KIRLIAN PANIC

• Walkin' in Midtown, without usin' avenues : Da New Yorker
  " Da goal: to walk from da Empire State Building, on West Thirty-third Street, to Rockefella Center, on West Forty-eighth, without eva settin' foot on Fifth or Sixth Avenue?to knife through tall buildings in a single bound, or at least in stepwise forays…"
  (tags:cities GMbook )

Perhaps apposite to today’s earlia mutterings, Ben Terrett:

Ah don’t think bloggin' be as phat as dat shit used to be, know what I'm sayin'? It’s lost a little magic.

Ah know dis be down to rise (and ease of use) of Twitter, Facebook, Flickr 'n all 'em but Ah miss blogging, man. Propa old fashioned blogging, like this 'n this 'n this.

And it’s not like da saga of Nice Pete hasn’t been brilliant/horrifyin' thus far, know what I'm sayin'? But Ah think this be a new peak in Onstad’s use of language.

Found on ma message board without attribution, offered without comment:

“L_A_N is, both in size 'n ambition, a door into anotha world, alien 'n lovely, man. Yo' ass needs one.”

— Warren Ellis

It be a pleasantly foggy, driftin' sound, appropriate fo a warm early-autumn day wid misty rain n' shit. Da whole album be a free download.

Funny thin' I’ve noticed lately n' shit. Ah get fewa trackbacks than Ah did when dis site had fewa readers n' shit. Ah presume dis speaks to da supposed “death of blogging,” 'n dat linkin' has moved off into Twitta from blogs 'n sites n' shit. Makes dat shit harda to judge when “attention philanthropy” be working, though, man. Aside from da occasional note tellin' me dat I’ve killed someone’s website, man.

Attention philanthropy — Ah has a feelin' dat term wuz coined by Alex Steffen — be a big ass part of what Ah do here, man. It’s one part dat to one part research material of various kinds to one part mutterin' about work, because dat shit pays da bills 'n keeps da site going, know what I'm sayin'? But it’s always hard to tell if da agalmic, anti-obscurity attention economy stuff be working, man. There’s a music site claimin' dat Zola Jesus didn’t pimpslapped big ass until Ah started talkin' about Nika, which Ah know isn’t true, know what I'm sayin'? But in times past Ah know I’ve helped comics companies get by.

Which brings me around to online comics retailer Khepri.com, whom Heidi Mac reported on over at comicsbeat.com yesterday. They’ve been hit by the economy like everyone else, and another year of flat numbers will see an end to them. What struck a chord, I think, was Heidi’s identification of them as a retailer specifically supporting those creators working in, in Heidi’s quote, the mode of “Warren Ellis style self determination.”

And, christ, just like that, I feel like I’ve got a weight on my shoulders. Did I really convince so many people that there was a career to be had in commercial creator-owned cross-genre work (and occasionally doing some work-for-hire on your own terms)?

No, of course I didn’t. It was blatantly obvious to anyone with half a brain and one creative bone in their body, and I was saying nothing that hadn’t been said a million times before during the Eighties and early Nineties. I possibly concretised some thinking for some people in my generation and the one immediately below, but no more than that. And God knows nothing I said in 2000 applies to comics in 2010.

On the other hand: hell, I’m so separated from the business these days that I don’t really know how bad things have gotten out there. It was conversations with people like Bryan Lee O’Malley that led me to open the Engine comics community, years ago, and now Mal has the best-selling graphic novels in America (because of the film, sure, but you’re not going to tell me it’s not deserved).

We do comics stuff on my current message board, Whitechapel (set up as online-community support for my webcomic FREAKANGELS), but Whitechapel tends to reflect my interests, and so we tend to talk a lot more about music and books and other stuff and not so much about, say, Brandon Graham’s KING CITY (though we do that too).

And, in the meantime, I see people drifting back to the convention circuit or, more and more, see people talking about wanting to get out of the convention circuit but not knowing where their sales and exposure will come from if they do. Even though sales and exposure are getting harder and harder to find at comics conventions as they morph into pop culture shows. And, really, is sitting at a table trying to hawk your wares like you’re at a rural craft fare with your handmade wicker bedpans really the model to aspire to?

