Collection of rare Robert Anton Wilson essays.

Borders: weird hour long Robert Anton Wilson TV thing from 1989, starring a young Steve Buscemi, with lots of interesting people cropping up.

Click here to view the embedded video.

June’s transit of Venus will be the last in your lifetime (unless you live another 100+ years)…

More Eidolon-becoming-real news: Presence.

Also: (near) future tech article – Web 2.0 is dead, long live age of mobile: “Any company that isn’t primarily delivering its service via mobile five years from now will probably be irrelevant.”

UK aid helps to fund forced sterilisation of India’s poor. Details as nasty as you would imagine.

Nine ways to make yourself smarter. Obvious parallels to artistic and magical techniques.

As a neat companion: five effortless postures that foster creative thinking.o  These really don’t seem like they should work.

All of these studies show how the position of our bodies feeds back into the state of our minds. And it also shows how deeply metaphors are planted in our consciousness.

Things babies know. Fascinating article on baby cognition research. My question would be the power of the interactions it occurs to them to measure… which could get unethical but interesting.

“In 20 years, the most successful, happiest people will be living in resilient communities. “  Interesting claim explained.

The Institute for Dark Tourism Research aims to advance knowledge about the act of visitation to tourist sites of death, disaster or the seemingly macabre.

Solar power your neighbourhood.

Database of nonviolent civil resistance techniques.

And just randomly a quote from Bruce Sterling encouraging weirdness:

Don’t become a well-rounded person. Well rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish. If you want to woo the muse of the odd, don’t read Shakespeare. Read Webster’s revenge plays. Don’t read Homer and Aristotle. Read Herodotus where he’s off talking about Egyptian women having public sex with goats. If you want to read about myth don’t read Joseph Campbell, read about convulsive religion, read about voodoo and the Millerites and the Munster Anabaptists. There are hundreds of years of extremities, there are vast legacies of mutants. There have always been geeks. There will always be geeks. Become the apotheosis of geek. Learn who your spiritual ancestors were. You didn’t come here from nowhere. There are reasons why you’re here. Learn those reasons. Learn about the stuff that was buried because it was too experimental or embarrassing or inexplicable or uncomfortable or dangerous.

This is a link to a very good 10 minute video of psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist explaining that most of the popular conception of the left hemisphere vs right hemisphere split is very distorted and wrong, and goes on to explain what differences they do actually seem to have quite usefully.

I am particularly pleased to see this since the left/right thing has seemed a stupid and gross oversimplification for a long time, and actively frustrates discussion about mind and consciousness.

* 48 psychological facts about yourself worth knowing

definitely worth the read. far from the usual sort of guff.

* Chris23 summarises the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2011.

well worth reading. short clear but excellent summary of where shit is at, current pressure points in the world system, etc.

* Reality as failed state

interesting analysis of the disconnect between different actors in the world

* old maps online

the largest collection of old maps online

* a downloadable archive of all of the amazing Grey Lodge online magazine

Grey Lodge was one of the first and greatest sources of underground, avant garde, occult culture. some absolute gems in their collection.

* future of publishing news: freemium, a fascinating funding model for writing from China

basically serialised online fiction. free at first. as it gets more popular, you have to pay. seems to be working for some people.

* BBC reports that implanted wireless devices are hackable by McAfee… ie if you have an insulin pump, it can be turned off, or made to release all its contents at once, by external signals…

And, as a follow-up to the last post on economics, here is a nugget from the awesome Nils Gilman:

Stat of the day: Sustaining a 2.3% growth rate to the year 3500 would require us by then to be capturing the entire energy output of the Sun

Capitalism cannot work.

(lots of todays stuff came from catching up on technoccult and URBEINGRECORDED for the first time in ages)

Introducing FYI – a site which helps you make and browse Official Information Act requests. Now that is useful. (via norightturn)

Tatjna collects a long scary list of statistics and right wing quotes about the drug war. This will not make your day happier, but it is fascinatingly awful.

Cryptogon notes that in 2011, the Federal Reserve Purchased a Stunning 61% of U.S. Debt. Broken. So broken.

Aimee sent this… thing in. It is self explanatory. At least I am not going to try to explain it. Just look at it. And keep looking. I think that is what it is for.

Click here to view the embedded video.

anyway. here is some stuff.

* America under Obama still galloping towards fascism:

President Obama signs Executive Order allowing for control over all US resources.

On March 16th, President Obama signed a new Executive Order which expands upon a prior order issued in 1950 for Disaster Preparedness, and gives the office of the President complete control over all the resources in the United States in times of war or emergency.

