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Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019: PART I ][ Chapter 5
PART I ][ Chapter 5
No Signal without Symbol: Decoding the Digital Humanities
David M. Berry, M. Beatrice Fazi, Ben Roberts, and Alban Webb
The ubiquity and potency of digital culture in the early twenty-first century have been the subject of sustained interest and comment in both public and academic spheres. The digital, as a computational form, mediates our everyday lives, offering new modalities, surfaces, and processes for (re)presenting the world. The word "automation" was coined in its contemporary sense in the immediate postwar era. It referred to a more extensive and systematic mechanization, closed-loop systems of feedback and control, and the incorporation of discrete electronics. We use the term "computational automation" to refer to the present extension of automation: the incorporation of machine learning and large-scale data analysis into economic production, academia, and everyday life. Computational automation is revolutionizing scientific, cultural, and artistic human endeavors, which are constantly being reorganized into new temporal, spatial, and conceptual structures with different degrees of agency and reflexivity. Due to the speed and scale of these organizing forces, our understanding of computational automated systems, such as self-driving cars, high-frequency trading systems, autonomous military drones, or organized swarms of shelf-stacking robots, falls behind these technological developments. This lag creates what Bernard Stiegler calls "disorientation": a disjuncture between human temporality and the accelerated technological ordering of time in a hyperindustrial era.[1] Equally, certain deployments of computational automation engender epistemic transformations; that is, changes in the way in which knowledge is justified and understood. These changes could be understood as anti-hermeneutical; they short-circuit critical interpretation in favor of statistical correlation and pragmatic "results." These epistemic transformations require further interrogation, which is exactly what we intend to do here.
We propose that a critical assessment of computational automation should be one focus of the digital humanities. Via a reading of information theory and Wolfgang Ernst's arguments about media archaeology, we explore the automated systems enlisted by the digital humanities in terms of signal processing. "Signal processing" is an expression that we take from Ernst and by which we mean ways of analyzing cultural heritage that bypass traditional forms of interpretation and historiography. We argue that signal processing represents an impoverished vision of the possible contribution of the digital humanities to debates about the future of culture. The contours of a new digital public culture are emerging; as digital humanists we need to address the critical implications of the computational state that makes our work possible.
The French usefully deploy the acronym GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) to identify the wave of Silicon Valley technologies and ideologies that stand in some sense against the European ideal of public goods, shared culture, and the Enlightenment.[2] We can think about their business model as what Rey Chow, following Phil Agre, calls capture. Within the technology sphere, and particularly in computer science, the most frequent use of the term "capture" refers to "a computer system's (figurative) act of acquiring certain data as input, whether from a human operator or from an electronic or electromechanical device," Agre explains. A second use of the term, he continues, refers to "a representation scheme's ability to fully, accurately, or 'cleanly' express particular semantic notions or distinctions, without reference to the actual taking in of data" (106). This twofold definition masks the ambiguity of the same word being used to describe an epistemological idea ("acquiring the data") and an ontological idea ("modeling the reality it reflects"), even as this usage is remarkably common across the technology sector and in computational disciplines (Agre). The "machinic act or event of capture" that interests Chow creates the possibility for further dividing and partitioning—that is, for the generation of copies and images—and produces an ontology that is structured around the copy (4). Because a significant focus of recent software development has been to enable more effective systems of surveillance, new capture systems have proliferated, fueling a political economy supported by shared data and knowledge. These surveillance systems also make the collection of data relatively easy. This ease of collection results in exploding quantities of data and in claims that we are part of a digital economy. Information and data are each seen as a source of profit, if captured in an appropriate way.[3]
The notion of capture also implies derangements in the organization of knowledge, derangements caused by the unprecedented adjacency and comparability or parity that digital computation makes possible. These concepts define computation, which itself works through a logic of formatting, configuration, structuring, and the application of computational ontologies (Berry, Critical Theory; Philosophy of Software). In other words, everything becomes data and, in doing so, becomes equally comparable and calculable. Data are manifested in a form of character-based notation that, while resembling writing, is illegible without the computers that capture, store, and process it.
In fact, this very form of capture—digitization—is the one identified by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson as emblematic of the "Second Machine Age." They identify it as "an inflection point in the right direction—bounty instead of scarcity, freedom instead of constraint—but one that will bring with it some difficult challenges and choices" (11). Whether or not this "inflection point" does indeed aim in the right direction, it is certainly the case that digitization has generated widespread feelings of anxiety and concern over its implications for the economy and society more generally. Even more, digitization has brought about a crisis in thought. This crisis is manifested, at a sociological level, in a form of anxiety over automated capture—a worry that with atrophied human reason and diminished cognitive faculties, humanity will soon be replaced by intelligent robots.[4] Automation anxiety, in turn, raises key techno-epistemological questions around the assembly and reassembly of mechanisms of signal production, dissemination, and consumption.[5] The crisis in thought also questions the relevance of human subjectivity, while pointing toward the development of a new machine-subject. Capture, automation, and digitalization suggest a cultural complicity between technology and nature, where society and subjects no longer exist except as a cloud of data points. Signal processing therefore links automation anxiety to the crisis in thought.
In this respect, it is possible to argue that we are entering a time of a new unintelligibility, whereby people can no longer make sense of the world due to our increasing reliance on digital technology that writes and reads for us, as a form of algorithmic inscription. This unintelligibility results in new forms of what the philosopher Bernard Stiegler calls "grammatization"; that is, the standardization and discretization of idiomatic human cultures, which now also include human-machine cultures. These new forms of grammatization are symbols and discrete representational units, which are opaque to humans even as they are drawn from human-created devices.
Digital technologies have reconfigured the very texts that humanities and DH scholars take as their research objects. These technologies have encoded texts as fragmentary forms, often realigned and interleaved with fragments from other texts, and placed them into digital archives and computational tools.[6] To be working within the field of digital humanities is thus to already be cognizant of the need to "build" digital systems, to encode, and to be involved in a practice of a highly technical nature. But this practice-based approach remains a contentious point, even within digital humanities. At times, it has been interpreted as a move away from theoretical and hermeneutic concerns and critical engagements (Berry, Philosophy of Software; Cecire). Indeed, Galloway asks, "Is it the role of humanities researchers to redesign their discipline so that it is symmetrical with that [digital] infrastructure?" (126).
We understand the strong technical orientation of the digital humanities through the concept of signal processing as described in Wolfgang Ernst's "Media Archaeography." He observes that media archaeology differentiates itself from media history through its concern with media artifacts and apparatus not only as "symbolic acts" (244, emphasis added), but as the "signal processing of culture." Discussing Milman Parry and Albert Lord's 1930s recordings of Serbian and Montenegrin epic songs on aluminum disc and electromagnetic wire, Ernst draws attention to the way in which systems of analog recording have allowed the "physical layer below symbolically expressed culture" (244) to be registered. Media archaeologists are thus concerned not only with symbol but also with signal; instead of being preoccupied with the textual or musical content of recordings (symbol), "[the] media-archaeological ear listens to radio in an extreme way: listening to the noise of the transmitting system itself" (250). Of course this does not mean that it is exclusively concerned with signal. Indeed, as Ernst notes, "media-archaeological analysis opens culture to noncultural insights without sacrificing the specific wonders and beauties of culture itself" (245). The point is not a turn to oppose signal to symbol, but to think both together.
What are the lessons of signal and symbol that might be applied to the digital humanities? After all, the digital humanities is not often concerned with the physical vibrations of air recorded in the electromagnetic flux of a fragile piece of wire, but much more commonly with the digital encoding and analysis of (primarily) textual data. Our contention here is not that the digital humanities lacks a cultural critique, a point that has been made many times before—particularly persuasively by Alan Liu, for example. Rather, we argue that the more specific problem of the digital humanities is seeing its contribution to public culture as a form of processing of signals, rather than as symbol. Understood as symbol, the technologies of the digital humanities have great implications for humanistic models of research. As Johanna Drucker asks,
So can we engage in the design of digital environments that embody specific theoretical principles drawn from the humanities, not merely work within platforms and protocols created by disciplines whose methodological premises are often at odds with—even hostile to—humanistic values and thought? This question is particularly pressing in light of the absorption of these visualization techniques, since they come entirely from realms outside the humanities—management, social sciences, natural sciences, business, economics, military surveillance, entertainment, gaming, and other fields in which the relativistic and comparative methods of the humanities play, at best, a small and accessory role. (85–86)
It is vital that the deployment and creation of tools drawn from outside the humanities do not simply supersede the theoretical principles that, as Drucker suggests, should inform DH design practice. Yet one complaint about the digital humanities is that, too often, tool making is seen as a substitution for hermeneutics. Indeed, this condition is epitomized by the use of the expression "more hack, less yack" (more computer programming and less theorizing).[7] This represents a very strong trend in those strands in the DH community that have self-identified around the notion of "building things" (i.e., the construction and making of digital systems, archives, interfaces, visualizations). This model of digital humanities might be understood, following Jean-Francois Lyotard's suggestion in The Postmodern Condition, as a way of opening the data banks, giving the public access to information in order to resist the corporate and military enclosure of computerized knowledge systems (67; see also Berry, Critical Theory, 178). But the digital humanities needs to go beyond simply placing information in the public domain and making data accessible and manipulable.
