Undulating Ungulate

I first saw Inferno on late night TV, maybe somewhere in the 12-14 age bracket. It holds the distinction of being one of the very few films that ever genuinely scared me.

Later in life I rediscovered it as one of Italian horror legend Dario Argento’s masterpieces, a companion piece to the absolutely sublime Suspiria, one of my all time favourite cinematic experiences. They both feature the same bizarre mythology around the Three Mothers, Mater Suspiriorum, Mater Tenebrarum, and Mater Lachrymarum. They both feature the same insanely lurid colour palette and utterly dreamlike narration. They both use striking music to excellent effect.

Along the way I had came to regard Inferno as the lesser of the pair, neglecting its own magnificence, and hadn’t watched it for most of a decade. Rewatching it recently was a real treat.

Gorgeous, incredibly atmospheric and dreamlike. Very little actually happens in the story; it is an intense exercise in style in the telling. The action is simultaneously grounded in simple moments of reality that extend out forever – how can he hold the shots so long, and make them so gripping? – and a surreal inescapable nightmare layer, a world of constant descents into weirdly lit labyrinthine spaces.

What scared the younger me was not being able to work out what was happening. Atmospheric whispers, hooded figures, old books, malevolent cats, strange women, not quite human hands…. It was just so weird. Something is clearly going on, people are being killed horribly, but the motive and murderer is generally unknown; perhaps simply the power of evil itself unleashed.

As an adult the film barely makes sense, even on multiple viewings. It almost coheres, but is most effective on an unconscious, metaphoric and symbolic level. The encounter with a genuine archetypal force beyond us, working through us and the world, will not be a rational one.

And ultimately the forces at work in Inferno are transcendent. Death itself, present as a purposive force. There is no escape. Triumph is an abeyance. The flames change nothing.

Beyond its immediate visceral impact, Inferno remains a work of art with depth that rewards repeated consideration.

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Scientific American interview with a guy who has been working out in depth plans for how New York could run on 100% renewable energy (wind, water and solar).

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Jaron Lanier snarks massively as he reveals the feudal nature of the online economy with this damning adapted EULA.

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Fascinating take on why capitalism won’t save us:

In a capitalist economy, it is not mere necessity, but purchasing-power-weighted necessity that is the mother of invention. American entrepreneurs don’t compete to meet the needs of money-poor Africans or Chinese. Instead, Chinese entrepreneurs compete to meet the needs of citizens of the country money comes from. Within the US, entrepreneurs don’t much innovate to discover and address unmet needs of the poor. That’s a rough business. The poor have more needs than they can pay for already, and entrepreneurs hope to be paid.

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The Economist on China’s new leader, and the Chinese dream.

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Russian family lived in complete isolation in the wilderness for 40 years.

Oh, and C02 is about to hit 400ppm…

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The Business and Practice of Coaching – Lynn Grodski

Solid, in depth, nitty-gritty nuts ‘n bolts book about what it says it is. Very useful.

The Quantum Thief – Hannu Rajaniemi

Rajaniemi burst on the scene a few years ago to great props with this, and they are justified. Hugely fun romp through a posthuman future where the hard science has melted and become effectively magic. Clever, entertaining, definitely a standout of recent SF.

The Course of the Heart – M. John Harrison

Deeply weird novel. (Came it at #1 on the Guardian’s list of weird fiction, as it happens.) Probably does the best job of presenting the experience of the uncanny entering into the normal world I have seen. At times deeply frustrating – what exactly are you trying to say here, Mr Harrison? – , but short, acute, and its strengths are so overwhelming – so many amazingly good lines! – that it is worth the effort. Maybe would be clearer on a reread.

Thundersqueak – Ramsey Dukes

OMFG. Incredibly funny, entertaining, and brilliant. It is scary that something written over thirty years ago can be so fresh, relevant, anarchic, and thought-provoking. Incessantly quotable.  A book about magic via politics, it has a lot to say about politics, even for the jaded, and sort of encapsulates the whole point of chaos magic (of which it is considered a founding text). And so much more. One to return to. (Dukes (itself a pseudonym) is here writing under a pair of pseudonyms, Liz Angerford & Ambrose Lea.)

