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Decommissioned Sea Fort Reborn as Luxury Island Retreat | Earth911.com
“While the reimagined Spitbank Fort features ultra-modern fixtures and decor elements, its jaw-dropping design schemes incorporate much of the original structure, including rugged exposed brick and armor-plated walls.”
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Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol Foundation Settle Banana Album Dispute | Billboard
“The Velvet Underground and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts have split their differences over the iconic cover art for the 1967 album The Velvet Underground & Nico.”
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EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5 | Electronic Frontier Foundation
“the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a formal objection to the inclusion of digital rights management (DRM) in HTML5”
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“The strategy these companies use for radical innovation is decades out of date. We need to update it. We learned to do it at DARPA and we’re going to bring it to mobile, and it will have cascading effect on industry.”
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“$200 puts you in the driver’s seat. Steer the telescope and snap a photo of the celestial object of your choosing — a nebula, Jupiter, Saturn’s rings, another galaxy, maybe even an asteroid.”
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From a Free Software Movement to a Free Safety Movement | Local Autonomy Networks
“This is a call to all feminist hackers, anti-racist coders, gender hackers, genderchangers, queer and trans hackers, political hackers, anti-violence activists and networked activists to help stop violence against queer and trans* people, people of color, disabled people and women.”
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The New Aesthetic — A secret network of 20 roadside listening stations…
“criminals are attempting to jam GPS signals on a regular basis”
Category: Uncategorized
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Daily 05/30/2013
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Daily 05/29/2013
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Survivorship bias: why 90% of the advice about writing is bullshit right now | Tobias Buckell Online
“the self assured expertise of anecdotes drives me nuts”
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2013 Internet Trends — Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers
“The latest edition of the annual Internet Trends report finds continued robust online growth.”
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Five Undercover Police Cars Sent To Arrest Single Alleged Movie Pirate | TorrentFreak
“What remains remarkable about FACT operations is how they are able to persuade the police to invest significant resources towards detaining individuals for non-violent crimes.”
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“A deep topically relevant exploration of this cyber drama comes to light as The Acme Corporation presents If You Can Get To Buffalo: An Exploration of a Rape in Cyberspace by Julian Dibbell, a new work by Trish Harnetiaux.”
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svg.js – A lightweight JavaScript library for manipulating and animating svg
“A lightweight library for manipulating and animating SVG.”
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Jackson Pollock’s ‘One – Number 31, 1950’ Restored by MoMA – NYTimes.com
“That meant they were added after 1962,” Mr. Coddington said. “And since Pollock died in 1956, those photographs confirmed they were put there after his death.”
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Me and Sad Keanu: A 3D-Printing Story – Alexis C. Madrigal – The Atlantic
“a meme materialized”
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TRUSTAFARIANS OF THE BELLE ÉPOQUE | CAREER SUICIDE
“here’s just a few of the famous artists who conducted art as a full time hobby” with added photoshops.
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Facebook agrees to block sexual assault ‘humor’ – NBC News.com
“Facebook is changing its policy on “humorous” posts and images that make light of rape and violence against women, following pressure from activists and advertisers.”
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BSA Study Demonstrates Open Source’s Economic Advantage – Open Enterprise
“the fundamental premise of the latest BSA study – that licensed proprietary software is better in many ways than pirated copies – actually applies to open source software even more strongly”
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Google defends its use of proprietary tech in Hangouts | TechHive
“Google is feeling the heat over its decision to build its new Hangouts IM and audio/video chat product with proprietary technology”
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“Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs Women in Video Games Is Back With More On That Oh-So-Irritating Damsel Trope”
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“a few of the GIFs Google has created showing some of the most startling pockets of change”
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Beneath the Fold: The Twisted Tale of Origami v. Sarah Morris | GalleristNY
“Ms. Morris did say that a friend pointed out to her that a group of origami zealots suing an artist was just about “the ‘least zen’ thing he’d ever heard.””
