DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ FEB 23

Meet the New Caliph, NOT the same as the Old Boss...

1. This Graeme Wood feature from The Atlantic is probably the finest piece of in-depth reportage that I've seen in a Western magazine about Islamic State. If you only read one article on the topic, then please, take my advice and let it be this one. It begins:

What is the Islamic State? 

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors. 

The group seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been its leader since May 2010, but until last summer, his most recent known appearance on film was a grainy mug shot from a stay in U.S. captivity at Camp Bucca during the occupation of Iraq. Then, on July 5 of last year, he stepped into the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, to deliver a Ramadan sermon as the first caliph in generations—upgrading his resolution from grainy to high-definition, and his position from hunted guerrilla to commander of all Muslims. The inflow of jihadists that followed, from around the world, was unprecedented in its pace and volume, and is continuing. 

Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom; few have gone there and returned. Baghdadi has spoken on camera only once. But his address, and the Islamic State’s countless other propaganda videos and encyclicals, are online, and the caliphate’s supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable. We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world. 

The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), follows a distinctive variety of Islam whose beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment matter to its strategy, and can help the West know its enemy and predict its behavior. Its rise to power is less like the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a group whose leaders the Islamic State considers apostates) than like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million. 

Bin Laden viewed his terrorism as a prologue to a caliphate he did not expect to see in his lifetime. His organization was flexible, operating as a geographically diffuse network of autonomous cells. The Islamic State, by contrast, requires territory to remain legitimate, and a top-down structure to rule it. (Its bureaucracy is divided into civil and military arms, and its territory into provinces.) 

We are misled in a second way, by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature. Peter Bergen, who produced the first interview with bin Laden in 1997, titled his first book Holy War, Inc. in part to acknowledge bin Laden as a creature of the modern secular world. Bin Laden corporatized terror and franchised it out. He requested specific political concessions, such as the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia. His foot soldiers navigated the modern world confidently. On Mohammad Atta’s last full day of life, he shopped at Walmart and ate dinner at Pizza Hut.

You know what? Forget about the second and third options for today's Suggested Reading list. You really need to read this entire article, right freaking now. And keep notes as you read. Read every word. Read it, damn you. Before it's too late.

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ FEB 21

1. So... remember that one time in Africa when James Jameson, heir to the Jameson's Irish Whiskey Company, purchased an 11-year-old girl from slave traders, then presented her as a gift to a tribe of cannibals on the sole condition that he be allowed to watch as they tortured, murdered, butchered, cooked, then ate her, all because he wanted to paint some lovely watercolors of the ensuing carnage? Jameson's is gonna leave a whole 'nother kind of taste in your mouth after learning that, I bet. If you're interested in more background information on this and other horrific crimes committed by "civilized" old white dudes in the service of colonialism, check out this extended section from a biography of Henry Morton Stanley - the 19th century's "greatest gentleman explorer", and none too gentle himself, but a veritable Saint compared to Jameson, whose crimes Stanley was able to corroborate with his own two barely believing eyes. You know, there's a movie in there, somewhere, but I don't know if anyone would be willing to sit through it. There's tons more information on this incident on the web, if you just Google the key-words. Happy hunting.

2. Are you an amateur lexicological sleuth? A word freak? Then you're gonna love this awesome "word map", which allows you to type in any word currently defined by Wikipedia and "map" it across the world, with translations into every language currently supported by Google Translate, in order to put into context "the relationship between language and geographical space." Personally, I'd love to see this page grow into a graphical display that maps the etymological roots and evolutionary peregrinations of as many words from as many languages as possible, through a historical place/time-mapping interface. Maybe in a year or two?

3. Hey! Why not cap off today's Suggested Reading List with Russia Today's incredible drone-shot aerial video of the once-super-secret Soviet-era super-lightning-generating Tesla Towers on the outskirts of Moscow? Though somewhat dilapidated in appearance, these rusty beauties are still capable of generating 500-foot-high artificial lightning bolts so massive, they rival the entirety of this partially-resurrected superpower's energy grid output in just a few measly miliseconds! So WATCH!

DDD SUGGESTED READING ~ FEB 20

1. Pretty much everything you need to know about the Drudge Report as a "news" source is the fact that he's published links to THREE "rebuttals" to the story of Bill O'Reilly's wartime lies, but NO LINK to THE ACTUAL STORY - which includes some pretty damning stuff, even by FOX News standards - itself. Go and read. It's freaking hilarious. O'Reilly comes across like a Third Reich Ron Burgundy. Perhaps the most galling aspect of this revelation is the fact that O'Reilly is ultimately going to get away with it because everyone understands FOX News reporters are a pack of propaganda-spewing liars, anyway, so who gives a fuck? 

2. If you think we are currently living in a Golden Age of information sharing and (most especially) information retention... turns out you're laboring under a dangerously erroneous illusion. The Atlantic has recently published an article pulling together multiple stories and events to paint a picture of an imminent Information Dark Age. This link-rich story begins:

Two weeks ago, a seven-alarm blaze at a storage warehouse smogged up the Brooklyn ether (and confettied parts of the East River) with "decades’ worth of charred medical records, court transcripts, lawyers’ letters, sonograms, bank checks, and more." Huge swaths of Brooklyn's legal history literally fueled the fire, leaving one Clerk's Office representative to lament of the stacks of data lost: "They're priceless." 

If there's any solace to be had from such a disaster, aside from its lack of fatalities, is its seeming outdatedness. The move to digitize vital files as well as electronically store keepsakes, letters, and photos should, in theory, safeguard future generations from the agony of losing data to a fire or flood. But what happens when we outgrow our own technology? 

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science this week, Google Vice President Vint Cerf warned of a “forgotten generation, or even a forgotten century” that awaits us when "bit rot" takes hold and our digital material gets lapped by the new hardware and software racing around it. 

