2 March 2020
[death] 17th Century Death Roulette ☠️ … How would you have died in the 17th Century? ‘In the week of September 12th, 1665 you died from Canker.’
3 March 2020
[disease] The sounds of Covid-19 … the DNA sequence of Coronavirus converted to music notes by Shardcore.
4 March 2020
[quote] LMG is 20 years old: The Inevitable Alan Moore Quote … ‘Anything of any value in our lives, whether that be a career, a work of art, a relationship, will always start with such a leap. And in order to be able to make it, you have to put aside the fear of failing and the DESIRE of SUCCEEDING. You have to do these things completely purely, without fear, without desire. Because things that we do without lust of result are the purest actions that we shall ever take.’
[lmg] Twenty Years of LinkMachineGo – “I DID IT!”
5 March 2020
[quote] LMG @ Twenty – The Inevitable Hunter S. Thompson Quote:
On page 39 of California Living magazine I found a hand-lettered ad from the McDonald’s Hamburger Corporation, one of Nixon’s big contributors in the ’72 presidential campaign: PRESS ON, it said. NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN TAKE THE PLACE OF PERSISTENCE. TALENT WILL NOT: NOTHING IS MORE COMMON THAN UNSUCCESSFUL MEN WITH TALENT. GENIUS WILL NOT: UNREWARDED GENIUS IS ALMOST A PROVERB. EDUCATION ALONE WILL NOT: THE WORLD IS FULL OF EDUCATED DERELICTS. PERSISTENCE AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT. I read it several times before I grasped the full meaning.
9 March 2020
[disease] Fever dreams: did author Dean Koontz really predict coronavirus? … The Guardian has a look at fictional pandemics. ‘[Dean Koontz’s] novel The Eyes of Darkness made reference to a killer virus called “Wuhan-400” – eerily predicting the Chinese city where Covid-19 would emerge. But the similarities end there: Wuhan-400 is described as having a “kill‑rate” of 100%, developed in labs outside the city as the “perfect” biological weapon. An account with more similarities, also credited by some as predicting coronavirus, is found in the 2011 film Contagion, about a global pandemic that jumps from animals to humans and spreads arbitrarily around the globe. But when it comes to our suffering, we want something more than arbitrariness. We want it to mean something. This is evident in our stories about illness and disease…’
10 March 2020
[crime] A Brutal Murder, a Wearable Witness, and an Unlikely Suspect … Fascinating true-crime story about using a heartbeat tracking smartwatch as evidence in a murder case. ‘As Karen’s body was unzipped from the body bag and laid out at the morgue, the coroner took note of a black band still encircling her left wrist: a Fitbit Alta HR—a smartwatch that tracks heartbeat and movement. A judge signed a warrant to extract its data, which seemed to tell the story Karen couldn’t: On Saturday, September 8, five days before she was found, Karen’s heart rate had spiked and then plummeted. By 3:28 in the afternoon, the Fitbit wasn’t registering a heartbeat.’
11 March 2020
[comics] Hand Painted Colour Guides for the Death of Gwen Stacy Issue of Spider-Man from 1973 … Some historic comics process art spotted the Bristol Board tumblr.
12 March 2020
[blogs] Things not do in April 2020 … Diamond Geezer’s April round-up post in the age of Coronavirus. ‘April 10 – Flight from Heathrow: Join the crowds heading off for a long-promised Easter break, hopefully to a country that’s still mostly virus-free, praying that they don’t introduce an emergency quarantine lockdown while you’re over there trapping you in a hotel room you can’t fly home from. …or, when cancelled, stay at home and check the small print of your cancellation policy.’
13 March 2020
[coronavirus] Top U.S. Health Experts: ‘Hold On To Your Fucking Seats Because This Bitch Hasn’t Even Thought About Starting Yet’ … The Onion on the CoronaVirus.
“We’ve been getting a lot of questions surrounding Covid-19, and, well, you all better buckle the fuck up, because this shit is about to kick into high gear,” said Stanford professor of health research and policy Richard Mason, throwing all his papers in the air and warning the nation that they better strap in tight, because this motherfucker will knock you on your goddamn ass.
16 March 2020
[comics] A jam comic cover from Mick McMahon, Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons and Kevin O’Neill … Created for a 1979 Society of Strip Illustration (SSI) newsletter.
17 March 2020
[tv] Beyond Bargain Hunt: your definitive guide to ‘the wonderland’ of daytime TV … An extremely useful guide if you are new to WFH. ‘The BBC One daytime schedule exists to pummel two messages into viewers. One: your house is full of valuable things that should be sold to the highest bidder; two: the world is cruel and full of people determined to rip you off.’
19 March 2020
[tv] Making the Most of the Streaming Services … Useful tips from Feeling Listless. ‘Plenty of us are subscribed to one or two streaming services and I’ve been wondering just how widespread some of the “hacks” I’ve picked up over the years are. So I thought I’d put them up here just in case. Note the following is with the UK in mind but there tend to be versions of these things abroad too…’
23 March 2020
[trump] Teen models, powerful men and private dinners: when Trump hosted Look of the Year … Engrossing look at the time Donald Trump judged the world’s biggest modelling competition. ‘Downstairs, a party was in flow. Scores of teenage girls in evening dresses and miniskirts, some as young as 14, danced under disco lights. It could have been a high school prom, were it not for the crowd of older men surrounding them. As the evening wore on, some of the men – many old enough to be the girls’ fathers, or even grandfathers – joined them on the dancefloor, pressing themselves against the girls. One balding man in a suit wrapped his arms around two young models, leering into a film camera that was documenting the evening: “Can you get some beautiful women around me, please?” The party aboard the Spirit of New York was one of several events that Donald Trump, then 45, attended with a group of 58 aspiring young models that September…’
24 March 2020
[herzog] Werner Herzog Has Never Thought a Dog Was Cute … Wide-ranging, recent Werner Herzog interview… ‘Q: How do you derive meaning from life if life is indifferent? Herzog: Life is not indifferent. The universe is indifferent. But just trying, itself, is something I should do.’
25 March 2020
[comics] Frank Miller’s “Famous Detective Pin-Up” portfolio … a gallery of Frank Miller art about classic pulp detectives.
26 March 2020
[movies] I’ve never seen… The Shining … On watching the Shining the first time. ‘It was bad. Good, in a “cinematic appreciation” way, but bad in a sitting at home alone during a nationwide quarantine way. No one had mentioned the music to me before; the score undulating from fluttering strings to thundering synths and that shrill whistle tone making those long tracking shots especially heart-palpitating. In fact, Kubrick’s penchant for lengthy, silent takes makes perfect sense now, elongating observation into its own sense of anticipatory fear. And this gels so well with the evolution of Nicholson’s face throughout; morphing from smug and clean-shaven to craggy and wide-eyed, broken only by his terrifying rictus grin – a perfect foil to Shelley Duvall’s incredulity.’
27 March 2020
[c19] A letter to the UK from Italy: this is what we know about your future … ‘You will not understand if witnessing the birth of a new world is more a grandiose or a miserable affair.’
30 March 2020
[life] Humblebrags: Self-Isolation Edition … ‘UPDATE: We are now on lockdown here in the Marquesas Islands, a remote archipelago in the southern Pacific Ocean described as “heaven on Earth” by the New York Times. So hard to be hundreds of miles from family.’
31 March 2020
[comics] Bryan Talbot Offers Free Comics Compilation Download … With comics written by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Nick Cave and others. Download: PDF / CBR.