillion-parameter model that already encodes the full extent of human knowledge (and then some), ready to be given any task required of the machine. The bulk of the intellectual work of getting the machine to do what one wants will be about coming up with the right examples, the right training data, and the right ways to evaluate the training process. Suitably powerful models capable of generalizing via few-shot learning will require only a few good examples of the task to be performed. Massive, human-curated datasets will no longer be necessary in most cases, and most people “training” an AI model will not be running gradient descent loops in PyTorch, or anything like it. They will be teaching by example, and the machine will do the rest.

Matt Welsh. 2023. “The End of Programming.” Communications of the ACM 66 (1): 34-35.

brucesterling:

mitchipedia:

via

itscolossal:

Miniatua Puts the Micro in Microchip in a Series of Remarkably Precise Miniature Computers

:

Optics & Photonics News - Image of the Week

kiki-de-la-petite-flaque:

David Lynch with Harry Dean Stanton

richardjager-deactivated2023072:

So, here are just a few the things that have happened this week so far

• Orcas are attacking yachts off the coast of Spain.
• Approximately 600 refugees drown in a maritime disaster off the coast of Greece. Grecian Coast Guard observes the carnage without intervening.
• Billionaires undergo journey to the Titanic in DIY death trap built in the backyard of a guy who reads Ayn Rand unironically. Everyone on board dies when the “submersible” suffers a catastrophic implosion.
• The UPS Teamsters Union has voted to go on strike, demanding, among other things, AC in their trucks. Something I’m sure you thought they already had. Because why don’t they? UPS is one of the largest private postage companies in the United States, and if the strike proceeds long enough, it will undoubtedly be broken up by the Biden Administration, much like the potential railway strike last December.
• The trial date of former US President Donald Trump is set for August. This is the trial for the nuclear docs he was storing in his shower in Florida, not the shady business practices he held in New York or the election fraud he is currently being investigated for in Georgia.
• Hunter Biden, son of current US President Joe Biden, has plead guilty to tax crimes and the illegal possession of a firearm. Opponents of the administration are displeased because Hunter was not charged with what they feel is his most serious offense, being Joe Biden’s son.
• Violence has once again broken out in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, as Israeli settlers and the IDF continue to encroach and commit atrocities further and further into Palestinian territory.
• SCOTUS delivers a highly unexpected ruling on how the Biden Administration has handled immigration, allowing it to proceed with its current plans. This is one in a serious of surprisingly progressive decisions by the court. Given the far right leanings of the court, many suspect this is simply SCOTUS setting up to cushion the blow of their inevitable strike down of a student loan forgiveness program. A decision that will likely be just as unpopular as the strike down of Roe v Wade, given the millions of US citizens relying on said debt forgiveness.
• Speaking of which, this week is the one year anniversary of SCOTUS striking down the court’s previous decision on Roe v Wade, robbing women across the US to the right to an abortion.
• Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk set up a cage fight.
• A massive gas explosion rocks central Paris, injuring dozens of people.
• Logitech suffers an immense blow to its stock prices as a result of their involvement in the Titan Comedy. Conversely, independent video game Iron Lung sees its downloads shoot through the roof.
• The Wagner Group, a Russian PCM with numerous neo-nazi affiliations, launches and then abandons a coup against Russian High Command in a period of less than 36 hours.

Can someone PLEASE explain to me just what the fuck is going on here?

leben-bleibt-wirr:

Rumgeblödel. Oder: Fotos mit einem der besten Models der Welt. Oder: wer einen tieferen Sinn oder Inhalt in den Bildern sehen will (und kann), darf das auch gerne. Oder: Mann mit Glas. Hinter Glas. Blumenvase. Mann mit Vase. Ohne Inhalt.

joeinct:

Migrant Juke Joint, Camden, North Carolina, Photo by Alex Harris, 1972

elodieunderglass:

sufficientlylargen:

elodieunderglass:

stylo-90:

elodieunderglass:

2glassesofchianti:

beemovieerotica:

tinynebula:

:

:

:

:

:

If there was so much discourse over continents I CAN’T WAIT for you to find out about the south-up map

This is what the earth looks like btw

Ok stop answering to this post with “up and down don’t matter in space” cause north and south are not up and down and their orientation doesn’t matter on earth either. This is legit what the earth looks like.

Well somebody has a superiority complex. Go to a shrink or something idk

Just in case you’re feeling important, our planet also looks like this:

“there’s a very good reason we humans tend to draw north up maps” yeah, colonialism and eurocentrism. anyway south up rules

mapposting time post your favorite projections mine is the pierce quincuncial!!!

My favorite map of Earth

Oh I feel like I should be able to fold up the pierce quincuncial into a sort of ball

did someone say fold up into a ball

Waterman is clearly the best except it needs the origami gold lines

@elodieunderglass You might appreciate Jarke van Wijk’s “Unfolding the Earth: Myriahedral Projections” (site, pdf)

I really like these, thank you. Although my first comment was tongue-in-cheek, I like origami and seaming and folding. These are very satisfying.

gehe-lihiyot-androgynos-varda-d:

Progress Towards Full Recognition of Indigenous Sovereignty in Australia

Cheers and joy as South Australia becomes first state to legislate Indigenous voice to parliament

I am excited and overjoyed to tell you that two days ago my state became the first jurisdiction in Australia to legislate an official First Nations voice to parliament (an official advisory body to review, discuss and advise on the drafting of legislation and legislation that is before parliament) to put the Indigenous Peoples in the room and make their concerns known as part of the political process.

