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James Fairbairn

@james.exitmusic.world
13 followers 0 following 397 posts

Pay attention, help others, let go. Working in video games but seeking ways to heal people, society and our biosphere. 🇭🇰🇬🇧 in 🇺🇸. We/us. Searchable. 🌉 bridged from ⁂ mastodon.exitmusic.world/@james, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 21/09/2026
“Not all capitalisms”
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 12/09/2026
@RuthMalan I feel like this is somewhat near your wheelhouse - system blindness rather than system seeing
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 12/09/2026
I don't understand why the AI doomers are only analyzing the "super-intelligent AI deliberately and competently ends humanity" scenario, rather than the far more plausible "thousands of moderately-autonomous technological systems accidentally collaborate in ways that emergently destroy human […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 11/09/2026
And I just thought to look for the book’s author Gil Durán on Fedi. And here he is! @gilduran
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 11/09/2026
You will tell me if you think I’m getting too conspiracy pilled, right?
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 11/09/2026
Anyway, I recommend the book.
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 11/09/2026
They really do want to do away with nation states and democracy. Not just as a pose. It’s a real goal and it’s what they’re putting their money behind. They really want to be at the head of privatized autocracy. And for me the most alarming part is how many of their people have been appointed to […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 11/09/2026
I’m reading The Nerd Reich and it really puts together all the Silicon Valley elite nonsense politics, philosophy and strategy in a way that makes it understandable as a whole. What I’d say is that while one should not ascribe competence, rightness, self-consistency or really any serious degree […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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Reposted by James Fairbairn
Guy Emerson @angloperanakan.lingo.lol.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2026
This Is Just To Say I have trained on the proofs that were on our servers and which you were probably saving for publication. Forgive me I can't rule out that your proofs improved our models but burning $15m on a $1m prize so lean and so slop
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 07/09/2026
I love the writing of Wendell Berry, of Ivan Illich and of Christopher Alexander, even if they didn’t have everything figured out and were certainly wrong about some things. They were all in their own ways proponents of life’s natural generosity, of generative relations, and of the beauty of […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 03/09/2026
@sz_duras consequences
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 03/09/2026
[Linux nerd stuff] Look I know it’s hard to be morally perfect, but you really don’t need to go with the white supremacist’s distro just bc you want a modern tiling/scrolling compositor setup with decent defaults. I’ve been having fun with NixOS and home-manager lately and have a pretty great […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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Reposted by James Fairbairn
Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026
[doomy, but don't give up] Bad headline on this one "Climate change past the point of no return" www.cbc.ca/news/science/unep-climat… The most important part of the article is a few paragraphs in: 'The 1.5 C limit is not "some magical climate cliff" […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 18/08/2026
I’ve been exploring the philosophical landscape of (western) panpsychism, and, well, I’m not good at philosophy words, but i find a lot of the discourse pretty infuriating - especially the deep-rooted assumption that things that exist in relation are first things and only secondly in relation […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 18/08/2026
@skinnylatte it’s intrusion inclusion!
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 10/08/2026
@sz_duras I think many of them do understand. And the only aspiration they are left with is “jam today”
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 04/08/2026
Oh, I should add that none of this is an alternative to activism, to politics, to getting to know your neighbours, to preserving and passing on critical skills, or even to walking away from ways of being that are not working. Rather, just know that all of these are subsets of things that “make […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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Reposted by James Fairbairn
Jenny Cohn @jennycohn.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
“Drought causes 'collapse' in France's vegetable production: 'Even with irrigation, young plants have not survived' Cauliflower, peas and lettuce are suffering from a lack of water and successive heatwaves. The industry describes the situation as a 'disaster,' …” 8/2/26
lemonde.fr
Drought causes 'collapse' in France's vegetable production: 'Even with irrigation, young plants have not survived'
Cauliflower, peas and lettuce are suffering from a lack of water and successive heatwaves. The industry describes the situation as a 'disaster,' especially across western France, as the ability to sow...