Vathek – William Beckford

A 17 year old English lord’s son wrote this in 3 days about 150 years ago. And that sort of shows, but also, there is a reason people are still reading it. Entertaining, mildly deranged, tale of the Caliph Vathek being tempted by evil, and succumbing, abusing his absolute power. The vision of Baal’s fiery palace, and the wrong doers eventual punishment, is remarkable.

The Forever War – Joe Haldeman

Classic SF novel about the madness of war unfolding across relativistic spacetime. Breaks most of the show vs tell dichotomy in writing, but what he is telling is consistently interesting and entertaining. Mostly, aside from the technical stuff, which isn’t too hibrow, the book is really about  abiding disgust with war, and human and military stupidity. A short fast read, well worth it.

Currently on: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, which comes with a big rep as far as being good literature goes, and so far lives up to it.

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Go out one clear starlit night to some open space and look up at the sky

at those millions of worlds over your head.

Remember that perhaps on each of them swarm billions of beings,

similar to you or perhaps superior in their organization.

Look at the Milky Way. The earth cannot even

be called a grain of sand in this infinity.

It dissolves and vanishes, and with it, you.

Where are you? And is what you want simply madness?

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Before all these worlds ask yourself what are your aims and hopes,

your intentions and means of fulfilling them,

the demands that may be made upon you and

your preparedness to meet them.

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A long and difficult journey is before you…

Remember where you are and why you are here.

Do not protect yourselves and remember that no effort is made

in vain. And now you can set out on the way.

- Gurdjieff

Filed by billy at 8:28 pm under consciousness,quotes
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Hmm. Printing this manuscript is taking a few hours. Ah! Twitter!

The Web We Lost – short and fascinating look back at how much has changed online in ten years.

Weirdly fascinating breakdown of China’s online gaming industry, and other internet businesses.  It is evolving differently in isolation  over there.

use LinkedIn smarter I’m not on, but figure it to be inevitable.

The answers to this year’s Edge question are out: 192 smart people’s replies to the question

“What is your favourite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?”.

Pretty much a selective must read.

On cold reading, and why it still exists

Sundberg’s study highlights one of the difficulties in this area. A fake, universal sketch can be seen as a better description of oneself than can a uniquely tailored description by trained psychologists based upon one of the best assessment devices we have.

 Life as a Mexican drug gangster’s moll

Mattermap – contextual tool/app to create maps about issues, debates, conversations

Filed by billy at 6:36 pm under consciousness,sunday mutants,technology
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A Midsummer Nights Dream – William Shakespeare

Compact and entertaining, with some philosophical meat. Good stuff.

Mosaic – me!

Reread the 3rd draft of my fantasy novel, in preparation for rewriting. It was pretty good.

You Are Not A Gadget – Jaron Lanier

Really fascinating critique of current pro internet/web 2.0 orthodoxy. Probably essential reading for computer people, and oddly, musicians (Lanier being both of these.) Deeply thought provoking. May give it a separate post to get my teeth into it. Quite brilliant; strongly recommended.

Gun Machine – Warren Ellis

Hmm. Easy to read, entertaining, sort of, but disappointing; I picked it up to give Ellis a shot in long form, hoping he would have some depth (a la Transmetropolitan), but this is pretty much just a twisted police procedural with colourful mental cases for main characters, and occasional vague stabs at something approaching meaning. So probably more fun than this sort of thing normally is, if this is the sort of thing you read, but really just a disposable entertainment.

The Coaching Manual – Julie Starr

Really solid guide to personal coaching.

Anarchists in the Boardroom – Liam Barrington-Bush

Read a prerelease draft copy. Very timely book grappling with big questions around how we do things and why as groups; how our organisational cultures are often horrific and dehumanising, and exploring what we can do to make them better, more satisfying, and more human. Weaves many stories of the changes unfolding across the world from a guy who has been involved in many of them first-hand. Interesting and worthwhile, particularly for the NGO/non profit sector, but really for anyone who works with other people and wants that to be a better experience.

Alif the Unseen – G. Willow Wilson

Best novel I have read so far this year. Excellent. Arab spring hackers meet djinn in a metaphysical cyberfantasy. Fascinating to read a cyberpunkish novel set in an arabian context. Lots of fun, rockets along, and human and smart, too. Check this one out.

