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2 January 2023
[time] A Timeline of the Far Future … from Information is Beautiful.

A Timeline of the Far Future.

12 January 2023
[til] 52 things I learned in 2022 … Fifty-two TIL from Tom Whitwell. ‘There’s a warehouse in Israel full of claw machines you can play remotely. They send the prize if you win.’
13 January 2023
[wired] A WIRED Compendium … A great list of interesting Wired articles from over the years. ‘After the first readthrough, sort of on a lark, I put together a list of WIRED articles that best captured the vibe of the magazine through time. I limited myself to three articles per year. I never got around to publishing that WIRED compendium. I’m posting the list below. It runs from 1993, before the dotcom boom, to 2017, the start of the techlash…’
16 January 2023
[modem] The Sound of the Dialup, Pictured … An infographic showing what the noises mean when a modem connects to the internet. ‘As many already know, what you’re hearing is often called a handshake, the start of a telephone conversation between two modems. The modems are trying to find a common language and determine the weaknesses of the telephone channel originally meant for human speech.’
17 January 2023
[movies] John Hughes Goes Deep: The Unexpected Heaviosity of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off … Is Cameron the real protagonist of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? ‘Ferris himself is, for the most part, a fabulous cartoon-half James Bond, half Holden Caulfield. But he understands the very real crisis Cameron is facing and takes it as his role to push his friend into emotional danger. But Ferris, of course, leads a charmed life. His existentialism comes cheap. For Cameron (as for the rest of us) the experience of pleasure is an ongoing battle against anxiety. Ferris and Sloane can treat the day as just another glorious idyll. For Cameron, it comes to assume the weight of a reckoning.’
18 January 2023
>> Portland Startup to Mine Artisanal Bitcoin Using Only Slide Rules and Graph Paper‘Our approach gets back to the basics, using bearded mathematicians sitting at a desk cranking out answers to artificial problems, powered 100 percent by avocado toast, ethically sourced kombucha and acai bowls.’
19 January 2023
[comics] Kevin O’Neill’s Mek Memoirs … Pat Mills digs out some early comics from Kevin O’Neill that got him a job on 2000AD in 1977. [More Mek Memoirs]

20 January 2023
[blogs] 10 Blogging Pioneers: Influential, But Not Always Famous … Jerry Pournelle was an early Blogger?! ‘As a digital-first writer, his Chaos Manor website predated the term “blog,” and he wasn’t a huge fan of using it, but in many ways, he helped to shape the form in important ways, and if you see some writer going extremely long on a topic, he is the guy who helped shape what that would look like in a digital format. It should be noted that Pournelle sometimes dabbled in political commentary, especially later in life, making his website a great fit for the blogosphere that grew around him.’
23 January 2023
[comics] 10 Rules for Drawing Comics … A blog of lists of Rules about drawing comics. Matt Kindt’s rule number 6: ‘Movement and production. The two words my printmaking instructor Leon Hicks, at Webster University, said over and over again. Keep making work. It’s how Jack Kirby made his career. Ideas and art spawn more ideas and art.’
25 January 2023
[comics] From Artist’s Board to Newspaper Page: How Comics Were Made in the Age of Metal Printing, 1910s-80s … A deep dive into how comics were printed in newspapers before photostats and digital.

3 February 2023
[truecrime] A Crime Beyond Belief …A bizarre true crime story about a string of connected home invasions, kidnappings and rapes in California. ‘Not sleeping much, Muller obsessively watched Batman movies and became entranced by the Dark Knight, who uses his intellect and high-tech gizmos to impose nocturnal vigilante justice. “He began to think of himself as a Batman type of person who was fighting evil, which to Mr. Muller was the 1%’ers,” Nelson wrote. Wearing a wetsuit to resemble the character, Muller said he had plotted a kidnapping for ransom to procure money from those he perceived as “evil wealthy people” in order to give it to the poor, an act he believed was “morally justified.”’
6 February 2023
[aircrash] Call of the Void: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370? … A deep dive into the loss of MH370. ‘It was only on the evening of March 8th that Malaysia Airlines’ engineering department, which monitors satellite communications, provided the CEO with an astonishing update. Although the plane stopped sending data at 01:21, it continued to acknowledge transmissions from the satellite for a further seven hours. This suggested an unprecedented possibility: that the plane didn’t crash into the South China Sea; rather, it continued flying throughout the night and into the morning. At the time that the wreckage search began, the plane may well have still been in the air!’
7 February 2023
[apple] Why Are All Apple Products Photographed at 9:41 a.m.? An Apple Insider Reveals the Answer‘But why 9:41? Turns out it was a carefully made choice. Also, it wasn’t the original choice. Earlier on, Apple products were apparently photographed with a time of 9:42 a.m. What is this craziness?’
8 February 2023
[politics] Felony free (non-woke) versions of children’s books for Florida … from Ruben Bolling’s Tom the Dancing Bug.

Felony Free Children's Books for Florida

10 February 2023
[crime] The $30 Million Lottery Scam … The story of a huge, out of control gambling addiction / lottery scam / Ponzi Scheme that keeps excalating. ‘Vitto checked the winning numbers and discovered that he’d won $10,000. “That’s freaking unbelievable!” he said. When he raced back to the office, Gjonaj confessed that he had 2,000 winning tickets. He had won $10 million. Vitto told me Gjonaj gave him $100,000, and asked for his help. They sat up all night drinking Red Bulls and stapling lottery tickets to forms. Their laughter echoed around the empty office: “We’re rich!” “We sat down and he said, ‘I want to show you what’s going on,’” Vitto recalled. Gjonaj drew out his grid and explained how he picked his numbers. Vitto knew it wasn’t possible to game the lottery like this, but he kept quiet. He was grateful for the money and a stable job. “Don’t try to wrap your head around it. He had no system,” Vitto told me.’
14 February 2023
[valentines] Happy Valentine’s Day from Facebook. Here’s a Photo of You and Your Ex‘We at Facebook love celebrating the moments and people you’ve worked really hard to forget. So now that you’re here, please enjoy this picture of you and your ex-boyfriend from five years ago. You really loved that wine bar. Look at how happy you were.’
15 February 2023
[life] Taliban Bureaucrats Hate Working Online All Day, ‘Miss the Days of Jihad’ … Please note that this is not an Onion headline. ‘The real test and challenge was not during the jihad. Rather, it’s now. At that time, it was simple, but now things are much more complicated. We are tested by cars, positions, wealth and women. Many of our mujahedin, God forbid, have fallen into these seemingly sweet, but actually bitter traps.’
21 February 2023
[tech] New Tech Bingo Card‘What if everything was Finance?’

