- A list of âhuman universalsâ â things said to be common across all human civilisation.
- âI agree with the flag-waving patriots that America is Godâs own land â I just happen to believe that that God is Dionysos.â
- Are Boeingâs first aeroplanes secretly being stored underneath a sacred mountain in New Zealand?
- Is there any song more melancholic, and yet, so hypnotically addictive, as âGolden Brownâ? Something about that harpsichord just sends me to another world.
- Iâm going to need you all to look at this ridiculously comprehensive, wide-ranging sci-fi alternate history map project Thing â including the associated lore docs, which are currently longer than the first Harry Potter book. Joanne could never.
Page 9
A jolly good show: tidbits from Manchester
Hello. Iâve been to Manchester. I thought i might tell you about it. Wait no come back i promise this isn't just showing you my holiday ph
The last time i went to that wonderful southern city, i was hardly ten years old, and hadnât much of a chance to explore â a mistake i was itching to rectify this go around. Over the next few days iâll be sharing some of the things i saw, heard, and third verb goes here.
First things first, our tripâs raison dâĂŞtre: Sigur RĂłs were on a world tour, and though they might not have been schlepping up to Newcastle, i sure as hell wasnât going to miss the chance to see them.
Sigur RĂłs are a post-rock band, and their gig made clear that itâs with a strong emphasis on the âpost-â. It was an all-seated audience, with vanishingly little banter from the band (one has to imagine theyâre not 100% confident in their English), excepting a brief pantomime bit at the end of âAndvariâ. No complaints from me, though: a laid-back, almost classical atmosphere quite befits their ĂŚtheral soundscapes. I mean, could you imagine people going wild in the pit to âVakaâ?
As âPopplagiĂ°â came to a close and everyone shuffled out the venueâs doors, i noticed a curious item at the merch table: an officially licensed Sigur RĂłs tea and incense kit. What a world we live in. (I didnât buy it â there was only one left, and i probably wouldnât be the one to make the most use out of it.)
As an official, Lisa Nandyâcertified resident of a Townâ˘, i was left slightly dumbstruck and intimidated by the dense forest of tall buildings that is Manchesterâs city centre. Sure, itâs not like iâm a stranger to the idea of a city, but of the two big cities i have most haunted over the years , Newcastle only has a stumpy luxury apartment and a few council houses strewn about the suburbs, while Amsterdamâs skyscraper district is sectioned off behind the other side of a ring road, far from the centre of town.
But Manchester? Nay â Manchester is Englandâs second city, and theyâll show it any way they like! Dozens upon dozens of architectural phalli jut up from the ground in all directions, a veritable orgy of capital. I pray thee, have we as a species learnt nothing from the tales of Icarus and the Tower of Babel? Nothingâ˝ This is hubris writ large, i tell you!
Or, you know, something like that. Their green spaces donât even have cows.
They both serve the same purpose, really, but i just want to rub in that where we up north has a fully-fledged metro, Manchester merely has to do with trams. Sure, ours might be delayed every five minutes, and theirs might be uber-reliable and extend throughout the urban area, but whoâs really winning?
Manchester has no shortage of iconic residents â Morrissey, Danny Boyle, Burgess, Wanksy â but Mancunians have taken it upon themselves to idolise two people above all else. Everywhere you look, there are statues, plaques, and posters in their memory.
The first is Emmeline Pankhurst. An early leader of the suffragette movement, she and her allies often used violent tactics to get their way, from breaking windows all the way up to arson. You can see why the left-wing, industrial city, birthplace of the labour movement, would be proud to honour her.
The other is Noel Gallagher.
Naturally.
Does anyone else think the guitar riff from â21 Gunsâ sounds like the Full House theme, or am i just crazy?
Mx Tynehorneâs link roundup, volume XIV
- If you have any interest in web development stuff â which i suspect is a decent chunk of my dear readers â then you should look at these PokĂŠmon cards right fucking now.
- Sign language in VRChat, using a cool new hand-tracking feature! Furriesâ spare cash 1, Facebookâs billions upon billions 0. Well â itâs probably more like Furries 50, Facebook 0 at this point.
- âSlow Roadsâ, a neat little driving simulator. Every day i grow more astonished at what people can do in a web browser.
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The Youtube rabbit hole:
- âDear Raid: Shadow Legends: I don't want your money. I want a Date.â [3â˛]
- Watching The Fifth Element1 recently had me thinking, naturally, about Russian pop singer Vitasâ 1999 classic âThe Seventh Elementâ, which is far catchier than it really deserves to be. [4â˛]
- The criminally underrated Captain KRB on the downfall of Myspace and the ruins of the web, which, well, youâre probably on Neocities, youâre going to watch it either way [30â˛]
- BlameItOnJorge investigates creepypasta lost media, which is the sort of thing thatâs basically guaranteed to make me watch your video. [33â˛]
THE WAR ON SANTA
ALRIGHT BUCKO ITâS FUCKING NOVEMBER, PUT YOUR GODDAMNED HANDS UP!
