Blockchain: organised crime’s new best friend
The way security is secured in the information age is fundamentally changing. Traditional methods of policing are increasingly ineffective in dealing with the capabilities of organised crime, with groups taking advantage of novel forms of financial technology (fintech) to evade detection and disruption. Blockchain in particular is a technology exploited...
‘Responsibility to protect’?
‘Responsibility to protect’ underpins the international system of states, and now it is crumbling. How we respond to humanitarian crises in Syria, Yemen, and now Myanmar is crucial for maintaining the United Nations’ credibility. I n 2011 the Qaddafi regime began waging indiscriminate war against its own people in one...
Palm Springs
A person reliving the same day over and over again in an endless purgatorial cycle doesn’t exactly sound like cinematic catnip but, rather fittingly, it’s been repeated enough times to make something of a cottage industry. According to the confusingly actually existent Wikipedia page, a ‘list of films featuring time...
Are we sleepwalking into a Nuclear Apocalypse?
Douglas Adams (author and satirist, 1952-2001) wrote, “it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end.” For some years now the state of international nuclear arms control is one best described as experiencing freefall. Perhaps it was American hawks abandoning the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty...
Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139
Back in the far distant past people wore top hats and monocles, teens used phrases like “straight from the fridge daddy-o” unironically, and videogame companies designed their consoles to have backwards compatibility. Those days are long since passed (though perhaps ‘daddy-o’ is due a comeback). The huge companies who hoard...
Voyage into the Known: Back to Roots
Emerging from lockdown, the masses are mapping out their summer migrations. People aren’t flying far from the nest, only venturing as far as British seaside hotspots and highland peaks. In our last February edition, Theo Dingwall-Main wrote on the loss of cultural authenticity and restricted travel as a result of...
The Rise of NFTs: Originality in the Digital Age
In 1935, when Walter Benjamin analysed the theoretical implications of reproducing a work of art in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he would not have believed what the next 85 years would bring. Benjamin’s work is a rumination on the nature of value; a social...
Promising Young Woman
This last year film director Emerald Fennell made headlines for being one of three women nominated for Best Director at the 2021 Golden Globes, an award only five women have ever been nominated for in the history of the Awards (Emerald Fennell would go on to win the Oscar for...
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut
There are few tropes that are as well-worn as the alcoholic detective. Even uncontacted tribesmen in the Amazon basin could probably get the gist of “he’s a loose cannon…but he gets results.” Huge swathes of our televisual landscape and innumerable forests worth of pulp literature are dedicated to badge carrying...