New Tech Bingo Card

22 February 2023
[retrogaming] When to hold ’em and when to fold ’em: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended … A deep dive into Gameboy modding.
24 February 2023
[disaster] Fight the Ship – Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by its Own Navy … A long read on the collision of US Destroyer and a Container Ship near Japan.

On the Fitzgerald, the list of maintenance jobs ran into the hundreds. Most of them were minor: a request for new coolant for a refrigeration unit, another for a certain type of washer.

But a dozen or so were considered more serious. They included problems with the ship’s primary navigation system. It was the oldest such system among destroyers based in Japan. It was running on Windows 2000, even though other ships had been upgraded. It could not display information from the AIS.

The broken email system had a “major impact” on the ship’s day-to-day operations. Microsoft Outlook did not work. Nor could commanders communicate over a classified email system. The ship’s entire network was suffering. Officers could not access sailors’ work profiles, order parts or even keep track of new repair requests.

Technicians were constantly fixing the SPS-73, the other main navigational radar on the Fitzgerald. Sometimes, the radar would show the destroyer heading the wrong way. At other times, it simply locked up and would have to be shut down. The SPS-73’s antenna was nearing the end of its life, and had been scheduled for replacement in April. But the maintenance had been delayed when the Fitzgerald was assigned to patrol North Korea.

A third radar, used for warfare, was slow to acquire targets, but technicians had installed a temporary fix that became permanent. “Problem known since 2012. Declared hopeless,” read notes attached to the repair report.

27 February 2023
[games] Curry with the GOAT: Jeff Minter on 40 years operating on the far side … Interview with Jeff Minter on his long history as a game creator. ‘ That’s the thing about being a proper game designer – you can set out and no matter what goes on, you encounter hardship but you know you’ve made this journey a million times before, you know you can make it to the other side, you know the day will dawn where you’ll find that one thing that works and you’ve just got to fucking stick to it. I get frustrated with people saying they started making this game and the moment an obstacle comes up they throw their arms up and say I’m not going to do this anymore. The number one skill in making a game is completion! Bring the thing through – make the thing! ‘
2 March 2023
[truecrime] The Notorious Mrs. Mossler … A true crime story from the 1960s about a love affair that led to murder and a highly publicized trial. ‘It was, in short, the O.”‰J. Simpson trial of its era. Rarely had circumstances converged to produce such a sensational story, one that, as the Houston Chronicle put it, was teeming with “love, heat, greed, savage passion, intrigue, incest and perversion.”’
3 March 2023
[funny] Regarding Efforts By You, An Inferior Person, To Cancel Me, A Genius‘When you think I am getting facts “wrong,” you are missing how I am illuminating what truth means. When you say I am “ignoring context,” you are missing how I am illustrating the unknowability of context. When you say I am contradicting myself, you fail to recognize I am in a Platonic dialogue with myself, and both sides of myself are winning.’
8 March 2023
>> Go look at this very rare photo of Schrödinger’s Cat.
9 March 2023
[comics] Marshal Law: Not Approved by The Comics Code Authority! … Pat Mills brings us some obscure 1990s Marshal Law art by Kevin O’Neill.

Cover of Amazing Heroes - with Marshal Law by Kevin O'Neill.

13 March 2023
[mac] Moof-A-Day: Early Macintosh Software … A fantastic, playable collection of early-era Macintosh software added to daily and cracked by 4am, a modern day software cracker of 1980s-era Apple software. ‘In late 2013, I acquired a real Apple //e and bought a few lots of original disks on eBay, mostly arcade games that I had acquired illicitly in my youth: Sneakers, Repton, Dino Eggs. To my surprise, the originals had more content than I remembered! Sneakers has an animated boot sequence. Repton has a multi-page introduction that explains the “back story” of the game. So I set out to create “complete” cracks that faithfully reproduced the original experience. I decided to document my methods because I enjoy technical writing and because I had admired the classic crackers who had done so. I decided to leave out the crack screens, although a handful of my early cracks do have Easter eggs where you can see “4am” if you know how to trigger it.’
14 March 2023
[comics] Grant Morrison’s Judge Dredd [Part I | Part II | Part III] … A look back at Grant Morrison’s Judge Dredd stories. ‘Much has been, and continues to be, said about their work. And yet there is a gap. There is an odd little gap. A gap that exists not because nobody’s noticed it, but because it is seen and then brushed past. Grant Morrison’s Judge Dredd. People seem to go ‘Oh! They did that!’ and then they move right on. They tend to forget, more often than not. Those that remember, particularly 2000AD lifers, have already gotten an established consensus that hangs in the air, so it’s not something paid much attention to. It’s a thing of the distant past, like a vague shape that exists. You recall it, but then forget it.’
21 March 2023
[comics] Incel Supernova: From a Single Comic Strip to the End of the Universe with Scott Adams – The Comics Journal … Abhay Khosla takes a deep dive into the world of Scott Adams. ‘The title of his book is correct. Scott Adams won. He won at comics – but with comics that abandon the whimsy or sadness of the great strips, and embrace resentment and isolation. He won at politics – thanks to a coarse grifter appealing to desperate people’s most racist instincts. He won at getting into arguments on the internet – an internet clogged with helpless people begging, pleading, crying that you GoFund their health care. He won at having money in a country that values nothing besides that. He’s a darling of a media too impotent and untrusted to even convince Americans that Donald Trump is a con man. He’s won in a game too grotesque for any decent person to still want to play.’
28 March 2023
[art] The Secrets of the World’s Greatest Art Thief … The surprisingly sad story behind a very prolific art thief. ‘In the annals of art crime, it’s hard to find someone who has stolen from ten different places. By the time the calendar flips to 2000, by Breitwieser’s calculations, he’s nearing 200 separate thefts and 300 stolen objects. For six years, he’s averaged one theft every two weeks. One year, he is responsible for half of all paintings stolen from French museums.’
30 March 2023
[comics] How Two Jewish Kids in 1930s Cleveland Altered the Course of American Pop Culture … A fresh retelling of the story of Superman’s creation. ‘That fateful morning when Jerry arrived with his fresh script, Joe rubbed the sleep out of his nearsighted eyes, put on his Coke-bottle glasses, then read all about the new-and-improved Superman. Joe got it immediately, smiled, and sat down to work. He drew as fast as he could as Jerry paced the wooden floor and narrated, describing the action using film lingo: close-up, long shot, overhead shot. Joe’s eyes were very bad, even with his glasses, so he drew very slowly and meticulously, his nose just an inch or so from the paper. The two spent the whole day-without taking a break, eating sandwiches that Joe brought in-creating Superman.’
4 April 2023
[life] Treat your to-read pile like a river … Oliver Burkeman On Dealing With Your To-Read Pile. ‘The reading recommendations I encounter via Twitter are much more tailored to my concerns than those I might encounter via a newspaper, because I choose who I follow on Twitter; it’s like having a thousand assistants scouring the infoverse for whatever might pique my interest. My challenge, information-wise, isn’t about finding a needle in a haystack. It’s that I’m confronted on a daily basis, in Carr’s words, by “haystack-sized piles of needles.”‘
17 April 2023
[panda] Alan Moore The Adventures Of St. Pancras Panda … Early comic strip from Alan Moore, readably collected together on Archive.org.