The National Defense Resources Preparedness order gives the Executive Branch the power to control and allocate energy, production, transportation, food, and even water resources by decree under the auspices of national defense and national security.  The order is not limited to wartime implementation, as one of the order’s functions includes the command and control of resources in peacetime determination.

Between that and the NDAA stuff (By signing into law the NDAA, the president has awarded the military extraordinary powers to detain US citizens without trial.) there’s not much left. They can lock you up and take anything they want and tell you to do whatever they want, and it is all legal.

It is a sadly tired comparison, but seriously, that is a definition of totalitarian dictatorship.

(Seriously, the fact that these two have gone through under Obama – this most recent as an executive order – really overshadows anything positive he may have achieved.)

Bye, America.

(By the way, is this news to you?)

* Amazing article about the importance of libraries. Actually, it is a really long comment on a post. But it is exceptional.

* Fascinating guess at how China will develop: along Nordic socialist lines.

* The heart has consciousness. Mostly posting as a reminder to myself to read that.

* Cool post-apocalyptic short film: concept ruin

First, quite a bit of webby stuff:

An opensource decentralised darknet p2p is here, now: retroshare. This is probably important.

Who is tracking you online? Collusion for Mozilla shows you.

Found in this long but interesting article about advertising and privacy online.

the top 25 viral news sources on twitter and facebook.

Thinky stuff:

Six animations teaching logical thinking to kids. And adults.

free ebook: the future we deserve. 100 essays on the future.

Obama, explained. Epic article analysing Obama’s performance and psyche.

Other stuff:

New evidence suggests climate change wiped out the neanderthals, not conflict with humans.

Wade Davis continues to be jaw-droppingly awesome. (photo of his writing work-space)

Anonymous, for what it is worth, declared war on the US government.. One of those things that seems like I should have heard of it already, even if it is just rhetoric.

The Citigroup Plutonomy memos quite bluntly assess the size and power of the wealthy minority in the world economy, and how this distorts a number of economic indicators. Basically argues that companies servicing the rich will continue to do well, since they have all the money, so invest in them.

In 2005 and 2006, several analysts at Citigroup took a very, very close look at the economic inequalities within the USA and other countries and wrote two memos which were addressed to their very wealthy customers. If there is one group of people who need to know the truth about what is really going on within the society and the economy, minus the propaganda, then it’s businesspeople who have a lot of money to invest, and who want to invest wisely.

Fascinating. Apparently these have been fairly successfully suppressed, yet are reasonably available online. The trick is to know to look for them. Particularly relevant in terms of the Occupy 1% – 99% dialogue.

Footnotes to a changing world: Brazil has overtaken Britain as the world’s sixth largest economy.

Saber rattling between Iran and USA

A senior Iranian official on Tuesday delivered a sharp threat in response to economic sanctions being readied by the United States, saying his country would retaliate against any crackdown by blocking all oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for transporting about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

This would actually lead to war, so it will be interesting to see who backs down and how.

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A quick few interesting tech tools:

“I’m getting arrested” android app – alert lawyers and loved ones with one click when you are being arrested. Evolved from OWS/protestors needs.

Tasker. Total automation for your android. Looks real high powered, but overkill for casual users.

Okay, this looks like it has really interesting potential: if this, then that: an automation tool for online stuff. Basically lets you automate repetitive online tasks between different programs you use daily, and more.

Also looks really interesting: hypothes.is.”The Internet, peer reviewed.”

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A few kinda nerdy notes:

Some surprising uses of wolfram alpha for word-professionals.

Large Hadron Collider discovers its first new particle

This is quite fascinating, on a philosophical/thinking level:  answers to the question “what it’s like” to have an internalized sense of very advanced mathematical concepts“.

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A few tracking the nasty weird future coming soon/now:

The Future of Drone Warfare – deeply weird and fascinating extrapolation on the likely direction of drone warfare. For bonus points, introduced me to the fact of Bonjwas.

System D – the 10 trillion dollar black market global economy – Foreign Policy article by the excellent Robert Neuwirth (author of Shadow Cities).

More on the emerging warlords of our near future: Mexico’s cartels build own national radio system. (via @nils_gilman / @deviantglobal)

Tracking this stuff is pretty relevant to what things are going to look like when things fall apart more openly: empowered non-state actors doing it themselves.

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And some random shit:

How to open a padlock with a coke can

Mad monks shut down by Pope

“a renowned monastery in Rome where monks staged concerts featuring a lap-dancer-turned-nun and opened a hotel with a 24-hour limousine service has been shut down by the pope.”

