Rogueish

01/26/12

For some reason I have spent much of today gripped by a terrible desire to make a “Lena Katina? I barely know her” joke.

(Source: lena-katinas-world)

10 notes

01/25/12

I am so far advanced that I will have finished with the whole economic crap in 5 weeks’ time. And having done that I shall complete the political economy at home and apply myself to another branch of learning at the Museum. It’s beginning to bore me.

― Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1851

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@spitzenprodukte: the finest products

01/25/12

spitzenprodukte:

On FULL COMMUNISM-
cursory notes on the evolution of a memetic non-demand.

You hear it everywhere, these days, if you walk within a certain activist milieu. It’s a token demand, a given. FULL COMMUNISM- I wouldn’t get out of bed for anything less. It’s a joke, a dumb joke. It’s a communist meme. Like all good memes, it’s pretty much devoid of meaning, in terms of content. But its use denotes something else– a Zizekian uber-demand, a demand which goes beyond. FULL COMMUNISM is both a lack, in a very real sense, but also a pointed lack, its very meaninglessness a cry for meaning.

On the fascinating UK ultraleft meme economy.

52 notes

The rise of the data self < PopMatters→

01/25/12

But my suspicion is that this runs deeper — that data collection is slowly becoming the ideological basis of the self — what we regard as the real self. Data is the authorized way to pursue self-knowledge in the networked society; the other means are suspicious, deluded or outmoded.

I wonder how new this is, or maybe better, how different relationships to data are leading to different forms of the data self. So much of what Foucault writes about is to do with how data structures subjectivity (population statistics and governmentality, physiology and disciplinarity, confessional discourses and sexuality); but it’s certainly possible that these various relationships between data and the self are getting reconfigured by the internet generally, and social networking in particular.

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Genetics & Politics

From Ned's Review of Lana Del Rey→

01/25/12

nedhepburn:

It sounds like the soundtrack to a James Bond movie directed by and starring twelve year olds.

In more “descriptions of Lana Del Rey that I think are supposed to be critical but which make me want to listen to her album” news.

(The rest of this review is sort of positive-ish although in the rather patronising “it’s for tween girls so let’s lower our standards” genre, of which I am not a huge fan).

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What is Google taking when it takes our data? › Voyou Desoeuvre→

01/25/12

A lot of concerns about “privacy” seem to be objections simply to the fact of Google tracking data, to the idea that our behavior can be quantified and mathematized. The concern, that is to say, is about privacy in the sense of our true, innermost, self, our bourgeois subjectivity. Or, to put it another way, people are worried about technology stealing their souls.

In which I try and figure out why people are so bothered about a minor technical change to Google’s privacy policy.

1 note

NeLAnnderthal

It's Official: Google Is Evil Now→

01/25/12

nelannderthal:

Guess I have a reason to switch to Bing now.

Microsoft’s privacy policy is down right now, but according to the version in Bing’s cache, Microsoft has exactly the same policy people are freaking out about: they record information from different products and services (including what you search for), and combine that information together.

6,974 notes

katherine st asaph

01/25/12

The songs come off like 15 different variations on a drunk chick at the bar trying to convince someone to come home with her.

I misread this as claiming that each song sounds like 15 different variations on a drunk chick at the bar, which actually isn’t entirely inaccurate and is an aesthetic I could kind of get behind.

(Source: stereogum.com)

lana del rey

10 notes

Average Is Over - NYTimes.com→

01/25/12

But the one thing we know for sure is that with each advance in globalization and the I.T. revolution, the best jobs will require workers to have more and better education to make themselves above average.

“The way to succeed is to be above average. Therefore, we must make sure that everyone is above average.” Thomas Friedman’s extraordinarily marketable skill is his ability to say things that are both tautological and self-contradictory (that is, ideological) with a straight face.

11 notes

PANDA THE ROBOT

It's Official: Google Is Evil Now→

01/24/12

bellafaim:

In a radical privacy policy shift, Google announced today that it will begin tracking users across all services—email, Search, YouTube and more—sharing information with no option to opt out. The change was announced in a blog post today, and will go into effect March 1.

In an entirely non radical privacy policy shift, Google announced that it would continue doing what it had been doing previously. Tracking users across Google’s different services has been in their privacy policy since 2005:

When you sign up for a Google Account or other Google service or promotion that requires registration, we ask you for personal information (such as your name, email address and an account password). For certain services, such as our advertising programs, we also request credit card or other payment account information which we maintain in encrypted form on secure servers. We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services.

6,974 notes