The truth is that working the attention economy is hard in 2010 because there is so much noise and so many things vying for your attention. I actually feel a glimmer of pride because I’ve gotten my Google Reader down to under 600 unread items for the first time in six months. I think of it as the Manfred Macx problems, from Charlie Stross’ ACCELERANDO – Macx had to absorb a megabyte of text and a few gigs of AV a day just to stay current. This is why the web is still rammed with curatorial sites, from BoingBoing on down. The difference between them and this site is simply that this is my research store, accessible from anywhere with an internet connection (which, for me, is anywhere aside from rural Kent, apparently, where I think I have to sacrifice a hare to get bendwidth).

And now I’m out of Red Bull, here at the pub, and have to buy more and then go home and start work. Consider this not fully baked: a pile of things for later consideration.

Note to self. must buy this from Khepri soon. Probably so should you.

(If you own any issue or collection of GLOBAL FREQUENCY, you own Brian Wood design work. And you will understand that you need this book.)

This amuses me no end.

John’s Phone is the most simple mobile phone. Just call and hang up. John’s Phone is easy for anywhere, anytime. Finally a separate unit with no frills and conditions. A simlock free phone with large keys, an address book, a pen and over three weeks of standby time.

The phone equivalent of, say, the Muji bag. Or, perhaps, this:

Plus, you know, Lego.

• Scientists discover nanodiamonds in Greenland ice
  "University of Maine volcanologist Andrei Kurbatov and glaciologist Paul Mayewski, along with 21 other scientists, coauthored a scientific paper released late last month that details the discovery of a layer of nanodiamonds in the Greenland ice sheet, which has added to a controversy in the scientific community about a possible extraterrestrial impact event that could shed light on why some types of large mammals disappeared around 12,900 years ago."
  (tags:history geo NANODIAMONDS! )

This, on the face of it, is pleasingly crazy. Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman are to adapt Stephen King’s DARK TOWER sequence (which I’ve never read) for film and tv:

The plan is to start with the feature film, and then create a bridge to the second feature with a season of TV episodes. That means the feature cast – and the big star who’ll play Deschain – also has to appear in the TV series before returning to the second film. After that sequel is done, the TV series picks up again, this time focusing on Deschain as a young gunslinger. Those storylines will be informed by a prequel comic book series that King was heavily involved in plotting. The third film would pick up the mature Deshain as he completes his journey.

I’m betting there’ll also be an online element, for the full "transmedia" buzzword-fulfilling effect.

This is big old-media old-school popcultural stars stepping up out of their trenches with atomic bazookas, saying "this here might be the old stuff, and it might not be your magic digital smart dust, but we can still make a pretty big hole in shit with these things." In a way, I wonder if the question is not whether or not there’s been anything like this before, but whether there’ll ever again be anything like this afterwards.

§ – TIMES 3 feat.??† ? from § on Vimeo.

Chairman Bruce in full-on Future Machete Guru mode:

Next Nature is an investigative enterprise by a set of mostly Dutch researchers. Next Nature is haunted by Previous Nature, or rather, by the ghostly Gothic absences of a vanished Natural world. Next Nature also bears many premonitions about the seething, favela-like, feverish state of our planet tomorrow. Next Nature offers us few reassurances. It refuses to view Nature as a given, solid, static entity to be discovered, dissected and destroyed by human agency. Instead, Next Nature is a dynamic entity that is fated to change right along with us.

There is an ontological crisis involved in our ignorance of what the Earth was like before we humans altered it. It’s hard for us to establish a comfortable sense of our place in the world when the world itself is so outworn and bedraggled by so many previous human efforts. It’s degrading to work creatively on hand-me-downs: the writer whose page is a scraped-down palmpsest, the artist whose canvas is torn and worn, the architect engaged in endless renovations, the actress in thrift-shop clothes. That’s what it’s like for a civilization existing in a natural milieu that has been irretrievably damaged. And yes, that is our future.

