New Pornographers - Challengers.
Dec 29, 2007
what the fuck have you done
I love this piece, but I haven't been able to identify the artist.
This has finally been identified as an installation by Philippe Lhomme. The photograph is from the portfolio of Michael Roulier. Click below to embiggen!
machines for surviving
A sprawling year-end post by Matt Webb touches on some compelling ideas about technology, structures, markets, and social systems. Here's a quick excerpt:
"We need a recombinant chemistry of web pages, where we can see multiple conversation molecules, with chemical bonds via their blog post pattern matchers, stringing together into larger scale filaments. What are the long-chain hydrocarbons of the Web? I want Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to be mining the Web for these molecules, discovering and name them.And jumping down the page a bit:
The most important thing I think we've learned about the Web in the last 10 years is this: there is not infinite variety. That means the problem of finding the patterns in pages and inter-page structure is a tractable one. It might be large and difficult, but it can be done..."
"Monarchy used to be a force of nature...It is not possible to know what the king will say without asking the king; the king is only asked for a decision in cases where the answer cannot be known ahead of time. The king is the only source of unknowns in the society. In our world, it is the free market which is the only source of unknowns.Dig in.
What the Magna Carta did - or rather, what the process that the Magna Carta was part of did - was turn the king into a thing. The thing-king is the king revealed. The important feature of the document isn't the constraints put on the king, but rather the fact that it is possible to bind to the king at all. It's like suddenly leaping above the ocean and realising that the ocean is there at all... and therefore tides! and therefore currents! and therefore the possibility of other bodies of water that aren't this ocean! Or it's like the way that air pollution revealed the atmosphere as something that could have varying parameters over its volume. Once the king is a thing, it is possible to bring the king into society, and constrain and rule him. That was the big deal."
(via fimoculous)
the shock doctrine
I've just finished reading Naomi Klein's latest book, The Shock Doctrine, and it's damned powerful stuff. Klein weaves a cohesive narrative thread through seemingly disparate tragedies, and exposes the brazen political and economic ideologies that have underwritten the past forty years of global development. To promote the book's release, Alfonso and Jonás Cuarón have produced the following short film, which does a wonderful job of summarizing the book's central argument.
Dec 26, 2007
frozen
A strong piece of flash fiction by Gareth D Jones.
"For a few seconds the tableau remains before me. Five figures all unmoving, frozen in the middle of their last action..."Set aside two minutes and read it.
(via futurismic)
beneath the surface lies the future
From Seed:
"Never before has the world's attention been so fixed on the deep ocean. Inflated oil, mineral, and gas prices, coupled with collapsing global fisheries, are pushing industries into remote seas once too expensive to tap. Pressing concerns about global warming are bringing scientists to explore uncharted depths—both to understand how they influence climate and to take the pulse of abyssal life before human impact irrevocably transforms it. At a time when still so little is known about the ocean's very nature, it has suddenly become a place of extraordinary geopolitical, economic, and scientific value."Read on.
(via 3qd)
Dec 25, 2007
Dec 23, 2007
Dec 22, 2007
rare exports inc
Rare Exports Inc is a wonderfully dark 2003 short film directed by Jalmari Helander. It was followed by Rare Exports: The Official Safety Instructions two years later. Enjoy.
are you ready for the revolution?
I wasted an hour last night watching these videos by comedian Maria Bamford. Funny = very yes.
(via 3qd)
this shit just got real!
An excerpt from Ben Joseph's Aliens Vs Predator Save Christmas:
Page 63
EXT. NIGHT THE CANDY CANE FOREST
(A red glow shines in the near distance. SANTA approaches it.)
SANTA: Rudolph? Is that you?
(PREDATOR decloaks, revealing the glow to be his targeting laser!)
SANTA: Gulp.
(PREDATOR fires, hitting an ALIEN right behind SANTA!)
SANTA: Maybe I can put you on the "Nice" list after all.
PREDATOR: Thanks, Santa. Also, I talk now.
(SANTA and PREDATOR shake hands.)
PREDATOR: Let's give these aliens what for.
(RUFUS pops out from behind a candy cane.)
RUFUS: Damn, son! This shit just got real!