As our reading of Ernst suggests, there is a need for the digital humanities to think signal and symbol together. Or, to frame the issue in terms of Shannon and Weaver's mathematical model of communication: there is no communication without encoding and decoding. One might therefore interpret the digital humanities as an intellectual practice concerned with the transmission of knowledge as messages through channels. It is our contention that this transmission is generally assumed to work on the basis of a "sender-receiver" conception of communication, a conception that could be described as similar to that put forth by Claude Shannon (and popularized in his work with Warren Weaver) in the mid-twentieth century. In Shannon and Weaver's model, the sender is the originator of the message, while the receiver is the recipient. By virtue of its simplicity and generality, this model has been successfully applied to various communication scenarios. Here, we would like to argue that the knowledge production of the digital humanities (understood in its paradigmatic mode of thought) and its consequent input into public culture might be seen to work as a similarly one-way process of communication, albeit one complicated by the signal processing that takes place on the receiver end. In part, it is the unidirectional dimension implied by the notion of a signal that we are challenging here. However, we also consider the limits of signal processing as a way to understand how the digital humanities might not only critically intervene in but also construct public culture.
In Shannon and Weaver's model, the sender is the originator of the message, but the message is then encoded by an encoder; this becomes the second step in the transmission. Once encoded, the message becomes a signal that is compatible with the technologies used to transmit it. For instance, in a traditional telephone communication, a sound wave such as a voice saying "Hello, world" is transformed into an electronic signal to be sent via cables, satellites, etc. At the point of reception, a decoder must then convert the signal back into the original message. In our telephone example, the electronic signal is decoded into a sound wave again. The receiver of the decoded message is the final node in the model, to which the signal is directed. "Hello, world" has reached its destination as a message with intelligible meaning.
Within the digital humanities, we believe, scholars more often than not aim to create strong signals, rather than strong messages, to be given to the receiver.[8] By way of the digitization of archival materials, for instance, or by encoding texts into queryable information, what the digital humanist can be seen to be doing is striving for the release of the purest, strongest, widest signal to reach a public audience. Problems arise, however, when the audience is a receiver with no decoder; when, in other words, there is only signal processing and no way of turning the signal back into a comprehensible message.
We are, of course, simplifying, and also reducing a great deal, the many activities of the digital humanities, as well as Shannon and Weaver's famous schema. What we are proposing is rather a sort of analogy, meant to highlight an issue that the digital humanities, as a critical field of inquiry, needs to tackle. It is often assumed that the public has the means, and the wish, to turn signals back into messages. This is, however, not always the case. Digital humanists must address the limits of signal processing head-on, which becomes even more pressing if we also consider another question brought about by the analogy to Shannon and Weaver's model of communication. The sender-receiver model describes the transmission of information. The charge of the digital humanities is, instead, the production of knowledge. An uncritical trust in signal processing becomes, from this perspective, quite problematic, insofar as it can confuse information for knowledge, and vice versa.
We can now turn to some examples of the digital humanities understood as signal processing. In his New Republic article, "Technology Is Taking over English Departments," Adam Kirsch criticizes the impoverished model of reading found in large-scale analysis of literary corpora. Kirsch illustrates this with the case of Moretti's "distant reading" of novel titles from 1740–1850. Moretti's computer-based quantitative analysis, analyzing title lengths in a database of novel titles, shows that titles are much longer at the beginning of the period than at the end. Kirsch observes, "The computer can tell you that titles have shrunk . . . but it takes a scholar with a broad knowledge of literary history [i.e., Moretti]—that is, a scholar who has examined the insides and not just the outsides of literary and artistic works—to speculate about the reasons titles shrink, and why it matters." For Kirsch, unlike Moretti's rich scholarly account, digital methods often adopt a position of "faux naïveté" about textual history: "their proud innocence of prior historical knowledge and literary interpretation" is, in his view, "partly responsible for the thinness of their findings." This thinness that Kirsch finds, we would argue, is precisely the result of understanding the work of the digital humanities according to a model of signal processing; the belief that new scholarly insights can emerge simply from the digital manipulation of textual data such as novel titles, without the wider interpretative context that Moretti provides.
Yet, computational analysis is not the only activity of the digital humanities. In "Ignoring Encoding," Ryan Cordell argues that Kirsch is describing a model of the digital humanities that is "all coding, no encoding." For Cordell, Kirsch ignores the benefits brought by the less glamorous work of digitization, and the literal encoding that is required to draw meaning from digitized texts. Cordell uses here the example of the Women Writers Project (WWP), a project dedicated to the TEI encoding of early modern women's writing. He argues that the work of encoding "has not been 'simply' the application of computer technology to traditional scholarly functions," since it depends on scholarly debate about how to encode different entities within the text. His objection to Kirsch is then not only an argument for the inherent value of digitizing texts, placing them in the public domain, and making them "accessible to a wide audience of teachers, students, scholars, and the general readers," as the WWP describes it.
For Cordell, the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) encoding is also a model of scholarship in that it involves making interpretive decisions about texts. In other words, encoding is not just a useful application of computer technology but is also an important part of the contribution made by digital humanities as a scholarly activity. As he writes, "You may find encoding or archival metadata development boring or pedantic—certainly some do—but you cannot pretend that encoding is less a part of the digital humanities than coding." In this view, the activity of digitizing texts and "processing" them according to the TEI standard—adding tags identifying semantic content, for instance—is and should be seen as just as important a contribution to humanities scholarship and to the wider public as big data and textual analysis. For Cordell, the TEI is indeed "one of the best examples of humanistic scholarship applied to computer technology." He argues that "encoding inherited the stigma of scholarly editing, which has in English Departments long been treated as a lesser activity than critique—though critique depends on careful scholarly editing, as text analysis depends on digitization and encoding."
We believe Cordell's piece to be a very telling lament, partly because it underlines that, in the comparison between "traditional" and "digital" humanities, what is lost is not scholarly editing, which is preserved and extended in encoding, but rather critique, which disappears in Cordell's battle to extend the digital humanities to mean not only big data text analysis but also encoding. Cordell's defense of the digital humanities in no way responds to Kirsch's central point: neither encoding or coding (textual analysis) is in fact a substitute for humanistic critique (understood in the broad sense). In Cordell's formulation of the digital humanities, the space for symbolic, humanistic interpretation is now confined to the same relatively narrow role as scholarly editing. However worthwhile, symbolic interpretation is directed, along with scholarly editing, toward a higher goal of creating open, computer-readable, and universally accessible editions. Here, symbolic interpretation is purely instrumental: it is, as Cordell reminds us, applied humanistic scholarship. For us, therefore, encoding remains a paradigmatic example of digital humanities understood as signal processing: in other words, a humanistic computational effort to create the purest possible digital signal and send it to the scholarly community or interested public.[9]
It is useful here to consider, as a further example, the Folger Shakespeare Library and its creation of an extremely detailed TEI XML versions of Shakespeare's plays.[10] The Folger Library opened in 1932 as a fairly traditional archive and library connected to a strong collection of Shakespeare's works. Today, it describes itself as an "innovator in the preservation of rare materials, and major new digital initiatives support our leadership role in digital humanities (DH) research." Since it contains the world's largest Shakespeare collection, from the sixteenth century to the present day, producing canonical versions of the texts is centrally important to the library. Indeed, the library has "added sophisticated coding that works behind the scenes to make the plays easy to read, search, and index—and lays the groundwork for new features in the future" (Folger). Moreover, implicit editorial information that previously may have been difficult to access or unveil is now encoded directly into the XML files, so that, the library claims, the editorial process is "as nearly transparent as is possible."
The values implied by the Folger's encoding process, which seeks to embed as much information as possible into their digitized texts, demonstrate how strong encoding has become an important part of the justificatory discourses around why a digital edition of a work is created. It is also connected to a wider performativity about the cultural value of computational automation. As Sarah Werner, then digital media strategist at the Folger, once argued, "Right now there's the catalog over here, and then the digital images over here, and then there's a blog over here, and then there's this thing over here. We need something that unites these products, and makes them more usable" (Rosen). The organization and classificatory logic of digital encoding through XML is then also bound up with the calculatory possibilities of making different things equal—that is, a process of standardization via the classificatory encoding system that is woven around the text and metadata of Shakespeare's plays in those versions.