“We are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole," he said to The Guardian. “We digitize things because we think we will preserve them, but what we don’t understand is that unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse, than the artifacts that we digitized. If there are photos you really care about, print them out.”

3. Hey! Finally, the [adult swim] dolts got around to uploading a brand spankin' new "Infomercial"... and boy howdy, it's a winner! An absurdist cavalcade of high concept and low comedy nonsense glazed in the kind of terrifyingly believable patina of insubstantial decadence that grows on Late Capitalist consumer ephemera like an alien moss... the latest Infomercia's got it all! Gaze upon the sheer, post-modernist perfection that is... Icelandic Ultrablue!

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ FEB 12

1. Looking for an information-packed online spiritual resource? Look no further than HolyBooks.com, where you can download holy books, sacred texts and spiritual ebooks in full length for free. Download the Bible, The Holy Quran, ancient Asian texts and thousands of free pdf ebooks on yoga, buddhism, magic, meditation, self-improvement and many other categories. I found a ton of formerly hard to find materials here, all in the easy to read, easy to copy and save PDF format. Bookmark this page! You'll be glad you did!

2. Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, has a joke he wants to share.

In 1893, the chairman of physics at Harvard University warned students that there was no more need for additional PhD’s in the field of physics. He boasted that science had established the fact that the universe was a matter machine, comprised of physical, indivisible atoms that fully obeyed the laws of Newtonian Mechanics. Since all the descriptive laws of physics were “known”, the future of physics would be relegated to making finer and finer measurements.
Two years later, the Newtonian concept of a matter-only universe was toppled by the discovery of subatomic particles, X-rays and radioactivity. Within ten years, physicists had to discard their fundamental belief in a material universe for it was recognized that the universe was actually made of energy whose mechanics obeyed the laws of Quantum Physics. That little piece of Universe Humor profoundly altered the course of civilization, taking us from steam engines to rocket ships, from telegraphs to computers.
Well… the Cosmic Prankster has struck again!

Read the rest of the article to laugh along as he shares one of the most portentous punchlines in scientific history, with implications that are, quite frankly, staggering, once you really start to think on it. Here's a hint as to what it's all about: "A roundworm and an Irishman walk into the Human Genome Project headquarters..."

3. After spending two years behind bars for violating the Espionage Act, former CIA employee John Kiriakou is now a free man. His crime? Informing the world about illegal torture being carried out by his coworkers, his superiors, and his government. In what ranks as one of the most brutal ironies yours truly has encountered in decades of political observation, Kiriakou is the only CIA employee to ever be sent to prison over the agency's illegal torture program. Not for participating in it, but for exposing it. Kiriakou explains:

“Let’s say you see evidence of torture and you go to your supervisor; he’s part of the torture program. You go to his superior but he’s the one who ordered the torture program. You go to the general counsel; he approved the torture program. You go to the committees; they have been briefed on the torture program and have raised no objection. Where do you go? There is no other place to go but the press.”

Read the rest of this eye-opening SputnikNews.com interview with Kiriakou for insights on continuing CIA abuses, the questionable ethics behind the Espionage Act, the lack of protection for whistleblowers, and the casual brutality of prison life in America.

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ FEB 10

1. Okay, if you had to choose, which of the following two scenarios would you prefer: for there to be bubonic plague DNA found throughout your city's public transit system? or for more than half the DNA to be "of unknown origin"? Well, if you're in New York, lucky you, because you don't have to choose! BOTH scenarios are true! And there's a handy dandy interactive map to show you exactly where all the most disgusting pathogens are concentrated! Hooray for antibiotic resistant, radioactive e.coli!

2. Here's an intriguing little experiment in publishing related novelty: a book with a cover that judges you. The damn thing won't even unlock until you pull a face that it approves of! Here's a video that shows how it works, although I can't for the life of me figure out who would need this. Maybe the CIA?

3. While the above book-related technology is kind of cute, I can see a whole lot of potential for mischief - especially of the malevolent variety - with this book related technology, which ostensibly "allows" the reader of a book to experience what the characters in the book are experiencing. From the article:

It's straight out of the pages of science fiction: a "wearable" book, which uses temperature controls and lighting to mimic the experiences of a story's protagonist, has been dreamed up by academics at MIT. The book, explain the researchers, senses the page a reader is on, and changes ambient lighting and vibrations to "match the mood". A series of straps form a vest which contains a "heartbeat and shiver simulator", a body compression system, temperature controls and sound. "Changes in the protagonist's emotional or physical state trigger discrete feedback in the wearable [vest], whether by changing the heartbeat rate, creating constriction through air pressure bags, or causing localised temperature fluctuations," say the academics. Dubbed "sensory fiction", the idea was developed by Felix Heibeck, Alexis Hope and Julie Legault at MIT's media lab. The prototype story used was James Tiptree Jr's Hugo award-winning novella "The Girl Who Was Plugged In", in which the protagonist P Burke – who is deformed by pituitary dystrophy and herself experiences life through an avatar – feels "both deep love and ultimate despair, the freedom of Barcelona sunshine and the captivity of a dark damp cellar", said the researchers.

I can't help but wonder what reading Fight Club would be like while strapped into this contraption. Or American Psycho. The possibilities are endless. As an added bonus link. You can read the Tiptree novella at this here link, free of charge.

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ FEB 9

1. See that video up there? It's called "Riding Light" and it's a simulator of sorts. You, the viewer (and listener; the music is great) get to hitch a ride on of a single light particle - or photon - as it backs away from it's mother, the Sun, at (duh) the speed of light. As you pass Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and some minor planets in the asteroid belt on your way to Jupiter and its moons, you start to realize just exactly how truly, mind-bogglingly huge astronomical distances really are. It's a real slick production, and I stuck with it for the whooooooole trip. Can you do the same?

