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Alper point­ed me to this slight­ly retard­ed but at the same time engross­ing rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the com­put­er RPG: mis­sions and ene­mies are laid out on a grid. You fin­ish or defeat them by click­ing repeat­ed­ly (shades of Cow Click­er here). Then hov­er over the XP and mon­ey that appears to cash in. To get to the hard­er ones you need to lev­el up and pur­chase kit. There is no declar­a­tive lay­er what so ever but it still works. Strange.

Refresh­ing analy­sis of the rise of pop­ulism in the Nether­lands, argu­ing that it is not the result of pol­i­tics bow­ing to grad­ual, nat­ur­al change in soci­ety (the grow­ing edu­ca­tion­al divide). But in stead, the result of the new right’s active cam­paign to influ­ence pub­lic opin­ion. Which means that what is need­ed is active opin­ion shap­ing from oth­er polit­i­cal move­ments, not paci­fi­ca­tion of populism.

Philip K. Dick after see­ing parts of Blade Runner:

“…this indeed is not sci­ence fic­tion; it is not fan­ta­sy; it is exact­ly what Har­ri­son said: futur­ism. The impact of Blade Run­ner is sim­ply going to be over­whelm­ing, both on the pub­lic and on cre­ative peo­ple — and, I believe, on sci­ence fic­tion as a field.”

(via Sarah van Sons­beeck, artist)

Not too long ago I read Charles Stross’s Glasshouse, in which a fara­day bag fig­ures heav­i­ly. Leave it to artists like Sarah to make sci-fi a reality.

Also found in this week’s Groene: amus­ing com­men­tary from a Syr­i­an woman on amuse­ment park the Eftel­ing. “You West­ern­ers must be bored.”

(via 314 — Watch the Road: World’s Ear­li­est Sat­Nav | Strange Maps | Big Think)

So good. At first sight I assumed this was some kind of retro movie prop.