The encoding process influences and shapes our comprehension of digital objects and the narratives that these inspire. In this respect, the performativity of computation becomes highly important to our understanding of digital public culture. As Dan Edelstein notes, the "mass digitization of books has made research more efficient than ever" (237). Yet, while "quantification allows us to scale up from one book to the many . . . it only displaces, rather than resolves, the problem of figuring out what the numbers mean" (240). Edelstein's corrective implies a much greater role for DH researchers as human encoders and decoders. They must use their understanding of the limits and biases of computational techniques to critique their application, as, for example, Jeffrey M. Binder does in "Alien Reading." They must bridge the gap between digital and public culture.
One area we might look to for a less impoverished model of the digital humanities than that of signal processing would be the emerging field of études digitales. This term designates a set of predominantly, but not exclusively, French-speaking academics such as Bernard Stiegler, Antoinette Rouvroy, and Yves Citton, as well as the work collected in the journal Études Digitales, edited by Franck Cormerais and Jacques Athanase Gilbert. As the latter put it in their introduction to the journal, "Why études digitales rather than études numeriques? Because the term digital conserves in French the reference to the fingers (digits) whereas numerique refers to machine computation" (Cormerais and Gilbert, our translation). ("Numerique" is the French word used more normally for digital.) Such work would appear to use a more explicit engagement with the relationship between technology and research method than we tend to find within DH scholarship.
For Stiegler, this might mean understanding automation anxieties, such as those surfaced by the claims of the Folger library, as part of a "generalized and integrated automation" that encompasses both digital methods and the digital humanities themselves (La Société Automatique, 60). One starting point for Stiegler's analysis is Chris Anderson's Wired article, "The End of Theory." Anderson argues that, in what he calls the "petabyte age," the need for models and theories is eclipsed by algorithmic analysis of big data. As Anderson puts it, "Petabytes allow us to say: 'Correlation is enough.' We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show." Anderson's argument might almost seem to be a manifesto for the instrumental data-driven vision of the digital humanities, where data, modeling, and visualization (i.e., what is conceptualized in this chapter as signal) eclipse theory, critique and interpretation. Indeed, Tom Scheinfeldt's "Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?" arguably makes Anderson's argument about science in relation to the humanities, envisioning a golden age where methodology and "organizing activities" displace theories and "ideologies" such as "socialism, fascism, existentialism, structuralism [and] poststructuralism" (124). Stiegler, in contrast, builds on the critique of Anderson found in Kevin Kelly, arguing that behind every automated understanding of facts lies a hidden theory. For Stiegler, then, the automation of knowledge, as one that has no need for thinking (La Société Automatique, 96), must be addressed alongside the automation of society and itself made the subject of critique. Indeed, the automation of knowledge implicit in Google-like algorithmic analysis of big data that claims to disavow theory is always already theory-laden. In response, we need to sharpen our critiques of big data and what Stiegler calls the "neuroeconomy" (60). Implicitly, this requires a critique of automated or algorithmic knowledge, inasmuch as the latter sees itself as signal processing, bypassing the cultural critique and interpretation of symbols.
Antoinette Rouvroy and Bernard Stiegler stake out the terrain of big data and algorithmic knowledge well in a classic piece of études digitales work, "Le régime de Vérité Numérique":
The work of producing big data, or rather raw data, is therefore the work of suppressing all signification, with the goal that these raw data can be calculable and no longer function as signs that signify something in relation to what they represent, but as something that substitutes for signifying reality, making it disappear. In place of signifying reality, a set of asignifying networked data is substituted, which function as signals, meaning that although they have no signification, or rather because of that, they become calculable. In fact, this accords with the definition of signal that Umberto Eco gives: a signal is an element without signification which signifies nothing but because it truly signifies nothing, becomes all the more calculable. (114, our translation and emphasis added)
The idea that knowledge can be reduced to the analysis of data is, as Rouvroy and Stiegler argue, essentially the ideology of big data, one that rests both on the principle that empirical facts can replace theoretical models and on the false assumption that big data is simply the natural emanation of an empirical reality.[11]
This has immediate implications for our argument about signal and symbol in the digital humanities. The signal-processing model of digital humanities, far from dispensing with ideology or being an essentially pragmatic methodological exercise, collaborates in what Rouvroy and Stiegler identify as the ideological purification of data as signal. In this way, the digital humanities participates not only in the processing (or purification) of signal but also in its essentially ideological suppression of symbol and signification. The digital humanities partakes in what Rouvroy and Stiegler are calling the "digital truth regime." That is why it is important for the digital humanities to consider the political, cultural, and legal implications of the technologies it employs.
Thinking signal and symbol together, as we propose to do here, requires digital humanists to consider method in ways that are at odds with the paradigmatic understanding of method in the DH field. In spite of some trenchant critiques, method is still often used to disavow theory. Here it is worth considering, as an example, Tom Scheinfeldt's well-known position in "Why Digital Humanities Is 'Nice'":
Digital humanities is nice because, as I have described in earlier posts, we're often more concerned with method than we are with theory. Why should a focus on method make us nice? Because methodological debates are often more easily resolved than theoretical ones. Critics approaching an issue with sharply opposed theories may argue endlessly over evidence and interpretation. Practitioners facing a methodological problem may likewise argue over which tool or method to use. Yet at some point in most methodological debates one of two things happens: either one method or another wins out empirically, or the practical needs of our projects require us simply to pick one and move on.
Scheinfeldt sees methodological debates as clearly distinguished from theoretical ones: the latter require endless arguments "over evidence and interpretation," whereas the former can be resolved quickly, empirically, and pragmatically. According to this view, method has almost no relationship with theory, and methodological debates are oriented around the best way to deal with empirical data. Method, in this context, becomes the pragmatic "cleaning up" (to use Rouvroy and Stiegler's expression) of data, or the signal suppressing symbol.
We see this disavowal of theory as symptomatic of the model of DH work that we are describing as signal processing. The disavowal of theory indicates the need to address the mutual relationship between signal and symbol that we have outlined in this chapter. In this respect, it is important to stress that our argument about the interdependence of signal and symbol involves contending that method and theory are also equally inseparable. Just as we need to think more critically about the relationship between signal and symbol, so too do we need to think more critically about the relationship between method and theory.[12]
This point is crucial, insofar as the implications of the digital humanities' initial relegation of theory to a status below method are manifested in the way in which academic knowledge and its dissemination are understood within the field. With an impoverished model of signal/symbol, there is an overemphasis on encoding and coding, and on the clarity of the channel, instead of on the decoding and reception of the symbolic content, which are essential ingredients of both academic and public discourses. We are not proposing that symbol should eradicate signal or that the relationship is necessarily conflictual. On the contrary, we see it as beneficial for the humanities to engage more robustly with signal; for instance, along the lines that Wolfgang Ernst suggests in relation to media archaeology. In this regard, digital methods potentially have a great role to play. By drawing attention to the status of both signal and symbol when actualized in the archives, tools, models, formalizations, and research infrastructures of the digital humanities, we can restore symbol to a position of significance and importance alongside signal. To return to Stiegler's suggestion, we need a digital hermeneutics within the digital humanities that binds together method and theory, signal and symbol.
1. Here we are mobilizing a concept of disorientation drawn in part from Stiegler (Technics and Time).
2. In financial markets, the seemingly more threatening term FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) is often used to denote a special group of technologies stocks concerning new models of computational media as streaming technologies (Berry, Philosophy of Software).
3. Indeed, data and information were said by Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States, to be the new "oil" of the digital age (Berry, Copy, Rip, Burn, 41, 56).
4. Stiegler, for instance, has identified this as the emergence of the "automatic society" (la société automatique). This is an era in which "calculation prevails over every other criteria of decision-making, and where algorithmic and mechanical becoming is concretized and materialized as logical automation and automatism" (La Societé Automatique, 23, our translation).
5. We are currently running "Automation Anxiety," an AHRC (UK Arts and Humanities Research Council) project exploring methods for analyzing contemporary cultural anxiety about automation. See http://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/automationanxiety.
6. The interdiscursivity and intertextuality engendered by the digital have, of course, been much remarked on and even used creatively in the writing of new forms of electronic literature.
