30 September 2016
[tweets] Following On Twitter: @WernerTwertzog … ‘In the future, everyone will be dead for an infinite number of minutes.’
29 September 2016
[trump] Psychiatric hospitals filling up with time travellers sent back to kill Donald Trump … ‘They all say the same thing, they come from a future of riots, war, famine, the collapse of civilised society, and then being sent back to ‘make it all right’. I mean, it’s almost like they’re telling the truth and for some unknown reason the future is getting increasingly desperate to stop the rise of Donald Trump and the end of the world he will inevitably bring about. He can’t be that bad, can he?’
28 September 2016
[tv] Netflix Original Series, Ranked (Again) … Vulture rates all 36 of Netflix’s current original TV productions … ‘House of Cards – One of Netflix’s first tentpoles, House of Cards is better at a prestige-y veneer than it is at actual prestige-quality narrative. While Kevin Spacey plays his character with embarrassingly visible excess, Robin Wright’s Claire Underwood is a stunning, implacable pillar of hard surfaces and internal machinations. Everything else veers rapidly between way-too-complicated plotting and underdeveloped surprise twists. Though initially absorbing, it feels increasingly unnecessary given the drama of real-life politics.’
27 September 2016
[ww2] High Hitler: How Nazi Drug Abuse Steered the Course of History … an interesting examination of Adolf Hitler’s drug addictions …
For Hitler, though, a crisis was coming. When the factories where Pervitin and Eukodal were made were bombed by the allies, supplies of his favourite drugs began to run out, and by February 1945 he was suffering withdrawal. Bowed and drooling and stabbing at his skin with a pair of golden tweezers, he cut a pitiful sight. “Everyone describes the bad health of Hitler in those final days [in the Führerbunker in Berlin],” says Ohler. “But there’s no clear explanation for it. It has been suggested that he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. To me, though, it’s pretty clear that it was partly withdrawal.” He grins. “Yeah, it must have been pretty awful. He’s losing a world war, and he’s coming off drugs.”
26 September 2016
[tv] Eastenders to show Ian Beale discovering old episodes of Eastenders on UK Gold … ‘Forthcoming episodes see Ian Beale taking time off work with a chest infection and watching daytime TV, during which he discovers old Eastenders episodes showing the exploits of his younger self, friends and family. A BBC spokesman said: “It’s going to trip him the fuck out.”‘
24 September 2016
[life] ‘…It Goes On.’
23 September 2016
[moore] If you read only one Alan Moore Jerusalem interview, make it this one … extensive must-read profile/interview with Moore on Jerusalem and Northampton …
It’s a strange experience, walking the streets with this bearded compendium of knowledge. Every corner provokes a reminiscence, such as the graffiti which he recognises as the work of Bill Drummond of art-pop group the KLF, who came round to his house to show him the film of them burning a million pounds. Do they regret it now, I ask?
“It’s not so much that they regret it, but I think it haunts them. I heard a brilliant definition of haunting: ‘That which haunts us is that which we do not or do not completely understand.’ And I thought, that makes sense. Often we don’t understand our own actions. And certainly, if we’d gone to the Isle of Jura and burned a million quid, we would have a lot of questions!”
22 September 2016
[tech ] The Doom of Your Memories Doesn’t Really Exist … On reinventing classic video games… ‘That’s what digital media does: it allows us to create alternate histories, versions of our gaming past that better match our heightened expectations. And as our expectations change, as our memories shift and gather junk data with age, so, too, can we return to our old passions with those shifts intact, remaking them to suit us. Brutal Doom recently added weapons from the new Doom, taking new ideas that seem appropriately Doom-y and rewriting them into the game’s past. There’s not just one Doom, or one Super Mario, or one Half-Life. As we modify and reimagine these games, we’ve created dozens, hundreds, each signifying an alternate version of videogaming’s past.’
