January 2012
8 posts
5 tags
Barefoot Bandit Federal Case Finishes Up
Colton Harris-Moore was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison by a federal court following his Washington state sentencing:
The LA Times reports:
U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones’ sentence runs concurrently with an earlier 7 1/2-year sentence imposed by a state court in Washington for his crimes under state law. Those offenses included a series of burglaries and thefts that terrorized...
6 tags
New Online Comic: The Yankee by Jason Leivian and...
The Yankee (probably not safe for work) is a new serialized online comic by former Arthur Magazine comics editor and Floating World Comics owner Jason Leivian and artist Ian MacEwan (aka Popjellyfish).
“The Yankee is a dumb American. He’s Cosmo Vitelli. He’s Prince Rogers Nelson. He’s a Richard Pryor monologue. Psychedel-economic fiction set in the Nation States of...
6 tags
I Tasted the Blood of My Enemy in My Mouth
On Monday, Danny Chaoflux and Nova had their home invaded by a man on the run from the cops. Nova escaped with his son but Danny and the other housemates were taken hostage and had to fight their way free. Now their home is in shambles thanks to the attacker’s gun fire and the police’s tear gas canisters.
You might know Danny as the co-founder of EsoZone, mastermind of Portland...
7 tags
The Vegan Body Building Movement
“Is it possible to be a good bodybuilder and be a vegan? Yes,” said Jose Antonio, the chief executive of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. “But is it ideal? No.”
Vegan bodybuilders may face challenges getting sufficient amino acids, found in meats, Antonio said, adding that although protein can be found in vegetables and nuts, they must be consumed in greater quantities to get the...
12 tags
Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the...
It’s that time of year again. Some good stuff this year. Sterling starts off talking about what he sees as the key drivers of global change:
I’ve tended to emphasize climate change, urbanization and demographics. Those are big and significant changes in the world, but also pretty easy to measure and quantify. That’s like hunting for futurity under the street-lights where...
4 tags
Has the Cost of Books Gone Up, Adjusted for...
The answer, apparently, is no. The Awl looked through the cost of different New York Times best sellers from the past seven decades and comparing the costs using a tool from Bureau of Labor Statistics to convert all the costs into 2011 money. The conclusion? Hardcover books have cost roughly $30 2011 money since 1951, with the exception of some large outliers in 1971. The article...
5 tags
11 Free Philip K. Dick Short Stories
Open Culture rounded up 11 Philip K. Dick short stories that you can download for free - legally. It includes his first published story, “Beyond Lies the Wub,” which is also the source for the illustration above.
Original Article
10 tags
ACLU Sues Library for Blocking Wiccan Websites
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Eastern Missouri sued a local public library on Tuesday for allegedly blocking websites related to Wicca, a modern pagan religion.
Anaka Hunter of Salem, Mo., said she tried to access websites about Wicca, Native American religions and astrology for her own research, but the library’s filtering software blocked the sites.
According to the...
December 2011
40 posts
14 tags
Flexing: A Fusion of Contortion and Break Dancing
Flexing (aka “bone breaking”) is a fusion street dance style that incorporates contortion with various other styles. The dance group in the video is the NextLevel Squad, and the music is by B’zwax. It was filmed by Yak Films, who have done hundreds of urban dance videos.
(via Boing Boing, thanks to Trevor)
Original Article
1 tag
Top 10 Most Popular Technoccult Posts of 2011
Top 5 Most Common Regrets of the Dying
The Westboro Baptist Church is (Probably Not) a Scam
Technoccult Interview: Douglas Rushkoff On Kicking the Consensus Reality Habit
Trailer for Cronenberg’s Movie on Freud and Jung
A Bitcoin-based E-Bay for Illegal Drugs
Top 10 People to Follow on Twitter
Selections from The Dream Manual Artist Michael Skrtic – Technoccult Interview
N-Back Training...
6 tags
Insane Rollerman Footage
(via Christopher Stumph)
Original Article
7 tags
Acedia: The ADHD of the Middle Ages
John Plotz writes for The New York Times:
By some miracle, you set aside a day to tackle that project you can’t seem to finish in the office. You close the door, boot up your laptop, open the right file and … five minutes later catch yourself thinking about dinner. By 10 a.m., you’re staring at the wall, even squinting at it between your fingertips. Is this day 50 hours long? Soon, you...
4 tags
Alejandro Jodorowsky Crowd Funding Next Film
Alejandro Jodorowsky, apparently fed up with not being able to raise funds from traditional sources, is appealing directly to fans to raise money for his next film, the autobiographical Danza De La Realidad (“The Dance of Reality”). Here’s the Google translate of the official site:
We invite you to participate in financing the film “The Dance of Reality,” directed...