Dec 16, 2007
the stale killer whale, bumping up against someone so pale and frail
Nature has just posted an interesting article that describes orcas "using group hunting behaviour to divide ice floes, push them into open water, and create waves to wash animals off them into their waiting jaws."
The post references a recently-published paper in which researchers note that the coordinated hunting techniques appear to be taught by the pod elders: "orcas have been seen nudging youngsters onto the shore, encouraging them to try the tactic, often coming up alongside to demonstrate...and adults sometimes put living seals back on the ice after catching them, seemingly so that the young can have another try."
Read more, or check out the video below to see this incredible behaviour in action.
nobody loved our sentences as we loved them
Jonathan Lethem's "The King of Sentences":
"This was the time when all we could talk about was sentences, sentences—nothing else stirred us. Whatever happened in those days, whatever befell our regard, Clea and I couldn't rest until it had been converted into what we told ourselves were astonishingly unprecedented and charming sentences: 'Esther's cleavage is something to be noticed' or 'You can't have a contemporary prison without contemporary furniture' or 'I envision an art which will make criticism itself seem like a cognitive symptom, one which its sufferers define to themselves as taste but is in fact nothing of the sort' or 'I said I want my eggs scrambled not destroyed.' At the explosion of such a sequence from our green young lips, we'd rashly scribble it on the wall of our apartment with a filthy wax pencil, or type it twenty-five times on the same sheet of paper and then photocopy the paper twenty-five times and then slice each page into twenty-five slices on the paper cutter in the photocopy shop and then scatter the resultant six hundred and twenty-five slips of paper throughout the streets of our city, fortunes without cookies.Read the rest of the short story at the New Yorker.
We worked in bookstores, the only thing to do. Nobody who didn't—and that included every one of our customers—knew what any of the volumes throbbing along those shelves was worth, not remotely. Nor did the bookstores' owners. Clea and I were custodians of a treasury of sentences much bigger on the inside than on the outside. Though we mostly handled the books only by their covers (or paged briefly through to ascertain that no dunce had striped the pages yellow or pink with a Hi-Liter), we communed deeply with them, felt certain that only we deserved to abide with them. Any minute we'd read them all cover to cover, it was surely about to happen. Meanwhile, every customer robbed us a little. At the cash registers we spoke sentences tailored to convey our disdain, in terms so subtle it was barely detectable. If our customers blinked a little at the insults we embedded in our thank-yous, we believed, they just might be worthy of the marvels their grubby dollars entitled them to bear away."
Dec 15, 2007
Dec 14, 2007
call for kicks, tickets, and clothes
An interesting profile of fourteen-year-old Alex Goldberg from NY Magazine:
"Alex isn't like other boys his age. He's had free rein over the streets of Nolita since before he can remember, and he quickly learned the rules of that playground, turning his relationships with the neighborhood's shop owners into access to free gourmet meals and designer clothes and trendy sneakers, then turning those freebies into even better stuff (like courtside Knicks tickets), and leveraging those perks into even more valuable things, like connections to athletes, rappers, nightclub owners, and so on...Read the whole piece.
As in most of his jobs, he didn't work for cash — child-labor laws wouldn't allow it. He worked for the connection, which was worth far more. With steady access to NikeID, Alex turned himself into a valuable commodity, especially with the Knicks. He started supplying players and officials in the front office with shoes—a gift for sneaking him into games. He now sits courtside, and eats dinner in the green room with the players' families and friends. 'It's like he assumes that he's supposed to be here, and so everyone else thinks he's supposed to be here, too, and it's like now he really is here,' says Adia Revell, a former college player who knows him from the Garden...
For networking purposes, Alex always carries his own business cards. He had 500 printed last year. 'ALEX GOLDBERG,' it reads. 'CALL FOR KICKS, TICKETS AND CLOTHES.'"
(via raymi)
Dec 13, 2007
spiders from mars
They're doing their part; are you? Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship. Would you like to know more?
this might just take attention away from my failures as a human
A Charlie Brown Christmas, dubbed by the cast of Scrubs to hilarious effect.