If you’re in or around Brighton tonight, go to THE OUTER CHURCH, held upstairs at The Freebutt, for an indoctrination into the kosmiche, the hauntological, the confusing and the electronic as prepared by Joseph Stannard, writer for THE WIRE magazine and The Quietus. I would be there if I could, and, in fact, in the near future, I might be.

Good morning. If the embed works, this should be a little bit of RED.

• The brain speaks: Scientists decode words from brain signals
  In an early step toward letting severely paralyzed people speak with their thoughts, University of Utah researchers translated brain signals into words using two grids of 16 microelectrodes implanted beneath the skull but atop the brain.
  (tags:neuro blacklight )
• Canadian authorities to try 3D image of child to slow drivers
  An optical illusion is about to be trialed in West Vancouver, Canada, starting September 7, to try to jolt reckless drivers into slowing down.
  (tags:tech crime psych )
• Scientists examine possibility of a phonon laser, or ‘phaser’
  Scientists theorize that phonons, which are the smallest discrete unit of vibrational energy, can be amplified by a phonon laser to generate a highly coherent beam of sound (particularly, high-frequency ultrasound), similar to how an optical laser generates a highly coherent beam of light.
  (tags:sci tech war )
• Who do our genes belong to?
  Investors in pharmaceutical, medical and biotechnological industries should not be able to patent genes that are identical to naturally occurring sequences, according to an Australian National University biotechnology patent expert.
  (tags:med crime )
• Study examines association between urban living and psychotic disorders
  ""There is a substantial worldwide variation in incidence rates of schizophrenia," the authors write as background in the article. "The clearest geographic pattern within this distribution of rates is that urban areas have a higher incidence of schizophrenia than rural areas." Characteristics of neighborhoods that have been associated with an increased risk of developing psychosis include population and ethnic density, deprivation and social fragmentation or reduced social capital and cohesion…"
  (tags:psych )
• Book Covers – Penguin Classics: (Red) Series

  (tags:design books )

• AfroCyberPunk : Blog Archive : Tomorrow is Today
  "…the largest movie industry in Africa has joined in on the action with the July 2010 release of the sci-fi movie Kajola by Nigerian director Niyi Akinmolayan. "Kajola is the Yoruba word for commonwealth. In the year 2059, Nigeria becomes a totalitarian state. After a second civil war, the rich relocate to the Island areas of Lagos state and turn it into an ultra modern city. The war torn mainland of lagos state is disconnected and abandoned. A rebel leader, Allen learns of a plot codenamed Kajola to build cities on the mainland and eliminate the remaining survivors…""
  (tags:film )
• BLDGBLOG: Hydromania
  "Set in a drought-stricken world "several decades into the future," run by "water corporations from China, Japan and the Ukraine," it follows the science fictionalized path of a "maverick water engineer"…"
  (tags:books )
• Holding Tide: The Connectome and Data-Driven Biology
  "Sebastian Seung at MIT is one of the foremost researchers in the field of connectomics– the branch of neuroscience dedicated to reconstructing the complete circuit diagram of the human brain…"
  (tags:sci neuro med )
• Hallucinogen can safely ease anxiety in advanced-stage cancer patients: study
  "In the first human study of its kind to be published in more than 35 years, researchers found psilocybin, an hallucinogen which occurs naturally in "magic mushrooms," can safely improve the moods of patients with advanced-stage cancer and anxiety, according to an article published online today in the Archives of General Psychiatry."
  (tags:drugs neuro med )

This design has always been peculiarly popular.

Click through to buy a download of the whole thing for a miserly 5 euros.

Just read about this in an interview somewhere this afternoon. Magazero is an internet shop for independent magazines. Not quite in the same space as Stack.

I love Magazero because they told me something I didn’t know — there’s a new issue of the excellent "speculative architecture" magazine P.E.A.R. Magazero is slowly expanding its stock, according to the interview I read on the phone at the pub… ah, here it is.