21 September 2016
[movies] Where Will Snowden Rank Among Oliver Stone’s 10 Biopics? … an attempt at ranking Oliver Stone’s biopics … ‘JFK is in some ways a ridiculous film. It’s also one of the greatest films of all time. Stone puts the audience through over three hours of near-constant information overload, accented by a variety of film stocks and shooting styles, all leading the viewer to feel, by the end, that they see conspiracy everywhere they look. Stone doesn’t just tell the story of Garrison’s life. He immerses us in Garrison’s headspace until we can’t help thinking the way he thinks, and see the world the way he sees it. It’s an incredible cinematic feat…’
20 September 2016
[comics] Dredding Every Minute of It … profiling Judge Dredd – Arthur Wyatt back at the career of Mega-City One’s greatest Lawman… ‘The far-future setting served Judge Dredd and 2000 AD well over the years, acting as a springboard for all kinds of science fiction-themed stories and building up a menagerie of aliens, mutants, psychics and visitors from other times and dimensions, which all somehow managed to be integrated seamlessly and have a distinctive Judge Dredd spin to them. This magpie tendency even extended across genres: When Dredd wanders beyond the borders of Mega-City One into the vast wasteland of the Cursed Earth, the stories become futuristic Westerns. The genre shifts again to Horror with the introduction of Judge Death, Dredd’s twisted mirror image from another dimension, where life itself has been declared a crime. The one constant is Dredd. Imbued with an unlimited reserve of stoicism and not much given to change himself, Dredd is a perfect foil for the chaotic ever-changing world around him.’
19 September 2016
[people] An Extremely Awkward Encounter with Larry David … Larry David discusses the Seinfeld Curse amongst other things …
LD: Here’s what I’ll have: split-pea soup and white-bean hummus. Is that okay?
PUBLICIST: Whatever you want.
LD: And I don’t need the cheesy croutons. And if there’s cream in the soup, don’t get it.
PUBLICIST: I’ll check.
LD: Yeah. No cream or butter in the soup or the hummus.
SR: Is that a lactose thing or a general-health thing?
LD: General health.
SR: So you tolerate lactose.
LD: I tolerate lactose like I tolerate people.
16 September 2016
[crime] The Detectives Who Never Forget a Face … fascinating look at the Metropolitan Police’s Squad of “Super-Recognizer” detectives who scan CCTV and databases matching images to criminals … ‘Porritt sometimes talks about the database using mystical language, like a trophy fisherman musing about the sea. Scrolling through thousands of photos, he squints his eyes, as if looking for a pattern that is hidden just beneath the surface. “I still think in the database there’s a massive series-bigger than Caballero,” he said. “Keyser Söze’s in there.”’
15 September 2016
[tech] People, Please Don’t Store Private Data in Your Address Book … Putting personal data in Smartphone address books is a terrible idea … ‘They know why people use these shortcuts, but Siegrist and Paradise emphasize that address books and plaintext notes apps put sensitive information at serious risk. And it’s not just some social security numbers, which would be bad enough. The two said that they’ve heard of people using their address books to store passwords, bank PINs, passport ID numbers, photos of passports, confidential work data, credit card numbers, financial account numbers, home security codes, and vault codes. It’s an address book, folks, not a magic data garden patrolled by dragons.’
13 September 2016
[tv] Make it Stranger … a Stranger Things logo generator …
12 September 2016
[herzog] How To Be Werner Herzog … A Hertzog fan watches Werner Hertzog Teaches Filmmaking … ‘Werner described being bitten by one of the iguanas and/or desert lizards that Nic Cage hallucinates in Bad Lieutenant. “He bit me so hard, I cannot explain. It was like a vise. The crew was delighted and laughed like mad.” Werner then gazed, momentarily wordless, at the playback of the twitchy, expressionless lizards. “These creatures are so insipid, so stupid, so demented,” he reflected. “Look at the face of that iguana. I love that creature. It just can’t get any better.” He paused, utterly transported. “I love these moments. How beautiful.” And, scene. Please trust me that it was fucking amazing.’