8 tags
Justin Boland Interviewed by Rev. R4D4
Hump Jones Interview by Rev.R4D4
Justin Boland, aka Hump Jones and about a bazillion other aliases, was recently interviewed by Rev. R4D4 for The Thermonuclear Bar on KZSU Stanford. You might know Justin from his sites Brainsturbator and Skilluminati, his contributions here at Technoccult or from his various hip hop projects on World Around Records.
Original Article
9 tags
The Man Who Told the Internet He’d Come from the...
Mike Lynch, a private detective hired for an Italian documentary on Titor, suggests that Haber’s brother, John Rick Haber, is Titor. John Rick Haber is a computer scientist who would have known about the IBM 5100 and Unix 2038 problem, with a post office box application later linking John Rick Haber with the John Titor Foundation. Lynch believes John Rick Haber to have the computer...
9 tags
Is Getting Paid to Do What You Love All It's...
David McRaney writes:
The Misconception: There is nothing better in the world than getting paid to do what you love.
The Truth: Getting paid for doing what you already enjoy will sometimes cause your love for the task to wane because you attribute your motivation as coming from the reward, not your internal feelings.
If you pay people to complete puzzles instead of paying them for being...
9 tags
Sea Shepherd Uses Surveillance Drone to Locate...
A long range surveillance drone developed by the Moran Office of Maritime and Port Security
The Sea Shepherd crew has intercepted the Japanese whaling fleet on Christmas Day, a thousand miles north of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.
The Sea Shepherd ship, Steve Irwin, deployed a drone to successfully locate and photograph the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru on December 24th. Once the...
4 tags
New York Times on Salt Lake's Real Life...
I have to say that the Salt Lake superheroes have some the coolest names and costumes I’ve seen so far:
Mike Gailey, a burly former bouncer at a strip club whose crime-fighting persona is called Asylum, said that for him, joining the Black Monday Society was partly about making amends for things in his past, like the time he spent collecting debts for drug dealers.
“I was a thug,” said...
7 tags
In Case You Missed It Last Week: LHC Reports...
The Chi_b (3P) is a more excited state of Chi particles already seen in previous collision experiments, explained Prof Roger Jones, who works on the Atlas detector at the LHC.
“The new particle is made up of a ‘beauty quark’ and a ‘beauty anti-quark’, which are then bound together,” he told BBC News.
“People have thought this more excited state should...
11 tags
Inside the Secretive World of MegaUpload
OWNI reports:
Last year, journalists from New Zealand’s Investigate Magazine looked into the identity of the mystery man at the centre of MegaUpload. Kim Schmitz is a former German computer hacker with something of a chequered past. He made a name for himself infiltrating some the best protected computer systems in the world (including NASA’s) and has been accused of getting rich on the back of...
“ZOMBIE THE UNDEAD,
WAS A MONSTER WITH NO SOUL,
WITH A TORN WINDPIPE AND A...”
– THIS XMAS ZOMBIE SONG | FAKEGRIMLOCK BLOG
8 tags
Neuromancer Casting? Cyberpunks Weigh In
Damage from Planet Damage asked his “22 major arcana of cyberpunk” who they thought should be cast in a Neuromancer movie. I was honored to be included.
[CASE]
Klint: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Anabelle Cat: I love Cillian Murphy-superb choice and Joseph Gordon-Levitt Matt: An Unknown Rob: As for Case, the only person even slightly close to the target age that I feel could pull it off...
5 tags
ATF Creates Fictional Hip Hop Label to Make Drug...
AllHipHopNews reports:
Over $7.2 million in drugs and 161 weapons were confiscated after a year long investigation by the Washington D.C. Police and the Bureau the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which operated as fictional rap label.
According to the Washington Post, D.C. police and ATF agents acted as undercover officers and “music industry insiders” during the year-long sting.
The police...
7 tags
Fashion is a Feminist Issue
(photo by Toru Kogure)
Greta Christina writes:
Fashion is one of the very few forms of expression in which women have more freedom than men.
And I don’t think it’s an accident that it’s typically seen as shallow, trivial, and vain.
It is the height of irony that women are valued for our looks, encouraged to make ourselves beautiful and ornamental… and are then derided as shallow and vain...
6 tags
Do Entrepreneurs Really Create Jobs?
Barry Ritholtz has an iconoclastic take on entrepreneurs and job creation:
BI is a digital media property. The print industry (aka dead trees) has been fighting a losing battle versus online competition for years. The print news industry itself is shrinking, while the online industry is growing — but online’s gains are not nearly as large as offline’s losses.
Those 75 jobs Henry mentioned?...
5 tags
Barefoot Bandit Trial Winding Down
Reuters reports:
As part of that agreement, Harris-Moore forfeited his ability to profit from the rights to his life story. He also signed a movie deal with 20th Century Fox earmarking $1.3 million in proceeds as restitution to his victims.
He still faces up to 6-1/2 years in prison when he is sentenced in January in federal court.
