Debates over the nature of contemporary capitalism, further stimulated by its most recent financial crisis, have led to a renewed problematization value. Existing understandings process valuation may not make visible what is new or unique in conjuncture. This paper presents diagram value transformations that conjunctural it arises out and responds It describes complexity processes which specific social relations value, expressed through obligation indebtedness, are transformed produce first...

Vintage goods are valued for their nostalgic association with pre-digital modes of production, but contemporary trafficking is increasingly organized by processes platformization. The central component what we call “listing labor in the digital vintage economy” online display collectible merchandise, listing also entails promoting sellers’ brands on social media and using sales platforms other logistical to manage inventory, process transactions, handle shipments. Listing performed branded...

Abstract The paper is concerned with a node-based, gradient-driven, continuous adjoint two-phase flow procedure to optimize the shapes of free-floating vessels and discusses three topics. First, we aim convey that elements Cahn–Hilliard formulation should augment frequently employed Volume-of-Fluid model maintain dual consistency. It seen such consistency serves as basis for robust primal/adjoint coupling in practical applications at huge Reynolds Froude numbers. second topic covers...

The revived popularity of vinyl records in the United States provides a unique opportunity for ‘rethinking distinction between new and old media’. With vinyl, new/old dichotomy informs more specific opposition digital analog. record is an iconic analog artifact whose physical creation circulation cannot be digitized. Making involves arduous craft labor old-school manufacturing, process remains essentially same as it was 1960. Vinyl culture commerce today, however, abound with media: majority...

After sustained growth for over a decade among independent record labels and retail outlets, major chain stores embraced vinyl records as sector, the first time in half century, demand began outpacing supply. In this essay, I analyze recent trends of traffic critique prominent feature contemporary culture: Record Store Day. The annual holiday has boosted sales while become an inflationary engine driving up costs, which alongside have skyrocketed since turn century. At stake is sustainable...

Within communication studies today, the term labor is being employed more often and with variety than at any time in discipline’s history. What role did Empire phenomenon play this recent promotion of into such a fungible expansive category? Contemporary theories analyses are largely dispensing traditional oppositions like production consumption, leisure, or everyday life above. The influence Hardt Negri has left us less inclined to describe new forms leisure consumption contrast likely find...

The internet and other digital networks in the U.S. (and beyond) remain essentially an upgrade of national telephone network built by AT&T over first half twentieth century, payment remains tethered to telephony at level infrastructure. Telephone history also continues inform interface. Debit card readers feature a keypad nearly identical those introduced (also AT&T) dialling public half-century ago on touch-tone telephones. In this essay I highlight development as transformative technology....

Keywords authenticity, craft and DIY cultures, e-commerce, entrepreneurialism, gender, nostalgia, platforms, retail, social media

This essay offers labor's advocates and ethnographers a conceptual historical framework for outsourcing. Jobs being moved abroad are less the focus than work transferred from processes of production distribution into realms consumption everyday life. Call centers in India have attracted tremendous attention recently U.S. become an iconic site outsourced jobs. The cultural politics animating these reactions discussed, comparisons drawn between to call initial encounters with ATMs, order...

In this essay I draw on observations about how the pandemic impacted sales of vinyl records, in order to describe a (further) dis-embedding brick-and-mortar second-hand stores from their local economies and communities. Before pandemic, majority was already being purchased online; while buyers sellers were sheltering place, marketplace’s reliance internet became total, traffic skewed more than ever toward used records. Nearly all record had an online presence before shops that system place...

This article examines the telephone’s entangled history within contemporary infrastructural systems of ‘big data’, identity and, ultimately, surveillance. It explores use telephone numbers, keypads and wires to offer new perspective on imbrication telephonic information, interface infrastructure surveillance regimes. The exchanges as arbiters cultural identities, foundation digital transactions wireline networks enacting transformation citizens consumers into subjects ripe for...

Objective: This case reports an atypical presentation of Congenital Myasthenic Syndrome (CMS) with delayed symptom onset and unexpected response to pyridostigmine. Background: CMS due MuSK mutation is a rare genetic disorder date, only few reports/studies have been documented. Symptom usually soon after birth. The pyridostigmine poor can lead deterioration. Some cases were shown benefit from salbutamol 3,4 DAP. Design/Methods: 29 year old lady presented moderate proximal/facial musculature...

Despite (or perhaps because of) the ATM’s ubiquity, its story remained largely untold. Bernardo Batiz-Lazo has authoritatively filled that gap. Drawing on more than a decade of research (that r...