Caffeine Supplements and the Scientism of Fitness Marketing
An essay written under the influence of English Breakfast Tea
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Hard Times
"'Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to
Intelligence Testing Regimes and Theatrics
How shall we ever conceive However express a new idea If we are bound by the categorization That delivered our problem to us In the first place ? -- Stafford Beer How do you measure intelligence? You take a tape measure, wrap it around someone's cranium, and jot down
Doctored Doom
Back in 2012 ("the year of the MOOC"), when Sebastian Thrun told Wired that, in fifty years time there would only be ten universities left in the world and his startup Udacity had a chance to be one of them, I admit, I laughed. I laughed and laughed
Authoritarianism and the Agentic State (and Andor)
(I'm interested in questions of agency, and how automation and artificial intelligence serve to undermine this – agents versus agency, I've previously argued. It's particularly striking that "agents" are being marketed as an easy way to optimize one's personal and professional