But that sentence is to be served concurrently with the state...
18 tags
Edge 2011: What Scientific Concept Would Improve...
This year’s Edge question was: “What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?” There are some good but somewhat boring answers, like Susan Blackmore’s or Kevin Kelly’s. But here are some of the more interesting ones I found:
Stewart Brand: Microbes Run the World
Nicholas Carr: Cognitive Load
Aubrey de Grey: A Sense Of Proportion About...
4 tags
The Search for the Woodstock Babies
From the AP back in 2009:
Welcome to middle age, Woodstock Baby - if you’re really out there.
The babies reportedly born at the Woodstock festival 40 years ago remain the most enduring mystery from that chaotic weekend that defined a generation. Depending on the source, there was one birth on that patch of Sullivan County farmland between Aug. 15-17, 1969. Or two. Or three. Or none.
AP:...
3 tags
Our Increasingly Ballardian World
“Even Ballard didn’t go as far as describing consumer riots over 2$ waffle makers at Wal-Mart” - Ashley Benigno
This most recent Thanksgiving weekend was violent even by Black Friday standards, including at least once incident of one shopper using pepper spray on fellow consumers. As Ashley points out, that’s a grimly Ballardian reality. This weekend I’ve come across...
5 tags
9 tags
Alan Moore and Will Contribute to Occupy Comics...
Wired reports:
Nearly 30 years after publishing V for Vendetta, writer Alan Moore and artist David Lloyd are throwing their support behind the global Occupy movement that’s drawn inspiration from their comic’s anti-totalitarian philosophy and iconography.
Moore will contribute a long-form prose piece, possibly with illustrations, to the Occupy Comics project. His writing work will explore the...
10 tags
Invisible Babies = Codename: Kids Next Door
Danny Chaoflux on the similarities between The Invisibles by Grant Morrison and the Cartoon Network show Codename: Kids Next Door.
1: The leader, bald, wears shades, really into spy stuff.
2: Inventor/Shaman, always cracks jokes, “the weird one”, overweight [ie: Future Fanny].
3: Shes nuts.
4: Street thug with thick accent and hoodie.
5: Cool headed, laid back tomboy, specialty is stealth...
10 tags
Alejandro Jodorowsky Leads Group Psychomagic...
Alejandro Jodorowsky made a rare public appearance in Mexico City to lead a group psychomagic ritual with over 3,000 participants:
It was billed as “the first act of collective psycho-magic in Mexico.”
The call made by the cult mystic Alejandro Jodorowsky said the event would seek to “heal” the country of the cosmic weight of so many dead in the drug war, by gathering...
4 tags
Creators Are Caught in the Cross-Fire Between...
Brian Wood, of Channel Zero and DMZ fame:
Everyone I know loves comic shops. Everyone I know who makes comics, especially creator-owned comics, is hurting, financially. EVERYONE is bleeding, its a bad time. So to what extent does digital as a publishing format represent an additional revenue stream, one on top of print sales through shops, one that can ease some of the suffering? […]
...
4 tags
Astronomers Find Earth-like Planet 600 Light Years...
The BBC reports:
The planet lies about 15% closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of an Earth-like planet in the “habitable zone” around a star not unlike our own.
The planet, Kepler 22-b, lies about 600 light-years away and is about 2.4 times the size of Earth, and has a temperature of about 22C.
It is the closest confirmed...
7 tags
Peter Jackson, Damien Echols Complete New West...
Lord of the Rings and Bad Taste director Peter Jackson has completed a documentary on the West Memphis Three with several collaborators:
Longtime West Memphis Three supporter Peter Jackson has announced the completion of a new documentary, “West of Memphis,” about the fight to prevent the trio from being executed by the state of Arkansas.
Collaborating with Jackson and his partner,...
5 tags
Some Newer Art by Joel-Peter Witkin
Here’s a gallery of work by Joel Peter Witkin, including a lot relatively new (many pieces from the 00s) that I had not seen before:
Edelman Gallery: Joel-Peter Witkin (NSFW)
(Thanks Ashley)
See also: Joel-Peter Witkin: Tribute to a Genius
If Witkin’s work looks familiar, it’s because it served as the inspiration for the video for Nine Inch Nails’...
November 2011
37 posts
9 tags
3 Reads on the Financial Industry
Wall Street Unoccupied as 200,000 Job Cuts Bring ‘Darkest Days’. Schadenfreude, especially considering:
The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen
Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress
But the level of dislocation is disconcerting, especially as it continues to demonstrate how jobless this “recovery”” really is - even the...
7 tags
Coil Retrospective
The Quietus ran a retrospective on Coil’s career for the one year anniversary of Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson’s death:
Through a potent trinity of chemically-altered states, occult arcana and technological transmutation, Coil was, perhaps, the strangest and occasionally the most frightening of bands. While their twenty year history saw much in the way of personal...