February 2, 2020 fkirschner

In today’s weekend reading: Games as simulated experiences, offering agency in the face of uncontrollable circumstances. We need to talk about this more.

And hopefully on a deeper level than this article on Quartz (although props to Jane Li for bringing attention to this):

On China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform, many joked darkly about the similarities between the games and the real situation. “The best way to get rid of fear is to face the fear itself,” wrote 17173, a Chinese game news site, commenting on Plague Inc.’s sudden rise in popularity. Some users said that in order to have a more immersive experience, they chose China as the origin country that exports the virus to other regions in the game.

Regarding sustainability and materiality of digital media, Low Tech Magazine reports on their solar powered website:

A website that goes off-line in evening could be an interesting option for a local online publication with low anticipated traffic after midnight. However, since Low-tech Magazine’s readership is almost equally divided between Europe and the USA this is not an attractive option. If the website goes down every night, our American readers could only access it during the morning.

And finally, the thing I am reading right now:Rodrigo Ochigame on The long history of algorithmic fairness.

Take care, and hug a British person.

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