Global Drug Commissioner Richard Branson (huh?) on lessons from Portugal after a decade of decriminalistation.

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And to go out on: Wax, Or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees

By all accounts about the most impossibly weird film ever.

Watch it free online here.

Anyhow. Here are the results of my first dedicated info trawl in a long long while, scrying the emerging future in the froth of the web… Much of the best of this comes from the already indispensable Innovation Patterns, the rest from the mutants list, and generally revisiting some of my haunts.

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Michael Ventura steps into prophet mode again. Three parts, necessary reading/analysis of what the fuck is going. (Subtitle: “The Worldwide End of Capitalism and Its Replacement by a Mode of Commerce for Which, as Yet, There Is No Ism.”) Flash Mob Dance Revolution Parts One Two & Three. Two parts analysis, third part an attempt at solution.

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fighting muppetocracy: pretty brutal and punchy look at how fucked we are, well worth reading and distressingly difficult to argue against.

This show brought to you by the international community, by government, by the NGOs, by well-intentioned individuals, by the UN, and all the rest of it. The same cast of clowns that screwed up Haiti.

Get it yet? Is it landing?

We are screwed. We don’t need to speculate on how or why, but we have an absolutely clear and rational expectation that there will be no sudden, effective, global and complete transformation in our global governance systems resulting in an effective resolution to our climate crisis.

We did not do it for poverty.

We do not do it for natural disasters.

We will not do it for climate.

Everything rests on us getting a technological fix for climate, and we’re massively, dramatically underfunding research into those breakthrough technologies in favour of continuing to subsidize oil. These are the facts.

Really worth reading the whole thing for context etc.

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kind of an antidote to that: recent interview with zen buddhist master Thich Nhat Hahn :

“Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come,” he warns. “Civilisations have been destroyed many times and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.

“If you meditate on that, you will not go crazy. You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.”

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Excellent Foreign Policy article about the logical limits to China’s growth, and the rise of Turkey, India, Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia.

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DARPA trying to hack the neurobiology of narrative in order to bring in a whole new generation of propaganda control.

Once scientists have perfected the science of how stories affect our neurochemistry, they will develop tools to “detect narrative influence.” These tools will enable “prevention of negative behavioral outcomes … and generation of positive behavioral outcomes, such as building trust.” In other words, the tools will be used to detect who’s been controlled by subversive ideologies, better allowing the military to drown out that message and win people onto their side.

“The government is already trying to control the message, so why not have the science to do it in a systematic way?” said the researcher familiar with the project.

Um. WTF? Disturbing as fuck anyway.

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The Case Against the Spirit World Model of Psychedelic Action

Pretty fascinating/challenging read for entheogenic enthusiasts.

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Cyborg future news: A team at at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen says it’s built the foundation for devices to communicate directly with the human brain.

The researchers’ new graphene-based transistor array is compatible with living biological cells and can, for the first time, record the electrical signals they generate.

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Have you missed these posts? Or are you happier not knowing?

(Hell, for that matter, have I missed making these posts, and am I happier not knowing?)

A couple of interesting articles about our interactions with technology that I don’t have time to do justice to:

first, one about how how online personalization services begin to skew our access to information:

I found this bit telling:

If you want to test your own views on personalization, you could try a party trick Mr. Pariser demonstrated earlier this year during a talk at the TED conference: ask some friends to simultaneously search Google for a controversial term like gun control or abortion. Then compare results.

“It’s totally creepy if you think about it,” said Tze Chun, a filmmaker who agreed to participate in a similar experiment at a recent dinner party we both attended in Brooklyn. Five of us used our phones to search for “Is Osama really dead?,” a phrase Mr. Chun suggested.

Although our top 10 results included the same link — to Yahoo Canada answers — in first place, two of us also received a link to a post on jewishjournal.com, a newspaper site. Meanwhile, Mr. Chun and two other filmmakers had links to more conspiratorial sites like deadbodies.info.

For Mr. Chun, who visits a variety of true-crime Web sites as part of his screenplay research but tends to favor sites that sell vintage T-shirts in his private life, the personalization felt a little too, well, personal.

“You are used to looking at the Internet voyeuristically,” he said. “It’s weird to have the Internet looking back at you and saying, ‘Yeah, I remember things about what you have done’ and gearing the searches to those sites.”

I had noticed that my google results were odd at times…

Second, social influences kill the wisdom of the crowd. Essentially, collectively we know stuff, but when we get feedback about what others think (eg through social networks), conformity effects make us dumber.

(Oh, and unrelatedly, for those of you who have houses, Jez talks about earthquake-learnings from Chch for your house, which I had been meaning to point at)