7. For an alternative etymology of the phrase, see http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/58.
8. As Andrew Prescott commented on an earlier version of this chapter, "the idea that there is a distinction between information (signal) and carrier has been fundamental in much infrastructural provision for the humanities, not only in a digital environment but also for example in microfilming of newspapers. This concept is fundamental to XML and TEI. The problem is that for large swathes of humanities scholarship the information is fundamentally bound up with the medium in which it is carried. For historians, it is important to know whether we are talking about a telegram, medieval writ, newspaper, etc. Much of the interest of the digital humanities is precisely in the use of digital technology to explore the materiality of these carriers."
9. "It is as if, when the order comes down from the funding agencies, university administrations, and other bodies mediating today's dominant socioeconomic and political beliefs, digital humanists just concentrate on pushing the 'execute' button on projects that amass the most data for the greatest number, process that data most efficiently and flexibly (flexible efficiency being the hallmark of postindustrialism), and manage the whole through ever 'smarter' standards, protocols, schema, templates, and databases uplifting Frederick Winslow Taylor's original scientific industrialism into ultraflexible postindustrial content management systems camouflaged as digital editions, libraries, and archives—all without pausing to reflect on the relation of the whole digital juggernaut to the new world order" (Liu, 491).
10. See http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org.
11. On this point, see also the essay collection edited by Lisa Gitelman, 'Raw Data' Is an Oxymoron.
12. As Savage argues, methods demand to be understood as neither simply instrumental ("the practical needs of our projects require us simply to pick one and move on," as Scheinfeldt has it) nor uncontroversial. Savage contends that we need to resist the "instrumental framing in which [methods] are simply seen to be technically 'better or worse' means of doing social research" (5). Far from being merely tools to investigate theoretical questions, methods are now "the very stuff of social life": "Social networking sites, audit processes, devices to secure 'transparency', algorithms for financial transactions, surveys, maps, interviews, databases and classifications can be seen as . . . modes of 'making up' society. This move . . . is part of a striking rethinking of the relationship between theory, culture and method which is currently underway in contemporary academic research" (5).
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Drucker, Johanna. "Humanistic Theory and Digital Scholarship." In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 85–95. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Edelstein, Dan. "Intellectual History and Digital Humanities." Modern Intellectual History 13, no. 1 (2015): 237–46.
Ernst, Wolfgang. "Media Archaeography: Method and Machine versus History and Narrative of Media." In Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, edited by E. Huhtamo and J. Parikka, 239–55. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
Folger. "Folger Digital Texts." https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Folger_Digital_Texts. Accessed March 29, 2018.
Galloway, Alexander R. "The Cybernetic Hypothesis." Differences 25, no. 1 (2014): 107–29.
Gitelman, Lisa, ed. 'Raw Data' Is an Oxymoron. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2013.
Kelly, Kevin. "On Chris Anderson's 'The End of Theory.'" Edge: The Reality Club, June 30, 2008, http://edge.org/discourse/the_end_of_theory.html/. Accessed January 15, 2016.
Kirsch, Adam. "Technology Is Taking over English Departments: The False Promise of the Digital Humanities." New Republic, May 2, 2014, https://newrepublic.com/article/117428/limits-digital-humanities-adam-kirsch/. Accessed January 15, 2016.
Liu, Alan. "Where Is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?" In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 490–509. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984.
McAfee, Andrew, and Erik Brynjolfsson. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. New York: W. W. Norton, 2014.
Rosen, Rebecca J. "A Brief Tour of the Folger Shakespeare Library's Digital Treasures." The Atlantic, October 2, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/a-brief-tour-of-the-folger-shakespeare-librarys-digital-treasures/280039/. Accessed January 15, 2016.
Rouvroy, Antoinette, and Thomas Berns. "Gouvernementalité Algorithmique et Perspectives D'émancipation" Résaux 177 (2013): 163–96.
Rouvroy, Antoinette, and Bernard Stiegler. "Le Régime de Vérité Numérique De La Gouvernementalité Algorithmique à Un Nouvel État de Droit." Socio (2015): 4113–140.
Savage, Mike. "The 'Social Life of Methods': A Critical Introduction." Theory, Culture & Society 30, no. 4 (2013): 3–21.
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Stiegler, Bernard. La Société Automatique. 1. L'Avenir du travail. Paris: Fayard, 2015.
Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time: 2. Disorientation. Translated by Stephen Barker. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008.


Miami City Commission Chair Ken Russell is ready to move on his vow to protect the city's Maurice A. Ferré Park and adjoining FEC Slip from commercial development.
A proposed resolution from Mr. Russell to limit uses there to only park and other green space is on today's (4/11) commission agenda.
"My request… to all of you is to please assure that all the Bayfront parks have no possibility of becoming Miami's Coney Island. At the very least please delete the amusement rides from the Maurice A. Ferré Park,"


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text:
FIRST BLOOD - August 2008
Vampire Babylon novella in the FIRST BLOOD collection from Berkley Sensation, 8/08
The woman moved like red light easing over a midnight street as she slipped onto the dance floor.
Ben Tyree watched her from his dark corner, hidden from the slow, throbbing disco music. He was biding his time, having traveled too many miles for answers regarding the death of his older, better brother.
As a deputy back home, he knew his way around an investigation. But here, the NYPD seemed so wrapped in red tape that Ben had ventured out on his own. The cops were cooperating by sharing what they already knew, yet Ben hadn't accepted the lack of progress.
"Severe blood loss," the young detective who wore glasses, a plaid tie and an officious attitude had said. "That's all we really know about the cause of death right now. No clear indication of drug use, no signs of violence or attack like stab or gunshot wounds…"
So Ben had done his own tracking, starting with Nolan's hotel concierge, a whey-faced man who'd jokingly mentioned Studio 54 to Nolan after he'd asked about city hot spots. The employee had known the obvious family man wouldn't get in, but Nolan had taken him seriously.
It didn't sound like his brother at all, but Ben had still followed up, even though the cops had already covered this ground.
And his tenacity paid off when he found something they hadn't.
While working his way from the back of the club's waiting mob to the front, Ben had encountered two women dressed as disciples of the Marquis de Sade by way of the Bee Gees. They'd told him that a woman named "Ginny"—early 20s, dark-haired, looked like Elizabeth Taylor back when she was fresh and young—had been seen with "the dead guy" outside this club the night before last.
Consequently, Ben hadn't expected to get in to Studio 54 since it was known for its selectivity, so he'd resigned himself to staking out the crowds gathered around the entrance for this "Ginny." But a slight guy with wiry hair had been handpicking customers, and Ben somehow caught his eye and was ushered past the velvet ropes as women in feathers and glitter and men in butterfly-collar shirts begged the same admission.
Now, under the pulsing lights and the synthesizer-driven chug of music, Ben honed in on the woman who just might hold more answers.
The lady who really did look like a young Liz Taylor, swaying so gracefully to the music.
Her short hair curled to just below the ears, a white flower poised in its black curls. Thick lashes surrounded eyes that seemed to flash blue against pale skin. Crimson lipstick shaped a lush mouth.
He couldn't take his eyes off of her. Then again, neither could the other dancers—male and female—who'd gone still to watch her, enthralled.
Every one of Ben's cells hammered downward until they gathered in his gut, stretching then twisting until they overcame him, tearing him apart with every undulation she made.
A flame, he thought while she smoothed her hands up her red dress, lifting her face to the catwalks lingering over the floor.
A lure that shouldn't be tempting him.
He tore his gaze away, gathering his guts by reminding himself of why he was here and where he was.
A Sodom wrapped around Gomorra. A cavernous former theater from the 1920s that had been turned into a radio/TV stage, then morphed into this pit over fifty years later. A place with bared bodies writhing under a piece of artwork that symbolized debauchery—a man in the moon, complete with a cocaine spoon lifted to its nose.
Life in the goddamn city, he thought. And his brother had died in its embrace.
As Ben quelled his emotions—he'd already allowed himself grief, but now vengeance overtook it—the music escalated to a more urgent beat, pumping in time to the lights.
In spite of himself, Ben's gaze was pulled back to the woman's allure.
She would be the key. He just knew it.
Fingers buried in her hair, she had stopped dancing, closing her eyes as if craving the slow churn of the previous song. She allowed her hands to trail down the sides of her long, pale neck, over the clasp of her halter, then her collarbone. Her sliding touch was a sensual fade, one last long note in the song still humming through her.
She brushed the swell of her breasts, and his belly clenched. But then he forced himself to think about Nolan and the pictures that the cops had shared.
The sightless eyes of a man who'd died in the throes of…
What? Ben had been wondering just what the hell it was that defined Nolan's gaze in those pictures. It had compelled him, haunted him.
Fascinated him.
