Salton Sea – From Miracle in the Desert to Environmental Disaster
A fleet of wrecked fishing boats, tinted orange with rust. Fleets of RVs decaying into rusted ruin; roofs caved in with no walls to hold them up. Pieces of debris scattered everywhere, remnants of life littered across the dusty, barren land. Bombay Beach: a community abandoned, leaving a ghost...
Hades
There are plenty of things that videogames do well: unfurl impossibly beautiful worlds, deliver a truly invigorating challenge and, of course, provide the only legal way to shoot the approximate population of mainland Europe. But beyond all of these bloodthirsty delights, the one thing that videogames have over every other...
Retreat: withdraw from the world to remember the world
Withdraw from the world so you can remember the world. Seek respite, silence, and the clarity that only aloneness can offer. Go find a sacred space where your experience of selfhood can expand without touching another’s, even for just twenty-four hours. What happens in this simple refuge, what unfurls in...
Anything But A Drag: London’s Vibrant Drag Performance Scene
Hot pink lights fill the stage. Dancing trash cans perform choreography while a cover of the iconic 90s anthem “Barbie Girl” pours out of the speakers, barely audible over the sounds of a cheering, whistling audience. The star of the performance struts in her high-heels across the stage, dressed in...
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...