9 September 2016
[comics] A Party in a Lunatic Asylum … Alan Moore Profiled in the New Yorker … ‘He found a seat on a low wall overlooking the River Nene, which plies its milky, reluctant course through the town’s suburbs. The last time Moore had walked this way, the underpass had been littered with hypodermic needles. Today there was nothing but a square of soggy cardboard, apparently used as someone’s groundsheet, and the jacket of the golfing guide “Putting: The Game Within the Game.” Abutting the wall was a jumble of stones-the remains of the world’s first powered cotton-spinning mill with an inanimate energy source, and thus, arguably, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. We were therefore sitting, Moore explained, at the source of the Anthropocene, the geological epoch defined by man’s influence on the environment. It was also the birthplace of capitalism, by Moore’s account. “Adam Smith either visited the place or heard about it,” he said, of the mill, speculating that this might have led the thinker to develop his famous “invisible hand” theory of laissez-faire economics. “Jerusalem” is full of such local arcana; it also demonstrates Moore’s tendency to see deep congruities everywhere’
8 September 2016
[apple] Apple Plug … ‘Fill in your archaic headphone connector with beautiful aluminium and plug yourself into the future.’
7 September 2016
[docu] What Werner Herzog’s new film ‘Lo and Behold’ reveals about the internet … More about Werner Hertzog’s new documentary from the Independent … ‘And when I bemoan the proliferation of cat videos, he rises to the defence of the internet, which is the triumph of the useless, and the beautiful, the cruel and the ingenious and the insane, the place we go when we are bored, when we are lonely, when we want to know Steph Curry’s stat line and why your knee is making a weird sound and why they tore down the Bastille and what happens when we die, which we will, unlike the internet, which will not. “There are fantastic, crazy cat videos out there,” says Herzog.’
6 September 2016
[movies] 10 great British rural horror films … interesting list of British horror films to watch … ‘Witchfinder General is a doom-laden film. Many of its characters are either left dead or end up in a terrible state, while Michael Reeves, its brilliant young director, died shortly after the film’s release while still in his 20s. Yet it’s also an extraordinarily beautiful film that makes great use of extensive location shooting in the east of England. Here it is not the landscape itself that is the source of unease but rather the savagery of the people who occupy it. This juxtaposition of an indifferent nature with appalling human behaviour recurs in other British rural horrors, but it is never done quite so effectively.’
5 September 2016
2 September 2016
[life] Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom Murdered… disturbing true-life story of Munchausen by proxy and murder … ‘Because Dee Dee is dead, it’s impossible to diagnose her. She didn’t leave behind a diary or some other documentation of her intentions. She did keep a binder of medical information in which she seemed to be sorting through the different information she’d given to various doctors. And she did fit certain parameters that doctors often cite as red flags for Munchausen syndrome: For example, she had some medical training. The number of doctors she took Gypsy to see over the years, and her propensity for changing locations so there was no clear medical trail, is also common. So are the concerns over sleep apnea, which is one way Munchausen often seems to begin in the various documented cases.’
1 September 2016
[moore] Alan Moore and literature’s fascination with the fourth dimension … a look at Alan Moore’s conception of time in Jerusalem and earlier comics … ‘In Jerusalem, Moore makes these mysterious topographies known. Here, the fourth dimension is both temporal and spatial-as much a way of seeing as a thing unseen. Moore’s fourth dimension is both conceptual (i.e., a collapse of temporal moments, like Vonnegut’s “beads on a string” or Dr. Manhattan’s “intricately structured jewel”) as well as a material plane, called Mansoul, invisible to the naked eye, home to all manner of mystical and supernatural creatures. It’s very much the stuff of escapist high fantasy, like a 4-D Narnia. The extra-dimensional level of Jerusalem is place of “twisting crystals” and “ghost-seams” and afterlife academies, where characters use the made-up word “wiz” as linguistic copula that refers to something happening across the caved-in tenses of past, present and future. Back on the solid, three-dimensional footing of Earth, an eccentric artist called Alma Warren attempts to represent this mystical, magical realm, informed by recollections from her brother, who was transported there as a child.’