Ben had seen a few corpses in his own small-town Texas job, but he'd never seen this, and he found himself wondering just what Nolan had found in death that had eluded him in life.
What could've possibly given him such a look of ecstasy…?
When the images faded from his mind's eye, the woman was gone.
He thought of the .45 in his ankle holster. Ready for anything.
Emerging out of his shaded corner, he scanned the club, past the mirrored bar by the dance floor, past the stage, past—
He sucked in a breath when he met a pair of bright blue eyes.
Fight-ready, he immediately went into defense mode, his heartbeat trumping the music and banging in his ears, his chest.
But…he couldn't move. God, he was captured by the blue gaze, which had somehow turned a pure, fathomless silver in the endless second it'd taken him to recover.
A strange peace filtered through him, and he thought, This is what Nolan saw while he died.
Suddenly, he knew that he shouldn't be so on guard. Not around her.
Not around Ginny.
As he stared and stared, he felt the vague sensation of fingers riffling through his mind, quickly and efficiently exploring.
Then, as soon as it had started, it was over.
He was still looking into her eyes, but they were blue again. Music blasted, as if turned way up, even though Ben instinctively knew that it was the same volume as before.
The woman in red didn't speak over the drumming rhythms, only crooked her finger at him, inviting him to follow her.
He probably should have thought twice about obeying, but he didn't. Couldn't. His body seemed to be doing all the thinking for him as he followed her to a staircase, where they climbed to a balcony dominated by old theater seats.
And the chairs weren't empty, either. No, all around, there were bodies—half-dressed, undressed, exposing sleek limbs and grinding hips.
A twinge of warning told Ben to leave, to let the NYPD do their own work, but abandonment wasn't natural to him. Besides, Ginny had taken his hand, leading him past a woman who was snorting cocaine while she straddled another female. The second one was strumming the first one between the legs, a naughty smile on her face as she checked out the new arrivals.
Then they moved on, past a woman wearing nothing but gold paint while she laved the penis of a man who was casually drinking a martini.
Eventually, they found a relatively quiet area of their own, and Ginny turned to Ben.
God, she was so beautiful that looking at her almost seemed blasphemous. But he did it anyway.
And his cock went hot and hard, as if he had no control.
She gestured to a seat, but he refused. Nonetheless, she folded herself into a chair, crossing one long leg over the other.
"From the way you were watching me," she said, "I thought we might enjoy a little privacy."
Privacy would be great for this interview he needed to conduct with her; if it panned out, he'd let the NYPD in on the lead.
Or maybe privacy would be Ben's downfall.
He steadied himself, and she must have misconstrued his hesitation.
"There are other places we can go if that makes you more comfortable," she said. "Haven't you heard about the upper area—the real 'Upstairs'? Private, secret rooms. I know the owners of Studio, so--"
Ben tried to clear his head. What the hell was going on with him?
"I'm not here for any other reason than to talk," he managed.
"Really?" It wasn't so much a question as an amused statement.
"Really. I've got some business to take care of and you're on my check list, Ginny."
A lift of her brow was further proof that he'd found the right woman.
As she cocked her head, inspecting him with cool negligence, he strengthened himself with thoughts of his older brother: Nolan laughing at a family barbecue, then gone the next morning on a business trip to New York. The phone call his wife had received yesterday, announcing Nolan's death in a condemned building down in the Bronx.
Ire all but pummeled Ben as it batted away the grief. Got to find out what happened.
Then, a crazier thought.
Got to know what Nolan saw before he died with that fulfilled look in his eyes….
"How do you know my name?" Ginny asked, eyes narrowing. But she grinned, too. Sultry, languorous.
Ben stepped forward, knowing the interview had begun. Over the balcony's stench of sex and sweat, he caught the lovely scent of the magnolia in her hair.
Or maybe that was the smell of her skin…?
His cock strained against his fly, blood thrusting through his veins and tearing him apart as he struggled for composure.
"Two nights ago," he said tightly, "people saw you outside this club with my brother, Nolan. Seven hours later, he was found dead. I thought you could offer some insight about what happened between then and there."
Something seemed to roll over her, like the moon losing its light, and Ben knew that he hadn't wasted his time tracking her down. This Ginny knew what he was talking about.
But before he could start in again, a voice sounded from behind him.
"You going to tell him, Ginny?" a second woman asked, and she sounded exactly like her. Like Ginny.
When Ben turned around to see who she was, he realized that it was Ginny.
Or at least her double.
From the book: First Blood (story title: "Double the Bite")
By: Chris Marie Green (with Susan Sizemore, Erin McCarthy, and Meljean Brook)
Berkley Sensation
By: Chris Marie Green
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


CinemaNext, the European specialist in cinema exhibitor services (Ymagis Group, ISIN: FR0011471291, TICKER: MAGIS, PME-PEA, TECH 40), today announced the signing of an agreement with Austrian cinema circuit Cineplexx (Constantin Film-Holding GmbH) for the installation of a Samsung 3D Onyx CinemaLED at the Cineplexx Wienerberg in Vienna. It will be the first Samsung Onyx CinemaLED deployed by CinemaNext.
First introduced in July 2017, Samsung Cinema Screen is a Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI*)-certified cinema display, which amplifies on-screen content through HDR and EclairColor HDR picture quality. It features 4K images with peak brightness levels nearly 10 times greater (146fL) than the common cinema standard (14fL). The resulting high contrast showcases bright colors, pristine whites and deep blacks. Unlike standard 3D cinemas, the Samsung CinemaLED screen provides consistent picture quality across an entire theater, ensuring a uniform, immersive viewing experience for viewers in every seat.
The film distributor Constantin Film Holding GmbH was founded in Austria in 1951. A second mainstay was created at the end of the 1960's in the segment of cine operations. In this segment, 25 traditional cinemas and cinema centres were operated until the beginning of the 1990's and, following a structural change, the Cineplexx Cine Operations GmbH, a subsidiary company of the Constantin Film Holding GmbH, was founded in 1993. The business developed during a time when many traditional cinemas in Austria were disappearing and multiplex movie theatres were conquering the market. Constantin Film reacted to this trend by establishing a group of 19 cinemas and 153 screens in Austria. Additionally, traditional movie theatres with up to 18 halls existed.
* Digital Cinema Initiatives, LLC (DCI) is a joint venture of major motion picture studios, formed to establish a standard architecture for digital cinema systems.


text:
A Murder of Manatees
The Further Adventures of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent
By: Larry Correia
Narrated by: Adam Baldwin
Series: The Adventures of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent
Categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction
4.1 out of 5 stars 4.1 (9,787 ratings)
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When half your galaxy is unexpectedly sucked into a black hole - when a hitherto-unknown species of space aliens lays waste to your home planet - when disaster rears its ugly head (or heads) - who can you call for faster-than-light appraisals and best-in-the-multiverse customer service? Just one man - Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent.
In this latest chapter of his interstellar exploits, Tom is about to deliver a crushing performance evaluation to Jimmy the Intern when the unimaginable happens: The beloved Wendell the Manatee has been kidnapped! Armed with his battle mechs and his elite corps of junior associates, can Tom find Wendell before he's canned in oil? And can Jimmy, at long last, channel his inner agent?
Performed by Adam Baldwin, the sci-fi Audible Original A Murder of Manatees will make you quiver with fear, laugh uncontrollably, and wonder whether your deductibles are too high.
©2017 Larry Correia (P)2017 Audible Originals, LLC.
The Golden Orchard
By: Flora Ahn
Narrated by: Kathleen Choe
Maya loves to cook with her grandmother - her Halmunee - to connect with the rich family history associated with each dish, a history Maya's mom would prefer stayed in the past. While cooking with Halmunee, something remarkable happens - the food creates such a strong memory that Maya and Halmunee are transported back in time through the memory itself. Halmunee explains that the women in her family have the gift of time travel through food and Maya can do it too, if she practices.
Joyce Gassman
By Allison Hernandez on 02-04-20
Audible Original Novella
By: Christian White
Narrated by: Ellen Archer
Stan Weir is mourning a tragic loss when he meets a mysterious nine-year-old girl, who claims to be the reincarnated spirit of his late wife. Marcy Keef is a single mother trying to make ends meet when her daughter Erin starts describing 'past life memories'. Neither wants to believe Erin, but as violent secrets are revealed, the truth becomes harder to deny.