THIS FUCKING HALLOWEâEN SHIT IS OVER MERRY CHRISTMAS I WANT YOU TO REPEAT AFTER ME âMERRY CHRISTMASâ RIGHT NOW AND IâM NOT LETTING YOU GO UNTIL YOU DO IT
MERRRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU TOO
NOW YOU MIGHT BE WONDERING WHY IâVE BROUGHT YOU HERE TODAY AND THEREâS ONE SIMPLE REASON. THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS? ITâS FAKE. ITâS A FUCKING PSYOP. WEâRE RECRUITING YOU INTO THE REAL WAR. THE WAR ON SANTA CLAUS.
THIS RAT FUCKING BASTARD SANTA IS AGGLOMERATING CHRISTMAS INTO ONE CORPORATISED YANKEE MEGATRADITION AND THIS CANNOT STAND! FATHER CHRISTMAS IS THE REAL ONE. SINTERKLAAS AND HIS WEIRD RACIST FRIENDS ARE THE REAL ONES. SATURN IS WEIRD BUT WE KIND OF STOLE HIS SHTICK AND ALSO WEâRE PRETTY SURE HEâD EAT US IF WE DIDNâT LEAVE HIM BE. DED MOROZ IS STAYING. BUT SANTA CLAUS? WEâRE KILLING THAT ELF-ENSLAVING ASSHOLE
YOUR SOUNDTRACK FOR THIS MISSION WILL BE âFAIRYTALE OF NEW YORKâ, PLAYED ON REPEAT FOR SEVENTY-TWO HOURS STRAIGHT. THIS IS BECUASE SANTA IS HOMOPHOBIC AND YOU NEED TO GET ACCLIMATISED TO HIM CALLING YOU A WELL YOU KNOW
AND AFTER WEâRE DONE, OH TRUST ME BUCKO, WEâRE NOT STOPPING THERE. YOU THINK NOVEMBER IS BAD? WEâRE GONNA EXTEND CHRISTMAS SEASON TO ALL YEAR ROUND. HALLOWEâEN? YOU MEAN PRECHRISTMAS? SUMMER HOLIDAYS? YOU MEAN CHRISTMAS IN JULY??? THATâS RIGHT FUCKER ITâS CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY THE PROPHECY IS TRUE MERRY CHRISTMAS
Now playing:
(New posts eventuallyâ˘. Promise.)
âThere She Goesâ is such an addictive song.
Donât Worry Darling is not the greatest film ever made
I was bored the other day, so i thought iâd go see a film. The problem, my dear readers, is that i have this terribly unlucky habit: 70% of the time, when i go see a film at the cinema, itâs not very good â and i can confirm that Donât Worry Darling is, indeed, not very good.
If youâve heard anything about Donât Worry Darling, itâll be about the juicy, juicy behind-the-scenes drama, involving saucy affairs between director Olivia Wilde and the filmâs leading male star, an exasperated Chris Pine, and Shia LaBeouf. But weâre not going to be talking about any of that â instead, weâll be talking about the topic everyone is desperately avoiding: the movie itself. Oh dear.
The film boils down to a thin Truman Show pastiche following a troubled couple in an idyllic American suburb, wherein a 1950s housewife, imaginatively named Alice Warren, questions what her controlling husband, the inexplicably British Jack Chambers, actually does at his mysterious government job. The wonderful Florence Pugh, hot off of 2019âs Midsommar, gives her all with the script sheâs given as Alice, and is easily one of the standout parts of the film. Jack, on the other hand⌠Jack is played by Harry Styles, a man who should not act. (Every pop star nowadays seems to think they can walk the tightrope between music and cinema as easily as Lady Gaga does, and it never quite seems to work out for them.)
So, letâs put ourselves in Ms Wildeâs shoes. You have one common plot structure, one brilliant lead actress, and one so-so lead actor. How do you make this movie⌠good?
Well, first you load up the secondary cast with talented people. KiKi Lane and Chris Pine both absolutely kill it in their respective roles â Margaret, a troubled neighbour to Alice, and Frank, Jackâs hammy villainous boss â but neither character feels fully fleshed out; Mr Pine in particular finds himself with not much to do despite ostensibly being the driving force behind the plot.
You can also pour piles upon piles of money into your filmâs technical aspects. The quaint suburb in which Jack and Alice live is designed to within an inch of its life, and every shot is clear, crisp, and packed with colour while not being too overbearing â like a James Bond film or, if youâre being unkind, a perfume commercial.
