m1k3y

Next day David got out his tool chest. He made a little
unconscious ritual of it, like a duke inspecting his emeralds.
The toolbox weighed fifteen pounds, was the size of a large
breadbox, and had been lovingly assembled by Rizome craftsmen in Kyoto. Looking inside; with the gleam of chromed
ceramic and neat foam sockets for everything, you could get a
kind of mental picture of the guys who had made it-white robed
Zen priests of the overhead lathe, guys who lived on
brown rice and machine oil…

Pry bar, tin snips, cute little propane torch; plumbing snake,
pipe wrench, telescoping auger; ohm meter, wire stripper,
needlenose pliers … Ribbed ebony handles that popped off
and reattached-to push drills and screwdriver bits . . David’s
tool set was by far the most expensive possession they owned.

Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling

He grubbed around in his bag as he progressed past Grand on his way down the Bowery, walking in the glow from the electric showrooms of the many lighting stores fringing the street. He had a few pieces of dried squirrel meat in there, wrapped in plastic and cloth. The hunter, working by touch alone, claimed a small piece and reclosed the wrapping. He bit a morsel off and chewed, slowly and methodically, matching action to footfall. The flavor was somewhere between chicken thigh and rabbit. There was better squirrel to be had farther up the island; the animals in Central Park inevitably took in enough pollution to render their meat blander, and sometimes more bitter, than it really should have been. But it kept him moving, and it kept the saliva flowing, so that he avoided thirst and didn’t deplete his physical reserves.

…

THE HUNTER awoke gently from a peaceful sleep at the break of dawn, its rosy fingers softly touching his face as he slept beneath a great Central Park cypress by the water. He sat up, cross-legged, silent, breathing deeply as the rising sun warmed him. The hunter then stood, pulled some leaves from the cypress, crushed them in his hand to release their oils, and rubbed them under his armpits to minimize his odor.
Walking quietly around the park, he gathered cattail shoots from the water’s edge, lamb’s-quarter leaves, hen of the woods mushroom flesh, a little mountain mint, and wood sorrel, and he returned to his spot under the cypress to eat it with a piece of squirrel meat. He was always careful never to take too much from one plant. He was a hunter, and that meant he never knew when he might have to rely on foraging to live. The moment he allowed himself to believe that the movement of seasons was perfectly repeating and broadly predictable, he would be creating the conditions for his own death.

Gun Machine by Warren Ellis

designcube:

Skyscraper for Bees by University at Buffalo Students

rebel6:

by Ih4te

inkshd:

Classic number six’s line.

It’s the only way to be sure.

grinderbot:

One of the consistent myths of pro wrestling is the concept of the “face” and the “heel” – the good guy and the bad guy. Within the consensus reality of the Kayfabe, these are mortal foes… right up to the point where one or the other makes a “heel-face turn”, the good guy becoming the bad or vice versa. (Like, say, the ‘heroic rebels’ of the CIA-sponsored Mujahideen becoming the post-9/11 enemy…) But in reality, they’re still just performers in a symbolic, mythical struggle. Whether they consciously co-operate or not, both sides need the struggle in order to continue their identity, to define their reality. So, again – who profits? Those invested – emotionally, financially – in the game, on both supposed sides. The extremists; the governments who seek any excuse to cow the populous, to keep every single person scared and surveilled; the radicals who want to tear down anything that doesn’t look exactly like their fantasy world (be it Dar-al-Islam or Rule Britannia); the corporations that sell the weapons to them all or, like Monsanto, rely on the distraction to conceal their agenda. And, by pure coincidence, those who want to tame the internet, to stop those who don’t want to suffer for their gain from finding out more about the truth behind the spectacle. Anyone who wants to play another game, wants a future of co-operation not competition, strength for all instead of profit-and-loss… are just collateral damage for the drones and the thugs. John Robb doesn’t write about 4GW directly that much, these days. In his consideration of precisely how one should defend against it, he came to understand the necessity of working towards the living conditions which are most effective in resisting terrorism in general and such cheap RoI attacks in particular – decentralized infrastructure, local and networked co-operation unlocked from hierarchy. People acting in groups sharing common goals, working towards long-term building of resilient communities rather than zero-sum enemies to be obliterated. A long-term solution that strives to bypass the reflexive tit-for-tat of this conflict, to benefit all. As I wrote this, the EDL marched on Whitehall. Again, only a couple of hundred of them, faced with a similar number of anti-fascist protesters. Supposed patriots are giving Nazi salutes and fighting police in the very heart of British governance, claiming to be protecting England against the infidel. Another front in The Forever War opened these past few days… and for those who aren’t part of the kayfabe, who strive to break past the fourth wall of us-and-them, resilience is becoming that much harder. We have to keep looking for the tools to grind our bodies, minds and tribes to be strong and flexible enough to endure the crushing pressures of these wrestling behemoths, to always remember that whoever appears to be the face or the heel… this should not, cannot be just war. It must always be a rescue mission. (via grinding.be » Blog Archive » Special Guest Post from the UK: Cat Vincent brings us “Rate Of Return: Woolwich, 4GW and Kayfabe.”)

Meanwhile, great guest post from @CatVincent on Woolwich attack and Fourth Generation Warfare

This was how I came to realise that in actuality, the grinding.be team was a human-machine dropped into the really real world to aid in the formation of planetary rescue; a metafictional outreach program from the mind of Warren Ellis to paradoxically prevent the creation of the universe he created. To stand in the gap, as Hickman puts it in S.H.I.E.L.D. To embrace the co-evolution of human and machine and to build the best of all possible futures.

And our remit was also to give them, the readers, the Grinders, a narrative constructed for that purpose. Because narratives are ontological engines, through which we can radically reframe people’s self-awareness and vision, and thereby create Ontological Rescue Mission Squads. Along the way, as I’ve grinded my futurist stats, I’ve been fortunate to find myself a proper mentor of sorts: Futurist, inventor of VRML, and legendary techno-pagan, Mark Pesce. And having an epiphany one day some years ago now, I put it to him that I was now a Militant Futurist, fighting for a better world. And he succinctly replied, as all gurus do, “there’s another kind?”

http://www.thestate.ae/anarchist-futurism-the-lie-of-history-part-2/

Part 2 of my first piece for The State. True secrets of fictional realities.