2. There's an excellent think piece up for free on the New Yorker website about how Islamic State recruitment videos owe a seeming stylistic debt to the immensely popular "First Person Shooter" (FPS) style videogame genre. It begins:

In a recruitment video for the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS that has been making the rounds of some uglier parts of the Internet, a man sits in a plastic chair on a porch, a rifle stuck between his knees. ... A bullet hits the cement wall behind his head, kicking up a puff of dust. He gets to his feet and stumbles forward, confused and disoriented. The view changes: an overlay effect makes it look as if the man is being watched through a sniper’s scope. A red dot zeroes in on the man’s midsection. There is a gunshot; the man recoils. As he grimaces in pain, the footage grinds down to render, in slow motion, every expression of his face, his flailing arms. ... The mechanics of all this should be familiar to anyone who has played a first-person-shooter video game in the past ten years. In Halo, Call of Duty, Gears of War, and pretty much every other F.P.S. sold today ... The similarities between ISIS recruitment films and first-person-shooter games are likely intentional.

The article's top pull-quote comes from another piece of ISIL propaganda: "THIS IS OUR CALL OF DUTY AND WE RESPAWN IN JANNAH!" Fucking goofs.

3. The entire first episode of the Amazon.com-funded television mini-series version of Philip K. Dick's classic 1962 novel The Man in the High Castle - perhaps the finest of all "what if the Nazis had won" novels - is up for all and sundry to watch on Youtube. Fair warning: even though it's been decades since I've read Dick's novel, this version appears to have veered significantly from the source. In the plus column, I do quite like the art production. Those giant Nazi jumbo passenger jets look damn snazzy.

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ FEB 6

1. I love the pun in the headline of this story about a recent study that shows petro-diplomacy has been at the heart of almost every aggressive action taken by any nation state over the last hundred years: "Crude Conspiracy Theories Could Be Right". Actually, the research presented in the article shows that said title is actually overly conservative in its appraisal of the situation! It begins:

Researchers have for the first time provided strong evidence for what conspiracy theorists have long thought – oil is often the reason for interfering in another country’s war.
Throughout recent history, countries which need oil have found reasons to interfere in countries with a good supply of it and, the researchers argue, this could help explain the US interest in ISIS in northern Iraq.
Researchers from the Universities of Warwick, Portsmouth, and Essex modelled the decision-making process of third-party countries in interfering in civil wars and examined their economic motives.
They found that the decision to interfere was dominated by the interveners’ need for oil over and above historical, geographical or ethnic ties.

The rest of this short article is well worth checking out. 

2. In our neverending quest to bring you an excellent piece of short fiction with every one of these "suggested reading lists", today the DDD gang brings you a spooky masterpiece by one of the 20th century's early masters of the form: Conan creator Robert E. Howard's "Pigeons From Hell"! I know, I know... that title! But it's actually a fantastic story, which you can read, totally free of charge and without any special software, at this link. The story begins:

Griswell awoke suddenly, every nerve tingling with a premonition of imminent peril. He stared about wildly, unable at first to remember where he was, or what he was doing there. Moonlight filtered in through the dusty windows, and the great empty room with its lofty ceiling and gaping black fireplace was spectral and unfamiliar. Then as he emerged from the clinging cobwebs of his recent sleep, he remembered where he was and how he came to be there. He twisted his head and stared at his companion, sleeping on the floor near him. John Branner was but a vaguely bulking shape in the darkness that the moon scarcely grayed.

And it only gets better from there!

3. Ever get the feeling that Apocalyptic, "end of the world" fiction isn't packing the same punch nowadays that it used to? Well, turns out you're not the only one, as evinced by this Public Books article, titled "What's the Matter With Dystopia?", which begins: 

Dystopia is flourishing. In the process, it is becoming routine and losing its political power.

If current fiction is to be believed, postapocalyptic wastelands will in the not too distant future be as common as parking lots, deadly plagues as widespread as the flu, and cannibalism no more unusual than a visit to McDonald’s. Dozens of writers have delved into the genre over the last decade, from newcomers such as Edan Lepucki (California, 2014) to old hands like Cormac McCarthy (The Road, 2006). Young adult novels in the genre abound, from Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy (2008–2010) and Veronica Roth’s Divergent series (2011–2013) to Lydia Millet’s Pills and Starships (2014). The scenarios stretch from hurricanes that devastate New York City, as in Nathaniel Rich’s eerily prescient Odds Against Tomorrow (2013), to global infestations of genetically engineered species that drive humankind to the edge of starvation, as in Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009). The fall season of 2014 added a host of new offerings in the genre, including David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, Michael Faber’s Book of Strange New Things, and Howard Jacobson’s J. 

Dystopia as a literary genre by and large developed in the 20th century, in the shadow of world wars, totalitarianisms, genocides, and looming threats of nuclear war and environmental crisis—with a few earlier exceptions such as Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville’s Le dernier homme (1805) and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826). Over much of the 20th century, it functioned as a powerful tool of political criticism, from E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” (1909), Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up (1972), and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976).

There's a bit more of a history lesson cum booklist recommendations, but author Ursula Heise gets to the meat of her argument - "If there's one thing that stands out about the deluge of dystopias over the last decade, it is their untiring attention to routines of everyday life" - before too long. It's a good read. Enjoy!

DDD SUGGESTED READING ~ FEB 2

1. A recent article by Internet security expert Soren Dreier begins:

Here are some sordid scenarios. Your ex-girlfriend can see every time you swipe right while using Tinder. Your former husband is secretly listening to and recording your late-night Skype sessions with your new boyfriend. 

