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A batch of the best highlights from what J's read, .

Cindy also had a start-up. So did Dan. Cindy’s start-up was an online marketplace for B2B software. The idea was that instead of buying the software directly from the company that made it, firms could buy it via Cindy’s outfit instead, which would take a 12% cut. What Cindy provided was a search algorithm, although the sellers could pay to rank their products higher. Since they all paid, the rankings were exactly where they’d have been if they’d all decided not to.

Numb at Burning Man

Sam Kriss

It was the public service-oriented BBC and Channel 4 that perplexed and delighted me with the likes of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, Pinter plays and Tarkovsky seasons; it was this BBC that also funded the popular avant gardism of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which embedded sonic experimentalism into everyday life. Such innovations are unthinkable now that the public has been displaced by the consumer.

Capitalist Realism

Mark Fisher

Writing about one’s own depression is difficult. Depression is partly constituted by a sneering ‘inner’ voice which accuses you of self-indulgence – you aren’t depressed, you’re just feeling sorry for yourself, pull yourself together – and this voice is liable to be triggered by going public about the condition. Of course, this voice isn’t an ‘inner’ voice at all – it is the internalised expression of actual social forces, some of which have a vested interest in denying any connection between depression and politics.

Good for Nothing - Mark Fisher

libcom.org

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