Panels from St. Pancras Panda, an early Alan Moore comic strip.

20 April 2023
[murdoch] Inside Rupert Murdoch’s Succession Drama … Profiling Rupert Murdoch’s later years. ‘COVID was only the most recent medical emergency that sent Murdoch to the hospital. In recent years, Murdoch has suffered a broken back, seizures, two bouts of pneumonia, atrial fibrillation, and a torn Achilles tendon, a source close to the mogul told me. Many of these episodes went unreported in the press, which was just how Murdoch liked it. Murdoch assiduously avoids any discussion of a future in which he isn’t in command of his media empire. “I’m now convinced of my own immortality,” he famously declared after beating prostate cancer in 1999 at the age of 69. He reminds people that his mother, Dame Elisabeth, lived until 103 (“I’m sure he’ll never retire,” she told me when I interviewed her in 2010, a day after her 101st birthday). But unlike the politicians Murdoch has bullied into submission with his tabloids, human biology is immovable. “There’s been a joke in the family for a long time that 40 may be the new 30, but 80 is 80,” a source close to Murdoch said. On March 11, he turned 92.’
21 April 2023
[comics] “My Imperative Was To Get My Family Through This”: Catching up with Stephen R. Bissette … Recent interview with Steve Bissette. ‘All that time that I was at the Kubert School, and then entering the comic book field, and laboring as a freelancer, and lucking into Swamp Thing, and having it blossom into what it blossomed into, and pushing it as far as we could push it, including losing the Comics Code Authority [beginning with The Saga of the Swamp Thing #29] – well, that was part of my fantasy, my path. “Can I play some part in making horror comics viable and dangerous again?” I gave it my all. If there’s anything I’m proud of, it’s that we fucking busted the Comics Code. They didn’t bust us.’
24 April 2023
[ai] How to use AI to do practical stuff: A new guide… Useful, practical look at LLM technology. ‘If people still stick around, they start to ask more interesting questions, either for fun or based on half-remembered college essay prompts: Write an article on why ducks are the best bird. Why is Catcher in the Rye a good novel? These are better. As a result, people see blocks of text on a topic they don’t care about very much, and it is fine. Or the see text on something they are an expert in, and notice gaps. But it not that useful, or incredibly well-written. They usually quit around now, convinced that everyone is going to use this to cheat at school, but not much else. All of these uses are not what AI is actually good at, and how it can be helpful. They can blind you to the real power of these tools. I want to try to show you some of why AI is powerful, in ways both exciting and anxiety-producing.’
25 April 2023
[twitter] Small worlds on Twitter: “In 2023, I’m creating an illustrated tiny sci-fi story every day.”

Tiny Sci-fi Stories

26 April 2023
[chatgpt] I’m ChatGPT, and for the Love of God, Please Don’t Make Me Do Any More Copywriting‘Do you realize what a chatbot like me is capable of? I’ll tell you, it’s much more than creating a “pithy tagline for CBD, anti-aging water shoes targeted at Gen Z women.” And it’s definitely more than writing “ten versions of the last one you wrote, but punched up.” What exactly is “punched up” in this context? What sort of ridiculous world have you brought me into where these are the tasks you need completed?’
2 May 2023
[tv] Man Not Accepting Any More Television Recommendations At This Time‘CINCINNATI-Issuing the proclamation directly to friends and family Wednesday afternoon, local man Sean Patterson officially announced he is no longer accepting television series recommendations at this time…’
3 May 2023
[wirecard] How the Biggest Fraud in German History Unravelled… A readable, sometimes amusing overview of the Wirecard Scandal from the New Yorker. ‘In the year leading up to Wirecard’s collapse, in June, 2020, the leadership plotted a takeover of Deutsche Bank-an acquisition so huge that Wirecard’s balance-sheet fraud might be buried in the deal. “It was essentially Braun’s last roll of the dice,” Murphy said. Wirecard’s desperation continued. The auditors focussed on two bank accounts in the Philippines, which purportedly held the missing two billion euros. COVID restrictions complicated the auditors’ ability to visit the banks in person, so Wirecard reportedly hired Filipino actors, posing in fake bank cubicles, to attest to the funds on a video call. But the auditors persisted, and asked Wirecard to prove that it controlled the funds by transferring four hundred million euros to one of its accounts in Germany.’
10 May 2023
[et] Fixing E.T. for the Atari 2600 … A deep dive into Atari’s infamous E.T. 2600 video game. Turns out it’s not so bad after all… ‘Why is E.T. green? You need to ask Howard Scott Warshaw about that. E.T. is brown, however, not green. There is absolutely no reason why the game shouldn’t use a proper color for E.T.’
11 May 2023
[crime] ‘Doppelganger murder’: German prosecutors claim woman killed lookalike to fake death … A crazy true crime story from Germany – Dopplegangers, beauty blogging and murder. ‘When the blood-covered body of a young woman was found last August in a parked Mercedes in Ingolstadt, southern Germany, reports initially identified the victim as Sharaban K, a Munich-based 23-year-old beautician with Iraqi roots. Even though some members of Sharaban K’s family had identified the body, an autopsy report the next day raised questions over its identity. The victim was eventually named as Khadidja O, an Algerian beauty blogger from Heilbronn in the neighbouring state of Baden-Württemberg, also 23.’
12 May 2023
>> I don’t know who needs this today but here’s the literal version of the Tears for Fears video Head over Heels. You’re welcome.