31 August 2016
[billboards] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: August 2006 … ‘Shepherd’s Bush Nuclear Waste Row’ …
30 August 2016
[wikipedia] Wikipedia Is Not Therapy! … behind-the-scenes look at how Wikipedia deals with mental health issues within it’s online community of volunteers … ‘A ‘recent changes’ feed tracks every edit made across Wikimedia projects; this is constantly monitored by volunteer community members. Experienced editors know that when an alarming change hits the feed, they should reach out to emergency@wikimedia.org. This address is connected to a 24-hour pager system that notifies Earley’s geographically dispersed team. Human eyes will usually read this message within a couple minutes. If at least two team members agree that the situation seems serious enough, they will report it to a law enforcement agency. Earley says that the Foundation has established police contacts across the English-speaking world who are familiar with this type of online threat of harm; it’s never a matter of hurriedly trying to explain Wikipedia to a confused or suspicious local cop.’
29 August 2016
[gaming] Everything I Knew about Graphic Design I Learned from Ultimate Play the Game … Remembering Ultimate Play the Game – and the imapact they had on UK Gaming in the 1980s … ‘Everything about Ultimate Play The Game was kind of mysterious and seductive. The company’s name itself didn’t really make a lot of sense in and of itself, but that merely added to the mystique. An Ultimate game felt like a coherent package. The company had an identity. Even before you got to play an Ultimate game the artwork was selling you on the promise; they had a distinct visual style that was unlike anything else. The chrome airbrushing of the company logo, the box artwork – later, the games came packaged in special custom boxes, which made them feel even more special – which was usually reflected in the loading screens… Potentially, I loved all of that more than I did playing the games.’
26 August 2016
[comics] Peter Bagge’s Neat Stuff paved the way for Hate-and the ’90s alt-comics boom … looking back at Peter Bagge’s Neat Stuff … ‘What was always great about Neat Stuff-and what makes those comics so exciting to read even today-is that they had the look of something disposable, but with a sneaky level of ambition and depth. One panel at a time, Bagge pulls readers into the lives of the Leeways or the Bradley family, taking what seems like tossed-off humor pieces and gradually revealing an uncanny understanding of human nature and the realities of modern American life. It’s no coincidence that Simpsons creator Matt Groening provided a quote for the cover of the first Bradleys book collection back in 1989. He recognized in Neat Stuff a kindred spirit…’
25 August 2016
[tv] Twin Peaks Captions … Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace in Twin Peaks …
24 August 2016
[games] These Mysterious Symbols Have Been in 19 Video Games and No One Knows Why … interesting video games mystery from Vice Gaming … ‘Either way, the sigils and glyphs have all the makings of an alternate-reality game (ARG), where players collaborate on solving a mystery spread across the digital and physical world. Some of the most famous ARGs, like Halo 2’s “I Love Bees,” had participants standing at pay phones waiting for secret messages to push them one step closer to answers. Other clues have been known to be spectrographically hidden in audio files. To wit: One sigil was found by decoding the morse code hidden in another sigil found in the otherwise innocuous mobile game Slide the Shakes. The morse code spelled out a set of coordinates in Los Angeles, California, which led someone to find a hidden USB drive. On that drive was-of course-another sigil.’
23 August 2016
[tech] Top 10 least-loved emojis … There are a lot of Emoji – and some are used more than others … ‘From the “what-were-they-thinking” department comes Lock with Ink Pen ðŸ”. Locks are good. Ink pens are good. So why are they together? Emojipedia speculates that it was meant to relate to cryptographic key signing in some way. This emoji feels like it escaped from the toolbar of Adobe Acrobat circa 1996.’
22 August 2016
[tubes] Diamond Geezer takes the World Record for the fastest time visting every station on the Night Tube on Opening Night … ‘Guinness’s pernickety rules don’t allow a single challenger with incomplete evidence to claim the world record, so my time of 3 hours, 24 minutes and 7 seconds won’t be officially ratified. It’s also true that the Night Tube network is as yet incomplete, so all I’ve done is visit every station on the first two lines, which isn’t anywhere near the final tally. But when all five lines are running it’ll be totally impossible to cover the entire Night Tube in one night, so I’ve grabbed the record while someone can, and now it’s mine.’
