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Weird and Deadly Interesting Posts

My Interview in “Speaking Freely”

Published by Ahmet A. Sabancı on March 6, 2020

Here it is.

This is probably one of the most important interviews I did for several reasons. First one is definitely the group of people I’m in. Most of them are people I’ve been following and admiring their work for a long time. That’s why you should definitely read all of them and thank Jillian C. York for starting a series like this one.

Second reason is the fact that I’ve not been thinking about many of these stuff for a long time. Of course I’ve been reading, writing and doing things related to the issues but not really thinking about it or thinking in a self-reflective way. This interview also gave me that chance. And made me realize how things and I have changed since I’ve started dealing with these issues.

There are other reasons too. Like having a chance to remember Özgür Uçkan and talking about these issues with Jillian. It’s something really special for me and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it too.

28 Şubat’ta ‘Kavanozdaki Yıldız’ Programındaydım

Published by Ahmet A. Sabancı on March 3, 2020

Her Cuma Açık Radyo’da yayınlanan Kavanozdaki Yıldız programının 28 Şubat bölümünde ağırlandım ve oldukça keyifli bir sohbet gerçekleştirdik. NewsLabTurkey‘i, medyanın durumunu ve geleceğini ve geleceğin medyasını konuştuğumuz sohbetimiz 25 dakikalık bir programa sığmadığından canlı yayının ardından birlikte iki bölüm daha kaydettik.

Eğer bir son dakika değişikliği olmazsa bu bölümler 20 Mart ve 27 Mart Cuma günleri saat 16:30’da Açık Radyo’da yayınlanacak ve ardından sitelerine de yüklenecek. Sitedeki medya oynatıcının WordPress embed özelliği olmadığı için bölümlerin bir kopyasını kişisel Archive.org hesabıma bir sonraki gün yükleyip buradan sizinle de paylaşacağım.

STATUS – 29.02.2020

Published by Ahmet A. Sabancı on February 29, 2020

Reporting from #1000mphClub.

That was quite a 24-hour run. One live radio show plus two extra episodes recorded me as a guest yesterday evening. Today gave two trainings at NLTR Academy from 9:30 to 17:00. Now headed back home. There’s still a NewsLabTurkey newsletter to be finished tonight. Now taking couple notes for my personal newsletter —which I’ve been neglecting for a while— before taking a short nap on the bus.

PS: testing to see if I can post from the WordPress Mobile app. Sorry if it looks weird on the website.

From the Mail – 31.01.2020

Published by Ahmet A. Sabancı on January 31, 2020

Surprise book from the mail. Recently supported the crowdfunding project by Teyit and this was one of the gifts for the support. Arrival of new books always makes me happy.

Teyit is a great fact-checking organization from Turkey and their crowdfunding project was a special series of reporting on anti-vaxxers and other bullshit/conspiracy theories on health. In case you want to check out what else they’re doing, here’s their work in English. They also have an English Twitter account too.

When A City Changes A Song

Published by Ahmet A. Sabancı on November 27, 2019

After leaving the airport and jumping on the train to actually go London, I was looking for something to listen and remembered Burial albums saved on my phone. After that realization I haven’t listened anything else for the half of the week. Maybe it’s my overstatement but listening Burial on London made me appreciate his music on a different level. Like I said to Jay, I feel like the music makes a different sense now. 

And now I’m wondering if there’s actually such thing. Music somehow connected with a special place and gives you a different experience when you listen there. Do any of you have a story like that? Or is it just my weirdness?

Related: Burial’s Untrue: The making of a masterpiece

This post was first published on my newsletter. You can read and subscribe here.

New Books in the Library – 26.11.2019

Published by Ahmet A. Sabancı on November 26, 2019

Bottom two, K-Punk and State Machines, are from the early November London trip. K-Punk is one of those books which you’ll read and re-read dozens of times over the years.

Rest came in yesterday. I was only planning to buy Teknopolis, because it seemed interesting but ended up ordering five books. I’m also excited to read Colson Whitehead‘s novels. I’m always a bit cautious about reading translation novels but the publisher is a trusted one.

On Traveling: 1

Published by Ahmet A. Sabancı on October 24, 2019
This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series On Traveling

I think a lot about traveling, being able to go somewhere else for any reason and the action itself. There are many reasons behind this.

I think the first one is related to how I grew up. Being almost exclusively in one city for 18 years, while being connected with rest of the world through other means probably put leaving that city and going as many places as possible on top of my priorities. Even so that when I was making plans for university, my main target was going İstanbul, not a specific university.

A lot changed since then. Now I’m traveling a lot and to many different places. Even writing this one in an airport, waiting for a flight. And honestly, sometimes I think about how I ended up in this place. Just some guy who saw lots of stuff on the internet while he was a teenager and decided to do something with that and ended up here. Although I’m not that famous and making tons of money from what I’m doing, it still feels too much for me.

Anyway, that’s one of the reasons why I decided to start a blogchain on traveling and what type of stuff I’m thinking about traveling and/or while I’m traveling. I wanted to write and talk about it, so that maybe I can manage to turn all of those half-baked ideas in my head into something else.

Let’s see what this blogchain will take me.

Charismatic Megapigment

Published by Ahmet A. Sabancı on October 15, 2019

A collaborative project between Charley Peters, Wesley Goatley and Tobias Revell. Charismatic Megapigment is a sculptural installation that examines the politicised nature of the colour green and the tensions between formalist and conceptual art practice, as explored through the practices of painting and machine learning. 

The screen moves across the painting randomly while feeding the image the camera on the back captures through a machine learning system that draws a closest neighbour match from a bank of 102,000 images related to ‘green’ found on Google.

Loved this work since I first saw it. There’s so much to unpack, especially every time the screen finds an example of a specific green. Never wrote much about art but works like that makes me want to.

There’s also a bit of extra writing about it on Tobias’s blog.

The hypersane are among us

Published by Ahmet A. Sabancı on September 24, 2019

Found this article thanks to Arikia:

Many ‘normal’ people suffer from not being hypersane: they have a restricted worldview, confused priorities, and are wracked by stress, anxiety and self-deception. As a result, they sometimes do dangerous things, and become fanatics or fascists or otherwise destructive (or not constructive) people. In contrast, hypersane people are calm, contained and constructive. It is not just that the ‘sane’ are irrational but that they lack scope and range, as though they’ve grown into the prisoners of their arbitrary lives, locked up in their own dark and narrow subjectivity. Unable to take leave of their selves, they hardly look around them, barely see beauty and possibility, rarely contemplate the bigger picture – and all, ultimately, for fear of losing their selves, of breaking down, of going mad, using one form of extreme subjectivity to defend against another, as life – mysterious, magical life – slips through their fingers.

The hypersane are among us, if only we are prepared to look – Neel Burton

This is an interesting term, “hypersanity“. Came across first time with this article and to be honest, it fills many holes about some of things I’ve been thinking about.

One thing that connected directly in my head with hypersanity is how people are always looking for normal, sane and ordinary. So they can feel safe. To do that, they even attack what is not normal and sane enough for them without thinking. But when you’re going through the mad times, normal and sane is the most useless thing. You have to be something more than sane. I think that’s where hypersanity can come into play.

This is going to be something I’ll dive deep into researching at some point. But I’m just putting a note here for now. Feel free to jump in and turn this into a conversation.