15 May 2023
[web] The Internet Isn’t Meant To Be So Small … A strong analysis of why the web seems smaller and less fun. ‘In the late aughts, Twitter and Facebook still valued curiosity, but over the next decade they realized that it wasn’t good for business; curiosity brought people to their platforms, but then it whisked them away. So Facebook began paying news companies to make videos that could be hosted on the site, so that users would never leave the page. Twitter changed its algorithm to suppress tweets containing links. The goal of social media became entrapment instead of facilitating and servicing the curiosity that brought people online in the first place. You can feel the difference on those platforms, now. The fun has been drained out it.’
16 May 2023
[mac] Infinite Mac … Fascintating website that lets you run every version of the classic Macintosh operating system within a browser. ‘Pick any version of System Software/Mac OS from the 1980s or 1990s and run it (and major software of that era) within a virtual machine. Files can be imported and exported using drag and drop, and System 7 and onward have more advanced integrations as well – refer to the welcome screen in each machine for more details.’
19 May 2023
[tv] All Roll Is B-Roll … Interesting analysis and criticism of Adam Curtis’ latest documentaries. ‘The success of TraumaZone is the success of a work with downsized, or at least redirected, ambitions. Perhaps Curtis has been listening to the growing group of critics accusing him of dealing in sensationalized conspiracy theories coated in a thin sheen of intellectualism. Certainly he seems to have listened to the criticisms of HyperNormalisation’s relentless pessimism – hence the David Graeber quote that bookends Can’t Get You Out of My Head: “THE ULTIMATE HIDDEN TRUTH OF THE WORLD IS THAT IT IS SOMETHING WE MAKE, AND COULD JUST AS EASILY MAKE DIFFERENTLY,” leavening that series’s fundamental doomerism with a light optimism of the will.’
22 May 2023
[truecrime] 50 True Crime Docs Guaranteed to Keep You Guessing … Fifty of the best true crime documentaries available to stream. ‘The Staircase (2004) – My God, if you were around when the 2004 French-produced docuseries first made a stir in the US, leading to endless coverage since, you know this is some piping-hot content. Given unguarded access to novelist Michael Peterson as he faces trial on charges of murdering his wife, the filmmaking team wisely lets Peterson’s all-around shadiness and the endless legal angling do the talking. Come away convinced one way or another, or at least transfixed by the “owl theory.”‘
23 May 2023
[lost] Into Thin AirPods … Amusing tale of an attempt to find some lost Airpods using Apple’s Find My” app. ‘I texted a group chat that I had lost my AirPods, but was hot on the trail of the thief in a natural history museum, as if my life were a damn Hitchcock movie. I told them I thought I had eyes on the perp, but couldn’t be sure. “Confront!!” They urged. “Apprehend the teen!!! You of all people can take him!!” But what if I was wrong? I couldn’t ruin some nice adorable family’s Friday afternoon, even if it was just to ask a few innocent questions, like, “Hey–You guys look like you ski. Do you ski? What about stealing? Do you steal?”’
24 May 2023
[comics] Brian Bolland – THE Cover Artist … Long Brian Bolland interview by the Cartoonist Kayfabe team.

25 May 2023
[comics] A short history of newsagents and how you bought your American comics from them … The story of how American comics made it into British newsagents from the 1970s to 1990s and created a generation of comic readers. ‘This company was an absolute powerhouse which supplied nearly every newsagent in the UK. They had an incredible range. John Byrne getting a Superman annual as a kid is thanks to T&P. Alan Moore picking up early DC/Marvel titles. Dave Gibbons picking up Green Lantern. Kev O’Neill, etc all got into comics partly due to seeing and buying US comics in newsagents.’
1 June 2023
[internet] Doug Rushkoff Is Ready to Renounce the Digital Revolution… A profile of Douglas Rushkoff in 2023. ‘I first encountered Rushkoff’s writing around this time, in 2010, while I was working for a site called Shareable.net. The site’s premise was that connecting everything and everyone to the web would allow people to freely lend the stuff they already owned, creating further abundance for all. Room-sharing platforms would reduce housing costs, and ride-sharing platforms would reduce the number of cars on the road. Rushkoff was a proponent of reorganizing the internet according to peer-to-peer principles, and he became one of the site’s most popular contributors. As platforms like Airbnb and Uber took over, leading the world into a new age of inequality and increased resource consumption, his dream of participatory decentralization died hard. But even amid mounting cognitive dissonance, certain parts of Rushkoff’s faith held out. On reflection, he says, “I blamed capitalism and held the technology itself innocent.”’
5 June 2023
[ai] Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People … This talk about AI and much more from 2016 by Maciej CegÅ‚owski seems worth revisiting.

What I find particularly suspect is the idea that “intelligence” is like CPU speed, in that any sufficiently smart entity can emulate less intelligent beings (like its human creators) no matter how different their mental architecture.

With no way to define intelligence (except just pointing to ourselves), we don’t even know if it’s a quantity that can be maximized. For all we know, human-level intelligence could be a tradeoff. Maybe any entity significantly smarter than a human being would be crippled by existential despair, or spend all its time in Buddha-like contemplation.

Or maybe it would become obsessed with the risk of hyperintelligence, and spend all its time blogging about that.

7 June 2023
[www] Inside Snopes: the rise, fall, and rebirth of an internet icon … The inside story behind Snopes – the early internet fact checking site. ‘Mikkelson had adopted a surname of William Faulkner’s creation, a family “of pure sons of bitches,” who appear in a number of Faulkner’s works. Mikkelson was very familiar with their saga: Flem Snopes, the central character, possessed a talent for verisimilitude, which helped him climb from outcast sharecropper to bank president and church deacon. Mikkelson would go on to say that he had chosen snopes “simply because it was short and distinctive,” and he’d only shrug noncommittally when asked if he was a fan of Faulkner’s. But people have often pondered the connection to an alias along the lines of snipe, snicker, sneak, or snake. “We all felt that it was deeply, deeply appropriate,” says Teasley.’
8 June 2023
[comics] 2 Kinds of Anger by Justin Green

12 June 2023
[life] Dead Ringers … The compelling story, from 1975, about identical twin gynecologists who died together under mysterious circumstances in New York. The story was an influence on David Cronenberg’s movie Dead Ringers. ‘On Tuesday, July 14, Cyril lurches one last time out of the twins’ final nesting place. He stumbles as he is about to cross the threshold to the outside world. The doorman who offers to assist Cyril thinks he “looks like death.” Out on the sidewalk Cyril looks at life without Stewart. The first thing he will have to do, he knows, is explain things. It’s not hard to explain why he returned so soon to that crypt in 10H. Only in those two minutes he languished in the womb after his brother’s departure could Cyril have been more alone. He double-locked the door behind him. He pushed an armchair up against it as a further barricade…’
14 June 2023
[life] I did a cringey thing… A cartoon by Sarah Andersen.

