172. INFLUENCERS - Why Violent Video Games Must Make Us More Violent

“When you speak to a classroom of teenagers about the possibility that playing violent video games might make them violent, you can immediately see the smirks and ready yourself for their knee-jerk defensiveness. After all, they are the smirks and defensiveness you, yourself, have given in response to the same suggestion your whole life…“

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93. PUNK FETISH - The Unpunk Dismissal of Digital Downloads

“punk’s rebellious spirit - punk’s philosophy - is one of questioning norms and facilitating creative expression of new modes of thought and alternative ways of living. Which brings me to my concern - punk, or at least punks of my generation or older, seem to have gotten stuck on a knee-jerk fetishisation of physical music which is blinding them to some of the merits of modern technology and digital expression.“

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73. OF NESTS AND PALIMPSEST - Am I Really Making An Aesthetic Choice?

“I have always loved chaotic collage and my childhood bedroom walls quickly became an ever-evolving palimpsest of posters, pictures, postcards, photos, and things I’d cut out of newspapers or magazines, their content adapting over the years alongside my tastes but generally maintaining the same ragged aesthetic; an aesthetic initially limited to a single cork noticeboard on a nicely painted wall but eventually sprawling out and taking over everything until, at one mad point, I was even hanging posters upside down on my ceiling, occasionally waking startled in the night as they lost their battle with gravity and came crashing down on my face.“

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67. DISPATCHES FROM THE CAVE - Why Being "Realistic" Demands The Impossible

“The pandemic has shown just how flimsy “the way things are” actually are. From basic norms of social interaction to entire economic systems, COVID-19 has unwittingly acted as the liberating hand breaking the chains of Plato’s epistemological prisoner and dragging them out of the cave and into the light…This isn’t, however, a post about the coronavirus…“

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