After the events of this week, it only seems appropriate to share this one again… In 1848, I was living in Hungary—or what was then Hungary. That was the year people across Europe finally imagined […]
Tag: history
(Art) Fake Maps of Real Places, Real Maps of Fake Places
Two artists are featured in this post. The first is Robert Hodgin, who developed, as he called it, “a procedural system for generating historical maps of rivers that never existed.” For a brief description of […]
(Art) My Dystopian Library – Pt. 2
It’s a well documented fact that when I’m between projects or can’t write for some reason, I design book covers I don’t need. All of these were actual old covers that I simply modified to […]
Cyberpunk and the State
I’ve been writing lately about how cyberpunk at 40 is becoming quaint and anachronistic but that most don’t see it because that’s the narrative of the future that most appeals. (There’s even a big computer […]
(Art) The Heavens of Ignace-Gaston Pardies
Ignace-Gaston Pardies was a 17th century French Jesuit physical scientist known as an insightful critic of Newton’s early experiments on light and as one of the earliest proponents of a wave theory of light. Although […]
The Curious Tragedy of the Batavia
The Batavia was a merchant ship which set sail on its maiden voyage in 1628 from the Netherlands to Java under the command of Dutch East Asia Company official, Francisco Pelsaert. The ship, for its […]
III. The New Rules
Earlier this week, I summarized both Orwell’s and Umberto Eco’s views on a species of thought, which we might call ideological factionalism, that has always been with us but which seemed to be in retreat, […]
II. The Unending Task
Yesterday I wrote about Orwell’s 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism,” where nationalism meant a manner of thinking that could attach itself to more than just a state. Orwell says he chose the word because it […]
I. The Emotion I Am Speaking
If you haven’t read Orwell’s “Notes on Nationalism,” it is a classic and a chief example of why he is a writer of the first class. The title is unfortunate, which he admits in the […]