Alright. Youâve got your cast, youâve got your style, now you just need to⌠ah, god, what was it? You look down at the smudged writing on your hand â ah, yes, the script! You have to write a script, with, like, a plot and stuff.
You wake up from a terrible dream. You are no longer Olivia Wilde. You are once again the handsome reader of the blog of an even handsomer webmixter, who politely informs you that the filmâs one-block-wide Jenga tower of a storyline, while it seemed to be setting up for an interesting conclusion, falls apart completely in the third act. The filmâs writers pull out every clichĂŠ in the book â âit was all in VR!â âour protagonistâs best friend was in on it!â âif you die in the game you die in real life!â â in the space of about ten minutes, with barely any of it given room to breathe. (In fact, that third revelation comes after a pivotal death scene.) Just as the audience wonders what impact this will have on the plot going forward, the film just⌠ends, with a distinctly unsatisfying resolution to our heroâs story, and an air of âwell why did they even bother?â about the villainous plot.
All in all, i really canât recommend watching Donât Worry Darling â perhaps catch it on streaming when it comes out if it piques your interest, but donât spend your heard-earned Lizzies on going to the cinema to watch Harry Styles gaslight his wife for an hour and a half. (5/10)
Pass notes: some other films of note
See How They Run is a fun, Wes Andersonâlite romp of a mystery story that gets in and out and does what it needs without making too much of a fuss about itself. Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell drive around in a tiny blue â50s police car; what more could you possibly want? (7½/10)
The Woman King is a fine enough (alternate-)historical epic carried on the backs of some terrific performances by Thuso Mbedu and Viola Davis. (6/10)
I wasnât expecting to be so spellbound by a seventy-year-old drama film of a bunch of people talking in a room, but i absolutely could not take my eyes off of 12 Angry Men, which you should really just go watch right now. (9/10)
Iâve decided that HRT, and all other drugs and techniques which can be used to express oneâs right to freedom of form, should not only be available over-the-counter, but government-subsidised to ensure equal access for all.
I will not be elaborating at this time.
Just write about gardening or the Bible or Zootopia fanfiction or something
I have to say, it gets on my nerves when, on my regular surfing sessions across the high seas of the web, i see a cool-looking website⌠and then its only content is just about how much its creator misses Le Old Web before they invented capitalism or whatever.1
Thereâs certainly room for meta-puffery about the internet (i wouldnât have made this site what it is without Kicks Condor doing exactly that), but after a dozen sites in a row all moaning the same moan without an original insight in sight, it starts to get tired. Iâm begging you, just write about gardening or the Bible or Zootopia fanfiction or something!
What makes the free web beautiful is the sheer diversity in the topics covered and how peopleâs little idiosyncracies and quirks and interests shine through â it saddens me how most sites in the âold webâ (did it ever really go away?) revival movement are doing nothing but lamenting their own existence.
Pleased to say that the new 1975 album is indeed the greatest album ever made.
Shatner on space
I was originally going to post this excerpt from William Shatnerâs new memoir, printed in Variety, alongside the usual link roundup, but something about it touched me enough to give it its own post.
Mr Shatner, in his own words, on his first trip to space:
I continued my self-guided tour and turned my head to face the other direction, to stare into space. I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely⌠all of that has thrilled me for years⌠but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold ⌠all I saw was death.
I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.
[âŚ]It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna ⌠things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.
Upon returning to earth, and trying to put his story into words for the first time, he was, as you may remember, bluntly cut off by Jeff Bezos, asking for more champagne:
Mx van Hoornâs link roundup, volume XIII
I suppose itâs only fair that the first roundup of October is spooky number thirteen, and weâre starting things off with a suitably spooky link:
- Why is a mysterious voice haunting the intercoms of American Airlines flights?
- The closely guarded secret of the New York Timesâ Yiddish translator
- Holy shit, they found silphium! I hope some day, many years down the line, when cultivation comes to fruition, we can all finally taste this ancient spice.
- John Green explains why his first non-fiction book suddenly became a hit with old people [4âł]
- The Hummingbird Clock, or, using the grid to investigate misdeeds
What does AI make of the Gods?
I recently bought 1000 imagesâ worth of credits on DreamStudio â a machine-learningÎą-powered art generator â on a whim and, after the requisite âBoris Johnson taking a bath of baked beansâ joke entries, i thought it would be an interesting test to get it to generate some images for my shrines (on- and offline).
My motivations were twofold: first, due to copyright constraints, all of the icons adorning these shrines were either old baroque paintings or freely-licenced photos of even older marble statues, which didnât necessarily represent my mental image of the Godsâ appearances â a topic which, of course, will vary massively from artist to artist and culture to culture. Second, i thought it would be a fascinating experiment to see how this machine learning algorithm, which has taken in hundreds upon thousands (perhaps millions; iâve not checked) of images, views the Gods in its latent space. Just as it has a prototypical idea of a âdogâ and a âcatâ, surely it also has one for âGodâ and âDionysosâ.
