Ten Thousand Posts

Robots Should Not Have British Accents ft. James Vincent

This week, we're joined by James Vincent (@jjvincent), a senior reporter at The Verge who writes on AI, Machine Learning and the development of robots. We talk about the ongoing meme of fake Boston Dynamics videos, and why watching videos of humanoid robots - real and fake- constantly seems to freak people out, and how much Boston Dynamics is aware of these viral videos. We then talk about digital 'Geofoam' - a mixture of inanimate digital objects, rigid automated robots, and machine learning tools designed to 'mimic' human activity - and how this is shaping the development of the internet, and our own relationship to it. While those autocomplete functions on Gmail might be great for sending half-assed emails to your line manager, how long will it take before these machines end up being able to produce and reproduce digital content? Is their presence setting even more limits on creative expression? Crucially, we reach one conclusion: If the robots are going to force themselves into our lives, they absolutely should NOT have British accents. 

You can read James' article here: https://t.co/yBOvgfAvJ8
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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posted. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth). For weekly bonus episodes, subscribe on Patreon at: www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast. 

[PREVIEW] The Facebook Papers ft. Shoshana Wodinsky

This is a preview of a bonus episode. Listen to the full (very good!) episode on Patreon at : www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast
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This week, we talk to Gizmodo reporter Shoshana Wodinsky (@swodinsky), who covers the business of data, and is one of the leads on Gizmodo's ambitious project to make the Facebook Papers public.

We talk about some of the revelations from the Papers that didn't make the headlines, how much of Facebook's problems are caused by negligence and its sheer scale, rather than being outright ghouls, and the value of open source information gathering when studying the platform technologies collectively. Shoshana also brings us an NFT related meme that neither of us initially understand, and end up descending into a deep conversation about the virtue of hot keys and warm change.

You can read Shoshana's work and keep up to date with the project here: https://gizmodo.com/author/swodinsky.
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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DAO And Out In The Metaverse ft. Ed Ongweso Jr

This week, we're rejoined by Ed Ongweso Jr (@bigblackjacobin), a writer at Vice and a co-host of the podcast This Machine Kills, to talk about ConstitutionDAO, another crypto thing that claims to be emancipatory and revolutionary, but also seems to really benefit the rich for some reason? We then go on to talk about the Metaverse, and why Facebook's announcement of their weird virtual boardrooms might simply be a way to paper over problems that they have caused, and realised are unfixable. Ultimately, this could be more effective if they simply were broken down and treated like utilities, but unsurprisingly, this is something that Mark Zuckerberg (and other tech guys) really don't want. So, as a result, it looks like we're all going to be forced to play by more of Facebook's rules. Great!
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You can follow and support This Machine Kills Here: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Phoebe (@PRHRoy), Hussein (@HKesvani) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth). You can subscribe to bonus content on patreon for as little as $5 a month at: www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast.

[PREVIEW] HK‘s Anime Club - Serial Experiments Lain (04-05) ft. Devon

 

This is a preview of a bonus episode. To listen to the whole thing, subscribe to us on Patreon at : www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast.
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Welcome back to the Otaku Zone! This week, we're back to talking about one of the most incomprehensible anime series ever made, Serial Experiments Lain, as we follow Lain's journey into the Wired. We ask questions such as "Where is Lain getting all these new server units from?" , "Why is her Dad spying on her behind a door like a nonce?" and "What's up with that weird little girl with no eyes?". As Lain goes further into the Wired, we find out how a simple computer upgrade means that she now permanently lives online, being able to hear and comprehend every conversation being had (much like a chaotic Clubhouse room), how she begins hearing rumours about a 'Prophecy' and a "God" in the Wired and the inevitability of the Wired consuming the real world. Of course, as people start dying as a result of trying to play a bootleg copy of MS DOS Quake, we realise that all this weird shit is happening because of Gamers. 

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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_OnEarth).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Something Awful This Way Comes ft. Nate Bethea

This week, Nate (@inthesedeserts) comes back on the Posts Pod to tell us about some internet history, and this little forum you might have heard of called "Something Awful". Following the death of Something Awful's founder, "Lowtax", Nate tells us how the forums shaped much of contemporary internet culture, ranging from terms like 'doxxing' and the ubiquity of trolls, to Lolcats, gifs, and uh, a lot of racism and Nazi insignia. But, it did also give us Dril, so who's to say if it was good or bad???

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If you want to hear more Nate, listen to his podcast, "A Hell Of A Way To Die" here: https://t.co/u0OcRMkTd1?amp=1
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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It is hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth). For weekly bonus episodes, subscribe to us on Patreon at : www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast.

[PREVIEW] Critical Poster‘s Theory ft. Sam Hoadley Brill

This is a preview of a bonus episode. You can listen to the full episode on Patreon at www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast.

