The Blog




So farewell then, Lucius Shepard. RIP.
http://boingboing.net/2014/03/20/rip-lucius-shepard-gone-too.html

Huge fan of his all the way back to The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter. Life During Wartime and Kalimantan also stick in the head in the same kind of way as Samuel Delayney's Dhalgren. There were lots of short stories too, Delta Sly Honey for one and the collection, Eternity and Other Stories for another.
 RIP, Lucius Shepard, gone too soon »
Lucius Shepard, one of science fiction's great writers, has died. He was 66. I had met Lucius on several occasions and found him to be just as you'd hope from his novels: smart and witty (but lots of writers are smart and wit...

[from: Google+ Posts]

The Aeropress. Not only better coffee and just as easy as single shot systems like the Nespresso, but more environmentally friendly as well. Do you recycle your coffee pods? Even if you do, there's the oil used to produce disposable polymers, using a finite resource to create garbage because it's convenient. Coffee pods are not exactly the worst use of oil but they're symptomatic of the first world approach to resources. 
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/03/coffee-k-cups-green-mountain-polystyrene-plastic

Meanwhile, the Aeropress needs a small redesign to make it a travelling companion. It needs a stainless steel re-usable filter (already available from 3rd parties[1]) and the plunger turned into a sealed compartment for coffee grounds (also already available[1]). And finally, a way of protecting the rubber bung without fully fitting the filter cap.
[1] http://ablebrewing.com/collections/products/
 Your coffee pods' dirty secret »
100 percent convenient. 5 percent recyclable.

[from: Google+ Posts]

Happy Equinox day!

March Equinox: March 20, 2014, 16:57 UTC (GMT)

http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/march-equinox.html

And no, it's not the last day of Northern Hemisphere winter or first day of spring. That was Feb 28-Mar 1. Take a look around the UK and Spring is clearly in full flow already with loads of Blackthorn, Cherry and Magnolia blossom and the first green leaves on the early trees.
 March Equinox: March 20, 2014, 16:57 UTC »
The March equinox, which marks the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere, will be on March 20 in 2014.

[from: Google+ Posts]




Do you ever have days when life makes you despair and you want to just mash a Burger King Whopper into your face while sobbing uncontrollably to the sound of death metal?

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of burger king that makes unhappy marriages

No, neither do I.


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Do you ever have days when you feel like this.
scrape mess


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Such commentary. Much thoughts.
From http://corydoctorow.net/post/78171742952

Is Red Bull the new CocaCola or Disney of imperialist aggression symbology?

[from: Google+ Posts]

First world problems seen on a G+ comment. Ugh! So much fail here.

I've been thinking for a while about how to give homeless people money on the street now that I don't carry cash anymore. I think there can be a device of since sort that everyone would carry for that purpose. Of course, those of us with smartphones would use our bitcoin (or whatever) wallet app.
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The first day of Spring is here. Since Winter was cancelled and we got an Endless Autumn instead, expect snow and blizzards any day now.

Meanwhile the new leaf, buds and blossom seem to be only days away. And the animal life is going at it in full noisy tilt with all the mating rituals as everyone pushes, shoves, shouts and sings in their quest for a mate.
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Friday cocktail: Savoy Hotel Special Cocktail #1

- 50ml Gin (robust like Beefeater)
- 25ml French  Vermouth (Noilly Prat)
- 5ml Grenadine (or Pomegranate syrup) (2 barspoons)
- 2.5ml Absinthe or Pastis (1 barspoon)
Shaken, Cocktail Glass, Lemon peel squeezed (or flamed)

I'm guessing the grenadine and absinthe quantities as the Savoy Cocktail book is fairly vague on proportions. 2 and 1 dash respectively to 2/3 Gin and 1/3 French.

Beautiful colour, not too sweet, complex flavours. The delicate pink makes it look like a girl's drink but it's not. Think of it as more like a lilac shirt worn with a suit!
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I'm trying to find a UK source for this honey but failing. It used to be carried in large M&S but they've stopped stocking it. Anyone know a good French Deli in SE UK or London that might carry it? Or an online delivery service that doesn't charge ridiculous postage costs?

Bernard Michaud, Miel L'Apiculture, Miel De Provence in 250g or 500g cartons.

http://www.mielapiculteur.fr/miel-de-provence.html 
 Miel de Provence »
Miels régionaux · Miel de GASCOGNE · Miel d'AQUITAINE · Miel de BOURGOGNE · Miel des PAYS de LOIRE · Miel de POITOU-CHARENTES · Miel de la CHAMPAGNE · Miel du GÂTINAIS · Miel de Provence · Miel de Provence 250g · Miel de Provence 500g · Miel de Provence 1kg · Miel de montagne ...

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Just coming up to 20 Years since the release of Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol II.

Which reminds me that I freaked out my 8 year old daughter by playing it loud in the room below hers after she'd gone to bed.

