Earl Shetland

Texhnolyze: /ouranime/?

“I had no idea how we were going to put a show like this on TV.” – Yoshitoshi ABe Herein follows some unrepentant weebery, the gist of which will be familiar to those of you better versed in K/r-selection and the like than myself. I won’t try to spoil too much, as I recommend Texhnolyze…

The 19 and a Half Amendment

I’m back to talk about how much I hate women again. Well, a certain type of woman. This was originally going to be an article on how Gilmore Girls ruined an entire generation of women, however, a barrage of insufferable social media posts have given me an idea. Let’s face it, the single moms on…

An Open Letter on Ham Radio

I wanted to write this after reading the info on ham radio in Exit Strategy, but after listening to the Myth crew’s recent emergency broadcast, I knew I had to. I shall begin with some technical explanation of ham radio’s benefits, and some evaluation of its potential pitfalls. I am only a technician, so I…

Serial Experiments Cybernetics Layer 08: Ego

“Intellectuals are naturally attracted by the idea of a planned society, in the belief that they will be in charge of it.” – Sir Roger Scruton To the credit of our readership, the only objections I have seen to this series are points where I was factually rather than ideologically wrong. It is a true…

Serial Experiments Cybernetics Layer 07: Bogdanoff

“Bonjour, Mr. McDonald. It is time. Activate technological unemployment.” This article is not about the French brothers who rule the cryptocurrency markets from the shadows, but rather about a proto-cybernetician who took on their surname to usurp a fraction of their power. Born Alexander Malinovsky, he took on a pseudonym when he got involved in…

Serial Experiments Cybernetics Layer 06: KIDS

“I never meant to put the children in any danger.” – Dr. Hodgeson If I were to restrict this series to cyberneticians alone, this week would cover William Grey Walter. He was the first to discover and categorize brain waves, and he developed robots in the 1940s known as “turtles” complete with “artificial neurons”. However,…

Feminism: A Hill To Die On

With the recent revelations that the first openly bisexual Californian in Congress has resigned due to allegations of sexual misconduct, I reflect on the fact that Adam and Eve, the first people ever, were the ones who fell. She was the first openly bi Californian in Congress, and Katie Hill had to leave office due…

Serial Experiments Cybernetics Layer 05: von Foerster

“Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer.” – von Foerster Heinz von Foerster was born in Vienna in 1911. Two of his grandfathers (Emil and Ludwig) were architects, and Ludwig Wittgenstein was an uncle and frequent visitor. Heinz himself often quoted the “Tractatus” at age 11. Von Foerster remained in…

Serial Experiments Cybernetics Layer 04: McCulloch

“From then on Mechanism and Teleology held no contradiction. They have in common the dialectical argument with its logic of becoming which is necessary for cybernetics, and they complement each other from the sides of matter, or body, and form, or mind.” – McCulloch Beer considered Wiener, Ashby, and Warren McCulloch to be the three…

Serial Experiments Cybernetics Layer 03: Ashby

“Only variety can absorb variety.” – Ashby The nexus between cybernetics and psychiatry runs deep. Indeed, R. D. Laing used a quote from Wiener’s “The Human Use of Human Beings” as an epigraph for part of the last chapter in “The Divided Self“. One of the progenitors of the science, who gets far less credit…