Grim's Tales: Recent Episodes
James 'Grim' Desborough
The podcast of James 'Grim' Desborough, RPG designer, author, videographer and long-suffering old school leftie.
Eminent atheist, libertine, analyst. Prize-winning onanist, bitter ludologist. Talented pleonast. Good plenist too!
We learned to code, and then the machines took that too. Machines were never supposed to come for art and writing, but here we are, nonetheless.
When art and technology come together, the one changes the other. This can be for better or for worse, but the speed of change and innovation is ever accelerating and the effects can be unpredictable.
Telling people to meditate, lift, use essential oils or do yoga doesn't address the underlying problem. It's spiritual complacency that ignores the root causes of what's causing the problems in the first place. Game designer and author James 'Grim' Desborough and professional nonconformist Rachel Haywire discuss the phenomenon of 'McMindfulness'.
In which myself and the inestimable Rachel Haywire discuss 'Dead Internet Theory' and wander off into talking about bots, authenticity, algorithms, the 'infranet' and a whole bunch of other related topics.
A conversation between game designer and writer, James 'Grim' Desborough, and nonconformist futurist Rachel Haywire about NFTs, Bitcoin, Grimes, Elon Musk and the fragmentation and strange death of the old Internet.
In which we start off talking about the Tesla Semi and international shipping problems, and meander into conversations about pod living, Amazon company towns, communes and Anarcho-Technocracy.
Various things have prickled at me in relation to this lately. So many people being so disappointing, reconversions, grifting. Better out than in.
We've all heard of Roko's Basilisk by now, I would hope.
Which, hypothetically means we're all doomed.
Woko's Basiwisk is, perhaps, worse because we have evidence for that one from history.
I wanted to add to, rather than distract from, the debates around intimate partner violence, stalking and sexual abuse. So here's a handful of anecdotes (by no means all) from my own experience and perspective. Anecdotes aren't data, but perhaps this will help other people speak out, or to get their head around their - or their partner's - feelings.
Identity politics and intersectionality breeds division, the 'left' has lost sight of the things that made it such a powerful argument. Equality, fairness and opportunity.
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"See... I can get you what you want, I can. I can get you anything, you just have to talk to me, you have to trust me. You can trust me, 'cause I'm your priest, I'm your shrink... I am your main connection to the switchboard of the soul. I'm the magic man... Santa Claus of the subconscious. You say it, you think it, you can have it."
- Lenny Nero, Strange Days