The Songlines – Bruce Chatwin

Extraordinary sort of book. Part travelogue of Australia in the 80s (a redneck nightmare), as he tries to find out about Aboriginal culture and worldview, particularly the songlines; and part deeply meta travel musing on the origins of humanity, taking in nomadism, evolution and anthropology. Very enjoyable.

Filed by billy at 6:24 pm under reading
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Just making notes in the margin as the world changes beyond recognition….

Roboearth

At its core, RoboEarth is a World Wide Web for robots: a giant network and database repository where robots can share information and learn from each other about their behavior and their environment. Bringing a new meaning to the phrase “experience is the best teacher”, the goal of RoboEarth is to allow robotic systems to benefit from the experience of other robots, paving the way for rapid advances in machine cognition and behaviour, and ultimately, for more subtle and sophisticated human-machine interaction.

Stewart Brand on “de-extinction”

Death is still forever, but extinction may not be. A dead body can’t be reanimated once it begins to rot, but the essence of a species — its genome — survives rot for centuries, even thousands of years. That DNA knows how to make living animals, once we figure out how to invite it to do so. At the leading edges of synthetic biology the invitation is now being crafted. For some extinct species, regenesis is becoming plausible.

The speed of censorship on China’s version of Twitter

Censorship on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, is near real-time and relies on a workforce of over 4,000 censors who stop work during the evening news, according the first detailed analysis of censorship patterns.

China’s obsession with the Soviet Union

Basically the CCP trying to avoid the mistakes that led to the fall.

The CIA and big data

On Wednesday, the CIA’s chief technology officer detailed the Agency’s vision for collecting and analysing all of the information people put on the Internet.

The wide-ranging presentation at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in New York City came two days after it was reported the spy agency is on the verge of signing a cloud computing contract with Amazon — worth up to $600 million over 10 years — that involves Amazon Web Services helping the CIA build a “private cloud” filled with technologies like big data.

After laying out what the CIA does — i.e. collect intelligence, conduct analysis, perform covert action — CIA CTO Ira “Gus” Hunt detailed just how the agency plans to acquire, store, and analyse digital data on a massive scale.

“You’re already a walking sensor platform,” Hunt said, referring to all of the information captured by smartphones. ”You are aware of the fact that somebody can know where you are at all times, because you carry a mobile device, even if that mobile device is turned off. You know this, I hope? Yes? Well, you should.”

In fact Hunt noted that based on the sensors in a smartphone, someone can be identified (with 100 per cent accuracy) by the way they walk — implying that someone could be identified even when carrying someone else’s phone.

Why Americans are the Weirdest People in the World – or how cultural differences mean we really don’t know much about human psychology which is based primarily on Westerners/Americans. This article is really worth reading, and ties into Wade Davis etc stuff about culture and language.

Filed by billy at 10:10 pm under sunday mutants,technology,the world,Uncategorized
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Or, my last hour on twitter, reading the last few days of my /mutants list. Really, if you aren’t using Twitter for awesome, you are failing at the interwebs.

Dude stops eating food for a month.

There are no meats, fruits, vegetables, or breads here. Besides olive oil for fatty acids and table salt for sodium and chloride nothing is recognizable as food. I researched every substance the body needs to survive, plus a few extras shown to be beneficial, and purchased all of them in nearly raw chemical form from a variety of sources.

Ratting. Dudes remotely hacking your webcams and messing with you. It’s a thiing.

Pornstars before and after makeup.

Microsoft getting closer to figuring out what makes shit go viral. [video]

Magic mushrooms and transhumanism

according to this peer-reviewed paper indexed by the National Institutes of Health, magic mushrooms could be the way to help posthumans retain or regain the morality needed to be good transpersonal godling/citizens.

Human brain cells make mice smart

A team of neuroscientists has grafted human brain cells into the brains of mice and found that the rodents’ rate of learning and memory far surpassed that of ordinary mice.  Remarkably, the cells transplanted were not neurons, but rather types of brain cells, called glia, that are incapable of electrical signaling.  The new findings suggest that information processing in the brain extends beyond the mechanism of electrical signaling between neurons.