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Where Looks Don’t Matter and Only the Best Writers Get Laid | The Cluster Mag
“How the feminist internet utopia failed, and we ended up with speculative realism”
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Daily 05/28/2013
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Artfacts API
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css rule application visualiser
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“The Raspberry Pi Twitter Sentiment Server (I really must called RPTSS for short) is an ongoing tutorial on using R, Sqlite and some Python to measure Twitter sentiment on given hashtags.”
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Rainbow Urinals
Thanks to Art Fag City, some beautifully coloured Urinal prints from 3D Printer Experience in Chicago:
This is exactly the kind of outcome of digital distribution that I was hoping for, and I love AFC, so I’m really happy to see these.
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3D Printing Sigils
Sigil CC-BY-SA by bwigfield.
In chaos magick, sigils are visual embodiments of intent used to focus and actualize that intent. Within both supernatural and cognitive theories of magic the principle is the same: sigils are foci for attracting the resources (supernatural or mental) required to achieve the desire of the person who has constructed them.
Traditional sigils are drawings, two dimensional graphical forms, created using magic square or letter abstraction techniques. Contemporary mages have constructed hypermedia sigils in various formats, from comic book series to interactive multimedia installations.
Sigils created by creative computer graphics programming software can be printed cheaply using Open Source 3D printers or online 3D printing services. This opens up a new range of techniques for creating and using sigils.
Image copyright 2011 Marius Watz
The 3D printed art of Marius Watz shows how data can be modelled in aesthetically appealing three dimensional form, and how the challenges of modelling complex arbitrary data can be met while still creating easily printed models. RIG’s experiments in 3D printed models of user data by distorting pre-existing forms Chernoff Face-style to display a as christmas tree decorations. We Can use these approaches and more (such as model mash-ups and extrusion of 2D sigils) to embody the intent of sigils rather than Web 2.0 data or random numbers in 3D printed form.
Image Copyright Joshua Madara 2011.
Joshua Madara’s 3D graphics sigil creator Processing sketch demonstrates the creation of a virtual three dimensional sigil form. The sigil is line-based, to keep its genetic link to magic square-based sigils, and would not be 3D printable in this form. But the lines could be replaced with cylinders or rectangular beams, with the angles of joins between them limited to ensure that they can be printed without support on Open Source 3D printers.
Image copyright 2011 Marius Watz
Whether Watz’s organic or machinic forms, more object based approaches or something even more abstract, it is easy to see how this can be applied to the construction of sigils. The mapping of letters (or words) to formal properties or objects by software in order to encode them in forms is how 3D printed sigil models can be produced. This adds an extra dimension of reality and relationality between the virtual and the real that affords a corresponding increase in persuasiveness and richness for sigils.
Part of the efficacy of a sigil may come from the mindfulness and concentration involved in manually constructing and chargeing it. If this is the case then having a machine construct the sigil may work against the sigil’s effectiveness. Constructing the code to make the sigil, and watching the mechanical operation of Open Source 3D printers alleviate this. And a better sigil form than could be made by hand will be a better focus, whether produced by magickal or technological means.
Create 3D sigils using creative coding software such as Processing, or in 3D design software such as Blender. Make the software and model files Free Software and Free Culture (GPL the software, BY-SA the models, wherever you can) and empower others to follow in your footsteps. Upload the model to a filesharing site such as Thingiverse. Then print it using an Open Source 3D printer such as a Lulzbot or a 3D printing service such as Shapeways.
A 3D printed sigil can be used as a focus for contemplation, mediation or ritual. It can be placed in work or living space as a reminder and proof of the reality of the objective embodied in the sigil. Or it can be destroyed to release it into the imagination and the world as part of a ritual by burning or by melting using solvents (but beware toxic fumes). Uploading the sigil to a model filesharing site will spread it further into the world as both virtual and, if anyone prints it, as physical form.
