I sleep a lot. Most of the day I am asleep. I wake up very late in the afternoon. I need the little black cat to be with me, and she usually does not make an appearance until sunrise. So, I toss around waiting for her – not having gone to bed myself until close to dawn. I dream a lot. Long dreams like stories almost. In them everyone is still alive. My mother, my father, my aunts, my uncle, my grandmother. And we do things together. Go on trips. I find myself in a lot of unk

Because what else would you call something that ignores data and instead goes solely by superstition and dogma? The big superstition around here, preached by the Health Minister who is actually a doctor (i.e., someone who presumably received some sort of scientifically based education, right?) and followed by all the ardent believers is a magic number: 1000! If we can get the daily cases under 1000 we will have won a big victory against the unseen enemy that is lurking everyw

Complete with its priests, its acolytes, its zealots, evangelists and pious worshipers. And its symbols and attire. Namely, the mask. Its rituals, namely social distancing. The clapping at one point of course, although that one seems to no longer have quite the urgency that it had a few months ago. The incessant hand washing. But then other things as well. Magical objects. Such as the scrying mirror that all adherents are obliged to carry with them at all times. This photo is

“It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” ____ Attributed to Mark Twain. ____________________ A picture speaks a thousand words, right? So, look at the chart below. Please note very carefully what country this is. And the years please – 1990 to 2020. You’re seeing the bar all the way on the right, yes? That’s 2020. You saw that, right? What you also need to note very carefully is that these bars only represent the first 4 months of each y

Surely I am not the only one who sees something askew with this, am I? This has actually been on my mind for quite a while now but I wanted to wait for the numbers to become more apparent before I visualized them. I think we have enough of an accumulation at this point, so here it is. I am not going to go to any lengths to explain what this is, I think it is pretty self-evident. In short, the critter appears to have biases when it comes to different countries. Some it likes,

… but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Well, disapprove is probably too strong a word. I didn’t exactly disapprove. Not everything he said resonated with me. Some of it did, most of it didn’t. For one thing, I have a hard time accepting his basic premise of the “hunger game society” – that achieving that is the goal. I can’t see that. There may well be some kind of goal, but if so then my gut tells me that it is something different. This here could be it – th

I saw this a little while ago: https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/12/why-are-some-alt-media-embracing-a-permanent-police-state/ I wasn’t going to post anything for a while. I was all written out, after the last one. But now I think I will anyway. Because I asked this question too, and pretty much at the start of all this. And then very shortly after I asked it (gave them the benefit of the doubt for a week or so) I got rid of the lot of them: One fine morning, before I even fin

I have been wanting to do this for days. It is my profession, after all. Or rather, it is a very important part of my profession – data visualization. And I haven’t pored over my Edward Tufte and my Chaomei Chen for nothing for all these years. Only reason I left it so long was that I needed a substantial number of days of both covid 19 test numbers as well as test results to be able to show what I want to show. So, here without further ado, it is: What you see in this first

I am very upset about this. In fact, I obsess about it. For the man himself and what he has been subjected to obviously, but I also obsess about what this means. In Gordon Dimmack‘s words “this is the biggest story ever, in ever ever – bigger than Brexit, bigger than anything else” – speaking as someone from the UK. As someone from Turkey, Brexit has never been high on my agenda anyway, but looking at it from here, Julian Assange’s plight is a bigger story than all the horror

By a landslide, no less. HRH has been defeated, and defeated very badly indeed. At least here in Istanbul, at least for now. Last night the city turned into one big party, and my ‘hood was once again one of the center stages of the celebrations. I was out for a bit too, but it was so crowded and so hectic that I didn’t last long. Dancing everywhere. Belly dancers, halay dancers, disco dancers. Dancers and dancers. Young and old. Rakı glasses raised all over the place with the

I have been teaching graphic design at 3 universities, good ones that are tough to get into, for 26 years. The thing about graphic design is that it is a complex field to be an instructor in. Contrary to popular misconception graphic design is not about visuality, it is actually about words. Or rather it is a field that lies at the intersection of words and images since the job of a graphic designer is to transform the spoken word into a visual artifact. Which is a highly sop

Well, binge watching is an exaggeration. But I did watch the episodes of a series called “the power of nightmares” back to back. And I have also watched “hypernormalisation” – but that was a while ago. Obviously they are extremely well made documentaries. And obviously Adam Curtis identifies some very important things. But, therein lies the rub: He just identifies them. Nothing further. Or nothing deeper I should say. He nibbles around the edges of a huge amount of stuff. Tr

I am listening to her right now and – yes! For anyone who has any sort of hope of salvation for the system we are all subject to, what she says will be very hard to take. She is hardcore. And, from where I am sitting here on my sofa, she has it dead to rights. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TspQyz7qsOs #Politics #Society

… to progressive commentators. For almost 3 years now. Turkish progressives. British progressives. And especially American progressives. Real ones. Not a bunch of mealy mouthed faux-liberals and such. On youtube – given that none of them are allowed on regular TV. Anywhere. I thought that it was just here in my country, where we do after all have an acknowledged authoritarian at the helm. Turns out it is the same everywhere. Why am I not surprised? ………………………………….. So, why th

I encountered myself from years ago. There is even a photo that Lanfranco took in Singapore in 2008 where I look not just 10 years, but 20 years younger than my current age of 65. I could not transfer the blog from wordpress to blogger with an xml file, like one would normally do, but had to bring the posts over one by one. And, I ended up reading a lot of them, of course. For the most part, I cannot believe the naivete. I certainly cannot believe how shut off I seem to have

I want to start blogging again. shorter posts this time around. Mostly, just jotting down ideas, really. But maybe sometimes a bit more. During the years that I neglected this blog I became engrossed with how our planet is run. How totally screwed up it is. It started out with my being no longer able to ignore what was happening in my own country. But, then from there I quickly spread out since I came to realize that what happens here is completely tied to what happens “there

I came across this on facebook (of all addictive places!) thanks to an old friend of mine, Nazif Topçuoğlu, who posted it there. And yes – I too think that online social networks and domains are wreaking havoc on our psyches. And if I am saying this, if I am observing some very adverse effects in myself that have come about from being a virtual worlds resident of 5+ years, then I may well be a good candidate for some of the research that these folks are conducting. http://ww

I have been obsessing about Cloaca since I knew of it’s existence – which was precisely 3 days ago. Not that I want to get overly dramatic and Spenglerian here by screaming “Untergang des Abendlandes”*** or anything like that – but civilizations are also often defined as organisms, yes? And organisms grow old and die. And one of the signs of old age dementia, as far as I am aware, is a fascination with feces. Now, had this been something that one person had made, financed ou