19 August 2016
[history] Interview with Joseph Goebbels’ 105-year-old secretary … ‘But really, I didn’t do anything other than type in Goebbels’ office.’
18 August 2016
[comics] Gallery of Art from Akira … collection of title pages from Young Magazine …
17 August 2016
[comics] Cartoonist Garry Trudeau on the GOP’s “Natural Born Toon” … Garry Trudeau on Donald Trump … ‘I just put him in the strip. And it was an early transfer-easy transfer. He wasn’t a parody exactly; he was really more like a natural born toon. I just took him out of the box, removed the tags and put him right into the strip. And I think he’s-you know, he’s like a version of Daffy Duck, I mean, in terms of his appearance, the silly way in which he talks, the over-the-top self-regard. All these things just made him a perfect cartoon character. And so, I just had him interact with the other characters as a peer, and they interact with him as just a, you know, comic strip colleague. And I didn’t have to make any adjustments. I would take the things he said and reframe them in a way, you know, to maximize the satiric purpose of it, but I didn’t have to do much in terms of exaggerating, the way you normally do in a parody.’
16 August 2016
[life] Man Hates Being Put In Position Where He Has To Think, Feel, Or Act … ‘I swear, everywhere I go, people expect me to take some matter or another into consideration, display some sort of emotion in response, and perhaps even do something about it…’
15 August 2016
[blogs] 15 Years of Feeling Listless … Stuart Ian Burns on blogging for 15 years … ‘As we discussed last time, the newer social media has all but killed new old-form blogs. On the odd occasion I do visit Facebook, I do see writing which even ten years ago would have naturally fitted on blogs and tweetstorms are the same. I’m often seeing people posting screen grabs of text on twitter so they can get all their thoughts down and always think it would be easier if they had a blogspot.’
28 July 2016
[comics] Comics Not Just For Kids Anymore, Reports 85,000th Mainstream News Story … BANG! POW! ZAP! … ‘The incredibly perceptive and original article also specifically mentioned the work of writer Alan Moore, an obscure reference point that has only been used in every single article like this ever written.’
27 July 2016
[billboards] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: July 2006 … ‘MURDERED – FOR FALLING IN LOVE’ …
26 July 2016
[moore] Creating Jerusalem: Alan Moore on the most important book he has written … Moore interviewed about his new novel called Jerusalem… ‘When we talk about history we talk about the history of church of state and maybe a dozen families. What about the rest of us? Weren’t we doing anything while all that was going on, or were we minor players in their drama? This is insisting that everybody has their own drama and mythology and story, and it is also insisting that if eternalism is a real thing that changes everything. It makes everywhere the eternal city, it makes everywhere Jerusalem and perhaps particularly the poorest meanest basest places.’
25 July 2016
[religion] Did Jesus Have a Wife? … a must-read crazy detective story into the origins of a papyrus fragment from a gospel where Jesus mentions his wife…
His account of how he’d come to possess the fragment, I noticed, contained a series of small inconsistencies. At the time, I wasn’t sure what to make of them.But years later, they still gnawed at me. The American Association of Museums’ Guide to Provenance Research warns that an investigation of an object’s origins “is not unlike detective work”: “One may spend hours, days, or weeks following a trail that leads nowhere.” When I started to dig, however, I uncovered more than I’d ever expected-a warren of secrets and lies that spanned from the industrial districts of Berlin to the swingers scene of southwest Florida, and from the halls of Harvard and the Vatican to the headquarters of the East German Stasi…
22 July 2016
[tv] A BBC comedy secret – REVEALED! … the Gibberish phone call – a classic BBC sound effect – slowed down … ‘Hello Sidney, yes, it’s me…’
21 July 2016
[comics] Ask the Artist Interview with Providence’s Jacen Burrows … discussing Providence and collaborating with Alan Moore … ‘I think Alan might even have said that one of the issues (#7 perhaps) was the longest he’d written for a single issue but I may be remembering that wrong. I’ve said before that Providence was like doing a graduate thesis, with all of the reading, research and actual drawing work. It has certainly been the hardest and longest project I’ve ever attempted. But I wanted to do it right and be as true to his vision as possible. I’ve tried to do every camera angle as described, every expression, every location. If he put it in the script, I tried to put it on the page.’