Some random slippery-dick is jacking off to the naked photos in your private photo library. For millions of people, it’s not hypothetical. Someone could be spying on every call, Facebook message, snapchat, text, sext, each single keystroke you tap out on your phone, and you’d never know. 

I’m not talking about the NSA (though that too); I’m talking about software fine-tuned for comprehensive stalking—”spyware”—that is readily available to any insecure spouse, overzealous boss, overbearing parent, crazy stalker or garden-variety creep with a credit card. 

It’s an unambiguously malevolent private eye panopticon cocktail of high-grade voyeurism, sold legally. And if it’s already on your phone, there’s no way you can tell.

Pretty intriguing stuff, no? Keep reading to find out more.

2. Yesterday, I linked to an online copy of the classic Franz Kafka short story, "In the Penal Colony". Today, I bring you another disturbing short story classic, postmodernist extraordinaire Robert Coover's notorious "The Babysitter", which you can read, online, for free, at this link, and which begins thusly:

She arrives at 7:40, ten minutes late, but the children, Jimmy and Bitsy, are still eating supper, and their parents are not ready to go yet. From other rooms come the sounds of a baby screaming, water running, a television musical (no words: probably a dance number--patterns of gliding figures come to mind). Mrs. Tucker sweeps into the kitchen, fussing with her hair, and snatches a baby bottle full of milk out of a pan of warm water, rushes out again. "Harry!" she calls. "The babysitter's here already!"

It's a classic, it's nice and short, and you won't soon forget it. Also, please feel free to contact me and let me know if you're enjoying my decision to run more fiction in these "suggested readings". You can either leave a comment below or contact me directly at jerkyleboeuf@gmail.com, as usual!

3. I've noticed the rapid proliferation of a Youtube video in which Irish TV host Gay Byrne gets an earful from actor Stephen Fry when he asks what the noted atheist would say if he were to find God waiting for him at the Pearly Gates upon dying. Watch Fry's response:

Although it's fun to watch Byrne squirm as Fry lets loose with his unabashed take on the issue, I don't think his answer is all that enlightened or intelligent. I would even call it philosophically naive, for in a universe without evil, pain and suffering, the concepts of goodness, love and pleasure would have no meaning. Absolutely none, whatsoever. These things only exist in contrast to each other. Also, if an eternal paradisical afterlife did, in fact, exist, any suffering experienced by anyone in this mortal, finite world of ours - no matter how tremendous, terrible or unjust - would seem utterly inconsequential by comparison. I'm not saying that I believe that this is the case; I'm just saying that Fry's stance in this instance is philosophically unsophisticated, no matter how posh his accent.

DDD SUGGESTED READING ~ FEB 1, 2015

1. Have you heard about the plan to transform Honduras into a Libertarian "Free Market" Wonderland? Over at Alternet, The Nightmare Libertarian Project to Turn This Central American Country Into Ayn Rand's Paradise has all the juicy details. After detailing some of the ramifications of the 2009 coup that ousted President Jose Manuel Zelaya and the subsequent election of Porfirio "Pepe Lobo" Sosa, who eventually handed over the Presidency to his hand-picked successor, Juan Orlando Hernandez - the selling off of public utilities, properties, and services to "private" interests and the militarization of security forces being top of the list - the article goes on to describe a peculiar new sociological experiment with "Zonas de Empleo y Desarrollo Económico" (special employment and economic development zones), also known as ZEDEs or “charter cities.” From the article:

According to reporting by Danielle Marie Mackey for the New Republic last month, here is how the project works: "An investor, either international or local, builds infrastructure. ... The territory in which they invest becomes an autonomous zone from Honduras... The investing company must write the laws that govern the territory, establish the local government, hire a private police force, and even has the right to set the educational system and collect taxes." 

An earlier article by Erika Piquero at Latin Correspondent described the law as “allowing the corporations and individuals funding the ZEDEs to dictate the entire structural organization of the zone, including laws, tax structure, healthcare system, education and security forces. This kind of flexibility is unprecedented even in similar models around the world.” 

George Rodríguez reported for the Tico Times that the plan was previously challenged and ruled unconstitutional in Honduras' supreme court, but Hernandez "twisted arms, had the [dissenting] judges removed, and brought in obedient replacements." Hernandez then re-tooled the bill and pushed it through the congress. 

As Mackey reported, "The ZEDE’s central government is stacked with libertarian foreigners," including a former speechwriter for presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., conservative political operative Grover Norquist, a senior member of the Cato Institute think tank, and Ronald Reagan's son Michael, as well as "a Danish banker, a Peruvian economist, and an Austrian general secretary of the Friedrich Hayek Institute."

And if you think the plans listed above are disturbing, wait until you read the rest of the article, which details the links between Honduras's home-grown One Percenters and the newly militarized police force, private security goon squads, and vicious street gangs that they will no doubt be relying on to provide "security" for this Brave New World of Libertarian Fiscal Freedom. As Maya Kroth wrote in September for Foreign Policy: "Critics worry that evidence to date — the government’s opaque approach, the ZEDEs’ undemocratic features, the cast of characters backing the scheme, and the vulnerabilities of people likely to be affected by development — indicate that charter cities would be little more than predatory, privatized utopias, with far-reaching, negative implications for Honduran sovereignty and the well-being of poor communities."

2. Have you ever read Franz Kafka's "In The Penal Colony"? No? Well then, here's your chance. For free, even! Go ahead... what are you afraid of? Being a tiny bit better read than you were before? It's Kafka! He's an important 20th century voice, it'll take you like 20 minutes to read, and you should read something by Kafka before you die. This particular story also happens to be a whole lot more entertaining than the far more popular "Metamorphosis", in which the protagonist wakes up in his bed as a giant dung beetle.

