James Stevens

Our existential showdown with machine intelligence isn’t a martial conflict between Sarah Connor versus the Terminator, but a confrontation between the human conscience and the absurd. The language machine doesn’t care whether anybody’s eating glue pizza. Glue pizza is a “you” problem. You might think that a computer ought to supply instructions fo

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Luxury spending in China has been crimped by the combination of a housing crisis and a government campaign against showy displays of wealth. Rather than monogrammed totes, Chinese youngsters now carry their belongings around in plastic bags to flaunt their frugality.

An almost-funny tragedy is decimating basically every artistic industry: there are too many things. Too many movies, too many shows, way too many songs and books and videos and email newsletters.

Swelter is in his best uniform, a habit of exceptional splendour, the high cap and tunic being of virgin silk. Doubling his body he opens the door the merest fraction of an inch and applies his eye to the fissure. As he bends, the shimmering folds of the silk about his belly hiss and whisper like the voice of far and sinister waters or like some va... See more

This is also only my perception but I felt like every time I opened up Instagram, brands were starting to push out way more content because they had all this shit to sell. Sure, there’s been a lot of content for years but this felt like a lot more than usual. We’ve just never been built like that, to be a content machine.

Watch streams and playthroughs: Ashley Bardhan recently argued that watching a video game isn’t so different from playing it. I agree. This guidance won’t surprise anyone under the age of 30. But many gamers in the millennial demographic (or older) have yet to make a habit of watching streams on Twitch or playthroughs on YouTube. If this is your f

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