As people know, I'm a huge Cory Doctorow fan. He has 18 titles for sale as a Humble Book Bundle to raise funds for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). You can get all 18 for €16.75 so it's a great chance to get some good books for a good price to support a good cause. The offer will end around the 23rd of March so there's a little over 12 days to get them.
The Markup published an interview of Dorothy Gambrell by Gabriel Hongsdusit, the visual designer of site. It covers a number of topics including the importance of publishing to your own site even as your audience move towards platforms and how publishing on the Internet has changed since she started writing Cat and Girl in 1999.
The main topic of the interview is Gambrell's response to finding out her art was used to train Midjourney, an AI image generation model. She wrote a beautiful piece about her journey as an artist that captures the struggle to make work that you find meaningful and the fear of that work being taken and abused.
I've included it below under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. The final 6 frames are heartbreaking.
I listen to the Second Captains to stay updated on sport in Ireland. They introduced me to podcasting when they left Newstalk in 2013. I admired their ambition and principles when they took that risk. I'm happy to see how well it has worked for them. Success wasn't guaranteed.
One of the benefits as a member is that I get exposed to some non sport commentaries and interviews such as this one with Mark Jones. Mark Jones is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Global History at University College Dublin and is a specialist in the history of political violence, war, and revolution. He is also a recognized authority on the history of the Weimar Republic.
He recently published a book "1923: The Forgotten Crisis in the Year of Hitler’s Coup". The interview mostly focuses on the period in question. The state of Germany post World War 1 and its relationship with France and the occupation of the Ruhr region. This led to the German response which was to attempt to support what amounted to a strike where the German population of Ruhr region refused to co-operate with the French. They attempted to do this by printing money. This eventually led to hyperinflation that inflicted so much suffering on the German population. This helped set the stage for Adolf Hitler ascent to power.
The book sounds fascinating and I'm looking forward to reading it. Listening to the interview you hear of messages and slogans that are echoed today. There are some worrying similarities in the rise of extremist politics. Just this week there were attacks in Cork and Dublin related to the housing of refugees. The library in Cork had to be closed due to fear for staff safety because of a protest taking place outside. It brings to mind the quote attributed to Mark Twain - "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."
Ken Early does bring up the question of what is the value of knowing this? Jones brings an impassioned defence of historians and the importance of knowing history. How vital it can be to look back to see the similarities in the present. It is important to remember.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
1984 - George Orwell
One disturbing thought is they discussed the possibility of violence, especially when one side celebrates its use. I heard someone say before that violence is never the answer until it becomes the only answer. The Nazis were only defeated after an astonishing amount of violence, death and destruction. It is worrying.
It is important to remember that it is not inevitable. There is always hope even when there are no clear answers.