Authors just should not put any twist they want
By Eve Ducky on 04-04-20
The Man on the Mountaintop
An Audible Original Drama
By: Susan Trott, Libby Spurrier - adaptor
Narrated by: Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones, Clare Corbett, and others
The Man on the Mountaintop tells the story of Holy Man Joe, an ageing and unassuming man who lives in a hermitage on top of a mountain. During the summer months, thousands of hopefuls line the path leading to his door, seeking his wisdom. From bombastic, wealthy nobles intent on cheating their way to the top to drunkards who gradually build the physical and mental strength they need to quit their addiction, The Man on the Mountaintop is a rousing tale full of humour, wit and life lessons.
Not my cup of tea
By: Susan Trott, and others
A Woman of the World
By: Rebecca Gilman
Narrated by: Kathleen Chalfant
Meet Mabel Loomis Todd, an inspired conversationalist who routinely invites scandal and ignores the rules of 19th century society. Now in her 70s and living on Hog Island in Maine, the outspoken writer and editor is holding court, entertaining us with musings on her colorful life, spilling secrets, and revealing the truth about how she turned Emily Dickinson into a household name.
Not worth time
The Mountain and the Sea
By: Kwame Dawes
Narrated by: Paula-Anne Jones
Esther, a painter living in Jamaica and recovering from the death of her husband, comes across a man on a mountain road with no memory of his past. As a hurricane rushes towards the island, she shelters the handsome stranger, names him "Monty", and tries to uncover the mystery of his missing memory. She soon finds herself falling in love with a man she barely knows, and who doesn't even know himself. The Mountain and the Sea is a romantic tale about letting go of the past and embracing the present.
By Christina on 04-04-20
How to Build Meaningful Relationships Through Conversation
By: Carol Ann Lloyd, The Great Courses
Narrated by: Carol Ann Lloyd
In 10 lectures for self-development, professional communications coach and speaker Carol Ann Lloyd teaches the best ways to communicate and listen, including how to focus on understanding, how to overcome barriers and distractions, and how to clarify intentions. When listeners step back to hear what makes conversations successful, they will learn that each component of a conversation is a piece of a larger puzzle, which only fits together when thoughtfully considered and executed.
Only Got 5 Minutes In…
By Shayla on 04-06-20
By: Carol Ann Lloyd, and others
Finding Tess
A Mother's Search for Answers in a Dopesick America
By: Beth Macy
Narrated by: Beth Macy
On Christmas Eve, 2017, Tess Henry was found dead in a dumpster in Las Vegas. Tess was a 28-year-old new mother, a former honor roll student, and a high school basketball player from suburban Roanoke, Virginia, a place ravaged by the national opioid crisis. The New York Times best-selling author Beth Macy chronicled Tess and her mom, Patricia, through Tess' harrowing, years-long battle to recover from heroin addiction in her award-winning book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America.
Exhausting and heartbreaking
By Sda on 04-08-20
How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps
By: Andrew Rowe
Narrated by: Suzy Jackson, Steve West
For thousands of years, there has been a cycle: a Demon King rises and conquers, and a Hero is reborn a hundred years later to defeat him. Each time, civilizations are ground to dust beneath the Demon King's hordes, but humanity has remained secure in the belief that a Hero of legend will always save them. There's just one slight problem. It's only been 23 years since the Demon King's latest rise, and this time, he's already conquered more than half the world. If humanity simply waits for the Hero's return, there may be no world left for him to save.
The Best Audible Original Book I've Heard
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Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection
By: Alexander C. Kane
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Andrea Vernon always thought she would spend her life living in Paris writing thought-provoking historical novels all day and sipping wine on the Seine all night. But the reality is she's drowning in debt, has no prospects, and is forced to move back to Queens, where her parents remind her daily that they are very interested in grandchildren. Then, one morning, she is kidnapped, interviewed, and hired as an administrative assistant by the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection. Superheroes for hire, using their powers for good. What could possibly go wrong?
If Sharknado were a book...
By G. Eytcheson on 05-24-19
The Flying Flamingo Sisters
By: Carrie Seim
Narrated by: Gabriel Vaughan, Bill Andrew Quinn, Jessica Almasy, and others
This hilarious, heartfelt, and soaring adventure will delight fans of The Goonies and Indiana Jones. Performed as a 1930s radio drama, it's bursting with humor for all ages, orchestral scoring, and some of the most talented voices on Broadway. When their ace pilot parents (and adorable puppy) mysteriously disappear over the Pacific, the Flamingo Sisters - Flo, Faye, and Franny - escape the clutches of their evil Uncle Freidrich (who believes girls should never pilot aeroplanes) and join a flying circus.
A rollicking good time!
By Lisa on 12-12-19
The Life and Times of Prince Albert
By: Patrick Allitt, The Great Courses
Narrated by: Patrick Allitt
In 10 lectures, award-winning historian Patrick N. Allitt transports listeners to England in the 1840s and 1850s. During those two decades, Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, became one of the most influential people in the country and remains a figure of fascination even today. In fact, the British royal family as we know it wouldn't exist without the private and public actions of this detached, impartial, and upright political figure.
A Master Storyteller
By tru britty on 04-18-20
By: Patrick Allitt, and others
By: Marie Benedict
The tide is turning against the colonists in the Revolutionary War, and 18-year-old Elizabeth Morris cannot sit by idly. Quietly disdainful of her Tory parents, who drag her along to society events and welcome a British soldier into their home during their occupation of New York City, Elizabeth decides to take matters into her own hands. She realizes that, as a young woman, no one around her believes that she can comprehend the profound implications of being a nation at war - she is, effectively, invisible. And she can use this invisibility to her advantage.
Should've leaned into history or romance
By Phx17 on 07-03-20
Sea Wall / A Life
By: Simon Stephens, Nick Payne
Narrated by: Jake Gyllenhaal, Tom Sturridge
Meet Alex, a photographer on a holiday with his family in the south of France. Meet Abe, a music producer with a baby on the way. Two men - both fathers, husbands, and sons - take us on a journey you will never forget. The finest actors of their generation, Academy Award® nominee Jake Gyllenhaal (Sunday in the Park with George) and Tony Award nominee Tom Sturridge (1984), had audiences roaring to their feet during the sold-out Broadway engagement. Now Sea Wall / A Life, a dramatic exploration of transformative love and devastating loss, comes to Audible.
Incredible. Sea Wall fell short
By Mia on 05-01-20
By: Simon Stephens, and others
The Cuckoo's Cry
An Audible Original Novella
By: Caroline Overington
Narrated by: Aimee Horne
On the eve of the global lockdown, Don Barlow opens the door of his old beachside cottage to find a pretty girl with pink-tipped hair, claiming to have nowhere to go. He allows her entry, and so begins a mystery set in unprecedented times: with the virus raging outside their home, the girl cannot be asked to leave, but what does he risk by having her stay?
Slow burning Aussie suspense in the time of COVID
Exit Interview with My Grandmother
On 76th Between Columbus and Amsterdam, a Ninety-Two Year Old Woman Is Reading Sally Rooney
By: Lily Meyersohn
Narrated by: Lily Meyersohn
At once profoundly personal and far-reaching, Exit Interview with My Grandmother serves as a meditation on the beginning of a young woman's life and the series of questions that arise from examining love, loss, family, memory, and death. Moving between cities and centuries, Meyersohn probes her family's Jewish history and her grandparents' relationships in part to decipher her own young queer relationships, but also to examine how we ought to behave in the face of a world riddled with uncertainty and doubt.
blaaaaah.
By Annie on 05-03-20
Henrietta & Eleanor: A Retelling of Jekyll and Hyde
By: Robert Louis Stevenson, Libby Spurrier - dramatist
Narrated by: Holliday Grainger, Clive Mantle, Carla Mendonça, and others
Dr Jekyll, a charming doctor explores the possibility of dividing the dark and light side of her personality, but in doing this she creates a monster, Eleanor Hyde. For many years she manages to live under the radar, keeping her dark secret unknown to those around her. However, gradually her evil side gains strength until Dr Jekyll is overwhelmed by Eleanor Hyde, to disastrous consequences. An exploration of human duality and forces of good and evil, this modern retelling is compelling and eerie and retains the disturbing nature of the original text.
By Yinna Makeup on 06-09-20
By: Robert Louis Stevenson, and others
Once More upon a Time
A Novella
By: Roshani Chokshi
Narrated by: Rebecca Gibel, Shiromi Arserio, Vikas Adam
Once upon a time, there was a king and queen in a land called Love's Keep who once loved one another, but alas, no more. Without love, they were doomed to be ousted from their kingdom at the end of a year and a day. A year and a day passed. This is where their story starts. Imelda and Ambrose can't remember why they got married. A year and a day ago, Ambrose consulted a witch, trading their love to save Imelda's life - and they've been stuck with one another ever since.