3. Although regular Dirt readers probably know about my admiration for Frank Zappa, my love of early Pink Floyd and my fondness for obscure 70's Prog Rock, I don't often discuss my musical preferences in my blogs. There are numerous reasons for this. For one thing, writing about music isn't really my forte. I like what I like, and that's that. And one genre of music that I sometime enjoy is death metal. I have long been a fan of Celtic Frost, for instance, and I think their 2006 release, Monotheist, was probably the finest album of any genre released in that year, and "Synagoga Satanae" the best metal song of the decade. More recently, this week I came across "Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel" by Polish death metal band Behemoth, from their critically acclaimed CD, The Satanist, and I really, really like it. I think there's some pretty powerful stuff going on here, and after checking out this analysis of the lyrics for the whole album, I found a lot of food for thought. Anyway, enjoy the video, embedded below, and let me know what you think of it!

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ JAN 30, 2015

1. Ever wondered what a 24-course meal at the most prestigious restaurant in the world (which runs you roughly $280 American-ass dollars, without the wine)? Well then, you're in luck, because rapper and food TV show host Action Bronson just posted an Instagram report of a meal he just experienced at Noma, in Copenhagen. The ingredients in these dishes range from "flowers and sea urchin to ants and grasshopper". The dish above is the first course: fresh berries in fresh herbs. You can see and read all about the rest of the dishes at this Sploid article.

2. I have a feeling that most of the people who read the Daily Dirt Diaspora family of blogs are probably big fans of "science" as a catch-all term, and self-declared foes of "anti-science" or quackery, or pseudo-science or whatever other term you might want to use. As such, I imagine that a large percentage of my readers believe that the so-called "Wakefield Study" that raised suspicions about certain vaccines and particular vaccination practices has been well and duly "de-bunked" and exposed as a particularly egregious example of medical and scientific "fraud". The reason you probably believe that is because of a journalistic war apparently waged by a single lone crusader - Brian Deer - whose work serves as the foundation for the massive anti-anti-vaccine movement (a movement far larger, better funded, and far better organized than the so-called anti-vaccine movement ever was). So before you make any final decisions about what's safe to believe in this matter, you might want to read up a little bit about this Deer fellow's background. It ain't pretty, and the fact that this one man's propaganda has played an integral role in shaping the course of medical history for the worse is, quite frankly, terrifying.

3. If you're reading this, then you should already be a huge fan of British filmmaker Adam Curtis' work by now. His documentaries and documentary series - from the in-depth exploration of Sigmund Freud's influence on the 20th century of The Century of the Self, to the parallel examinations of the founding fathers of Islamism (Sayed Qotb) and Neoconservatism (Leo Strauss) of The Power of Nightmares - all of Curtis' films are absolute must-see material for anyone hoping to even aspire to begin grappling with the Big Ideas and World Historic shiftings of the dawning Third Millennium. 

And now, after having premiered on BBC last week, his most recent documentary - Bitter Lake - is up for all to see on Youtube. It's all about the "coalition" failures, mostly in Afghanistan, and, as usual for Curtis, there's footage here that will leave you wondering, "where and how in the name of high holy FUCK did he get this footage?! and why have I never seen it before?!?"

Particularly sly is this one part where we see footage of these art teachers that the British military have flown into the newly "liberated" Afghanistan to teach the locals about "conceptual art". As one of these clueless lassies proudly shows a slide of Marcel Duschamp's "Fountain" (a urinal attached to a gallery wall), explaining how it was "a revolutionary statement" about how "art is whatever I say it is", the looks on the students faces is absolutely priceless. Talk about your misguided efforts.

You can watch it here, below, but I recommend you cruise on over to Youtube and watch it in HD, full-screen, because you're not going to want to miss a single image or moment. 

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ JAN 24, 2015

1. If you don't know who Barrett Brown is, what multiple governments claim he did, and the ridiculously severe penalties he has been forced to pay - and might be forced to continue paying - for said crimes... well then, I suggest you read on.

After spending more than two years behind bars, Barrett Brown will learn his fate this morning in a Dallas, Texas, courtroom. His original indictment carried a maximum sentence of 105 years. But as per the terms of a 2014 plea deal, the journalist and firebrand now faces a maximum sentence of eight and half years in prison. Charges against Brown stem from his association with the FBI’s then-most wanted hacker, Jeremy Hammond, who in 2011 exfiltrated private data from Austin-based intelligence firm, Stratfor.
During a hearing last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Candina Heath revived arguments based on the original 105-year indictment—that Brown may have broken the law by sharing a hyperlink in a public chat room to a file containing Stratfor's stolen credit cards. In early 2014, the government abandoned a related indictment, widely portrayed by supporters and journalists as an attack on the freedom of the press. However, federal sentencing guidelines require judges to hear the prosecution’s arguments regardless of whether or not the pertinent charges were dropped.
Kevin Gallagher, director of Brown’s defense fund, said in a statement Wednesday that supporters are hoping for a sentence of time served. “Every journalist in the world should be paying attention to what happens here, because it affects them directly,” he said. Brown will address presiding U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay before his ruling for the last time on Thursday. The complete text of his prepared statement is published here.

Find out what happened at Brown's sentencing hearing at the link provided directly above. Then, start considering cloaking your online activities behind a robust and muscular encryption. And always remember, just because you think you've got nothing to hide, that doesn't mean THEY can't nail you for some stupid thing or other.

2. Speaking of privacy and security, Gizmodo's annual list of the year's Top 25 Most Popular Passwords continues to amaze, delight, and stupefy. Here's how it starts off, along with position changes from last year:

25. trustno1 (Down 1)

24. batman (New)

23. 123123 (Down 12)

22. 696969 (New)

21. superman (New)

20. michael (New)

19. master (New)

18. shadow (Unchanged)

17. access (New)

16. mustang (New)

15. 111111 (Down 8)

If you think these passwords are stupid, wait until you get a load of the rest of the list.