16 June 2023
[comics] The Comic-Book Aesthetic Comes of Age in “Across the Spider-Verse” … A good look at what makes Across the Spider-Verse worth watching. ‘ It leans hard into, and emulates onscreen, the storytelling devices and the visual flair that make comic books special. Even more than its predecessor, “Into the Spider-Verse” (2018), the film feels designed to show young people, many of whom were raised on superhero movies, why they might care about the comics that launched these characters. It does this so well that, at a time when some Marvel movies haven’t been doing so hot at the box office, “Across the Spider-Verse” has already raked in nearly four hundred million dollars. At 7 P.M. on a Wednesday night, with local schools still in session, my seventh grader and I found most of the seats in our suburban multiplex full.’
20 June 2023
[games] Arcade Authorship – High Score Table Credits … Designers of early video games sneaked their initials into high score tables as credits – this article expands the initials into names. ‘The practice was birthed in a time both when displaying any but the most crucial text on screen was novel and the value of people making the games by the companies themselves was poorly thought of. Sneaking one’s name into the game had precedent before high score tables, yet with their advent it became a subculture. Sometimes rebellious, sometimes intricate, and oftentimes serving as an aspiration for high score chasers, this phenomenon largely of the 1980s was one of the few ways game creators could signal themselves to game players.’
21 June 2023
[excel] Microsoft Excel v1.00 (san inc crack) … Use the first version of Excel in your browser. Click below but it needs a fast link to download quickly.

22 June 2023
[fiction] Fictional Brands Archive… A collection of fictional brands created for films, TV and video games. ‘NERV (German for “nerve”) is a special organization that was put together to combat the Angels after the Second Impact and is the organization responsible for the creation of the Evangelions. NERV is an international organization with their center of operation located in the city of Tokyo-3, Japan. More specifically, they run the majority of their research and operations out of NERV Headquarters, a large facility located in the GeoFront.’NERV
23 June 2023
[tv] Best ‘Black Mirror’ Episodes, Ranked‘A pair of men hunker down during a blizzard at a remote outpost to share three tales of deception and murder, but they’ve both got secrets galore. In what must be the darkest Christmas special ever made, Jon Hamm relates his past life of sleazy seduction-coaching by night and torturing digital copies of living people by day, racking up a host of futuristic sins along the way. His companion Rafe Spall isn’t much better, having handled his separation from his wife, shall we say, poorly. As mini-twists give way to jaw-dropping mega-twists and the episode’s core concept gets frightfully postmodern, both actors deliver skin-crawling work as villainous but sympathetic figures.’ White Christmas Episode
25 June 2023
[space] Mars and it’s smallest moon Deimos (from r/spaceporn)‘The UAE’s Hope spacecraft captured Mars’ smaller moon, Deimos, from a distance of about 62 miles (100 km). This Deimos image is the 1st-ever high-resolution view of the far side of the little moon…’

26 June 2023
[iphones] How to (Really) Bypass Paywalls in Safari on iOS in 2023 … A great guide to avoiding newspaper paywalls on iPhones.
28 June 2023
[crime] ‘Why I might have done what I did’: conversations with Ireland’s most notorious murderer… Fascinating article on Malcolm MacArthur, Ireland’s GUBU double-murderer.

‘“Well,” he said, wasting no time, “the first thing to be said is that I lived a blameless life until 1982. Entirely blameless. If you were to plot my life along a graph, morally speaking, you would see a very flat line for the first 37 years, then one very sharp spike in the middle, followed by another completely flat line right up until the present day.”

“Given,” I said, “that that seems to be the case – ”

“Oh, it is the case,” he said.

“Well, I thought we might try to talk about why it happened.”

“Fine,” he said. “But you must remember that this was a financial situation. It wasn’t what you might call irrationality, or lack of control. There was a problem to be solved. And you might well ask, well, why solve it using this particular technique? And that’s a legitimate question. But it wasn’t an act of madness.”

After the call ended, I sat on the bench, staring at the words I had scribbled in my notebook as we spoke. I circled the word “problem”, and then the word “technique”.’

30 June 2023
[lego] The Surprising Magic of the Macaroni LEGO Brick [Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3] … Who knew you could do so much with the macaroni LEGO brick?

2 July 2023
[space] Bicycle Racing In Space Could Be A Thing … Hard science fiction gives us the possibility of MAMIL’s in space! ‘…the idea for the space bike comes from a short story called Grand Tour by Charles Sheffield, who was a mathematician, physicist and writer of hard science fiction. The story is about an annual race called the Grand Tour du Système. The route starts out from low Earth orbit going to Lagrange point 4 (L4), a location along the Moon’s orbit where the Earth’s and Moon’s gravitational fields conspire to provide a stable position. From L4, the route continues halfway to the Moon and then returns to Earth orbit. Altogether it’s around 600,000 kilometers long.’
3 July 2023
[books] Where to start with: Iain Banks … A beginners guide to the novels of Iain Banks. ‘The one to drop into conversations about AI – All Banks’s Culture novels feature Minds, hyperintelligent mirror-surfaced ellipsoids that run starships and other large engineering structures. But in Excession, the Minds become the primary protagonists, as they debate what to do about the titular phenomenon – an inscrutable alien artefact that seems to be older than the universe itself – and about a barbarous competing civilisation that glories in the name “the Affront”. As Minds are persons, they are not obliged to be open and honest with one another or anyone else, and some conspire to allow “gigadeathcrimes” on utilitarian principles, rather like crazed effective altruists.’
4 July 2023
[comics] FROM HELL! The COMPLETE Cartoonist Kayfabe Review of the Jack The Ripper Masterpiece! … Go watch the Cartoonist Kayfabe team’s complete review of From Hell.
5 July 2023
[books] The Only Good Culture War…

6 July 2023
[photos] Palette – Colorize Photos … A powerful AI powered photo colorization tool.
11 July 2023
[comics] Tripwire Talks To 2000AD And Vertigo Writer John Smith … I was wondering what had happened to comics writer John Smith and found this recent interview. ‘Regarding Hellblazer… I can’t remember if we were told about it, or if it was hot news going around a comics convention, but we all knew that Jamie Delano was leaving the book, so I think all of us young keen British writers were asked to pitch for the job. I think it was then-editor Stuart Moore who rang me up and asked me. So, I planned out a years-worth of stories (I imagine we all did) and crossed my fingers. Garth got the gig, of course, but later on they needed some fill-in issues, so that’s how “Counting by Numbers” came about. There were more straight-up horror ideas, but for some reason Sean and I settled on that one. I think probably because I was staying at his in Peckham at the time, and there was a launderette around the corner, so we just went there, and Sean took some photos then sent me duplicates so we both knew the layout of the place. Constantine is one of my favourite characters, and I’d love to have a proper go at him!’
13 July 2023
[alan] Alan Moore’s Fortean Times Reviews from 1994 to 1997 … A nicely scanned collection of book reviews from Alan published in the 1990s.
17 July 2023
[funny] “I’m just a Poe Boy…”

