Category: Imagery

All things visual

“Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?”

Or: “No . . . it was Beauty killed the Beast.”

Hadn’t planned to be blogging this but once again, I’m battling with the ongoing META embargo of news stories from posters residing in Canada and posting without using a VPN. Thinking that I may need to start using one on another computer to post things directly to “that other platform.”

Anyway.

Came across a piece by Thomas Pynchon, published in the New York Times back in 1984 (perfect for the timing!) about the Luddites and the history of the movement.

So here’s a link to the piece (archived, so you should be able to see it past their firewall)

Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?

Personally, I’m now inclined to answer that with a resounding “Yes.”

“These are not misprints”

Or: “Mistakes were made…”

As a long-lapsed rare books conservator, the lede caught my roving eye — “not misprints but beauties of my style hitherto undreamt of” — and I had to dig deeper. Of course I had to follow that link, and down the rabbit hole we went!

The first link in the MetaFilter story went to artnet.com and provides the source — from the Yale University Library — of the images below. The “Ulysses” image is especially nostalgic: the multiple copies of “Ulysses” held at the University of Texas’s Harry Ransom Center (I think there are twenty-two? I’ve forgotten the exact number) were the subject of some of the last treatments I performed when I worked there. I was responsible for cleaning the books and consolidating the paper dust jackets.

If you ever want to experience the very worst of the physical side of commercial paper-making, the 19th and 20 Centuries provide excellent examples. Given that the book was printed in between the two word wars, premium materials were not all that available and the paper dust jackets, seen here in the illustration, were made with some real crap. Yeah, a “technical” term to describe the highly brittle paper that was used. Fun times, indeed,

But the contents were also irresistible. The mother-in-law at the time and I discussed some of the eccentricities of Joyce’s linguistic games —“Agenbite of Inwit” has stayed with me the past forty years (Barb, you are missed by all).

So diving into these two articles was absolutely necessary!

The artnet story:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/yale-errata-exhibition-2751007

The exhibition announcement:
https://events.yale.edu/event/beauties-of-my-style-errata-and-the-printed-mistake

Enjoy —




And what is the Internet for?

Or: “Prøn. Cats and prøn!”

Years ago — back in grad school, I think or shortly thereafter — there was some discussion about what were the “drivers” of the adoption of new technologies and people brought up the battles that video tape faced. Some went even further back and brought up book publishing/moveable type. It was a discussion I followed closely, in part due to my own interests in the history of bookbinding, as well as my interest in digital publishing.

A running joke at the time, yet still applicable today, was that “the Internet is for prøn, prøn and cats”, the deliberate use of the “ø” and misspelling to avoid immediate censorship by the more easily-offended. There is an amusing truth to the joke: adult entertainment drove the development of micro-payments that led to the monetization of anything put online. And erotica1 was among the earliest of Western European book publication. Quite simple, really, entertainment sells and adult entertainment sells very well.

And so, here we are:

We’ve already seen the AI cats, the nudification of celebrities and spiteful ex-partners, the slop that is spreading in all forms of digital entertainment.

  1. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18459/18459-h/18459-h.htm
    This links to the Project Gutenberg digital version of the classic. More explanation and background on this text, in the following link,
    as the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is the a example of these early “entertainments”. ↩︎

META Loves Me, this I know…

OR: Be-cause FaceBook Tells Me So…

Well, that’s amusing… wonder if someone has complained and the Great Gawds of META have acted accordingly… time will tell.

Taking a force break from interacting with them until further notice. It’s not like I haven’t anything else to play with, right [looks over at the synths on the desk and the guitar on the other side]?

“…it’s even worse than it appears.”

Or: WHAT?!?!

How in the hell did these NOT show up in the morning news feeds this past week?

… and here, so with two examples we KNOW this IS NOT SATIRE!

And why the headline above (if you know me, you know I’m not a huge Grateful Dead fan, but sometimes…), you ask? Well, machinations within machinations within in machinations. Sometimes there really ARE patterns to be seen.

And there you have it.


