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POSIWID

Hold my (Stafford) Beer

What the Machine Does

Stafford Beer said the purpose of a system is what it does. Not what the charter says. Not what the judge reads before the oath. Bald fact. A better starting point than good intentions. First, one has to define the system. If you draw the box around a courtroom, you

Circuses

The number that was supposed to make you feel bad about each AI query is falling toward zero — while the total climbs, the grid strains, and the bill arrives at a house that never submitted a prompt Third in a series on how debates about scarce resources get told as

Nuts

How the almond took the blame for California's water — while a thirstier crop drank in peace, a bigger one escaped notice entirely, and in the end it wasn't guilt that moved the water at all Second in a series on how debates about scarce resources get

Dear Simon Reynolds...

You spent decades documenting histories of scenes. I spent days discovering I'd been living inside one of its footnotes. No one imposed it — that's your line, more or less, about the press cycle's self-sustaining cruelty, and I believed it right up until I

The Specimen

An essay about AI and water that spends more words taking its headline back than making it — and why that is the most honest thing about it First in a series on how debates about scarce resources get told as stories about personal guilt. You have probably met the number

Decibels As Terms and Conditions

A concert is usually where one goes to witness a musician or band perform within a set of familiar contexts: the venue, the genre, the audience, the history of the room, the price of the ticket, the acoustics, the lighting, the ritual of standing or sitting among strangers. Even when

The Morning After

Détournement, Recuperation, and the Engine That Runs on Everything The White House social media team used a Boards of Canada track in a promotional video this week. Fifteen seconds of "Deep Time" — a beautiful, shimmering piece from Inferno, the duo's first album in thirteen years — soundtracking

Job to Be Done

Boards of Canada, Talking Machines, and Domestic Bliss This is not a review of Inferno, Boards of Canada's first album in thirteen years, but I'm sure there are plenty of those by this point – hot takes and cupcakes from everyone who's been exposed to

Of Pets, Cattle, Cryptids, and Haunted Livestock

In the spirit of the finer satirists of our species, we humbly present the following modest proposal to revise the “pets versus cattle” taxonomy of modern infrastructure. The old formulation has served nobly, mostly as a blunt instrument. It has helped many organizations aspire toward automation, disposability, reproducibility, and the

There Is No Reason for This. Do Not Ask.

How a painted miniature accidentally asked a good question about why systems keep running It started with a miniature of an Ork in a Japanese school uniform. If you're not into the Warhammer 40,000 money pit… erm, hobby, that sentence needs unpacking. Orks, in this setting, are