Marvin by Michael Paulus
(via retrogasm)
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(via bunnyfood)
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Nature: Marijuana may make your brain grow →
Most addictive drugs inhibit the growth of new brain cells. But injections of a cannabis-like chemical seem to have the opposite effect in mice, according to new research. Experts say that the results, if borne out by further studies, could have far-reaching implications for addiction research and the application of marijuana in medicine.
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HOPE you don’t get indefinitely detained
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The future isn’t pre-ordained. It is contested and contestable. Science fiction isn’t a literature that tells you what will happen tomorrow. It is a literature that tells you how to prevent the bad tomorrows and usher in the good ones. It is an active and activist literature, with an agenda and a point of view. As we hurtle through our century of rapid change and economic, ecological, and technological disruption, it’s precisely the literature we need.
— Cory Doctorow, A Vocabulary for Speaking About the Future
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Why Black Market Entrepreneurs Matter to the World Economy →
Not many people think of shantytowns, illegal street vendors, and unlicensed roadside hawkers as major economic players. But according to journalist Robert Neuwirth, that’s exactly what they’ve become. In his new book, Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy, Neuwirth points out that small, illegal, off-the-books businesses collectively account for trillions of dollars in commerce and employ fully half the world’s workers. Further, he says, these enterprises are critical sources of entrepreneurialism, innovation, and self-reliance. And the globe’s gray and black markets have grown during the international recession, adding jobs, increasing sales, and improving the lives of hundreds of millions. It’s time, Neuwirth says, for the developed world to wake up to what those who are working in the shadows of globalization have to offer.
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The Coming War on General Computation
a talk by Cory Doctorow at the Chaos Computer CongressThe last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.
The problem is twofold: first, there is no known general-purpose computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones; second, general-purpose computers have replaced every other device in our world. There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There are no 3D printers, only computers that drive peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas. Consequently anything you do to “secure” anything with a computer in it ends up undermining the capabilities and security of every other corner of modern human society.
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Toucan
by Maurice Detmold (via The Pictorial Arts)