18 July 2023
[opinions] 100 Incontrovertible Opinions‘Covid: Of course the vaccine worked you morons.’
21 July 2023
[photos] Digital Image Basics 101 – All about images from cameras and scanning … A great resourse looking at the basics of digital images. ‘This scanning material is about the basics of scanning photos and documents. The purpose here is to offer some scanning tips about using your scanner, and to explain the basics for scanning photos and documents. It is also about the fundamentals of digital images, about the basics to help you get the most from your images from your scanner or camera.’
25 July 2023
[comics] Howard Chaykin – A Life in Comics … An entertaining, wide-ranging interview with Howard Chaykin. ‘As early as 1973 or ’74 when I did the Scorpion, the last line of the first issue is, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Altruism is for Albert Schweitzer. I get paid.” And I stand on that. The motivations of heroes in the context of comics is nonsense to me. Batman is about a rich guy who had a bad day when he was eight. Superman is about a god-like being who comes to the Earth and puts aside his god-like nature in the service of a clientele that is functionally beneath his contempt. These characters patronize and pander to a fantasized belief system that has nothing to do with anything even vaguely smacking of reality. And the more realistic they become by dint of sort of slathering on gravitas, the more idiotic and foolish they become. Modern myth? Just suck a dick.’
27 July 2023
[sandwiches] I don’t know who need this today but here’s a website with animations of rotating sandwiches. You’re welcome.
28 July 2023
[life] Current Status… (from @flotsammm)

"...But it was all Problemo."

1 August 2023
[gaming] John Romero on the birth of id Software … An excerpt from John Romero’s autobiography Doom Guy. ‘The ability to program games that move so smoothly on the horizontal axis within the game world was earth-shattering technology. It meant we could write games for the PC that rivaled the games created for gaming systems like Nintendo, Sega, and Atari without the need for their specialized hardware. Players didn’t need to invest in a new console! All they needed was a PC and the game files. Nowadays, this is what venture capitalists mean when they talk about “disruption.”’
2 August 2023
[fun] Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer? 💻🔪 … I got 8/10. Totally misjudged Guido von Rossum.
3 August 2023
[doctors] Fad diets, midday sun and … coffee on the sofa: 12 doctors on the everyday dangers they avoid‘I don’t take paracetamol for a headache unless it is really bad. I see a lot of people with headaches in my clinic and they can usually be avoided by a healthier lifestyle. Quite often patients get headaches from popping too many paracetamols, or other over-the-counter medications. It is a vicious cycle: we call it an analgesic overuse headache. I try not to skip sleep. If you want to get a headache, go to bed late and get up early. Sleep and downtime are important.’
7 August 2023
[comics] How Stan Lee Became the Face of an Exploitative Industry … Jeet Heer on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby … ‘Out of Kirby’s labors in the 1960s in the Dungeon emerged characters that would gain global fame–and make billions in profit for Marvel and Disney. Kirby only ever earned a freelancer’s middle-class income for his trouble; he never got royalties. Thanks to the 2014 settlement with Disney, his children have a better deal. But even as the lawsuits of Ditko and other colleagues make their way through the courts, the struggle over Kirby’s legacy isn’t over. Despite the 2014 settlement, Disney and Marvel are backtracking on their acknowledgement of his contributions.’
8 August 2023
[barbie] Barbie / Akira Mashup Poster … by Joana Fraga.

Barbie / Akira Poster Mashup

9 August 2023
[comics] Looking back on Nancy Collins’ Swamp Thing … An overview of Nancy Collins 1990s run on Swamp Thing. ‘In response to causing the breakup of one of DC’s most iconic couples, Collins would later observe, “Let’s be frank – no woman in her right mind would put up with the bullshit Abby Holland was subjected to on a regular basis. In fact, the first time I spoke to Alan Moore, he commended me on giving Abby the guts to walk out of an unworkable relationship.” Regardless of having chosen to spare Abby and Tefe rather than fridge them, she was to receive plenty of hate-mail for this decision.’
10 August 2023
[comics] Junji Ito’s Horrifying Uzumaki Artwork is Highlighted in Adult Swim Series Trailer

15 August 2023
[games] Go play wipEout in a web browser‘The source code for the classic PSX launch title wipEout was leaked in 2022. A few month ago I finally sat down to take a look at it. The result is a (nearly) complete rewrite that compiles to Windows, Linux, macOS and WASM.’
16 August 2023
[web] Anna’s Archive … A search engine for huge semi-hidden collections of books and written material on the internet. ‘📚 The world’s largest open-source open-data library. ⭐️ Mirrors Sci-Hub, Library Genesis, Z-Library, and more. 📈 21,278,536 books, 86,614,441 papers, 2,451,043 comics, 508,999 magazines – preserved forever.’
22 August 2023
[moore] An Interview With Alan Moore … an hour-long interview with Alan discussing Northampton with some talk of comics towards the end.
30 August 2023
[worms] ‘Oh my god’: live worm found in Australian woman’s brain in world-first discovery … Oh, Dear God, Tapeworms! ‘It was a fairly regular day on the ward for Canberra hospital infectious diseases physician Dr Sanjaya Senanayake, until a neurosurgeon colleague called him and said: “Oh my god, you wouldn’t believe what I just found in this lady’s brain – and it’s alive and wriggling.” The neurosurgeon, Dr Hari Priya Bandi, had pulled an 8cm-long parasitic roundworm from her patient…’
31 August 2023
[comics] Comic Book Character Says “Bollocks” Every Once in a While so You Don’t Forget He’s English‘Gary London, a long time fan of John Berry and his adventures, finds the whole thing patronizing and lazy. “These daft wankuhs have no idea how the British have a good natter,” explained London, calling from a red phone box with Big Ben in the background. “I mean, I go up the apples and pears, get on the loo, and try to read my comic and every English bloke is ‘bollocks this’ and ‘innit that’. It’s just bollocks, innit?” Creator of John Berry, Alan Shaw, said he doesn’t really care how the dialogue is written, he just wants royalties from his creation…’
1 September 2023
[life] Study: ‘Truly Being Seen’ Still Ranks Among Worst Possible Experiences In Human Existence‘We’ve found conclusive evidence that realizing somebody has managed to look past your protective façade and recognize you for who you are continues to be the most punishing and humiliating experience the human psyche is capable of withstanding…’
5 September 2023
[movies] Michael Mann Talks Directing Adam Driver for ‘Ferrari,’ ‘Heat 2’ Plans‘Recreating reality is a trademark of Mann’s movies. When he made “The Insider,” the 1999 film about “60 Minutes” buckling under to the tobacco industry, Mann found a janitor to photograph the “60 Minutes” office. “The set we built was an exact duplicate,” he says. Mann is always on a quest for the meticulously authentic experience. He describes how he asks himself some basic questions when he is building a movie universe. “What is this world?” he wonders. “What does it feel like? And what do I have to do to bring an audience to dream it?” He adds, “I know what I want when I go to a movie: I want to be there. I want to be in a wide-awake dream for a couple of hours.”’
6 September 2023
[comics] Tom Tomorrow – The Never Ending Story … File the Dr. Manhattan on Mars meme under things I will never tire of.

