Neither a Solid, Nor a Gas, Nor a Liquid (Nor Glass)

1. Filed under: there is so much more happening in the world than our keyhole perspectives permit us to see.

"The sheer size and scale of many of these urban expansion projects is almost inconceivable: Shanghai increased its area sevenfold in 15 years; Dantu, a new area of Zhenjiang, is 748 km2 (about half the size of Greater London). Chenggong in Kunming is 461 km2; Tianjin’s Binhai New Area comes in at 2,270 km2; and Changzhou, in Jiangsu province, has one new district the size of Los Angeles and is working on absorbing another which is larger than London."

2. "Buttons aren't actually easy to use." — a button historian.

"In the late 19th century, the Eastman Kodak Company began selling button-pushing as a way to make taking photographs easy. The company’s slogan, “You press the button, we do the rest,” suggested it wouldn’t be hard to use newfangled technological devices. This advertising campaign paved the way for the public to engage in amateur photography – a hobby best known today for selfies. Yet in many contexts, both past and present, buttons are anything but easy. Have you ever stood in an elevator pushing the close-door button over and over, hoping and wondering if the door will ever shut? The same quandary presents itself at every crosswalk button. Programming a so-called “universal remote” is often an exercise in extreme frustration. Now think about the intensely complex dashboards used by pilots or DJs."

3. If police services are systematically biased, what do we expect of the data that they generate?

"[T]he DOJ offered its blistering analysis: during the period of its review from 2005 onwards, the NOPD had repeatedly violated constitutional and federal law. It used excessive force, and disproportionately against black residents; targeted racial minorities, non-native English speakers, and LGBTQ individuals; and failed to address violence against women. The problems, said assistant attorney general Thomas Perez at the time, were 'serious, wide-ranging, systemic and deeply rooted within the culture of the department.' Despite the disturbing findings, the city entered a secret partnership only a year later with data-mining firm Palantir to deploy a predictive policing system. The system used historical data, including arrest records and electronic police reports, to forecast crime and help shape public safety strategies, according to company and city government materials."

4. Mindy Seu's cyberfeminist index, an extremely interesting project.

"I’m currently working on a printed publication, a la the Whole Earth Catalog and the New Woman’s Survival Catalog, that will provide an overview of cyberfeminism and its evolution into networked feminism (like social media activism), xenofeminism (gender-abolition), and posthumanism/bio-hacktivism. It will be a resource guide: a sampling of books, essays, collectives, online communities, hackerspaces, etc."

+ Here's her site.

5. It's not easy to write an encomium to liquified CO2, but hey, here it is.

"When you raise the temperature of carbon dioxide above 88°F and pressurize it to above 73 atmospheres, it shape-shifts into a sort of mystical, other-worldly state where it is neither a solid, nor a gas, nor a liquid (nor glass). Supercritical CO2 is heavy like a liquid but as penetrating as a gas, with surprisingly weird and useful properties. In this artificially created condition, CO2 can be very useful stuff. Mainly, it’s a safe alternative to a lot of conventional solvents, particularly organic solvents, many of which, apart from being dangerously flammable, are carcinogenic, cause birth defects or are toxic to the central nervous system. A lot of them also, if they haven’t polluted the land or water, or caused a giant explosion, are volatile compounds which evaporate into the atmosphere and cause all kinds of trouble."

+1: I've become increasingly interested in how the production mechanisms for platforms inform their politics. Here, I'm looking at YouTube and conspiracism.

"Inside each content creator on the late-capitalist internet, a tiny flame of conspiracy burns. The internet was supposed to set media free, which, for the content creator, should have removed all barriers to fame. But it did this for everyone, and suddenly every corner of the internet was a barrel of crabs, a hurly-burly of dumb, fierce competition from which only a select few scrabble out. They are plucked from above by the recommendation algorithm, which bestows the local currency (views) for reasons that no one can quite explain. This, then, is the central question of the failing YouTuber: Is my content being suppressed?"

YOY: The part I love of this video is how material data was in the punch card era.