3. Via Sploid I just found out that a "controversial" American research biologist has created a strain of influenza that can cut through the human body's defense mechanisms the way bullets sprayed from a helicopter-mounted 50 calibre machine gun cut through men, women, children and cattle during the Vietnam war. The London Independent explains:

Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has genetically manipulated the 2009 strain of pandemic flu in order for it to “escape” the control of the immune system’s neutralising antibodies, effectively making the human population defenceless against its reemergence.
Most of the world today has developed some level of immunity to the 2009 pandemic flu virus, which means that it can now be treated as less dangerous “seasonal flu”. However, The Independent understands that Professor Kawaoka intentionally set out to see if it was possible to convert it to a pre-pandemic state in order to analyse the genetic changes involved.
The study is not published, however some scientists who are aware of it are horrified that Dr Kawaoka was allowed to deliberately remove the only defence against a strain of flu virus that has already demonstrated its ability to create a deadly pandemic that killed as many as 500,000 people in the first year of its emergence.
Professor Kawaoka has so far kept details of the research out of the public domain but admitted today that the work is complete and ready for submission to a scientific journal.

I have nothing to add to this story, other than to ask, why is it that so many smart people are such absolute fucking IDIOTS a lot of the time?!

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ JAN 23, 2015

1. Australian comics creator Christian Read has something to say about right-wing-troll-slash-actor Adam Baldwin, the role he played in Gamergate, and the recent controversy about his scheduled appearance at the biggest genre convention Down Under, Supanova. I think it's worth reading, so I'm linking to it in this space. It begins:

Let’s talk about Adam Baldwin at Supanova, an Australian pop culture convention. I’ve debated a few days about posting this but my voice is being dismissed as simply agitating, so I’ll bring it home.
I have worked in the games industry. I know a few women in the games industry and maintain casual internet friendships with a few more. I know women games journalists. I know a lot of women gamers.
Gamergate, which Adam Baldwin started and supported, has made a lot of us angry. It is transparently an organised attack on women and if you think differently, you’re wrong. No debate will be entered in to.
I spoke out against it online. My partner, a tech journalist spoke out against it. And the both of us copped flak. Just reply after reply ranging from faux ‘oh be reasonable’ to personal insults, each one tediously stupid. Me? An SJW? Don’t make me laugh.
Then, the doxxings, the death threats, all that appeared. Go check it out. And that shit gets your attention.

Read is no knee-jerk identity politics whine-monger. That's why I consider his take on this issue to be so valuable. I urge anyone interested in the subject to read the entire thing.

2. If you ever think you've spotted a USB port sticking out of a wall, street curb or other piece of civic infrastructure... turns out you may not have been hallucinating! 

Aram Bartholl came up with this idea for an art project called “Dead Drops” in order to create an anonymous, offline file-sharing network in public space. These USB drives are completely public and anyone can plug in their devices to drop or find files. Each ‘Dead Drop’ USB is empty except for a .txt file which explains the project.
The idea is pretty unique and fun but your laptop may get scratches or a broken USB port. However, it may get handy if you want to start a revolution through an anonymous file sharing from a flash drive.

There's even a handy how-to video at the link. The phenomenon is mostly restricted to New York these days, but I have a feeling you'll be seeing more of these odd little info-pipes sticking out of things in other metropolitan areas in the very near future. The implications are just too good!

3. [adult swim]'s "Infomercials" series presented us all with what was, at times, satire of such exceedingly high quality that it's literally surprising to me when one of their videos falls flat. And fall flat is exactly what Farcopter, the very least among that series' efforts, does in style. In fact, it's so unsuccessful that it's actually worth watching if you harbor any creative ambitions of your own, just to see what not to do if tasked with creating short form nonsense comedy for cable TV. Ah well... they can't all be SmartPipe!

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ JAN 22, 2015

1. Christopher Miller is the author of a wonderful new book called American Cornball, in which he sets out to chronicle the USA's age-old love affair with naughty, raunchy comedy, both written and illustrated. To go along with it as a kind of evolving appendix, he's put together an excellent and surprisingly funny tumblr where he hosts images and jokes there wasn't enough room for in his book. From American Cornball's Harper Collins promo page:

Miller revisits nearly 200 comic staples that have been passed down through our culture for generations, many originating from the vaudeville age. He explores the (often unseemly) contexts from which they arose, why they were funny in their time, and why they eventually lost their appeal. The result is a kind of taxonomy of humor during America's golden age that provides a deeper, more profound look at the prejudices, preoccupations, and peculiarities of a nation polarized between urban and rural, black and white, highborn and lowbrow. As he touches on issues of racism and sexism, cultural stereotypes and violence, Miller reveals how dramatically our moral sensibilities have shifted, most notably in the last few decades. Complete with more than 100 period illustrations, American Cornball is a richly entertaining survey of our shifting comic universe.

Needless to say, yer old pal Jerky highly recommends it!

2. And, continuing in the spirit of what used to make (North) Americans laugh, here's an excellent (if somewhat dated) Boston Globe think-piece on Constance Rourke's classic 1931 text American Humor: A Study of the National Character, which may be read in its entirety at this University of Virginia link. Here's a description of some of Rourke's work from the Globe piece to give you a taste:

The funniest American types, in Rourke's opinion, were the Yankee, the frontiersman, and the minstrel. To explain the rise of these three archetypal American characters, she quoted the philosopher Henri Bergson: "The comic comes into being just when society and the individual, freed from the worry of self-preservation, begin to regard themselves as works of art." Europe might have castles, cathedrals, and rock sculpture by druids, but the United States had garrulous hicks who were canny enough not to mind being mistaken for fools.

