As far as we know, the alphabet was invented only once* — in Phoenicia (covering modern-day Lebanon, Syria, and Israel). It spread and persisted because with it, you can render any word in any language. This is what the physicist David Deutsch called “the beginning of infinity” in his book of the same name. It… Read More Language, Security, and the IoT
The art of Mike Campau (used without permission) helped me make peace with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I still don’t particularly enjoy being active on those places, but I can finally let go of my disgust for what they’ve largely become. This might seem paradoxical since we’re now in a time of high anti-social media sentiment. It… Read More How I stopped being disgusted by social media
After coming across some references to Posadism, I recently got sucked into the art and philosophy of the ectocultures (my term). I don’t mean the Occupy movement or Anonymous, but the real deviants, people who either were (or maybe should have been) institutionalized. There is almost no coherent categorization, except that they’re all highly conspiratorial,… Read More The Strange Uniformity of Madness
In case you haven’t heard, The History Channel recently aired a documentary suggesting that Amelia Earhart survived her trek across the Pacific. The evidence was based mostly on a photograph, recently discovered in the National Archives (where it had apparently been misfiled), showing a woman with an appearance similar to Earhart’s sitting on a dock… Read More A Case Study in Post-Factualism
“Winter” by Jason Felix I have two files labeled “Characters” and “Settings” where I dump a lot of the art I find. Flipping through those images later is great inspiration. Sometimes I take bit and pieces directly (and without shame — see Austin Kleon’s “Steal Like an Artist”), but many times the images spark a… Read More Winter
Here the women met them, swords and axes in their hands, and with hideous shrieks of rage tried to drive back fugitives and pursuers alike, the fugitives as traitors, and the pursuers as foes; they mixed themselves up with the combatants, with bare hands tore away the shields of the Romans or grasped their swords,… Read More Why I don’t argue on the internet
in my writing i often tackle the carnival-esque-ness of contemporary culture, but i do so ironically. much of the media we consume is self-consciously mythic, which doesn’t necessarily mean it has swords and wizards and shit, although obviously some of it does. it means it fills the role of myth. back before culture was lifted… Read More Carnival of Loss