Fairy tales of magic apples and horse cloaks
By: Rich Cohen
Narrated by: Rich Cohen
Every life reaches that crucial intersection, the place where you must choose your fate, or have it chosen for you. For best-selling author Rich Cohen (The Fish That Ate the Whale, The Last Pirate of New York), it came in a writing workshop senior year in college, when, at 17, he had to knuckle under to a ruthless professor or make a righteous, self-defeating stand.
to mush foul language
By susan markillie on 06-08-20
Our favorite moments from A Murder of Manatees
Tom Stranger and Wendell the Manatee address customer complaints.
"A good agent must follow his instincts."
"Man vs. his dinner"
Larry Correia is the New York Times best-selling author of the Monster Hunter International urban fantasy series, the Grimnoir Chronicles alternate history trilogy, the Dragon Award winning Saga of the Forgotten Warrior epic fantasy series, the Dead Six thrillers (with Mike Kupari), and novels set in the Warmachine game universe. He has also published a great deal of short fiction, which is now compiled in Target Rich Environment, volumes one and two, and is the co-editor (along with Kacey Ezell) of the Noir Fatale anthology. A former accountant, military contractor, machinegun dealer, and firearms instructor, Larry is now a full time writer. He lives in Yard Moose Mountain, Utah with his very patient wife and children.
About the Performer
Adam Baldwin is an American actor and voice actor. Baldwin was born in Winnetka, Illinois, and studied at New Trier Township High School East in Winnetka. He has three children with his wife, Ami Julius. He starred in Full Metal Jacket (1987) as Animal Mother, as well as in the television series Firefly and its continuation film Serenity as Jayne Cobb. His roles include Stillman in Ordinary People (1980), Colonel John Casey in Chuck, and Mike Slattery in The Last Ship.
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20 Best Sci-Fi Listens
There's a certain magic in losing yourself in the imaginative world of science fiction. Settle in as reality fades away.
10 Best Fantasy Listens
From popular sword-and-sorcery to the best fantasy magic books, your search for your next favorite series starts here.
What listeners say about A Murder of Manatees
J paslawski
like a lonely teenager wrote it.
this book reads like an edgy teenage wanna be comedian wrote it. while a few of the jokes hit...and hit hard, most of the jokes feel like they are coming from an incel. At one point he mentions that a group of manatees are able to hide amongst human women at a science march by just wearing pink hats. implying that the women at the march look like manatees. He openly refers to people who gave his book 1 star as "triggered" and uses other Alt Right power words. The book's premise could be funny, but I read it years ago in junior high, when I wrote it.
Logan R.
Over Referential Satire
Tom Stranger, and his little crew go on very small adventures with very little consequence. Sure, war between worlds is threatened, and enacted for about 10 minutes, but eh. It's all in a day's work, right? So this book strays into the weird world of sci-fi wish fulfillment where the author just kind of says things he has a problem with, and in his book, those are heavily ridiculed by all participants (in hopes of lampooning their extreme behaviors). This makes the book go between bad political commentary, and poor wish fulfilment fantasy as the book settles into it's jaunty little rhythm. Things happen, a take is expressed, and then we move on. Trying to be fast paced, so we don't care about all the details being dropped, is not really an effective strategy to writing a book. It's audience confuses me. The book is cartoonish. It's simple plot and very straight forward characters, indicate a children's book. The constant references, and dismissive attitude towards any group that is not in agreement with Tom Stranger points to a more adult audience. I don't think this was effective. I don't even think this could be considered political satire, because Tom Stranger, himself, is holding a lampshade. I'm not sure the author has a point beyond "everything is stupid." I dunno. It's "everything is on the table, and I'm just going to make shit up" storytelling is choppy. Sure, the plot moves. The characters have unique voices and objective. But dude, what's the point? Who is this for? And do you really think they'll like it? My guess, it's for Larry Correia, and he got a kick out of taking your money for it.
Molly Gordon
Libertarian twaddle
I tried to listen, setting politics aside, but without the Libertarian twaddle, there is no story at all.
Colleen A Fisher
Insulting, couldn't finish
While the premise is entertaining and promised a fun, upbeat sci fi jaunt the book is ultimately defeated by the self aggrandizing of the author. Using your writing as a platform to lash out at those you don't like is petty and unbefitting of a professional. Based on the first chapter wherein the author writes a press conference to deal with feedback of the last book, it seems that the author is rather obsessed with reading one star reviews so have fun with this one. Strange seems to be the nobler person you wish you were but are too petty to bring yourself to be.
Lucy's Mom Jack's Dad
Rather than being funny, this book was needlessly mean spirited. In the 1st chapter or so there's acknowledgement of people who lean left disliking his books, saying they are "triggered" and belittling them. I'm actually on the conservative side, and find the book to be more adolescent and taunting, than amusing and witty. He is no Douglas Adams.
I couldn't get past the first chapter. Not for me. Moving on to something else.
Erin Cartwright
Worst Audible Selection to Date
This story is awful. It was free and I am completely out of other things to read or listen to as I continue to home quarantine. But I should not have wasted my time... nothing about it was fun or interesting or amusing. I hated it.
Laura Gawron
Ok, we get it! You hate liberals
This had a lot of potential because the author can be quite funny and snarky, but it quickly devolved into a not-so-thinly veiled political diatribe. While I love that comedy is the great equalizer, the author's obvious distain for liberals was a major distraction. The story just awkwardly stops while he harps on the same few complaints over and over. Excellent performance by the narrator and I was initially intrigued by the story, but I couldn't get past the excessive ranting.
Christopher Flood
Unfunny Neocon Claptrap
Only a few genuinely funny lines. The rest a mishmash of political BS. Very skippable.
Brian Lee Gnad (The Bubba Man)
BEWARE May cause excessive laughter while driving!
Where does A Murder of Manatees rank among all the audiobooks you've listened to so far?
It is a cherished part of my collection!
Adam Baldwin knocks it out of the park!
His narration is excellent and his rendition of the Manatee language is outstanding! So Nuanced! It is another very amusing installment of Tom Stranger, and the bumbullings of Jimmy the Intern, who is an idiot with is heart in the right place.
What did you like best about this story?
I really do love the storyline of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent. I loved it back it was just random snippets on Larry Correia's blog. As a coherent narrative it is an excellent light hearted escape from the cares of the world.
What does Adam Baldwin bring to the story that you wouldn't experience if you just read the book?
Adam Baldwin nails the delivery of the main viewpoint, Tom Stranger, magnificently. When I read him now, I hear it in Adam's voice. He really captures the spirit of it all.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
If I could, I would!
Can't wait for the next installment!
10/10 for customer satisfaction
A great story with excellent narration, 10/10 would recommend Stranger and Stranger insurance to a friend.
I loved this. The story was funny as hell and Adam Baldwin is the king of narration. My only gripe is that I wish it had been a proper length novel.
Love jimmy the intern manatees are bad ass Really enjoyed the book nice to see that the series is carrying on😉💥💥💥
a a a a a a a a a ass an app add are and
Tom Stranger rides again!
loved it, the story, the performance. A fun way to spend a few hours if are traveling the multiverrse.


Jonathan is an Assistant General Manager for The Garland Center in Los Angeles. His responsibilities include working closely with the General Manager to perform lease administration, property and tenant accounting, and vendor management.
Prior to Rising, Jonathan worked at Panda Restaurant Group as a Property Coordinator. There, he was responsible for over 20 retail plaza properties across the United States.
Jonathan graduated from University of California, Riverside, earning a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Management. Jonathan enjoys DJing, mountain biking, and playing sports during his free time.


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A brush with death?
NO parent expects their young child to go into the bathroom and die, yet that is the risk all parents take when there is fluoride toothpaste present within easy reach.
By Walter Graham
Monday, 4th November 2013, 8:31 am
'Fluoride, the chief ingredient in toothpaste, is highly poisonous.'
Fluoride, the chief ingredient in toothpaste, is highly poisonous. In fact, unbeknownst to most parents, a fatal dose of toxic toothpaste lurks in virtually every bathroom in the country.
A 2002 report by the Department of Health in the Republic of Ireland, which said that 'fluoride is a poison in large doses,' warned that 'young children are particularly at risk of ingesting potentially life-threatening doses of fluoride from oral care products.'
The report made a stark revelation; 'swallowing as little as one-quarter of a tube (of fluoride toothpaste) may be life threatening for a one-year-old child.' A tube of toothpaste has enough fluoride to kill a child up to about age 12, it added.
'Dental fluorosis is systematic fluoride poisoning of the teeth. Its a visible sign that you have been poisoned by fluoride and its permanent, and it is only caused by fluoride'
Therefore to avoid children killing themselves, the report advocated that 'fluoride products should be kept out of reach of children'. However, young children have no spitting reflexes.