3. It is perhaps ironic that in this particular edition of the Daily Dirt Diaspora Suggested Reading List, ostensibly concerned as it seems to be with the subject of humor, that we are featuring the second-least successful of the [adult swim] series of videos entitled Infomercials:. In Search of Miracle Man. It's really too bad, too, because I'm a big fan of both Matt Besser and Rich Fulcher. Oh well, maybe you'll find something in it that I don't. And for completeness' sake, I'm running it. At least it's better than Fartcopter (see this space tomorrow!).

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ JAN 22, 2015

1. Did you ever wonder how, where and why the concept of "jay-walking" first originated? As you might have guessed by the fact that I'm linking to a story about it, it's probably not how, where and why you first thought! The story begins...

100 years ago, if you were a pedestrian, crossing the street was simple: you walked across it.
Today, if there's traffic in the area and you want to follow the law, you need to find a crosswalk. And if there's a traffic light, you need to wait for it to change to green.
Fail to do so, and you're committing a crime: jaywalking. In some cities — Los Angeles, for instance — police ticket tens of thousands of pedestrians annually for jaywalking, with fines of up to $250.
To most people, this seems part of the basic nature of roads. But it's actually the result of an aggressive, forgotten 1920s campaign led by auto groups and manufacturers that redefined who owned the city street.

2. Fortean Times is one of the finest publications going. Unfortunately, since they enjoy being a financially solvent operation, that means they don't like to put their excellent content up online for free, so that any asshole can tuck in, willy-nilly. That's too bad, because every once in a while they publish a story that it really is in the public interest to spread and have as widely known as possible. Case in point? One of their recent features on the bizarre fate of big-time Hollywood screenwriter Gary Devore, who disappeared mysteriously after a number of unidentified spooks clued him in to some dark secrets about the invasion of Panama in the 1980's. Thankfully, one of my fellow Rigorous Intuition readers typed out the entire story on the RigInt message board to share with all and sundry! And hoo-boy, is it ever a page-turner...

Gary had been returning from actress friend Marsha Mason’s New Mexico residence where he had just finished a screenplay he’d told his wife would be the hardest-hitting piece of film Hollywood had ever seen. A year later, in the summer of 1998, his car was located by a police dive team in a shallow aqueduct following a tip-off from an ‘amateur sleuth’. Inside the vehicle, belted into the front seat and dressed in Gary’s cowboy clothing, sat a skeletal corpse.
The Californian Highway Patrol wrote a 158-page report declaring it an accid­ent: case closed. And that was that… except for the fact that many of those who knew Gary Devore remain convinced that the official investigation was a whitewash, that Gary was murdered, and that the US government itself has been trying to wipe clean its fingerprints from the case.

Keep reading, folks, it only gets deeper and darker from thereon out.

3. And now, thank [adult swim] for this Infomercial selling you Goth Fitness!

DDD SUGGESTED READING ~ JAN 13, 2015

1. You know the Pillars of Creation? That massive celestial structure that makes you go "oooh" and "aaaah" every time they show up on PBS or in the pages of Scientific Astronomy or whatever? Turns out they're not there anymore. Like, they're gone, man. But we can still see them. But they're gone. But they're still there. But not. Look, I know it sounds daft, but read this Sploid article to find out exactly what's up about what, exactly, is or isn't "up there" anymore. And how.

2. I know I've been using this space to harp incessantly on about the Charlie HEBDO attack, as though this new think piece by Slavoj Zizek says so much that I wished I'd said - and then some - that I just can't help but post it. It also doesn't hurt things that Zizek quotes some very germain Nietzsche, as well as from my favorite piece of poetry, Yeats' The Second Coming. He begins:

Now, when we are all in a state of shock after the killing spree in the Charlie Hebdo offices, it is the right moment to gather the courage to think. We should, of course, unambiguously condemn the killings as an attack on the very substance our freedoms, and condemn them without any hidden caveats (in the style of "Charlie Hebdo was nonetheless provoking and humiliating the Muslims too much"). But such pathos of universal solidarity is not enough – we should think further.
Such thinking has nothing whatsoever to do with the cheap relativisation of the crime (the mantra of "who are we in the West, perpetrators of terrible massacres in the Third World, to condemn such acts"). It has even less to do with the pathological fear of many Western liberal Leftists to be guilty of Islamophobia. ... What is much more needed than the demonisation of the terrorists into heroic suicidal fanatics is a debunking of this demonic myth.

You really need to read this.

3. And, finally, a much needed dose of hilarity courtesy of [adult swim]! Newbridge Tourism invites you to visit the Little Town that Wishes it Could, but Can't!

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ JAN 11, 2015

1. This here essay, by author Kenan Malik, is the definitive statement on the Charlie HEBDO massacre, and the definitive response to the increasingly obnoxious chorus of sub-moronic moral midgets who claim that the people working at the magazine "had it coming", or ridiculously accusing them of "racism". It begins...

‘Je suis Charlie’. It’s a phrase in every newspaper, in every Twitter feed, on demonstrations in cities across Europe. The expressions of solidarity with those slain in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices are impressive. They are also too late. Had journalists and artists and political activists taken a more robust view on free speech over the past 20 years then we may never have come to this. Instead, they have helped create a new culture of self-censorship. 

Later in the essay, Malik explains:

The irony is that those who most suffer from a culture of censorship are minority communities themselves. Any kind of social change or social progress necessarily means offending some deeply held sensibilities. ‘You can’t say that!’ is all too often the response of those in power to having their power challenged. To accept that certain things cannot be said is to accept that certain forms of power cannot be challenged.

The essay just gets better - and more devastating to the reprehensible lazy lefty knee-jerk response - from that point on. This is a must-read editorial and I urge you to share it with everyone you know.