Dec 9, 2007
someone out there thinks you're great
Ze Frank continues to warm the hearts of former LoA devotees like myself with another new song, and Reboiled's Shaun Moriarty has whipped up an animated video to go with it.
Dec 8, 2007
chris christmas rodriguez
Chris Christmas Rodriguez is my new hero. Read an explanation of the ad campaign and then go here to watch the rest of the vids.
(via christie)
why is it easier to make friends than keep them?
"Potapych: The Bear Who Loved Vodka" by Darren Price.
(via ectomo)
Dec 4, 2007
xmas 2007 - hallelujah, holy shit
Greetings, all.
I've just finished throwing together an xmas mix cd for your (read: my) enjoyment. But fear not, because I've managed to compile a selection of tracks by indie artists that won't jeopardize your fragile hipster cred. Who's the bitch now, Santy Claus? The tracklist is below.
01. Walkmen ft Nicole Sheahan - Christmas PartyBut I don't even believe in Jebus, you say. Relax. I don't know many people who still posit that Christmas is a religious holiday, and I tend to assume that most informed people are familiar with the festival's long history and its many origins. Indeed, I would hope that people would instead recognize the season as a time for unabashed prostration to the whorish gods of consumerism. That said, enjoy the music, and let me know what you think.
02. Knife - Christmas Reindeer
03. Sufjan Stevens - Star Of Wonder
04. New Pornographers - The Spirit Of Giving
05. Deerhoof - Xmas Tree
06. Feist - Lo, How A Rose E're Blooming
07. Bright Eyes - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
08. Okkervil River - Listening To Otis Redding At Home During Christmas
09. Neko Case - Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis
10. Belle & Sebastian - Christmas Time Is Here
11. Stars - A New Year (Live)
12. Rilo Kiley - Xmas Cake
13. Sarah Silverman - Give the Jew Girl Toys
14. Dandy Warhols - Little Drummer Boy
15. Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping
16. Triangles - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
17. Raveonettes - The Christmas Song
18. Decemberists - Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas)
19. White Stripes - Candy Cane Children
20. Go! Team - The Ice Storm
21. Low - Just Like Christmas
22. Arcade Fire - Jingle Bell Rock
why so serious?
I love this stunning onesheet for The Dark Knight, which hit the tubes earlier today. As always, click to embiggen (but be warned: the hi-res tops out at 100mbs).
shiiiit, that's a really well preserved dinosaur...
This exciting report came out of Ntl Geographic yesterday:
"Scientists today announced the discovery of an extraordinarily preserved 'dinosaur mummy' with much of its tissues and bones still encased in an uncollapsed envelope of skin. Preliminary studies of the 67-million-year-old hadrosaur, named Dakota, are already altering theories of what the ancient creatures' skin looked like and how quickly they moved, project researchers say."
"'To say we are excited would be an understatement,' said Phil Manning, a paleontologist at England's University of Manchester who is leading the examination. 'When I first saw it in the field, (I thought) "Shiiiit, that's a really well preserved dinosaur." It has the potential to be a top-10 dinosaur, globally.'"The article goes on to detail the specimen's excavation and the multitude of data that it's already yielded.
Dec 2, 2007
just an insect trying to get out of the night
J Tyler Helms has created a beautiful music video for Radiohead's "All I Need" using clips from the nature documentary Microcosmos.
(via gvb)
theologians of the establishment
Noam Chomsky on truth and the responsibility of intellectuals:
"I'm always uneasy about the concept of 'speaking truth,' as if we somehow know the truth and only have to enlighten others who have not risen to our elevated level. The search for truth is a cooperative, unending endeavor. We can and should engage in it to the extent we can, and encourage others to do so as well, seeking to free ourselves from constraints imposed by coercive institutions, dogma, irrationality, excessive conformity, the lack of initiative and imagination, and numerous other obstacles. As for possibilities, they are limited only by will and choice."Read on.
(via 3qd)
can't see the line, can you russ?
Well, there's no denying it now: it's December. Ntl Lampoon's Christmas Vacation has been a beloved staple of my family's holiday viewing since it was released back in '89, and I can't think of a more appropriate way to kick off the festivities here at r&c. Enjoy.
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