Daniel Rourke /stream

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In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. In each pair, one note…

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Star Trek was one way of dealing with the social anxieties of the 1960s. Since sci-fi mirrors the present, ecological collapse requires a new dystopian fiction Build an imaginary world in…

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Millions of years ago, a few spiders abandoned the kind of round webs that the word “spiderweb” calls to mind and started to focus on a new strategy. Before, they would…

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“I use bits and pieces of others’ personalities to form my own,” Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain once wrote, wisely demonstrating that cutting and pasting from pop culture always makes for more…

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Science fiction tells us that a change in a past event, caused by the intervention of a time traveler, will open up a parallel timeline that leads to an alternate present.…

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Outraged headlines erupted when students launched a campaign to challenge the great western philosophers. We went to the source of dissent – London’s School of Oriental and African Studies – to…

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When we think of powerful goddesses, the names of Athena, Artemis, Isis, or Kali may come to mind. Much less known, however, particularly to the Western world, are the names of…

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In 1984, the philosopher Aaron Sloman invited scholars to describe ‘the space of possible minds’. Sloman’s phrase alludes to the fact that human minds, in all their variety, are not the…

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In central London this spring, eight of the world’s greatest minds performed on a dimly lit stage in a wood-panelled theatre. An audience of hundreds watched in hushed reverence.

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Midway through the first of five recent matches between Lee Sedol, a top-ranked professional Go player, and AlphaGo, a computer program conceived by Google DeepMind, an odd thing happened: Lee’s jaw…

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Sarah Perry is a contributing editor of Ribbonfarm. Nouns for human beings – “people” or “person” – conjure in the mind a snapshot of the surface appearance of humans. Using nouns…

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An Open Access anthology edited by Matteo Pasquinelli forthcoming (Fall 2015) for Meson Press, Leuphana University Lüneburg.

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas…

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As the film writer Anne Billson has pointed out most critics were wrong about John Carpenter’s The Thing when it was first released in 1982. In general they hated it and…

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In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. In each pair, one note…

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Star Trek was one way of dealing with the social anxieties of the 1960s. Since sci-fi mirrors the present, ecological collapse requires a new dystopian fiction Build an imaginary world in…

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In 1815, 15 years before he made his most famous print, The Great Wave, Hokusai published three volumes of erotic art. In one of them there is a woodcut print known…

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“I use bits and pieces of others’ personalities to form my own,” Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain once wrote, wisely demonstrating that cutting and pasting from pop culture always makes for more…

Bookmark

Outraged headlines erupted when students launched a campaign to challenge the great western philosophers. We went to the source of dissent – London’s School of Oriental and African Studies – to…

Bookmark

When we think of powerful goddesses, the names of Athena, Artemis, Isis, or Kali may come to mind. Much less known, however, particularly to the Western world, are the names of…

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Throughout history, the world’s greatest minds have been obsessed with immortality. The scientists and entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley are no exception “I’ve already lowered my biological age and upgraded my IQ,”…

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In central London this spring, eight of the world’s greatest minds performed on a dimly lit stage in a wood-panelled theatre. An audience of hundreds watched in hushed reverence.

Bookmark

Midway through the first of five recent matches between Lee Sedol, a top-ranked professional Go player, and AlphaGo, a computer program conceived by Google DeepMind, an odd thing happened: Lee’s jaw…

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The appetite for antiquities from the Middle East is being met by Isis, who are looting ancient sites with the market in mind. It’s imperative that this demand – from the…

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Sarah Perry is a contributing editor of Ribbonfarm. Nouns for human beings – “people” or “person” – conjure in the mind a snapshot of the surface appearance of humans. Using nouns…

Bookmark

An Open Access anthology edited by Matteo Pasquinelli forthcoming (Fall 2015) for Meson Press, Leuphana University Lüneburg.

Bookmark

As the film writer Anne Billson has pointed out most critics were wrong about John Carpenter’s The Thing when it was first released in 1982. In general they hated it and…

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It is not pleasant to contemplate the thoughts that must be passing through the mind of the Owl of Minerva as the dusk falls and she undertakes the task of interpreting…