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 04/08/2026
My panpsychist animism is nothing if not “reasonable”
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 04/08/2026
And here I’ve stopped, though I’ve barely touched on “complexity” and “emergence” and all that jazz. I just wanted to say this: Regardless of intention, understanding or measurement, change is happening all around us and within us and through us. We are “changing the world” because of and […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 04/08/2026
This actually demonstrates that, yes, what gets measured gets managed, as implied by the original headline. But that which is subject to change goes far beyond what is managed! And in fact, often, a given locus will play host to many overlapping modes of management that may or may not be aware […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 04/08/2026
But there are also so many cases where change was inadvertent, because that change is what happened outside of the chosen frame. Take, for example, the “civilizing” frame that begat colonialism and globalization, and led to the destruction of lifeways and environment for a large fraction of the […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 04/08/2026
In many ways the ability to effect change therefore has more to do with chosen zones of ignorance than of understanding. To “make change”, in the modern sense of an identifiable singular actor doing things that are legibly causally connected to the outcome, to the ending of the “before” and the […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 04/08/2026
But what if no situation can in fact be fully understood? What if no real object can be fully understood because the very objectification of that object is an ontological convenience to put things into a Newtonian frame? Does that mean you’ll never be able to effect change? In fact the ability […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 04/08/2026
Can’t stop thinking about this This mindset is endemic to the culture of my day job (working on a game platform) and it’s so… self-limiting It springs from the assumption that if only you have a known starting point and a known end point, and a plan to go from one to the other you can […]
mastodon.exitmusic.world
Original post on mastodon.exitmusic.world
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 04/08/2026
This Substack post headline contains two propositions, both of which are very wrong
"You can't transform the world unless you can understand it, and you can't understand the world unless you can measure it"
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 03/08/2026
Wow. Basically every paragraph of this news article is wow. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/…
theguardian.com
Romania blasts rock to divert water from drought-hit Danube to nuclear reactor
Hungary and Romania face energy crisis as record-low river levels force atomic power plants to reduce output
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 02/08/2026
Anyway. Pay attention, help others, let go (says my bio). Share what you have, what you know, what you can do. Cultivate the conditions so that these things can be the foundation of a new, convivial economy.
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 02/08/2026
We’ve organized our economy around every dollar, rather than every human or every living being, having equal access to the stuff. We’re literally privileging money over life
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 02/08/2026
Once you see that the problem is not that we haven’t made the things that will solve our problems, but that we don’t have equal access to the ingredients of a good life that already exist, that frees you to see solutions in connection rather than in invention.
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 02/08/2026
The economy is roughly 49% about how people feed, shelter, clothe and care for themselves/each other, and 49% about convincing people they’re doing okay so they don’t revolt
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 31/07/2026
Heard a YouTube pronounce it Nuh-vidia and that’s how im going to say it from now on
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 24/07/2026
For every “we” there is a “they” - and many “wes” are “theys” in disguise
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 24/07/2026
This is the disappointment I feel when I walk into a bookstore, lol
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 24/07/2026
What If This Is What We’ve Been Waiting For?
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 24/07/2026
RE: mastodon.exitmusic.world/@james/116… I think this is a thread of titles of books I wish existed
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 24/07/2026
Not Building But Nurturing
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 24/07/2026
It’s Already Collapsed—Let It
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 24/07/2026
Stop Waiting for the Revolution; It’s Always Been Here
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 24/07/2026
Citizen, Degrow Thyself
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 15/07/2026
bsky.app/profile/lukelebrun.ca/post…
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 10/07/2026
I miss magazine covers.
Foreign Policy (FP) magazine, Summer 2026 issue. The cover shows an hourglass in which a small globe of Earth sits in the top chamber as sand drains into the bottom. Beside it, the headline reads ‘the End of,’ followed by a list: The U.S.-Israel alliance, Neoliberalism, Trans-Atlanticism, Climate politics, The United Nations, Asylum, Political parties, Chinese growth, Morality, and The future.
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Reposted by James Fairbairn
Adrianna Tan @skinnylatte.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 06/07/2026
Maria Ressa talks about how in an Eritrean language, AI changes ‘smallpox’ to ‘syphilis’, and sometimes confuses ‘medicine’ and ‘insecticide’, which obviously has public health implications. This type of work ‘AI performance and safety issues in other languages and its impact on people’ is 50% […]
hachyderm.io
Original post on hachyderm.io
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Reposted by James Fairbairn
Brad Weed @bradweed.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/07/2026
In 1804, Alexander Humboldt — one of the world's most famous scientists — warned Thomas Jefferson directly: deforestation and industrial combustion would alter the climate. He based it on observed changes in forests and water systems. Jefferson ignored him. 220 years later, the bill has arrived. […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 05/07/2026
The further context to this is that I am a British person living in California (and kinda working in tech) but born in British Hong Kong to a British father and a Chinese refugee mother
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 05/07/2026
Responding to “happy fourth” with “death to colonialism” and a big smile seems to create just the right kind of merriment Anyway, happy fourth!
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Reposted by James Fairbairn
phae @phae.status.fberriman.com.ap.brid.gy · 23/06/2026
I'm doing an art on 16th July in SF. I haven't made the flyer yet, but... fberriman.com/art/on-what-we-dwell It's actually the last thing I'm doing for my MFA before I'm all done in August!
fberriman.com
On What We Dwell - fberriman.com
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Reposted by James Fairbairn
Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/06/2026
In the next day or so I need to force myself to read Yet Another Stupid Fucking Orbital Data Center filing, because I have to write a comment to the FCC so that it's on file that astronomers hate it. This one called "Stampede" from a company named Cowboy Space. I hate *everything* about this […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 13/06/2026
@skinnylatte I often think about comfort vs resilience these days - and the importance of a lived-in social fabric. How is Singapore these days in that regard?
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James Fairbairn @james.exitmusic.world · 11/06/2026
* Yeah, this is kinda panexperiential dual-aspect monism, with a helping of nestedness and a heaping of complexity/emergence. I haven't seen all this stuff put together this way before, but sure, I'll go and try to read Whitehead or whomever. 15/15
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