Mostly Yes

A Calendar of Tales

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 23:19:45 +0530

Twelve shorts by Neil Gaiman based on prompts people sent him on Twitter. Part of a marketing campaign by Blackberry, fine by me. [PDF Download]

The Clock in the Mountain

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 01:01:53 +0530

The Clock in the Mountain:

There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years.

Kevin Kelly on the Long Now Foundation’s 10,000 Year Clock project. Read the whole thing.

“Los Angeles, November 2019” This blog is brilliant.

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 09:01:38 +0530

“Los Angeles, November 2019”

This blog is brilliant.

Stuxnet Q&A

Sun, 03 Oct 2010 03:16:26 +0530

Stuxnet Q&A:

Fascinating details about the worm in F-secure’s standard no-nonsense format. Excerpts:

Q: Which factory is it looking for?
A: We don’t know.

Q: Has it found the factory it’s looking for?
A: We don’t know.

Q: What would it do if it finds it?
A: It makes complex modifications to the system. Results of those modifications can not be detected without seeing the actual environment. So we don’t know.

Q: Ok, in theory: what could it do?
A: It could adjust motors, conveyor belts, pumps. It could stop a factory. With right modifications, it could cause things to explode.

Video

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:42:33 +0530

The Vulture Transcript: William Gibson

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 05:49:28 +0530

The Vulture Transcript: William Gibson:

Brilliant interview with William Gibson, where he holds forth on Twitter vs Facebook (‘the street’ vs ‘the mall’), the world of things, terrorism, branding, post-nationalism, and the Tea Party.

A distant sparkling eruption of diamonds

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 04:37:14 +0530

A distant sparkling eruption of diamonds:

“My God, It’s full of stars!”

Jon Stewart interviews George Carlin. Heroes.

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 02:04:09 +0530

Jon Stewart interviews George Carlin. Heroes.

speech accent archive

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 06:30:23 +0530

speech accent archive:

An audio archive produced by a linguistics program at the George Mason university, illustrating a large collection of English accents. CC-licensed and everything.

Sanity

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 10:29:00 +0530

March to Keep Fear Alive:

America, the Greatest Country God ever gave Man, was built on three bedrock principles: Freedom. Liberty. And Fear — that someone might take our Freedom and Liberty.

Also: Rally to Restore Sanity.

Next Nature intro by Bruce Sterling

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 01:53:32 +0530

Next Nature intro by Bruce Sterling:

Bruce Sterling’s very very meaty essay on ways of thinking about nature and technology, introducing the idea of ‘Next Nature’. Lots of good stuff in there, worth chewing over slowly and coming back to later.

Excerpts:

We’re especially guarded about our most pious, sentimentalized notions of Nature. Nature as a nurturing entity that is harmonious, calm, peaceful, inherently rightful and all-around “good-for-you.”

This vaguely politicized attitude about Nature never came from Nature. It was culturally generated. Nature didn’t get her all-natural identity-branding until the Industrial Revolution broke out.

The most profound idea in the essay (to me, at least) is how our attitudes about what is of Nature and what isn’t is causing us to ill-treat technology:

We also stigmatize technology by denying its “natural” aspects: its mortality, fragility, complex interactivity, and its utter dependence on sometimes fitful flows of energy and material sustenance. We rarely allow ourselves any tender, reverential, nurturing attitude toward technology. The mass extinctions of entire classes of objects and services go almost unnoticed.

Making Future Magic 3D light-painting, long exposures, BERG...

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:17:14 +0530

Making Future Magic

3D light-painting, long exposures, BERG London collaboration - this hits a lot of sweet spots.

Blade Runner: Hades Landscape

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 00:43:38 +0530

Blade Runner: Hades Landscape:

Douglas Trumbull, special fx supervisor for the movie, explains how the opening scenes of Blade Runner were shot. There are some other cool videos at http://douglastrumbull.com/videos.

Get Lamp: An Interactive Review

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 08:51:09 +0530

Get Lamp: An Interactive Review:

Rob O’hare reviews Jason Scott’s interactive fiction documentary, Get Lamp. The review is a playable text adventure.

Nostos: A Story of Exile and Homesickness

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:43:00 +0530

Nostos: A Story of Exile and Homesickness:

Tim Carmody’s magnificent rambling and interconnected piece he wrote for the new made-in-48-hours magazine, Longshot. Just look at this first paragraph:

Punk rock and comparative philology were both invented in Germany about 150 years apart. This story is about how you go from one to the other in two moves, by way of Istanbul and the Mississippi Delta. First, though, you need to know something about the prehistorical Greece of Homer’s Odyssey.

The International Space Station and Atlantis shuttle transiting...

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 11:22:13 +0530

The International Space Station and Atlantis shuttle transiting the sun. (from APOD)

What’s a Cyborg?

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 00:57:49 +0530

What’s a Cyborg?:

This is exactly how I think of technology and human beings.

Supernova Spews Its Guts Across Space

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:41:18 +0530

Supernova Spews Its Guts Across Space:

FYI: The future is here when you can watch a time-lapse video of a Supernova explosion.

Subutai Corporation

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:10:05 +0530

Subutai Corporation:

New publishing startup for ‘post-book publishing and storytelling’, by Neal Fracking Stephenson. The first project is a serialized digital novel called The Mongoliad (previously).

Google’s Earth

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:06:50 +0530

Google’s Earth:

This is ridiculously cool. William Gibson on Google:

Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon prison design is a perennial metaphor in discussions of digital surveillance and data mining, but it doesn’t really suit an entity like Google. Bentham’s all-seeing eye looks down from a central viewpoint, the gaze of a Victorian warder. In Google, we are at once the surveilled and the individual retinal cells of the surveillant, however many millions of us, constantly if unconsciously participatory. We are part of a post-geographical, post-national super-state, one that handily says no to China. Or yes, depending on profit considerations and strategy. But we do not participate in Google on that level. We’re citizens, but without rights.

Also: I’ve gotta remember to use ‘novelistic Kafka glands’ in conversation.