Read moreWikipedia is a privately owned public space. Its articles are managed and manicured as carefully as the flora of Zuccotti Park. Just as Wikipedia is groomed for smooth and sensible data retrieval, the privately owned public park is a place for white-collar workers to savor a moment of relaxation so they can return to the bustle of the office feeling refreshed. Zuccotti Park and Wikipedia both make sense in the framework of a neoliberal worldview that understands public spaces—in the city and online—as sites of discrete actions and transactions, as links in logical chains of cause and effect. They are not places so much as they are conduits of productive movement. Ersatz urban environments are built along this principle: the Silicon Valley offices of Google and Facebook eschew cubicles for plazas and promenades, in the belief that shared spaces of locomotion generate productivity and innovation.
Author: m1k3y
Read moreThis is the political side of the New Aesthetic, which the discourse of the New Aesthetic has been dancing around since it became a topic of discussion. The New Aesthetic isn’t so much a thing of itself, as the combined sense of oddness that we feel when we discover technology warping or mutating the shape of the world. The New Aesthetic is an aesthetic tag, which James Bridle began attaching to clipped photos and text blocks that demonstrated this warp. The difficulty of confronting the political side of the New Aesthetic is that there is no ideology of it, no state flag or political line to toe. The political side of the New Aesthetic is that politics is everywhere, and anything can be equally political if deployed correctly, depending on who deploys it, and what their next-stage goals are. There is no rubric to assess this politics, no official spokesperson. There is only the vast multitude of instances of links between nodes, whether they are flying missiles, retweeted propaganda, philosophy texts, or the faces of self-Instagrammed soldiers.
And of course, James Bridle is on top of this, only just this past week launching Dronestagram, a Tumblr/Twitter/New Aesthetic/New Politic something, which posts aerial photos of the locations of US drone strikes from throughout the post-national terrain of that war-machine. So very similar to the IDF’s Youtube videos, the effect is entirely different, as it seeks not to brag or threaten, but to document and exhibit.
But could Dronestagram be co-opted by the State? What would be the effect of the IDF’s Twitter account retweeting Dronestagram? What if the president retweeted it? What if Al-Qaeda did? Who does the uncanniness of the New Aesthetic/New Politic work for? Who owns these aspects of the war-machine?
Not happy with building mysterious gigantic structures in the desert, the Chinese are now building inter-dimensional portals in the middle of their cities. I mean, come on, what the hell is this 157m high metal structure in the the city of Fushun, in northeast China’s Liaoning province?
It’s made of an astounding 3000 tons of steel and it will glow at night — decorated with 12,000 LED lights. According to Fushun Municipal Government’s officials, this titanic structure does absolutely nothing except serve as an elevated sighting position. They claim it is pretty “landscape architecture” — like the Eiffel Tower. It uses four elevators to take people to the top.
Source: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/11/what-the-hell-is-china-building-here/
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Read moreOn getting things done in a disaster:
A few days ago I saw a blog post showing a local Brooklyn startup company named BioLite which recently launched a product that’s basically a small portable camp stove with an ultra-efficient burn rate and an attached thermal-electric USB charging station. In the power outage caused by hurricane Sandy the guys at BioLite had come out of their offices in DUMBO and were offering hot coffee and phone charging using their handy little stoves.
I had been out to the Far Rockaways and seen the devastation out there, very reminiscent of Katrina, and I saw the hard work being done on the ground by Occupy Sandy, and I knew immediately I needed to connect these two amazing, yet disparate groups.
So I did. I tweeted at BioLite and asked if they were interested in donating some units for the effort in the Far Rockaways. And then I got in touch with Occupy Sandy to coordinate getting these delivered to where they’d make a difference.
We all set a time and a place to meet up, and today we loaded up a loaned van full of these stoves and took them out to the Rockaways. Two representatives from BioLite demo’d the safe use of the stoves to ten representatives of Occupy Sandy, who’ll in turn share the 20 or so stoves with whomever needs them, to heat up donated soup, and charge cell phones, or just to keep their hands warm.
FEMA didn’t coordinate this. The Red Cross didn’t organize this. This is just one cool company and a bunch of concerned citizens pooling their resources and skills to take care of neighbors in a disaster zone.
And that’s how I’d recommend helping, if you’re looking to help. Don’t text Red Cross $10. Instead, check out the Occupy Sandy website. They’ve even hacked Amazon’s Wedding Registry service to facilitate shipments and donations. If you’re local to the disaster area, even though your lights might be back on, know that it might be weeks or longer for areas like the Rockaways, Staten Island, and Jersey Shore, and it’s going to be a brutal winter.
This is not to say that FEMA or the Red Cross don’t do good things. But in a time like this, what’s really needed is smart motivated individuals like you and me to just say, “What’s needed? I’ll make it happen.”
Special thanks again to BioLite for the innovative stoves, and Occupy Sandy for the sweat and boots on the ground. Amazing people!
To summarize all this: the US does not interfere in the Muslim world and maintain an endless war on terror because of the terrorist threat. It has a terrorist threat because of its interference in the Muslim world and its endless war on terror.
MANDATORY READ: http://guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list?cat=commentisfree&type=article
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Time-Lapse Video Shows Star Trails and City Lights Streaking From Space
Photographer Christoph Malin from Austria created the stunning film by stacking image sequences taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The results show off incredible patterns of light as the ISS zooms by. Along with the man-made metropolises, viewers can catch a glimpse of lightning corridors flashing within clouds, green auroras, satellite tracks, meteors, and even a quick appearance by the famous sun-diving comet Lovejoy (at about 1:42).
(via WIRED)
(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)
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The Committee to Nuke Elysium 