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Pipe
“Pipe” is a 3D printable model of a classic smoking pipe. It is the latest in a series that began with Urinal and continued with Balloon Dog
Commissioned by me and modelled by the ultra-talented Chris Webber. Chris retains the copyright on it and has placed it under the Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 3.0 Licence.
You can download the files from Gitorious.
Or you can download them from Thingiverse and share images of your own prints and remixes there.
For images and more links see the project page:
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MakerBot Replicator: What I Have Learnt So Far
Here’s what I’ve learnt about the practical side of using my MakerBot Replicator so far.If you have a dual extrusion system, make sure the two extrusion nozzles are exactly the same height when you first install them. You may need to tighten screws or insert pieces of paper to do so.
When you first adjust the build platform, take your time. Getting the
platform the right height and levelled is vital to getting a good print. Too high and the extruder nozzles will scrape the tape. Too low and the extruded plastic wont stick.Re-level the build platform at least weekly to make sure it remains in the best possible position.
Clean the Kapton tape between prints to help with print adhesion. You should clean it with acetone, or in a pinch you can use nail polish remover.
When the Kapton tape on the platform looks like it’s ready to be
replaced, it’s very easy to do so if you use the squeegee that came in
the box. Peel off all the old tape, then unroll the new tape a strip at a time. You can lift up the tape and squeegee it down several times if
needs be to get rid of air bubbles. Just keep it taut as you unroll it
onto the platform.Heat the build platform to at least 110 degrees celsius, possibly 115 or 120. This will help prevent curling of edges.
Don’t be tempted to try rafts with dual extrusion. There is no way that will end well, no matter how carefully you set up the model. See above.
And if you do have a problem, the MakerBot mailing list, the MakerBot forums, and MakerBot tech support are the most amazingly helpful community I’ve encountered in a long time.
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Werewolf Fiction. You’re doing it wrong.
Werewolf fiction lacks the confidence of Vampire fiction. Vampire
fiction is novel, reflexive, indexical, and complete. It is novel
because vampirism is unprecendented in both the social and personal
realities of its characters. It is reflexive because it is about the
condition of vampirism qua vampirism as its subject. It is indexical
because the condition of vampirism is used allegorically or
metaphorically to animate contemporary concerns and to illustrate the
human condition. And it is complete because no other themes or
macguffins are used to make up for the perceived deficiencies of the
form.“Dracula” and “Interview With The Vampire” are the two high points of
popular vampire fiction. The former takes the stuff of penny dreadfuls
and distant folk superstition as the absent core of a clash between
modernity and superstition that animates the hypocrisy and shear of
Victorian society. The latter ironises the displaced catholic theatrics
of an exhausted cinematic form into a tale of the betrayal of promise
and an illustration of the price of the impossible that does not require
its reader to have an immortal soul to lose in order for it to terrify them.There is very little werewolf fiction that is novel, reflexive,
indexical, and
complete. I do not know why this is. Werewolfery can be an ironic symbol of
many key elements of the human condition and of their postmodern
situation. Take out the witches and faeries, the police procedural and
the pack dynamics, the hunters and the soap opera and lycanthropy can be a
prism rather than ballast. -
Humanity Is A Skeuomorph
Skeuomorphs are ornamental design elements that retain the structure of their functional precursors:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Skeuomorph
There are two senses in which humanity is a skeuomorph.
The first is that the quality of humanity, of being human, is irrelevant to social networking and its streams. Attaching human concepts and identities to streams is skeuomorphic, and Real Names policies only underline this.
The second is more quantitative. Capital, corporations and their algorithms do not need human beings, they are optimizing humanity out. But to the extent that they do still need to interact with human beings, they use skeuomorphic human forms such as CEOs and quants.
Humanity is a skeuomorph.
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Evie
Evie Matthieson died last night. She was an excellent cultural person, my ex partner, and the kids’ mum.
I had spoken to her on the phone earlier in the evening. I’m glad I got to chat with her, even if only briefly. I wish she wasn’t gone. I really wish she wasn’t gone.