A quote that turned up: “Lewis Mumford berated suburban life as “an asylum for the preservation of illusion.” ”

Filed by billy at 7:54 pm under consciousness,oblivion,research,technology,the world
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Spent a weird week or so unable to find the right book – usually I have an almost preternatural knack of finding the right book to be reading. So I ended up watching a few films, for a change, until the book magic returned. So you get some film reviews too.

Books

Tohunga: Hohepa Kereopa – Paul Moon

Interview based book with an old Tuhoe tohunga about his life, experience, and practices. Really fascinating and grounding insight into the Maori spiritual world-view.

In The Forests of Serre – Patricia McKillip

McKillip is one of my very favourite fantasists. She writes in a fairytale sensibility and mold, but not self aware and post modern, just alive with the richness of story. Think if Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, etc) wrote in English with an English patina of narrative tropes to draw from. Her prose is gorgeous, her tales vivid and unpredictable. This is absolutely delicious, and my favourite of hers so far; a forest full of magic and enchantments, and many twists in the tale. Ending a little flat maybe, or maybe I was tired. Generally wonderful.

Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor

Woo. This is a weird one. Set in the post-war American south, we follow young fucked up weirdo losers losing their minds as they try to make sense of their world. Really struck me as the Catcher in the Rye which should have been – a truer representation of finding a place in life, and America. Main character founds the Church of Christ without Christ, speaking such gems as “Where you come from is gone, where you were going to weren’t never there, and where you are ain’t no good unless you can get away from it.”

The Sisters Brothers – Patrick DeWitt

Amusing picaresque cowboy noir, set in 1850s America, following two killers on a job. The narrator’s personality, observations, and asides are oddly charming for a psychopathic killer. Read on a recommendation; enjoyable and swift, not quite sure.

Currently on You Are Not a Gadget: A manifesto by Jaron Lanier, in which he is arguing that lots about our current technological design is accidental, badly thought out, and is/will have bad effects on our notion and being of human.

Films

Snow White and Huntsman

Mostly alright until the last 45 minutes. Good atmosphere. Good example of something getting too self aware and post modern (or at least consciously modern) in its treatment of fairytale content.

Cosmopolis

Cronenberg directs based on DeLillo’s novel. The guy from Twilight is a billionaire travelling across town in his limousine having various interactions as the world comes down. Abstract, visceral, very weird.

The Master

Excellent but bizarre film, sort of based on L Ron Hubbard and Scientology, but mostly about Joaquin Phoenix giving a freaking amazing performance as a fucked up sex obsessed alcoholic which he doubtless should win awards for but probably won’t.

(John Dies At The End)

Pretty sure I saw this last month but it is worth mentioning. Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, Bubba Ho Tep) directs an extremely entertaining… hard to describe in a sentence, but awesome film. Dudes acquire a black goo drug which gives access to other dimensions of reality. A ride of mayhem ensues. Huge fun, occasional splatter.

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* Sobering but really sharp take on where 3D printing is actually at, and where it is heading, beyond the hype, in terms of what you will be able to build at home. Hint: your Star Trek replicator ain’t nowhere in sight.

* Meanwhile, scientists are using 3D printers to make stem cells, so who knows, really.

*Update on the Hedges, Chomsky et al case vs the Obama administration over the NDAA (which we first blogged back in October)

If we lose in Hedges v. Obama—and it seems certain that no matter the outcome of the appeal this case will reach the Supreme Court—electoral politics and our rights as citizens will be as empty as those of Nero’s Rome. If we lose, the power of the military to detain citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military prisons will become a terrifying reality. Democrat or Republican. Occupy activist or libertarian. Socialist or tea party stalwart. It does not matter. This is not a partisan fight. Once the state seizes this unchecked power, it will inevitably create a secret, lawless world of indiscriminate violence, terror and gulags. I lived under several military dictatorships during the two decades I was a foreign correspondent. I know the beast.

 Anonymous is also threatening to interrupt the State of the Union address over this.

* Blindspot: hidden biases of good people

* Great Big Ideas: twelve lectures covering most of everything, free online

Filed by billy at 11:41 am under politics,sunday mutants,the world
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