Little known fact. In late 1994, the Japanese anime series Macross Plus debuted. Set in a future time, in its first episode there's a moment when a rotating video ad at a bus stop promises the release of AFX's Selected Ambient Works Vol. 23 2038-2040, complete with that first ambient collection logo.

http://thequietus.com/articles/14552-aphex-twin-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-review

And by the way. It's not ambient music to fill in the spaces behind whatever else you're doing. It should be played loud and given attention.
 The Quietus | Features | Anniversary | Lingering Memory: Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II, 20 Years On »
Two decades since the release of Aphex Twin's second collection of Ambient Works, Ned Raggett revisits an album whose enigmatic internal logic remains as intriguing and beguiling as ever

[from: Google+ Posts]

Just another test for the Google Plus API.
https://soundcloud.com/ghostek/shackleton-you-bring-me-down

It appears that G+ embeds a live player for soundcloud in the post, but none of this turns up in activities.list. This issue is logged in https://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?id=407 but there's been no progress.
[from: Google+ Posts]

Tor Books (2014), Kindle Edition, 624 pages
[from: Librarything]

Tor Books (2014), Kindle Edition, 569 pages
[from: Librarything]




Re the floods. ‘For all the community spirit on show, when people feel under threat it’s not the 'big society' but big government that they long for.'
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/14/floods-washing-away-founding-logic-david-cameron-government

So what do we want central government (or even local government) to do in the long term to manage our environment? We live in a managed landscape that has developed over thousands of years of occupation. One way or another that has to continue. If that management is done collectively it will have to be paid for collectively. So how do we want to be taxed and our taxes spent to pay for it? We're getting dangerously close to political ideologies when we ask these questions. 
 These floods are washing away the founding logic of David Cameron's government »
Jonathan Freedland: By announcing that 'money is no object', the prime minister has performed the last rites on the notion of inevitable austerity

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The Wire meets NSA and the War on Terror meets New Aesthetic meets Design Fictions

First article in Greenwald's new journal 'The Intercept' https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/
vs
James Bridle's art project "Under the shadow of the drone" James Bridle - Meet The Artist

Wondering if the US would like to take humans out of the loop completely. Here we have NSA Sigint leading to geo tracking cell phone SIMs then calling in a drone strike on the cell phone's last known location. So no humint checks on the intelligence side. The humans controlling the drone are on the other side of the world so no body bags. And no human checks on the fall out. It's assumed that the phone is held by an "unlawful enemy combatant" no matter where in the world they are. The other side responds with a kind of Russian Roulette where they have SIM swapping parties. If they've worked that out, you'd expect them to be using large quantities of 'burner' phones. Or just reverting to paper.

Here's a member of the team talking,
“People get hung up that there’s a targeted list of people,” he says. “It’s really like we’re targeting a cell phone. We’re not going after people – we’re going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy.”
 The NSA's Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program - The Intercept »
The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.

[from: Google+ Posts]




Woosh. An hour's lecture on the Critical Design movement.

Critical Exploits - Tobias Revell
via
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2014/02/design-fiction-tobias-revell-critical-exploits-lecture-lighthouse/


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Yes, but is it art? Well, is it? Is it? Really?

What if? ... Then what? Laugh. Ah-hah. But so what? What happens next?

How do you measure success? Did it change the world?

Via http://www.lighthouse.org.uk/programme/critical-exploits and

http://www.lighthouse.org.uk/

seeAlso: Under the shadow of the drone. James Bridle - Meet The Artist




On the Weaponization of Bullshit among a Cargo Cult of Aestheticizers who mistake themselves for artists.

Which, among other things, explains the fascination of hipsters for steampunkian gothic high tech.

If nothing else, it's an entertaining read!

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/02/07/an-information-age-glossary/
 An Information Age Glossary »
We live in an information-rich environment, but our minds are still wired for an environment of information scarcity. It still hasn’t really hit us that in the last 20 years, we’ve experienced a transformation that is as dramatic for our

[from: Google+ Posts]




"By some estimates, the internet now uses 2% of the world's electricity"

I'm not even sure what that means but it sounds deeply scary when linked to the usual tech industries exponential growth. It feels like we're only a few doubling periods away from mankind devoting all it's remaining resources towards maintaining the computronium. But then we're still a long way from constructing nested Matrioshka shells to capture and completely use all the sun's energy output. 

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/internet-sustainability-renewable-power
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando
 The internet can be a force for sustainability if powered by renewables »
The good work of web pioneers is held back by other tech giants who refuse to admit the impact of their energy use

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We'll fill in the missing colours in each other's paint by number dreams.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54307735@N00/12301320885/

Or just be happy idiots and struggle for the legal tender

with a nod to Jackson Browne - The Pretender
 geoff mcfetridge always great! »
Explore Ben Wilson Design's photos on Flickr. Ben Wilson Design has uploaded 7891 photos to Flickr.

[from: Google+ Posts]

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