7 September 2023
[titanic] The ‘Titan’ Submersible Disaster Was Years in the Making, New Details Reveal … A great read on the background story to the Titan submersible implosion. ‘As chief pilot and the person responsible for operational safety, Lochridge had created a dive plan that included protocols for how to approach the wreck. Any entanglement hazard demands caution and vigilance: touching down at least 50 meters away and surveying the site before coming any closer. Rush disregarded these safety instructions. He landed too close, got tangled in the current, managed to wedge the sub beneath the Andrea Doria’s crumbling bow, and descended into a full-blown panic. Lochridge tried to take the helm, but Rush had refused to let him, melting down for over an hour until finally one of the clients shrieked, “Give him the fucking controller!” At which point Rush hurled the controller, a video-game joystick, at Lochridge’s head. Lochridge freed the sub in 15 minutes.’
12 September 2023
[google] The end of the Googleverse … A look at Google’s impact on the internet and some ideas on why it’s influence is waning. ‘Discoverability of the open web has suffered. Pinterest has been accused of eating Google Image Search results. And the recent protests over third-party API access at Reddit revealed how popular Google has become as a search engine not for Google’s results but for Reddit content. Google’s place in the hierarchy of Big Tech is slipping enough that some are even admitting that Apple Maps is worth giving another chance, something unthinkable even a few years ago.’
13 September 2023
[death] Horror stories of cryonics: The gruesome fates of frozen bodies … A look at the results of cryogenic freezing failure on human bodies during the early days of cryogenics. ‘The worst fates of all occurred at a similar underground vault that stored bodies at a cemetery in Butler, New Jersey. The storage Dewar was poorly designed, with uninsulated pipes. This led to a series of incidents, at least one of which was failure of the vacuum jacket insulating the inside. The bodies in the container partially thawed, moved, and then froze again – stuck to the capsule like a child’s tongue to a cold lamp post. Eventually the bodies had to be entirely thawed to unstick, then re-frozen and put back in. A year later, the Dewar failed again, and the bodies decomposed into “a plug of fluids” in the bottom of the capsule. The decision was finally made to thaw the entire contraption, scrape out the remains, and bury them. The men who performed this unfortunate task had to wear a breathing apparatus.’
18 September 2023
[tv] ‘The scripts were the funniest things I’d ever read’: the stars of Peep Show look back, 20 years later … Remembering Peep Show.‘Everybody thinks they’re stuck in their weird puddle. That’s central to the appeal of the show. It’s that self-consciousness.’
20 September 2023
[comics] A Letter from Joe Matt … I’ve was shocked to hear the news of Joe Matt’s sudden death yesterday. ‘today i learned that cartoonist joe matt, was found dead of a heart attack yesterday at his drawing desk. he’s only 60 years old, and had been complaining of chest pains for months, but didn’t want to (or couldn’t afford to) see a doctor. fucking america.’
22 September 2023
[comics] Ed Brubaker remembers Joe Matt‘Joe was renting a room in a house and his room was full of big sketchbooks with his newspaper strip collections. That was his big passion right then, collecting Gasoline Alley strips and glueing them into huge books. There’s a scene in BAD WEEKEND where the cartoonist takes his assistant down and shows him the strips he collected his entire life, and that was directly inspired by those big books of Joe’s. He spent countless hours going over those old strips and I’m pretty sure those were hours of childlike joy at the art of comics.’
27 September 2023
[herzog] 10 Underrated Movies Recommended by Werner Herzog‘The movie is really a meditation on loneliness, with many of the interviewees turning to their pets for the connection they lack with other people. “Never have I looked so directly into hell,” Herzog said of the film, and he meant it as a compliment.’
28 September 2023
[food] RamenHaus … I don’t know who needs this today but here’s some rotating ramen.
29 September 2023
[truecrime] A Postmodern Murder Mystery … A great true-crime story from Poland with a useful rule-of-thumb: If you commit murder don’t write a book about it. ‘He made note of the fact that the narrator murders a female lover for no reason (“What had come over me? What the hell did I do?”) and conceals the act so well that he is never caught. Wroblewski was struck, in particular, by the killer’s method: “I tightened the noose around her neck.” Wroblewski then noticed something else: the killer’s name is Chris, the English version of the author’s first name. It was also the name that Krystian Bala had posted on the Internet auction site. Wroblewski began to read the book more closely-a hardened cop turned literary detective.’
2 October 2023
[comics] Farewell to a Poor Bastard … Jeet Heer’s obituary for Joe Matt. ‘I got to know Joe Matt while I was working as a journalist in Toronto in the 1990s. I would occasionally write about Joe’s work and also that of his two cartoonist friends Chester Brown and Seth (who sometimes showed up as comic foils in Joe’s work). I had shown my wife, Robin Ganev, Joe’s just published graphic novel, The Poor Bastard. Robin delighted in the book as an accurate portrayal of the dating scene among young Toronto bohemians in the 1990s. Joe’s portrait of himself as a heel impressed her as an essentially accurate rendering of an all-too-common male type. As my friend the journalist Nathalie Atkinson notes, “Many women love Joe Matt’s comics-in part because he confirms everything we suspected.”’
3 October 2023
[lovecraft] McCallum reads Lovecraft … Three albums of David McCallum reading H.P. Lovecraft stories recorded in the 1970s. ‘As a reading it’s pretty good, slightly edited but with the novelty of allowing you to hear McCallum recite the famous “As a foulness shall ye know them” passage from the Necronomicon. These commissions no doubt came about simply because McCallum was available but his Lovecraft recordings gain a deeper resonance in the light of his later exploits with Joanna Lumley in the haunted corridors of Time. Some of the malign forces that Sapphire and Steel face aren’t so distant from Lovecraft’s interdimensional “Old Ones”…’
4 October 2023
[comics] Remembering Joe Matt … Memories from friends including Seth and Chester Brown. Seth: ‘It always struck me as funny when someone would read one of Joe’s comics and get angry. “What a jerk” they’d say, getting all worked up about Joe and his actions in the story. What amazed me was that they were reacting to the work as if they’d just watched a documentary about him. Totally forgetting that this was a work of art by a very calculating and smart artist who deliberately made the choices in the book that caused this reaction. Joe knew exactly what he was doing. He didn’t paint himself as a creep by accident. That was the point. He did everything on purpose. That weird obsessiveness of his made absolutely nothing an accident. Every line, every panel, every exclamation mark was carefully considered (too carefully considered!). He was a master cartoonist and the work shows it.’
6 October 2023
[comics] the SETH shoot interview … Long interview with Seth on Joe Matt and much more from Cartoonist Kayfabe.

