Welcome to indie.implausi.blog!

You found us! This is the bare-bones minimalist version of the implausi.blog, hand-coded just for you.

We've been making a few changes. Most of the info is now on pages, or in the various archives. You can check this out via the sitemap

Implausi.Blog

lite full

Most recent post: Dr Implausible’s Book Club

“Read a book!” This is more than just the catchphrase for Handy, the supervillian puppet and partner of the Human Ton in The Tick animated series (1994) (pictured to the right). Its also one of the more effective ways to spread knowledge. And while there may be an anxious pressure in the first month of 2025, that reading is a distraction or ineffective, there’s no time like the present.

While TikTok is seeing a nice resurgence in learning with the #HillmanUniversity and #TikTokUniversity programs, here we’ll just focus on going through some critical books, one at a time. This is a expanding and evergreen project so we’ve created a page for this project over in the pages section: Dr Implausible’s Book Club and we’re also mirroring the content over on the indie version of the blog here.

This one is focused on academic content, but there are a couple concurrent and overlapping genre-specific themes that we’ll dip in and out of too. We’ve introduced both of those on the podcast, in the early days, with the Cyberpunk 101 episode, and the Introduction to Appendix W (which we mentioned here way back in… 2021? Whoa). We sorta-kinda did the Appendix W as it’s own thing, and that may still continue, but we’ll try and keep everything contained here as well, in case you don’t feel like following three separate things. For those that only interested in a specific element, the companions will help narrow that focus.

We’ll start with Technology Matters: questions to live with by David E. Nye (2006). This was a text that was used as a supplementary reading for one of the classes I taught in the past, a “sociology and ethics for engineers” type of class in the STS vein. It’s approachable, and written for a non-technical audience, which makes it especially worthwhile. As Nye mentions in the preface, these are big questions, and such big questions defy simple answers (or at least ones that are easily testable), and as such we have to come at them with some empathy. Or at least, that’s my take.

We’ll start with the basics, and check back in over the next week or so, and then publish a full post (on at least one of the platforms). Trying hard not to overcommit at the outset though. Let’s see how it goes...


Previous post: Creativity in an Age of Strife

Was struggling a bit with the creativity over the holidays, which spilled over into the new year and the seemingly unending flood of bad news. As you can tell by the existence of this post, I’ve managed to get things moving a bit. The first step was turning off the firehose, and you can follow that link to read about some constructive actions to take towards your media health.

The second step is to keep creating. I mentioned my struggle in passing and was pointed toward this interview with Heather Cox Richardson via The National Press Club. The relevant bit is at the 57-minute mark (spoilers) which this clip below should link directly to:

(Link to YouTube video).

The gist of her advice is to “behave with joy”, as a means of resistance against an authoritarian government. “Do the things that matter to you, and that you can bring to the people around you.” “We can meet the moment, and as scholars, be honest”, and that by doing the best (scholarly) work we can, we contribute back to humanity.

Which seems like a lot to ask from a blog and media channels that mostly focus on the intersection of sci-fi and technology, but it’s what we’re doing. Maybe our project is a little bit wider in scope than we initially thought.

But the big takeaway, at least for me, is that moment of reflection that I like what we’re doing here, and I enjoy doing the podcast, the blog, the newsletter, the videos (about which I hope to show you more soon!) and the various other bits we have going on here.

So, after a brief period of stasis, we’ll get back to the things that bring us joy, and find the joy in sharing them with you as well. See ya soon!

ImplausiPod

lite full

Most recent episode: E0043 AW99 Terminus Est

In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, some things come to and end. Join us as we look at the impact of the Appendix W on real world events through a look at one of the most iconic blades in fiction: Severian's Terminus Est from Gene Wolfe's 1980 novel The Shadow of the Torturer. But much like the blade, there is much, much more hidden below the surface of this episode.

ImplausiTube

lite full

Most recent episode: E0042 Incipient Diaspora

What happens when a change is on the horizon, one that is approaching that will force you to move but is outside your control? When a community knows it will be disrupted, it may be facing an Incipient Diaspora. For the US denizens of the TikTok app, facing a ban in that country on January 19, 2025, we can observe how they reacted and prepared, and what lessons can be learned from the ongoing situation.

Social Media:

Last updated