At Pluralistic, Cory Doctorow has some thoughts. “When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by […]
Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker is finally getting a release date in the US. “Described as an absurdist semi-autobiographical dark comedy, The People’s Joker stars Drew as a painfully unfunny aspiring clown called Joker the Harlequin. Her character grapples with her gender identity while unsuccessfully attempting to join […]
The Gutter’s own Carol Borden has some thoughts on the new documentary about the world of carpet manufacturing, Carpet Cowboys (USA, 2023)! “Emily McKenzie and Noah Collier’s documentary Carpet Cowboys looks at the world of carpeting—especially the carpet used in big, almost anonymous spaces. If you have ever […]
At The New Yorker, Inkoo Kang writes about turbulence in Hollywood. “To survey the film and television industry today is to witness multiple existential crises. Many of them point to a larger trend: of Hollywood divesting from its own future, making dodgy decisions in the short term that […]
“Today, we’re policed by ads. Targeted with products and services by what a surveilling algorithm “thinks we’ll like.” But people usually know when they are being sold to and when they are being solicited for money. It is not always so clear, however, when a company is seeking […]
BBC Archives shares a 1991 report on “Nintendo and the Japanese Software Boom”: “Gordon Brewer visits Japan, to gauge the state of the Japanese software industry. With Nintendo having already demonstrated that a Japanese corporation can quickly dominate the US video games software market, should the big American […]