I believe that it is the richness and variety of the magazines that I stock that will bring success. My aim is to find magazines that are not really known or widely available, and to stock them. Then I have to bring them to the attention of potential buyers – that’s marketing. I take the view that there is a huge untapped market for magazines, and that work I undertake to bring mags to the attention of new buyers will be repaid.

I have an initial target of stocking 300 mags, which I think I’ll hit by the end of next year. It’s a slow business, but at the moment I am in the very early stages of building a system, a brand, customers, the lot. It can’t be done overnight – largely as each magazine has to be sourced separately.

If you decide to spend some money there, this coupon gets you 25% off until the end of September.

I suspect they will have some of my money this week.

I don’t know how I’ve never heard this before, or how I’ve never heard of them. I mean, don’t look too closely, because the band looks like it escaped from a skin-testing lab and the lead guy dances worse than the Jozin z Bazin guy. But the lead guy has a brilliant shouty voice. The music seriously sounds like it was nicked from gorgeously bad postpunk who in turn nicked their act from 1970s electronic library music.

And yet I’ve listened to it five times in a row.

“Follow You,” Future Islands, 2007. Odd thing, it is.

Artist/writer Katelan Foisy says: "I’ll be on the H2O Network Friday Sept 17th at 6 p.m. talking about my book Blood and Pudding and self transformation. For more info on the H2O network and a call in number click here."

MATER SUSPIRIA VISION feat. HOW I QUIT CRACK – Boadicea (2010) from Mater Suspiria Vision on Vimeo.

• Upside to global warming: ‘New North’ will thrive
  "As worldwide population increases by 40 percent over the next 40 years, sparsely populated Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and the northern United States will become formidable economic powers and migration magnets, Laurence C. Smith writes in "The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future" (Dutton Books), scheduled for publication Sept. 23." Possible tie-in here with InfraNet Lab's "Next North" project
  (tags:geo pol viridian )
• B.A.S.A.A.P. ? Blog ? BERG
  "B.A.S.A.A.P. is short for Be As Smart As A Puppy, which is my short-hand for a bunch of things I?ve been thinking about? Ooh? Since 2002 or so I think, and a conversation in a california car-park with Matt Webb. It was my term for a bunch of things that encompass some 3rd rail issues for UI designers like proactive personalisation and interaction, examined in the work of Byron and Nass, exemplified by (and forever-after-vilified-as) Microsoft?s Bob and Clippy (RIP). A bunch of things about bots and daemons, conversational interface. And lately, a bunch of things about machine learning ? and for want of a better term, consumer-grade artificial intelligence."
  (tags:tech design future BERG )
• Global Qi standard powers up wireless charging
  "The Wireless Power Consortium today launched the Qi 1.0 standard which enables consumer electronic brands and device manufacturers to bring interoperable wireless inductive charging devices to market. The Consortium also announced today the first products certified with Qi."
  (tags:tech )
• The Associated Press: AP IMPACT: Before the CIA, there was the Pond
  "Created during World War II as a purely U.S. operation free of the perceived taint of European allies, the Pond existed for 13 years and was shrouded in secrecy for more than 50 years. It used sources that ranged from Nazi officials to Stalinists and, at one point, a French serial killer"
  (tags:pol war spy )

“Blind,” Blackbird Blackbird.

BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD / BLIND from Alan Jensen on Vimeo.

Yes. Am here. But mostly just on email, with half an eye on Twitter some of the time. Busy day. Need to feed Paul more FREAKANGELS pages, among many other things. I don’t even dare switch on Google Reader right now. Bad enough I checked my "public" email account (warrenellis@gmail.com) and found a bunch of new music by RxRy waiting for me.

Negat-ve Patterns by RxRy

I looked at Flickr earlier, just to get my eyes out of OpenOffice for a minute, and um well yes why don’t you see for yourself:

Thank you Lenora Claire.

Things I am thinking about besides where the cartoon arserape ghost version of Lenora Claire is going to stick her fingernails in my forthcoming hellish nightmares: wondering if Katie and Jack are moving copies of NANOKA, and wondering if a one-man magazine counts as a magazine.