20 July 2016
[movies] Cageomasochism: Loving to Hate Nicolas Cage … How to understand Nicolas Cage’s roller-coaster career… ‘The larger, more glaring problem for me is this insane idea that in recent years Cage has been doing nothing but cash grabs. If you think Nicolas Cage views any of his roles as an easy way to earn a quick buck, you’ve never actually watched this man act. The late Roger Ebert was a big fan of Cage and once described him by saying, “He’s daring and fearless in his choice of roles, and unafraid to crawl out on a limb, saw it off and remain suspended in air. No one else can project inner trembling so effectively… he always seems so earnest.” I think this is the best description of Cage I’ve ever heard and that last snippet I’m especially fond of.’
19 July 2016
[life] How to stop your phone from distracting you and wasting your life … ‘Buy a travel alarm clock and charge outside the bedroom. Waking up to check our phone sets our day off to a bad start. Get a separate alarm clock and leave your phone outside to charge.’
18 July 2016
[comics] Looking Back at Marvel’s Wonderfully Weird Comic Adaptation of the First Star Wars Movie … It’s always worth sharing Howard Chaykin’s view on his work in this comic. ‘It’s the first issue-of the six that would adapt the film eventually known as A New Hope-that is the most “alien” in comparison to the movie. Covering from the opening crawl to Luke being ambushed by the Tusken Raiders, it’s clear that Thomas and Chaykin had limited access to the film beyond the shooting script (and presumably, publicity stills). Not only are scenes that didn’t make it into the final movie included, such as Luke’s encounter with Biggs Darklighter on Tatooine, everything looks slightly off, if still recognizable with the hindsight of seeing the movie. The Star Destroyer from the opening is bizarrely curved, while C-3PO’s body angular and sharp. The X-Wings on the cover are right out of Ralph McQuarrie’s concept art rather than the final design. Darth Vader’s visage is almost skeletal compared to its movie counterpart, and… well, take a look at Chaykin’s surprisingly mature Luke…’
15 July 2016
[brexit] Everything you need to know about Theresa May’s Brexit nightmare in five minutes … TL;DR – We’re fucked basically…‘An interim agreement. This would deal with her main problem, which is time. The Article 50 timetable is just so punishing no nation could come out of it safely. She could skip all this two-year stuff and agree an interim arrangement where the UK stays in the single market while it negotiates its ultimate Brexit deal, with a deadline of 2020 to coincide with the general election. Then she could go to the country looking for a mandate to sign that deal. That would calm the markets, provide a better situation for a decent deal with Europe and other countries, and generally make the whole process a lot less frightening and hysterical for all involved.’
14 July 2016
[herzog] Ecstatic Truths: The Best of Werner Herzog’s Reddit Q&A … ‘Well, I would say, reading is some kind of essential prerequisite to everything you do. Whether you are a scientist or a filmmaker, or just a normal human being working in a more “normal” profession. I cannot argue much about it. Read, read, read, read, read. The other side, traveling on foot, nobody does it and what I said will disappear into thin air any moment from now. Traveling on foot has actually given me insight into the world itself. The world reveals itself to one who travel on foot.’
13 July 2016
[politics] Prime Minister Theresa May Makes First Policy Announcement… ‘It’s Simple…’
12 July 2016
[life] Scientists Slowly Reintroducing Small Group Of Normal, Well-Adjusted Humans Into Society … ‘Prior to the conservation efforts, it is believed that even-tempered people with sound judgment and the ability to put the needs of others before themselves had dwindled to less than 150 within the country’s borders, and had gone completely extinct in the nation’s businesses and civic institutions. Experts widely agree that without isolation, protection, and captive-breeding programs, the remaining thoughtful, foresighted individuals would have been totally wiped out.’