As is tradition, we begin this article with Hestia (although Her portrait was actually the final one to be generated). On the broad strokes, my computer collaborator knocked it out of the park â but a closer look reveals some glaring imperfections in the face and hands, a theme which weâll be seeing a lot of (and which i sometimes managed to harness to my advantage).
I should note that iâm not just feeding it theonyms with no added context: the programme works best if you help it along to your goal with a heaping of adjectives and descriptors, say, to tell it that this is indeed meant to be an artwork (â4K ultra HDâ, âtrending on ArtStationâ), the details of the pose and background you want (âblonde hairâ, âraising His hand to the skyâ), or the style and artists you want it to take from (âbaroque painting by Thomas Coleâ, a prominent painter of beautiful, well-lit landscapes). If you calibrate it just right, it can make some genuinely beautiful stuff, like the above picture of Apollon (which i did, admittedly, have to manually touch up to get rid of a prominent Habsburg chin).
It may be an immensely powerful tool, but DreamStudio can also be rather prudish.β It blurs out any images it thinks might contain the utterly offensive sight of the genitalia with which we are all born, which can be a real problem if the relevant pictures itâs learnt from are all Greek and Roman statues â not exactly works known for their nether modesty. The detection software isnât perfect, though, and sometimes, like in this portrait of GĂŚa, it lets a few slip past (perhaps because of the greenish tone with which i instructed itÎł to portray Her skin).
The algorithm sometimes has issues with more complex prompts, for it is just a machine, and doesnât actually understand that âball on top of a red boxâ means that the ball indeed should be on top of the box, as opposed to by its side, beneath it, or fused together in a horrific amalgam. These troubles somewhat manifested themselves in the above portrait of Hermes; the winged cap He is traditionally depicted with has transformed itself into both a crown and a hulking pair of soaring, fleshy wings emanating from His shoulders, and the recognisable caduceus has been reduced to a bamboo stick by His side.
Perhaps itâs just the style i instructed it to paint in â sixteenth-century European paintings arenât renowned for their diversity â but DreamStudio also has some real trouble with darker skin tones. You can cry âdark skin, dark bronze skin, dark skin, dark skin, dark skin, blackâ all you want, but the only thing that can consistently get it to generate anything a shade below the average Spaniard is âAfrican Americanâ, which tends to bring along a heap of other associated physical changes besides just skin tone. (I have to say, i donât particularly envision Hermes as the eponymous Futurama character in my head.)
It also has quite some trouble with arms and legs. Originally, i thought of its odd morphings and multiplications as a bug to be stamped out, but i came to see them as a feature, representing the manifold, varied aspects of the Gods, their omnipresence, transcending the limits of human form. (This is also why the Hindus do it, if i recall correctly.)
I would have rather the above portrait of Hermaphroditos been slightly more, ah, gynomorphic around the chest, so to speak, but iâd been trying to get a decent pose for what felt like an hour and i didnât feel like fighting the blur anymore.
So then â itâs a bit off in places, and lacks the leopard-skin toga i would have liked, and lord knows what the objects Heâs holding are meant to be, and it turned out the computer really, really, struggled with the basic concept of a faun or satyrâs legs, but we end this post with DreamStudioâs interpretation of an icon of Dionysos, framed by some beautiful landscape.
Navigating through the neural netâs knowledge and limitations has been a fascinating, illuminating exercise, which has left no doubt in my mind that âAI artâ is, indeed, just that: art. It seems to me much more comparable to something like photography than painting: rather than doing the hard work by hirself with brush strokes and pencil lines, the artist guides hir computer collaborator through latent space, pressing âclickâ when sie finds something appealing. One can only hope the Muses would approve.
Mx van Hoornâs link roundup, volume XII
- Everyone working at this mammoth deĂŤxtinction company looks exactly how i would expect someone working at a mammoth deĂŤxtinction company to look.
- The numbers pool and the ultimately large telescope
- I would say âshut up and take my moneyâ to this cyborg ankle bracelet if only they listed a price tag of any sort â if this isnât vapourware i want one so badly. From the people who brought you the magnetic north organ
- Who scratched the word âPRAYâ on every phone booth in New York in the seventies?
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The Youtube rabbit hole:
- Are you gnomepilled yet? (14â˛)
- Justin Whang presents The game composer who was caught faking being deaf (21â˛)
- Roasting every state welcome sign (24â˛)
- Jet Lag is back, and theyâre playing a game of tag across Europe! (26â˛)