Hauntology, which is subtitled
Ghosts of Future Past, simply offers a lot of regurgitated and undigested material, which doesn’t evidence much understanding of original works on the subject by the likes of Mark Fisher which it draws heavily on. Whilst it is always good to see the books of Alan Garner, W.G. Sebald, Susan Cooper and Nigel Kneale’s TV films discussed there is little of any originality on offer here.
Tom Chivers works much harder with his research material, refining and reshaping it within a personal narrative of obsession and encounter as he explores overground and underground London in an attempt to map the city’s forgotten rivers.
Last modified on Thu 27 May 2021 12.14 EDT
At first glance, Demis Hassabis is an unusual figure for Dominic Cummings to have turned to for guidance in March 2020 about the threat of the novel coronavirus bearing down on the UK.
The co-founder of Google subsidiary DeepMind, which is dedicated to high-level AI research, has a varied CV, but is no epidemiologist. A child chess prodigy, he hit the rank of master at 13 and was for a brief time the second-highest-rated player in the world in his age category.
After completing his A-levels two years early, he joined video game studio Bullfrog, where he co-designed the hit classic Theme Park at just 17 years old, before leaving to study computer science at Cambridge. He returned to video game development for another decade, and, after switching back to academia and a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, founded DeepMind in 2011.
If someone asked you to think of a well-known conspiracy theory, which would be the first one that came to mind?
Well, there are plenty of silly ideas floating around the cybersphere nowadays.
And sad to say, the rise of the internet has been accompanied with a rise in antisemitic and anti-Israel propaganda; rather than in a salutary remission of this longstanding ideological cancer of Jew-hatred.
However, the utter ubiquity of conspiratorial thinking as part of the darker underbelly of human nature means that Israel, just like any other country, has not been found entirely immune to this problem.
I found it interesting to read recently about the rather ironic spread of COVID 19 Conspiracy theories to Israel, as well as Netanyahu’s unfortunate descent into conspiratorial accusations about his enemies.
The US president has proposed waiving patents on Covid-19 vaccines in a bid to boost global supply. But it won’t work on its own terms and holds dangers for the future.
Ian Hanomansing speaks to two people who were some the first in the world to get their COVID-19 shot. Tom Chivers and Kristen Choi explain why they chose to take part in clinical trials in London and Los Angeles almost a year ago, and their message today for those still feeling hesitant.