capitalism - Fresh Lime Soda

Pseudoscientific materials and thermoeconomics

Jul 6, 2021 6 min read

The Shycocan Corp. took out a full-page jacket ad in the Times of India on June 22 – the same day The Telegraph (UK) had a story about GBP 2,900 handbags by Gucci that exist only online, in some video…

On crypto-art, racism and outcome fantasies

Mar 23, 2021 9 min read

Analysis Op-eds Tech art criticism art patronage Beeple Big Tech Bitcoin bitcoin mining blockchain capitalism consensus algorithms crypto-art cryptocurrencies Ethereum Everydays financial transactions Metakovan Metapurse NFT non-fungible tokens power consumption proof of stake proof of work racism settlement finality Silicon Valley Sybil attack The First 5000 Days Tim Swanson Twobadour Christie's

If you want to find mistakes with something, you’ll be able to find them if you tried long enough. That doesn’t inherently make the thing worthless. The only exception I’ve encountered to this truism…

UAE's spaceflight shortcut to making history

Feb 10, 2021 2 min read

Analysis billionaire class capitalism Hope probe labour rights spaceflight UAE Hope UAE Hope mission UAE Mars mission United Arab Emirates

This post benefited from valuable input and feedback from Thomas Manuel. In an hour or so, the UAE's Hope probe, currently en route to Mars, will beam a signal to Earth about whether it managed t…

"Enough science."

Dec 15, 2020 2 min read

Science arts astrology capitalism democracy empowerment humanities pseudoscience The Guardian

Edit, 6.04 pm, December 15, 2020: A reader pointed out to me that The Guardian may in fact have been joking, and it has been known to be flippant on occasion. If this is really the case, I pronounce m…

Injustice ex machina

Jan 5, 2020 2 min read

Culture Tech anti-intellectualism artificial intelligence capitalism Cory Doctorow Evgeny Morozov globalisation machine learning middle-class aspirations nationalism populism technological solutionism

There are some things I think about but struggle to articulate, especially in the heat of an argument with a friend. Cory Doctorow succinctly captures one such idea here: Empiricism-washing is the to…

The rationalists' eclipse

Dec 27, 2019 4 min read

Culture Science Against Method annular solar eclipse BR Ambedkar Caliban and the Witch capitalism myth Paul Feyerabend Periyar pseudoscience rationalism science communication scientism solar eclipse superstitions superstitious beliefs Sylvia Federici

The annular solar eclipse over South India on December 26 provided sufficient cause for casual and/or inchoate rationalism to make a rare public appearance – rarer than the average person who had deci…

Accumulation then philanthropy

Nov 23, 2019 2 min read

Science Bill Gates capital accumulation capitalism Donald Trump income inequality Jeffrey Epstein Jim Simons philanthropy Simons Foundation wealth inequality

Peter Woit's review of a new book about Jim Simons, the mathematician and capitalist who set up the Simons Foundation, which funds math and physics research around the world but principally in the…

Exploring what it means to be big

Mar 31, 2018 4 min read

Scicomm capitalism classical physics cyclotrons Large Hadron Collider laser wakefield acceleration tabletop accelerators

Reading a Nature report titled 'Step aside CERN: There’s a cheaper way to break open physics' (January 10, 2018) brought to mind something G. Rajasekaran, former head of the Institute of Mathe…

(Untitled)

Aug 1, 2013

Uncategorized capitalism civilization

Free market capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to the rise of capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism ma…