What does it mean for us being human when a massacre does not stop you in your tracks? In this essay I examine the various ways in which scholars have tried to imagine the undoing of the endless night of the Zong, the undoing of a world we cannot live within.
folukeafrica.com/what-you-do-...
"the barrister acting for the Zong’s owners illustrated that point bluntly thus:
‘What is this claim that human people have been thrown overboard? This is a case of chattels or goods. Blacks are goods and property; it is madness to accuse these well-serving honourable men of murder.’"
"The story of the Zong is often narrated as a triumph over slavery. A triumph that took 52 years and resulted in compensation for slave owners only... 245 years after the events of the Zong, humanity is still discarding lives deemed not human enough to the open seas, to fire, to hunger, to war."
My favourite verse in Osundare's poem is the last:
"Are they of this earth
Who fritter the forest
and harry the hills
Are they of this earth
Who live that earth may die
Are they?"
folukeafrica.com/they-too-are...
"“all anyone seemed to care about afterward was the value of the claim. I had nightmares about it. Even now, I sometimes have dreams so vivid I can hear the waves slapping against that ancient, wooden hull, the screaming of lost souls as things go horribly, irretrievably sideways… Adam Oyebanji."
"“all anyone seemed to care about afterward was the value of the claim. I had nightmares about it. Even now, I sometimes have dreams so vivid I can hear the waves slapping against that ancient, wooden hull, the screaming of lost souls as things go horribly, irretrievably sideways… Adam Oyebanji."
Watching "Death in Paradise" and googling "what is the life expectancy of lizards?"
I once accidentally bit into a lemon seed and my optimism about life went down like 40%...
"What role should academics play in a world that is falling apart?" Creative thinking. Truth. Hope. Academics have a vital task in the building of new and better human worlds. We must not betray it, despite attacks on every side. We must work while the light lasts.
folukeafrica.com/academics-as...
"What role should academics play in a world that is falling apart?" Creative thinking. Truth. Hope. Academics have a vital task in the building of new and better human worlds. We must not betray it, despite attacks on every side. We must work while the light lasts.
folukeafrica.com/academics-as...
It is kind of suspicious that the only people I see actively defending LLMs as morally neutral seem to have very specific career incentives to do so. Especially in the academy!
I once accidentally bit into a lemon seed and my optimism about life went down like 40%...
"The story of the Zong is often narrated as a triumph over slavery. A triumph that took 52 years and resulted in compensation for slave owners only... 245 years after the events of the Zong, humanity is still discarding lives deemed not human enough to the open seas, to fire, to hunger, to war."
"the barrister acting for the Zong’s owners illustrated that point bluntly thus:
‘What is this claim that human people have been thrown overboard? This is a case of chattels or goods. Blacks are goods and property; it is madness to accuse these well-serving honourable men of murder.’"
The designation of having a 'foreign-born' parent makes no sense. When you consider that for many so designated, their own parents and grandparents were born British subjects and only gained the supposed "foreign" nationalities they have on the dubious granting of an 'independence' to do nothing.
Once again, if you're weary or sceptical of a bunch of white dudes tearing down GenAI from some imagined position of privileged purism, I can only suggest you seek out the women of colour who are tearing it down very comprehensively, and see how your arguments work on them.
Amazing to me that someone can post on the website they work for that they don't do any of their own work anymore and still be employed.
My garden, where seeds go to die...
What does it mean for us being human when a massacre does not stop you in your tracks? In this essay I examine the various ways in which scholars have tried to imagine the undoing of the endless night of the Zong, the undoing of a world we cannot live within.
folukeafrica.com/what-you-do-...
When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.
The international boycott of ChatGPT has absolutely exploded.
2.5M people have already joined, and this is just the beginning.
Go to quitgpt.org.
Cancel your subscription, delete your account.
And tell at least one person why.
My op-ed: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
I'll take this in one more direction. How about when you're reading for a lit review and you come across something that's NOT relevant, but you mentally file it away, and then years later, it becomes the cornerstone of something else? A whole new project? gAI can't do this.
okay, Ill bite.
What do you think the point of reading for and writing a literature review is? The process of reading and writing is crucial for THINKING. Your ideas are shaped by all of this, offloading it to gAI, no matter how "good" you think gAI is at it defeats the purpose entirely.
kind of crazy that if you have enough money and don't like what you see in the media, you can just buy up every film studio, news station, and social media app and change it
Adou Elenga was a Congolese singer-songwriter. "Ata Ndele", aka "Mokili Ekobaluka", was a song released in 1954. It was a call for decolonisation aimed at the Belgian colonial authorities, who censored it and sent Elenga to jail.
“Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.” Arundhati Roy, War Talk
Some of my favourite comedians have 100000% more incisive political commentary than most of the politicians that we are forced to pick between.
‘May we wake one by one.’ This is how we sometimes say 'good night' in Nigeria. It is a greeting and a prayer against a sudden disaster that wakes us all at once. ‘May we wake one by one.’
folukeafrica.com/may-we-wake-...
Yes, he did, but I am not sure when.
Adou Elenga was a Congolese singer-songwriter. "Ata Ndele", aka "Mokili Ekobaluka", was a song released in 1954. It was a call for decolonisation aimed at the Belgian colonial authorities, who censored it and sent Elenga to jail.