We cannot stop here.

Australia has no treaties with any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Nations, no state or territory has treaties, the Crown has made no treaties. This needs to change.

The sovereignty of the First Nations Peoples of this continent is not recognised in our constitution. This needs to change.

In South Australia, today, recognising the right of First Nations Peoples to be consulted directly and in person on the processes of government is a victory. It is also a mile marker on our journey to true recognition of rightful Indigenous sovereignty and not an end in itself.

Soon we will have a referendum to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Federal Parliament in our constitution, I am confident we will do the right thing as a nation. But you need to be talking to your friends and your family, your coworkers. Be vocal about your intentions to vote yes, be vocal and visible in your support for The Statement From The Heart.

The next question for us is the question of a Republic. Here I give an opinion. We should largely devolve the powers of the Governor General to the Chairperson of the Indigenous Voice. If we are to keep the functions of our political system largely consistent (as I expect to be the majority preference), the symbolism inherent in parliament asking permission of a first nations quorum for permission to form government or call elections is a powerful one. A new constitution is also clearly an opportunity to recognise indigenous sovereignty over this land and should not be squandered, we need to be calling for it, all of us.

Know who’s country you’re on. I am writing from Tarndanya Wama (Plains of the Red Kangaroo, also known by the colonial name Adelaide Plains) the lands of Kaurna people. Sovereignty never ceded.

(this really is directly talking to non-Aboriginal folks)

postpunkindustrial:

neon-wonderlands:

hellsgate-roadhouse:

A Distorted Reality is Now A Necessity To Be Free (2019), Amir H. Fallah.

ftftftftftftftftf:

Richard Deacon, Body of Thought 1987-1988

rjzimmerman:

Is Kelp the Next Ocean Hero? Only if We Can Protect It. • The Revelator

Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:

“Kelp” is a loose designation that encompasses roughly 100 species of brown seaweeds that grow in the cool waters along nearly one-third of the world’s coastlines. The thick algae form underwater forests, providing food and refuge for numerous animals, as well as numerous environmental benefits.

Kelp forests are one of the “most widespread and valuable marine ecosystems on the planet,” according to a United Nations Environment Programme report released in April.

New initiatives aim to tap these resources. But before we can reap the benefits, we need to ensure kelp forests aren’t destroyed.

Kelp has been applied as fertilizer, eaten as food, and used medicinally by coastal peoples for thousands of years. Now researchers are beginning to tally more of its environmental benefits.

Kelp provides habitat and food for ocean dwellers like abalone, lobsters, crabs, octopuses, fish, sea otters, sea lions and whales. It also helps reduce damage from storms, stores carbon, produces oxygen and reduces nutrient pollution in the ocean.

A new study in  Nature  Communications found that kelp forests contribute about $500 billion globally to fisheries production, carbon capture, and nutrient-pollution reduction, which can help limit toxic algal blooms and improve water quality. When it comes to mitigating climate change, the researchers estimated that kelp forests sequester nearly 5 megatons of carbon from the atmosphere annually. That’s roughly the emissions from burning 2 billion gallons of gasoline.

myhouseidea:

Voss House by @alex_nerovnya

Get Inspired, visit www.myhouseidea.com

activitesparanormales:

interzone / point of no-return 2023

enki2:

memewhore:

bookofkhidr:

A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well—this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection, and of sociality as a whole.

— Ursula K. Le Guin, from The Dispossessed

proustiansleep:

“They don’t write text; they cook up intensities. They don’t theorise; they secrete, datableed.”

— Mark Fisher, Writing Machines

certainwoman:

some interesting sight and sound top 10 lists

Cheryl Dunye

Joanna Hogg

Lucile Hadžihalilović

Hong Sangsoo

Isaac Julien

Guy Maddin

Nina Menkes

Isabel Sandoval

Alice Rohrwacher

Athina Rachel Tsangari

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

memewhore:

video link

pangeen:

“ Adrenaline “ //  ©  Austin Tucker

Original Audio

mitchipedia:

thevaultoftheatomicspaceage:

yusix13:

fashionlandscapeblog:

Gehry Partners

Fondation Louis Vuitton, 2014

Source

musicktoplayinthedark:

Merzbow - Frog

roguetelemetry:

ilikeit-art:

Murmurations are large groups of starlings that fly in mesmerizing patterns in the sky. It is thought that these formations offer protection from predators, as it is difficult for a predator to single out one bird from the large group. It is not fully understood how the individual starlings are able to navigate without colliding with each other.

I remember reading a study about birbs that apparently they have magnetic sensitive bacteria on their brains and it was supposed that might influence their ability to navigate massive distances and fly in the dark, or upside down with no bearing.  That movement seems less influenced by predation than just, weird northern lights type fluid dynamics or electro-magnetic wave motion.  I prefer to think things so beautiful are based on the cosmos and not fucking survival “eat or be eaten” capitalistic concepts.

blnxpc:

ジャズ喫茶METRO

Jazz Café METRO

via TorrentFreak

escuerzoresucitado:

mcnutcase:

mrdsc1010:

sandmandaddy69:

A biblically accurate fire hydrant

Be Not Aflame