George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four joins A Farewell to Arms among our fiction titles at Libriz today. We’ll only sell it where the title has entered the public domain, so principally our edition’s for the UK market. Fully reset, it is arguably easier to read for contemporary eyes. Being a newer title than A Farewell […]
Category: culture
Posts relating to culture, multiculturalism and cultural impact.
After warnings were ignored, we now arrive in the new tech mainstream
If you look back at all the tech companies I’ve called out, deep down I did so as a warning. If they show this contempt for the user, then it’s symptomatic of greater problems. Everything from Google switching your ad preferences’ opt-outs back to opt-ins and the stonewalling when it came to deleted blogs, to […]
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Publishing A Farewell to Arms, in the form Hemingway intended
We’ll soon make a proper announcement about our first fiction title under our JY&A Media imprint: Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. I was drawn to this title, more than any other that had recently entered the public domain. This one has a difference: we’ve restored all of Hemingway’s words, so it appears as […]
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The world is waking up to what Meta has been for a long time
I don’t need to say much now that the world is waking up. So what’s new? This was exactly where Facebook was heading in the 2010s. Appeasement depending on which way the wind is blowing. Principles? Look elsewhere. Zuckerberg’s only principle is safeguarding his wealth. I’ve said for years to simply shut it off. If […]
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Luxury Facts on the Jaguar rebrand (featuring Cristián Saracco and me)
A nice way to conclude 2024: my name in a real article by a real journalist with quotations attributed to me that are actually by me. I’m so grateful to Tejashee Kashyap and Luxury Facts for interviewing me and my friend Dr Cristián Saracco, and to our friend Philippe Mihailovich for connecting Tejashee and me […]
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Twenty twenty-four, the year of “AI slop”
The tricky thing in 2024 was, obviously, disinformation. More disinformation articles went up about yours truly than anything legitimate like press releases or media interviews. In other words, there was more “AI slop” going online—something mirrored in other parts of the web. As Cybarbie on Mastodon noted: ‘The surveillance people screwed themselves really, since we […]
Why don’t we just stop tracking?
Not only is Linkedin OK with disinformation, thereby making itself complicit to fraud, it turns out verification isn’t that simple. I’ve said many times that I think most “apps” are just web browsers limited to a single site, but, in the interests of greater visibility, I relented and downloaded the Linkedin app. Like most apps, […]
Wix’s terms of service are just for show—they’re OK with fraud
Ethical players, steer clear of Wix. Unlike most hosts, their terms and conditions are just for show, and are unenforced. In other words, I can report fraud, but they won’t lift a finger. From me to Wix, December 10: Dear Wix Abuse Team: A customer of yours has posted false content, misrepresenting me and […]
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The case for Brand Aotearoa
Originally published in Scoop During our mid-year travels, I was surprised to learn that Aotearoa New Zealand doesn’t have the profile that we think it does. We’re not riding the wave of The Lord of the Rings: few abroad remember the connection two decades later. No one I encountered recalls 100% Pure, and if […]
Autocade Year of Cars 2025 now out
We have put a few links around the place, Stanley Moss very kindly referred to it in his blog, and an article has gone up on Lucire: the new Autocade Yearbook is out for 2025. I decided to call it Autocade Year of Cars as that was more distinctive than just Yearbook (which, for […]