11 July 2016
[brexit] Brexit: a coup by one set of public schoolboys against another … Brexit – it’s all about the Oxford Union apparently … ‘The moment Brexit was achieved, Johnson and Hannan airily informed Britons that immigration would continue after all. No wonder, because the public schoolboys don’t care about immigration. Whether Poles and Bangladeshis live in unfashionable English provincial towns is a matter of supreme indifference to them. The public schoolboys turned out to have no plan for executing Brexit. I’m guessing they considered this a boring governance issue best left to swotty civil servants. Johnson actually spent the Sunday after Brexit playing cricket. In the great public-school tradition, he was a dilettante “winging it”.’
8 July 2016
[blogs] No Post Today … Diamond Geezer ponders the end of his blog … ‘The first physical thing that’ll go noticeably wrong is likely to be that my Flickr subscription expires and thousand of links stop working, as well as certain embedded photos which could create a bit of a mess. Various spam comments will soon appear which I won’t be around to delete, and the content will look increasingly out of date. Then at some point Blogger is going to change something, and that’s going to mess everything up. I don’t know what that change’ll be, maybe an enforced template update or a request for authentication, and I don’t know when. But every few years they throw a new grenade into the mix, and this time I’m not going to be able to respond and adapt, so the blog may be tweaked into something unreadable or reduced to an unusable rump. Sorry about that, in advance.’
7 July 2016
[comics] Interview With Providence Letterer Kurt Hathaway … a great interview and especially fascinating on the details around the lettering of Robert Black’s Commonplace book at the back of the comic … ‘Once I heard I had to do it by hand, it made sense to keep it typeset, and simply print it out at roughly twice the printed size, plop some tracing paper over it-and hand-letter on the tracing paper with the typeset text visible underneath. In this way, my hand-lettering would fill the same space as the typeset version-just in my handwriting. So it still came in at 14 pages. When I’m done-it takes me about 3 weeks to do the backmatter material-I scan it, fix any mistakes in Photoshop and make sure that Avatar gets it in enough time to work their graphic magic.’
6 July 2016
[politics] ‘Thatcher’s ghost told me to run’ says every Tory leadership candidate … ‘Michael Gove said: “I awoke when the owls outside my woodland cave began hooting loudly and when I came out Mrs Thatcher’s ghost was beckoning. She then implanted a vision of Britain in my brain. She also said that Boris was a twat.”’
5 July 2016
[news] The most dangerous drug isn’t meow meow. It isn’t even alcohol… … Charlie Brooker on the British Press … ‘In its purest form, a newspaper consists of a collection of facts which, in controlled circumstances, can actively improve knowledge. Unfortunately, facts are expensive, so to save costs and drive up sales, unscrupulous dealers often “cut” the basic contents with cheaper material, such as wild opinion, bullshit, empty hysteria, reheated press releases, advertorial padding and photographs of Lady Gaga with her bum hanging out. The hapless user has little or no concept of the toxicity of the end product: they digest the contents in good faith, only to pay the price later when they find themselves raging incoherently in pubs, or – increasingly – on internet messageboards.’
4 July 2016
[tech] How to Write a History of Writing Software … A look at the early history of Word Processing … ‘Another interesting story that’s in the book is about John Updike, who gets a Wang word processor at about the time Stephen King does, in the early 1980s. I was able to inspect the last typewriter ribbon that he used in the last typewriter he owned. A collector who had the original typewriter was kind enough to lend it to me. And you can read the text back off that typewriter ribbon-and you can’t make this stuff up, this is why it’s so wonderful to be able to write history-the last thing that Updike writes with the typewriter is a note to his secretary telling her that he won’t need her typing services because he now has a word processor.’
1 July 2016
[euref] Boris’s career undone by a Poundland Lord and Lady MacGove… John Crace’s political sketch on Johnson and Gove … ‘Boris couldn’t resist a bit of drama, delaying the announcement that he wouldn’t after all be standing for the Conservative party leadership right till the end, but that was just about the only sign of life he gave. The deflation was near total. Boris had only ever come out for leave to get the top job and now his ambition was dust. Nadine Dorries was in tears by the end; so it wasn’t all bad.’