I'm sick of both U.S. presidential candidates popping up on my screen several times a day to ask for money. Is there any other place on Earth where rich politicians not only expect your vote, but have the gall to ask you to pay for it too?
Mangal-Media: Istanbul-based micropress with great looking books.
Matt Alt argues that the TV series Shogun's appeal in America is because” our socio-politically fractured era resembles a culture-war version of Japan's era of warring states.”
Anne Carson: Life is Not Fair – The Louisiana Channel
Stuck: Dana Omar is only $3,200 away from reaching her pilot's production goal, and only a few hours to go until her campaign ends.
Matt Madden on discovering Oulipo.
Right-wing influencers duped to work for covert Russian operation – Or, Russia utilizes America's capitalist tendances against itself.
USPS is rolling out their own fleet of electric trucks apparently.
Free Faces: Free open-source typefaces.
Rain Poems-Ottmar Liebert: Beautiful acoustic guitar instrumentals.
Alleged fraudster got $10 million in royalties using bots to stream AI-generated music that he uploaded.
story
Still racing against the clock to finish PROJECT TWENTY-FIVE, so only logging on very briefly today. A few key updates:
Two days until Oltremari opens in the Italian city of Jesi. Not sure I fully realized that the Accademia di Comics, Creativita ed Arti Visive was involved.
The Hudood exhibition at the SOAS Gallery in London (where I have some work showing) is open for only 4 more days before all the work returns to the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah.
Dana Omar's STUCK is now 82% funded! Only 4 days left before her campaign ends.
This coming Saturday: I shall be hawking a few of my wares in person at this Palestine-solidarity event in Houston.
My good friend and amazing actor and multi-hyphenate of many talents Dana Omar over in Chicago is putting together a pilot for a powerful passion project of hers called STUCK. She's reached a good 49% of her funding goal and has about 17 days left to raise the rest! Many great rewards ensue.
“Siphonophores are colonial marine organisms made up of specialised but genetically identical units, zooids, that undertake different functions, such as feeding or reproduction. The best-known species is the Portuguese man o'war, which resembles a large jellyfish but is actually seven different kinds of zooid that cooperate so that the colony acts like a single organism.”
From Paul McAuley's THE SECRET OF LIFE.
I note that he does the thing that I love when its done in fiction: including actual non-fiction knowledge. Chuck Palahniuk will almost always slide a little nugget of knowledge in his novels (i.e. how soap is made in FIGHT CLUB or how long it takes to choke in CHOKE, and I think there was something about airplanes or bodybuilding or both in SURVIVAL). This strikes me as an essential function of storytelling: using story to ever so slyly act as a vector for knowledge. It isn't the only function, but it seems to be one of several essential functions. It is after all a tradition as old as time itself. The oldest story known to humankind, THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH, lets it be known that wood obtained from Cedar trees is ideal for shipbuilding (and indeed, the oldest known surviving boat, excavated in Egypt, is built out of Cedar). The myth of Osiris contains mumification instructions. Story is carrier wave for philosophical pondering, parable, moral compass tuning, and factual knowledge. Drama is, for the most part, a really great delivery system.
At least that's how I like it.
Great analysis of folk horror on Mangal Media's substack.
It's got me thinking that a reversal of the typical folk horror narrative might be worthy to explore, as it seems to me that narratives often described as folk horror are inherently pro-colonialist and pro-assimilation.
Perhaps instead of a narrative about an urban outsider arriving at an isolated pagan society to discover how fucked up they live, it may be time for one where the outsider comes away with the realization that his or her own world is in fact the fucked up one.
