Linear A.
Ancient language, lost to the modern day. Largely undecipherable.
So this got me to thinking . . . what if machines do have a subconscious of their own? What if machines right now are like human babies, which have brains but no way of expressing themselves except screaming (crashing)? What would a machine's subconscious look like? How does it feed off what we give it? If machines could talk to us, what would they say?
- Douglas Coupland, Microserfs
Pyromaniacal tendencies of Southern New Jersey (via relaxing)
the neighbors next door are shooting off fireworks from their shed and aiming them over my house. hooray, america.
chattr - immutable
i wrote this piece last summer, after spending the fourth of july alone an listening to fireworks go off around my neighborhood.
the number of ways my life has changed since are immeasurable, but primarily i have someone here with me now to share all this beauty with, and living isn’t so bad after all.
Concertlog: Johann Johannsson w/ Lichens @ St Mary’s Church, Philadelphia
(via relaxing)
deeply impressive show, on par with the stars of the lid performance in west philly last year. johannsson closed with the analog sequences and dramatic strings of “guidelines for a space propulsion device” and the applause came strong for several minutes, until the players came back for an encore.
but before all this, rob lowe (as lichens) had already blown the audience away with an amazing soundscape/journey created solely with his voice and a looping pedal. it was amazing act that seemed both tailored to the long beard/tie dye west philly crowd, yet far beyond what anyone had come to expect from ambient/looping music.
my only regret was not bringing my taping rig.
(bonus meta rant:
so this tumblr “photoset” thing is kinda cool, but i don’t like that you have to click on it to get to the good stuff. denies you the visceral response that makes tumblr worthwhile.
i thought photosets were going to be a way to have multiple images inline in a single post. which would violate the sanctity of the tumblr concept, i guess. but this doesn’t, because it’s a single flash object? mmkay.
meta-rant over.)
but somehow i don’t think that person found what they were looking for.
i still don’t find wolfram|alpha all that interesting, but today i discovered if you look up the definitions of words, it gives you “synonym networks” which could become something like concrete poetry, if you squint hard enough.
some fascinating info in here, even for the consumerist readers to whom most of this is old hat:
now a few people know that i have a theory on working for industries some might view as morally gray, which is that such places should not be abandoned by those who have a moral conscience to the batshit evil.
i hold this article in proof that theory.
I thought of a person like me, growing up in a flower-free part of the world and driving to the ocean in a little blue sports car won on a game show, down south to California, and admiring an acid-yellow field of zinnias. Suddenly, whoosh! along comes a blast of Pacific wind, rousing the zinnias into a pollen fervor and blasting me with yellowness, shake-and-baking me with a substance I had no idea I was allergic to, and within moments, I go into anaphylactic shock and am dead.
- Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet, p136
airline route map (i had forgotten the bear’s name, and could not find my way home to the hundred acre wood)
Why did Vampire Weekend get so much shit for being privileged when Grizzly Bear and The Band That Shall Not Be Named seem to come from similar comforts? Is it the difference between making your album on Cape Cod (which GB did, according to this week’s Time Out New York) and using the island’s name as a song title?