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This week, we're joined by academic researcher Sam Hoadley-Brill (@deonteleologist), who has been diligently following the most influential posters in America, who have successfully weaponised 'critical race theory' through relentless posting. Sam talks to us about how posting strategies created a lexicon in which CRT ended up becoming a meme, loaded with connotations of western civilisational collapse, and how Christopher Rufo, once an obscure right wing think-tank wonk in the 2000s, was able to utilise social media platforms to reframe the post-Trump culture wars, with effects not just in America, but throughout the rest of the Western world too.
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We also talk about Paul Joseph Watson's lamentation over No Nut November, in which he believes that the woke soyboy left have corrupted the true meaning of 'no nut' and its reactionary origins of banning all internet porn. You can read the original tweet here: https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1455100786313211912

99 British Problems ft. Juliet Jacques

A quick note from us: There were some technical difficulties at the end of this episode, so the closing section of this show was not recorded, sadly. We will revisit the section when Juliet comes back!
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This week, we're joined by writer and broadcaster Juliet Jacques (@zinovievletter) to talk about the "Very British Problems" twitter account. Set up in 2012, the extremely popular account posts mundane observations of British life (milky tea, not being able to stop saying please), but, like everything in 2012, it is largely a fantasy. We talk about how VBP and the media empire it spawned, became the ideological backdrop for the FBPE movement, and that in 2021, it exists as a strange place in which its supporters and followers lament what Britain either was, or what it should have been, had it not been for Brexit. We also talk about Spoonerisation (changing initials of names) and the shorter half lives of insults and funny put-downs on the internet, making the case that perhaps spoonerising....might not be funny any more?

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You can follow Juliet's work by following her at @zinovievletter, or through her website: www.julietjacques.com. 

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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein @HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth). For weekly bonus episodes, follow us on Patreon at www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast. 

[PREVEW] 10k Posts Film Club - THE NET (1995) ft. Podcasting is Praxis - Part 2

This is a bonus episode, that you can listen to in full on our Patreon for the low price of $5 a month!. Subscribe for more great bonus content / reviews of bad 90s movies at www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast.
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Welcome to the 10kposts Film Club, a series where we watch movies that tried to predict what internet culture would be like, and how much they got right or wrong.

Joining us this week are Rob and Jamie from @PodcastingisPraxis. This is the second part of our review of THE NET,  a 1995 movie starring Sandra Bullock and Jeremy Northam, in which the world's most incurious hacker is chased by Britain's worst assassin, in an extremely long film about viruses, floppy disks and, of course "the mainframe".  In this part, we talk about the second part of the film, where Angela discovers more about a shady surveillance tech company's sinister plot to control the world's utilities through a Trojan Horse anti-virus software - thanks to the help of an extremely creepy therapist, overfamiliar friends in AOL chatrooms, and a unique understanding of how to hide in office cubicles. It's bizarre, stupid and we were all very thankful when the movie finished!

You can listen to Part 1 of the review here: https://tenthousandposts.podbean.com/e/10k-posts-film-club-the-net-1995-ftpodcasting-is-praxis-part-1/

You can listen and subscribe to Podcasting is Praxis here: https://www.patreon.com/praxiscast

 

Influencer Defence Force ft. Abigail Thorn

A Note from us!  We are now producing WEEKLY bonus episodes. That means you get 2 episodes of the podcast a week, one for free, and the other, for subscribers only. At the end of this month, subscribers above $10 tier will also get access to the discord channel, which will have a bunch of cool stuff on there. You can subscribe to us for as little as $5 a month at: www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast.

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This week, we're joined by actress, Youtuber and podcast host Abigail Thorn (@philosophytube) all the way from the spooky mountains of Transylvania where she's shooting an upcoming film. While she's incredibly busy with a hectic shooting schedule, Abigail still found time to challenge us in The Battle of Ideas - specifically, how we on the show have talked about influencers and content creators. Abigail suggests that the breadth of multimedia content on the internet - alongside the rapid bleeding out of 'online content' into 'mainstream' entertainment, means that terms such as 'content creator' may be obsolete, not least because so many people are involved in it. Moreover, Abigail suggests that in 'mainstream' entertainment, including in areas such as Theatre and Opera, established artists actually *want* to be content creators and influencers - and in some cases, see it as more 'real' than other aspects of the entertainment industry. 

We also talk about film studios continuing to mine ideas from Twitter, and whether this is not only influencing how high-budget cinema is being made, but also, what viewers and audiences actually expect from the entertainment they consume.

You can subscribe to Abigail's Youtube channel, PhilosophyTube, here: https://www.youtube.com/user/thephilosophytube
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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth). For weekly bonus episodes, subscribe at www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast. 

[PREVIEW] Reported To Prevent For Quote Tweeting ft. Aisha Gani

This is a preview of a bonus episode. To listen to the full episode, subscribe to us on Patreon at www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast.

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We're joined by journalist and tech writer Aisha Gani (@aishagani) to talk about proposals to 'ban anonymity' on social media as part of the British government's Online Safety Bill, and to discuss how much of this - in practice - would be extending the British government's expansive and secretive counter-extremism strategy, much of which has been designed to tackle the nebulous threat of "Islamist" radicalism. We discuss how expanding surveillance tech to social media platforms not only represents a gross expansion of the programme, ensuring that Peter Theil and other tech cops get richer, but also how this would be entirely counter-intuitive - not least because most people who spread hate online already use their real names and are very easily traceable. Does this mean that more far-right threats will be reported to Prevent? Not particularly! Especially when, based on the British government's own definitions of radical, exclude them entirely. Seems good!

We also discuss Germanic Food Supremacy, in relation to a tweet lamenting that Muslims were unlucky because they couldn't eat boiled salty ham and mashed potatoes, in a liquid pan sauce. Sucks to be us I guess!
(https://twitter.com/Tinkzorg/status/1451921866222878729)

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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_OnEarth).