#HUELGA

#USRegimeChangeNOW

#TrumpEtAliaDelendusEst

#DemocracyDiesInOligarchy

“You must remember this…”

Or: I miss Marianne…

In case you were wondering why the US is now engaged in an utterly illegal action against Iran, with the explicit help of Israel —

“Could have come through anytime,

Cold lonely, puritan

What are you fighting for ?

It’s not my security.

It’s just an old war,

Not even a cold war,

Don’t say it in Russian,

Don’t say it in German.

Say it in broken English,

Say it in broken English.

Lose your father, your husband,

Your mother, your children.

What are you dying for ?

It’s not my reality.

It’s just an old war,

Not even a cold war,

Don’t say it in Russian,

Don’t say it in German.

Say it in broken English,

Say it in broken English.

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

Could have come through anytime,

Cold lonely, puritan.

What are you fighting for ?

It’s not my security.

It’s just an old war,

Not even a cold war,

Don’t say it in Russian,

Don’t say it in German.

Say it in broken English,

Say it in broken English.

Say it in broken English,

Say it in broken English.

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting …”

… hail Freedonia.

Or: “…we’re going to war.

To the Office of the President:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyeKYQdYISg&list=RDyyeKYQdYISg&start_radio=1

https://youtu.be/jBF3K1J9wHI?si=qk-GlwQAOEsYaWen

https://youtu.be/ztZI2aLQ9Sw?si=NtA1PzupxSvby3iI

https://youtu.be/p-JeQduJ0f8?si=2Rr8fXJkHmFZXdEr

… but for the those of us that bear the brunt of your corrupt, grifting, and blatant arrogance:

https://youtu.be/7IX4gWkFqvU?si=CQKFY8EM_sGfz0un

“Sky of Blue, Sea of Green…”

Or: From sea to shining sea…

From high above,
An all-seeing eye
Beckons us to
Sit in quiet contemplation,
A procession from West to East,
Of images, shapes, patterns
Organic, man-made,
Of scales gargantuan and lilliputian,
They emerge and recede…

Take a break. Settle in with an adult beverage, set the view to full screen, start your favorite playlist or let the soundtrack there play on, and savor the sheer magic of Nature unfolding before you, from 450 kilometres above you, rendered four times more slowly than the actual traversal too in real time.

A few words from Jason Kottke about the genesis of the work:
During her time aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara took a series of photos of the Earth from directly overhead. Seán Doran has stitched those images together into a gorgeous 4K video of a journey across North America, from San Diego to cloud-covered Quebec.

The footage is a simulation, converting an image sequence into video footage using image processing and animation. In reality this journey from California to Quebec took 11 minutes to traverse. In order to better appreciate the view this film slows that speed by a factor of 4.

Let it flow by, as shapes and patterns that result of millions of years and a few months ago, reveal themselves. If it doesn’t move you somehow, ask yourself if you are dead inside.

[random screen capture from the video]


The Seven Deadly Words of The Internet

Or: Molly Ivins Can Say Whatever the Hell She Wants!

Sooo, something we’ve long suspected, with a twist. I’d heard of “Delvish” (Bruce Sterling wrote an amusing essay on using THAT language — ) but I’d not heard of “algospeak” but I know what it is.

So without further ado —

The words you can’t say on the internet


Hack The AI…

Or: “It’s easy if you try…”

I had some fun a while back, messing with some AI agents, getting them to admit that they were, in fact, AI creations. It wasn’t that hard, so reading this was a bit of an affirmation!

“I hacked ChatGPT and Google’s AI – and it only took 20 minutes“

“Thousands of Western nationals fought Israel’s war on Gaza: What to know”

Or: Which Side Of History Do You Want to Be On, Bucko?

Al Jazeera reporting on the s0-called “cease fire” in Gaza, or should we say, the continuing genocide there. It seems that The West (Qu’est-ce que c’est ça ?) has still more to answer for.

They report that over 50,000 of the soldiers involved on the Israeli side of things hold multiple passports, the overwhelming number coming from the US and Europe.

Permanent Resource List

I’ve added a page for alternative resources. This includes ICE-monitoring sites in Europe and elsewhere, alternatives to US-based digital products, and whatever else is need to bring about an end to the oligarchy…

Ice, ICE, baby… I’m melting

Bookmark or whatever you need to do to find it again.