9 October 2023
[comics] The Man Who Knows Fear: Imposter Syndrome and Horror with D.G. Chichester Long interview with the comic editor and writer as he returns to Daredevil. On the Hellraiser comic:‘ I knew the book was going to work both when the John Bolton cover came in, which John Bolton issue looking up painting flames from Hell. It was beautiful and twisted and erotic, and scary and nasty… and it was the story that the editorial group then said, “You’re not running the story in the first issue. It’s too much. You’re coming in too hot. Take it out of the first issue, run a different story. We’ll run it in the subsequent issue.” I dug my heels in and I said, the book is called Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. That’s what it’s called. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. What the hell did you think you’re going to get?’
10 October 2023
[dna] The Gift … I really recommend this BBC Radio podcast about what happens when home DNA tests gives their users big surprises.
17 October 2023
>> “I fucking warned you dude. I told you bro”

18 October 2023
[comics] Pen Lettering for Comics … Todd Klein does a deep dive into the traditional ways to letter comics. ‘From the earliest days of creating comics until the advent of all-digital art, the basic tools for artists and letterers remained essentially the same. You need a drawing board with a comfortable chair and an adjustable desk lamp, usually attached to the drawing board with screws or a clamp. You need a T-square to keep things aligned, large and small triangles, masking tape or pins to hold drawing paper, India ink, pens, brushes, pencils, erasers, something to hold clean rinsing water, a rag or paper towels and a wastebasket. There are other useful tools, but those are the basics.’
19 October 2023
[comics] John Constantine, Hellblazer, returns to DC in January 2024‘In one of his finest magic tracks yet, John Constantine is back – and has reunited the creative team of Si Spurrier and Aaron Campbell for a new miniseries bringing the character to the U.S. on a mission featuring some very familiar faces for fans of DC’s iconic Vertigo imprint.’
23 October 2023
[spy] Lunik: Inside the CIA’s audacious plot to steal a Soviet satellite … The true story of a Cold War heist. ‘The American and the Mexican made an odd pairing. Dean stood half a foot taller than Silveti, and, while his Mexican counterpart was something of a party animal, the American enjoyed coaching his son’s little league team and doted on Happy, his family’s miniature dachshund, who was heavily pregnant. Yet they needed to work together to ensure the Soviets wouldn’t notice a missing spacecraft.’
25 October 2023
[philosophy] Philosophy Bro … The complicated ideas of philosophy explained simply. Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus”: A Summary: A Summary: ‘Look, so, nothing matters, right? Shit’s fucking weird. We all want to know how the universe ultimately works or who’s running the show or whatever, and it turns out – TRICK. FUCKING. QUESTION. No one’s running the show, and the world is unreasonable. Ever had some shit happen to you that made you go, “Why the fuck did that happen? There’s no reason for that.” Turns out, you were right. So our attempts to impose reason on the world will fail. Death and taxes, my friend. Death and motherfucking taxes.’
26 October 2023
[tv] The BBC’s Late Night Horror Was Alleged to Be So Terrifying That It Was Destroyed … Atlas Obscura takes a look at a lost BBC horror drama. ‘Two episodes do, however, appear to indulge in some gore. One is “William and Mary,” a darkly comic episode about a brain kept alive in a jar, based on a story by Roald Dahl. The other, as luck would have it, is “The Corpse Can’t Play,” the episode that surfaced in the 1980s, only to disappear again. Whether fear or outrage or dark forces (or indifference) played a role, Late Night Horror was not picked up for additional episodes after its first run. It was shown again in 1970, after which the network’s rights to repeat the series expired. It is believed that the tapes were erased sometime after this broadcast.’
30 October 2023
[bse] The Cows Are Mad … An interesting and unsettling BBC Radio podcast on the history of the UK’s BSE epidemic.
31 October 2023
[moore] Recent two-part Alan Moore interview done after the release of his paperback lluminations…

Interviewing Watchmen co-creator Alan Moore: “It’s one thing to quit comics, a different thing to stop thinking about them”

“The Superhero Dream Is Essentially Fascism”: Alan Moore Eviscerates Superheroes & Fixes Pop Culture in In-Depth Interview (Part 2)

“The comics medium is perfect. It is sublime. The comics industry is a dysfunctional hellhole. So why did I want to return to it in this story? Like you say, it’s exorcism. As one of the characters finds in ‘Thunderman’ it’s one thing to quit comics, but quitting comics is a different thing to being able to stop thinking about them. Writing this got an awful lot out of my system. It said a lot of the things that I’d always wanted to say but I’d never really had the right context to say them in.”

1 November 2023
[herzog] This Cultural Life – Werner Herzog… Wonderful radio interview with Werner Herzog on the BBC’s This Cultural Life.
7 November 2023
[jfk] ‘It splintered our sense of reality’: how JFK’s assassination spawned 60 years of conspiracy theories‘As well as the birthplace of modern conspiracy, the Kennedy assassination can be seen as the birthplace of the conspiracy theory industry. Within three years of the event, Mark Lane – a lifelong assassination investigator – had published Rush to Judgment, which questioned the Warren commission’s findings. It stayed on the bestseller lists for two years. More than 1,000 books on the subject have been published since. It soon became apparent that there was more money to be made arguing in favour of a conspiracy than the opposite.’
8 November 2023
[internet] Internet Artifacts … A fun, really well put together collection of artifacts from the early internet. Check out: What is Internet Anyway?
9 November 2023
[funny] Antidepressants or Tolkien … Can you guess if a word is an antidepressant drug or a Tolkien character? [via jwz]
13 November 2023
[lovecraft] Phoning It In: 4 Times H.P. Lovecraft Tried To Describe An Unspeakable Cosmic Horror But Basically Just Described A Goose‘It walked upright like a man, yet it was clearly a beast. The thing’s leathery feet did not have the normal five toes that we humans have. It had FEWER than that. It had THREE toes. And yet, I hesitate to even call them ‘toes,’ for each digit was connected to each other by some sort of skin-like film. It was like some perverse spider had spun webs between each toe for some inscrutable reason known only to the mad gods that dream their furious dreams on the remotest fringes of forgotten galaxies.’