Even using a small amount of toothpaste on a brush, will result in most of the toothpaste being swallowed, with serious health consequences.
The only fool proof solution, according to the 2002 report, is don't use the toothpaste. The report recommended that 'parents should be advised not to use toothpaste when brushing their children's teeth until the age of 2 years.'
Wait a minute! If toothpaste is as poisonous as this, WHY hasn't a government somewhere put a poison warning on the tube? Believe it or not, in the US all fluoridated toothpaste tubes must carry a "poison warning" on them by Federal Law, as of 1997.
It warns that: if you accidentally swallow more than a tiny pea-sized amount, you should contact a "poison control center immediately."
Yet British and Irish fluoride toothpastes carry NO poison warning. Why? Shouldn't parents here be warned of the risk of poisoning? Are our kids worth less than US kids?
It is highly immoral to have a product as toxic as this in every bathroom and not have a poison warning. This important product safety issue certainly needs to be brought to Stormont.
Put A Lid On It!
You'll notice that other risky drugs have child–proof caps to protect small children who like to try things when parents aren't around. Bleach has a child-proof cap for that reason.
Considering that the US Federal Government felt compelled to put a poison warning on because of a pea-sized amount, it is clear that this stuff is poisonous at very, very small amounts.
Then fluoride toothpaste should have a child – proof cap to safeguard the most vulnerable as well!
Fluoride is a cumulative poison, so small amounts build up in the body. An adult retains 50% of all they ingest, whereas babies' fragile bodies can't excrete it, as 90 per cent stays in their bodies, putting babies at higher risk of side-effects.
Toothpaste will no longer be your Child's main source of fluoride if our Health Minister presses ahead with plans to add fluoride to Ulster's tap water.
Numerous reviews, including the York Report, have said that fluoridation at one part per million (1ppm) causes toxic effects in 50 per cent of people. And remarkably, these effects show up in the teeth which fluoride is supposed to protect. The condition is called dental fluorosis.
Dental damage by fluoride
Dental fluorosis is systematic fluoride poisoning of the teeth. It's a visible sign that you have been poisoned by fluoride and it's permanent, and it is only caused by fluoride.
Fluorosis appears as white flecks on teeth, and can cause brown discoloured stains. At severe levels (which can result from swallowing toothpaste), the teeth are pitted and chipped. The tooth enamel is totally destroyed. Severe enamel fluorosis is a toxic effect that causes structural damage to the teeth, according to the US National Research Council report in 2006.
With this evidence that fluoridation damages teeth, far more convincing than evidence of benefit, international experts say it's time to stop.
"Litigation is inevitable. Inaction in the face of evidence could be considered negligent," said Dr. Hardy Limeback, past president of the Canadian Association of Dental Research, when he addressed TDs at the Oireachtas Health Committee in 2000. But the existence of fluorosis raises much more troubling questions about water fluoridation.
If 1ppm damages your teeth, the only visible part of your skeleton, surely it's damaging your bones too? And does ingesting fluoride via toothpaste combined with fluoridated water create even worse effects? The evidence is alarming.
Fluoride in water has been linked to osteoporosis/arthritis, cancer, genetic damage, gastrointestinal issues, thyroid problems and neurological disorders and lower IQ in children.
According to Dr Vyvyan Howard a toxo-pathologist at the University of Ulster Coleraine, says that:
"There are studies that show that osteoporosis, thinning of the bones, is higher in fluoridated communities and that when you get towards the end of your life the rate of hip fractures is measured to be twice as high in fluoridated townships in America than non-fluoridated ones."
With over a thousand published studies linking fluoride consumption to cancer, osteoporosis, etc., do we really want this added to our water?
In the same way as the cigarette pack shows a picture of someone's burned out lungs to warn you of the risks…shouldn't the toothpaste carton carry a photo of dental fluorosis? Is it fair to keep this from parents? Not warning them that the very product being advertised as a protection against tooth decay can also create dental damage? There is a need for photos of dental fluorosis on the box, so that parents can recognize the damage when it appears and choose to avoid the product by buying non-fluoride toothpaste at a health store.
Ulster says NO!
Health Minister Edwin Poots announced that he is considering water fluoridation for Ulster, even though 25 out of 26 councils voted against it in 1996. Along with the four area Health and Social Services Councils, NIPSA (the civil servants Union), the two Farmers Unions,
Queens Students Union, the Angling Federation, the Vegetarian Society and Shorts (the aero-space manufacturer) threatened to pull out of the North if fluoridation went ahead.
He has declared water fluoridation safe. Yet in 2002 a report by the Belgian Health Ministry claimed that swallowing fluoride causes osteoporosis and neurological defects.
Belgium then banned fluoride supplements and called for a European-wide ban on fluoride toothpaste. The Belgian Health Minister, Magda Aelvoet, stated that: "fluoride is a slithering poison that seeps into the brain."
Clearly one of these Ministers is wrong. The Belgian Minister is siding with the 98% of Europe who have rejected water fluoridation, with many countries trying it, only to stop later over health concerns.
Holland rewrote its constitution to prevent fluoridation from ever coming back after doctors proved fluoride was causing side-effects in the population.
So why would our Health Minister be considering such a mass-medication solution for a supposed dental benefit in a small group of children when Europe is so opposed? This question needs to be answered by Minister Poots before this is brought forward to the Assembly.
Doesn't Europe want good teeth like the Republic of Ireland? Amazingly 9 European countries have better teeth than the Republic of Ireland without mandatorily drugging their people. There obviously is a better way to reduce tooth decay.
Tale of Two Towns
THE Northern Ireland government used Holywood and Tandragee as two fluoridated test towns. Both had fluoride added to their water for thirty years to see what the benefits were.
You would then expect the government to have kept detailed records on the health and dental state of these two towns to base their decision to fluoridate the rest of Ulster.
However government officials claim that NO records were kept. It is unbelievable that citizens could be used as lab rats with out doing any health or dental studies and yet that is what has been done to these two communities.
The same thing has happened in the Republic as well. For 50 years the South has mandatorily drugged 76% of the population with fluoride acid without doing any health studies, despite the 1960's Health Act stipulating they should be done!
Long time resident Mr. G. Murphy stated: "The same government that didn't keep records on these two towns, now wants the whole of Northern Ireland mass-medicated through their tap water, when they know that 99.9 per cent of it is lost in underground leeks, to industry, household waste water and flushing toilets! The people need to stand against this waste of tax payers money and the release of large quantities of fluoride acid into the environment."
"Fluoride causes cancer and causes it quicker than any other chemical on earth" statement by Dr. Dean Burke, US Cancer Institute.
Cancer and bone damage are not the only worries…infants face the biggest risks as they are not fully formed and therefore are more vulnerable to fluorides many toxic effects.
The 2011 EC SCHER Report affirmed that Irish 'formula-fed' babies, (whose feed is made using fluoridated tap water) are exceeding the safe dose, as set by the US Institute of Medicine. 'For infants up to 6 months old receiving infant formula… this amount is 200 times higher than the amount found in breast milk,' said the SCHER report.
Dr. Howard explains why this is so important: "Nature has invented a way of keeping fluoride away from the infant and we're circumventing that by putting fluoride in drinking water. The question is WHY nature has devised a system to keep fluoride away from an infant? The answer is - it is a neurotoxin. They have no right really to use a mass-medication like this."
Of grave concern for Northern Ireland is the source of the fluoride to be added to water. The ingredient in toothpaste is pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride. The fluoride to be added to water, at a rate of one part per million (1ppm), is a much more toxic industrial grade chemical called hydrofluorosilicic acid. A highly corrosive acid, it is mainly sourced as a waste product of the phosphate fertilizer industry.
This acid is more corrosive than Sulphuric Acid and can eat through stainless steel, concrete and fiberglass! As an industrial grade chemical it has been found to contain mercury, arsenic, lead, aluminum, uranium and 25 other questionable contaminants.
Hydrofluorosilicic acid has never been tested for safety on humans, nor has it ever been proven to reduce tooth decay. Would you believe that your government want to add this to your water?
Demand Change
This situation is only happening because the public are unaware..SO demand change: copy this article and pass to friends, at play groups, schools, politicians, etc; Buy non-fluoride toothpaste from a Health Food Store if you want to avoid the risks altogether; Form a consumer group to demand your rights; write to Radio, Newspapers and TV.
A poison warning on all fluoride toothpaste; A child-proof cap; Photos of dental fluorosis on the box.
Further information on fluoride can be obtained from: www.fluoridealert.org