2. A little while ago, I used this space to link to an io9 story about evil technologies that should never be developed. One of those technologies was the creation of exotic brain tech to help make punishments for criminals more harsh and devastating - stuff like, for instance, meddling with a prisoner's sense of time so that it feels like they're rotting in jail for a thousand years... or more. Well, recently, New Atlantis writer Ari Schulman wrote a scathing blog post about this exact complex of proposed technologies, only to have the proposer enter the conversation in his blog's message section. Now I'm posting there, too! Why not pop on over and join the fray? Or at least just read the damn article. It's a good one, and New Atlantis has a bunch of other cool stuff for those interested in philosophy and deep cultural analysis. I've now added that site to our blog-list, on the right.

3. Once again, we finish things off with a short but sweet fake informercial from [adult swim]! This time, gaze in wide wonder at the results of Alpha Chow!

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ JAN 10, 2015

1. Two years ago, the editor of Charlie HEBDO wrote an editorial defending his magazine against bogus charges of racism. On Wednesday of this week, Charb - the pen name of editor Stephane Charbonnier - was one of 12 people gunned down in the massacre at the mag's Parisian head office. Click on the link above to read the powerful words of a man who is now less than a ghost because of sneering, churning spite brought to hideous life and disguised as an ideology. An excerpt:

Forty years ago, it was considered obligatory to jeer, run down, even crap on religion. Anyone who set about to criticize the way the world was going could not fail to question the great power of the biggest clerical organizations. But according to some people, in truth more and more people, these days you’ve got to shut your mouth. Charlie still devotes many of its cover illustrations to Papists. But the Muslim religion, imposed like a flag on innumerable people across the planet, as far away as Indonesia, must somehow be spared. Why the hell? What is the relationship, unless it’s just ideological, between the fact of being Arab, for example, and belonging to Islam?

2. Long-time readers of the DDD family of blogs are well aware of my long-term man crush on documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis. I'm also a huge fan of his frequent collaborator, Charlie Brooker. Well, apparently, Curtis has a new doc on the way, and judging from this nugget that was showcased in Brooker's 2014 "year in review" TV special, it's looking like a real doozy. Why is everything we're told by The Powers That Be confusing and contradictory? And what does a former avant garde artist from Russia have to do with "a new system of political control" that aims to keep citizens (subjects?) in "a constant state of destabilized perception"? Check out the clip below to find out. It's chilling, and it's essential watching.

3. And now, for our daily dose of levity from [adult swim]... "Live Forever as you Are Today!" And it's all thanks to science and technology! WOW!

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ JAN 9, 2015

1. If you only read one editorial about what went down in Paris on Wednesday at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie HEBDO, make it this one by George Packer.

The murders today in Paris are not a result of France’s failure to assimilate two generations of Muslim immigrants from its former colonies. They’re not about French military action against the Islamic State in the Middle East, or the American invasion of Iraq before that. They’re not part of some general wave of nihilistic violence in the economically depressed, socially atomized, morally hollow West - the Paris version of Newtown or Oslo. Least of all should they be “understood” as reactions to disrespect for religion on the part of irresponsible cartoonists. ... Because the ideology is the product of a major world religion, a lot of painstaking pretzel logic goes into trying to explain what the violence does, or doesn’t, have to do with Islam.

Read the whole thing. Read it. Especially if you secretly harbor niggling doubts about whether the people who work at Charlie HEBDO might have been "asking for it". Read it now.

2. If you don't know who David Cole is, how he figures into the story of Hollywood's underground right-wing establishment, and what he did before he got into the business of being America's #1 Republican Party Animal - I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with "Folocaust denier" - then boy howdy, wait'll you get a load of this crazy excerpt from his upcoming book by our good friends at Feral House Publishing!

3. And as a fitting satirical finish to today's otherwise tragic selections, please join me in watching [adult swim]'s hilariously sacrilegious parody infomercial, The Book of Christ. 

DDD SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ JAN 8, 2014

1. Peter Bebergal, author of the new book Season of the Witch: How The Occult Saved Rock and Roll, which I recently purchased and which I will be reviewing in depth later this month, also recently wrote an edition of The New Yorker's "Page Turner" column, in which he gives a very good overview of the career of the "high fantasy" author Michael Moorcock,  whom he calls The Anti-Tolkien.

From his first job, editing a Tarzan fan magazine at the age of seventeen, to his seventieth novel, which will be released in January, he has essentially written the other style guide for modern fantasy. Moorcock is the author of an almost uncountable number of short stories; he’s edited anthologies, written critical books of nonfiction and had his novel “Mother London” shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. With that output, Moorcock is likely to have written some duds, but he is quick to acknowledge his own limitations. He once wrote, “I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I’d rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas”

If you're looking for some compulsively readable, unapologetically fun genre reading material, I can wholeheartedly recommend Moorcock's entire Elric Saga as some of the best times I've ever spent reading fantasy. Bebergal's article serves as an excellent primer for anyone interested in exploring this writer's work any further.

2. Today, we're beginning a new tradition! From this edition forth, the first selection for the day's Suggested Reading List will be an article or text-based interview of some sort, preferably of an informative nature, but entertaining, regardless. The third selection will be, as it has been for a while, a comedic short video, likely but not exclusively from [adult swim]. In the middle, the second selection will henceforth be a video of a "serious" nature; probably a documentary of some sort. Today's "serious" video selection is What's In My Baggie?, a documentary about the dangers of the burgeoning "research chemicals" movement. It's sometimes harrowing, always informative, and very much worth watching and sharing with your more experimental loved ones.

3. And here, once again, we finish things off with our now traditional selection from the [adult swim] programming bloc! Today, behold the awesome power of the BROOM-shaka-laka!

JE SUIS CHARLIE