Shark skin is a sheet of teeth: millimetre-scale placoid denticles, each with an enamel crown, dentine core and pulp cavity, rooted in the dermis and oriented from nose to tail so that one way feels smooth and the other rasps like sandpaper. In fast swimmers such as the shortfin mako Isurus oxyrinchus and other pelagic […]
Law presents itself as a guardian of rights and social peace, but its core function is to preserve the legal order and the interests that dominate it. Rights are recognised only when they stabilise that order; when they challenge the hierarchy that sustains it, they are restricted or quietly ignored. Property is the central unit […]
The generative indeterminacy of (a) living diversity is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than the variously atavistic legal frameworks with which we might frame them. Discontinuities between law and activism are, in this context, the result of a false dichotomy. That is – the differences and environmentally unsustainable if not outright and questionably unethical outcomes […]
Context: Genetic paparazzi are right around the corner, and courts aren’t ready to confront the legal quagmire of DNA theft — I find that the unacknowledged (yet common enough) assumption that genes deterministically prescribe destiny as more or less isomorphic mappings of downstream biological development is unhelpfully shaping an already complex debate. Yes, genes shape […]
I have been deep down a rabbit hole of argument analysis just recently. There is a natural orientation as bias in many people towards choosing points of view and systems of belief based upon their structural aesthetics, not upon their substance. The arguments made for and against any particular political point or the tenets of […]
Context: Experts Sign Open Letter Slamming Europe’s Proposal to Recognise Robots as Legal Persons Robots might be a bit of a stretch for asserting personhood although it does remain somewhat indistinct as to where and when awareness, experience or sentience arise in recognisably “living” things. We may (following, at a distance, something I once read […]
Implicit and endemic grey-zone ambiguities mean that this might never be attributed to anything other than (yet) another heartlessly self-serving criminal enterprise that is leveraging the inflated value of hospitals and health data during a public health crisis. I expect there are some logical and legal hurdles in defining acts of war this way. Not […]
In what ways does regulation, interdiction, surveillance and retrospective analysis or definition actually and inadvertently (re)produce the problems it seeks to diminish? Distinctions between legal and illegal are clearly and self-evidently important but in terms of comprehensive analysis and aspirations towards effective problem resolution they may also be a foundational misdirection. It is becoming clear […]
If you find references to images which are missing, please comment on the post – I will tidy it up. Apologies for any inconvenience.
Daedelus Kite 