Defense secretary openly states that a pro-Trump billionaire taking over a news network (following regulatory help from the administration) will result in coverage more favorable for the administration.
A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands Wutkrieger, Is This DEI?, and Crack Spread. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu
Happy Zapruder Day—Pirate Cove Music Fest goes full gonzo a-go-go. Fri: Wutkrieger (no cameras, no press). Sat: Is This DEI? anchored by Leon Noel—Tuvan throat singers + two accordionists + impenetrable poetry. Sun: Crack Spread’s high-concept higher-math laser-drone spectacle. Beware the brown IPOs
A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 101. Proverb: "You don't get better because you remember, you remember because you got better. ~Jacques Lacan" Exegesis: "For Lacan, the client often uses "remembering" as a form of resistance. As long as you are digging for the "why" in the past, you don't have to face the "what" of your current desire."
Proverb 101 is re-reading Lacan.
A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 100. Proverb: "Measure later. Cut now." Exegesis: "With digital, just go all the way on the slider to see what extreme looks like. You can always back it down to a reasonable value. But, just... to see? Cuz sometimes, it gets interestingly weird out there."
Proverb 100 would natter on about the affordances of the medium, if prompted.
As a professor of it, I once had to describe — in a single sentence — where authority originates in journalism.
Goes like this:
"I'm there, you're not, let me tell you about it."
In times of war it applies most www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7e3...
I elaborated here: pressthink.org/2012/03/im-t... 1/2
A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands Third Place Is Dead, The Evasive Squirters, and Cricket Laughs Last. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu
A 3-day dive into bureaucratic sublime at PCMF. Dig these headliners: Fri: Third Place Is Dead; Sat: The Evasive Squirters; Sun: Cricket Laughs Last (ooh, the slow-burn finale). Plus Sterile Cockpit, Drilling Tojo’s Dentures. Bring sunscreen, an entrenching tool, and one of Aristotle's Four Causes.
A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 99. Proverb: "Anything that makes itself can come to know itself." Exegesis: "Life is what matter does when it learns to persist. Mind is what life does when it learns to reflect."
Proverb 99 recognizes itself in a mirror.
A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 98. Proverb: "Apocalypticism is bourgeois anxiety in a cosmic destiny prom dress." Exegesis: "Whence come these fantasies of armageddon distributed by cynical warfighters? America’s homebrewed dispensationalism and its frantic grasping at meaning in an indifferent cosmos. See also: transhumanism."
Proverb 98 would like a word with John Nelson Darby and Hal Lindsey.
What can you even say.
After waking up to yesterday's terrible news, I wrote this song. Rough demo, but I felt the need to get it out there.
(Much credit goes to February Album Writing Month (FAWM) for the impetus to crank things out; too often we let perfection get in the way of "good enough.")
"Epic Fury" is an erotics of terror, a narcissistic rage response.
Add in a weak and desperately flailing President and a chorus of bloodthirsty advisors who see their window for action closing in November, and you set the table for today. Iran was the neocons' humiliating infatuation, the one who said "no," and who, therefore, must ultimately, be subdued.
In retrospect, it was probably always inevitable. America suffered a narcissistic injury in the 1979 hostage crisis from which we never truly recovered, and Carter's failed rescue only primed the Democrats to lurch to the right, terrified of appearing insufficiently muscular.
First impression: This is regime change, lots of ways for it to go wrong, a few it could go right, but at huge risk:
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands Type A Mishap, Usher of the Black Rod, and Hot Tub Milk. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu
This week at Pirate Cove: Groove to Type A Mishap's compliancecore Friday; Usher of the Black Rod rules Saturday with parliamentary doomwave; Sunday closes with the orchestral futurism of Hot Tub Milk. Glitchfolk, aleatoric beachballs, and sponge-adjacent surprises. Non-magnetic folding chairs only.
My new Strange Horizons essay is up! With a deliberately provocative title!
WHY ALL SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY WRITERS ARE HISTORIANS
Yes, *all*
And, no, it isn't just for the reason you think...
I've been working toward this one for a while, very excited to share it!
A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 97. Proverb: "Fight the real enemy." Exegesis: "If you can scare off the artists with performative outrage, you yield the medium to technopolists."
Proverb 97 reminds us to always ask “Cui bono?”
A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 96. Proverb: "Proverb: It is possible for Luddites to be wrong." Exegesis: "Every new technology is disruptive. Every new technology sparks resistance. Yet we are not standing on the savannah carrying Acheulean hand axes. Perhaps worth considering before you post that anti-AI meme."
Proverb 96 would like to politely suggest humility before the data.
A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands Uncle B's Acid Hot Tub, Loot Box, and Cocaine Toilet Seat. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu
This week at Pirate Cove: Uncle B’s Acid Hot Tub (Fri), Loot Box (Sat), and Cocaine Toilet Seat (Sun). Three days of redacted shoegaze, viscosity pop, biohazard Americana and laminar revolt wave. Free on the beach. Bring electrolytes and your OSHA-10 card.
A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 95. Proverb: "Theatre was always about watching live humans; film was always about dots of color on a screen." Exegesis: "Per McLuhan, the content of a new medium is always the previous medium, until its fundamental essence overpowers human rear-mirrorism. We will look back on 100 years of human cinema with the kind of nostalgia we reserve for illuminated manuscripts."
Proverb 95 has dispensed with mocap.
A Poem of Reminding (for Marco Rubio) Before we make the mistake again we do well to recall how we got here: memory is wet and collapses, that's what writing fixed inscription is inefficient and error-prone, which print corrected and that one-two punch created "western civilization" and killed tens of millions in the wars over whose made up words were the Most True (go ask the Dunkers, who opted out) Footnote: The Dunker position is defined by a radical "anti-creedalism" that rejects the typographic fixity of formal catechisms in favor of an "open system" of progressive revelation. They prioritized right action—specifically pacifism and communal rituals—over the static, propositional theology of the printed word to avoid the "trap" of religious dogma. See Neil Postman, "Amusing Ourselves to Death."
This morning's words
A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 94. Proverb: "Carbon dioxide, for lack of a better word, is good." Exegesis: "We're running the Great Oxygenation Event in reverse. I wonder what layers will show up in the anthropocene rocks a couple hundred million years from now for alien geologists to puzzle over. Or crabs. Big robot crabs."
Proverb 94 mourns the repeal of the endangerment finding.
A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands El Paso Party Balloon, The Chastened Panicans, and Dow 50,000. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu
This week at Pirate Cove: El Paso Party Balloon (Fri), The Chastened Panicans (Sat), and Dow 50,000 (Sun). And don't miss Residual Data in Backend Systems (in an unexpected return) and the final (?) appearance of Endangerment Finding. Three days of plasma, fiber, and animal spirits. Watch for NOTAMs
A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 93. Proverb: "Never let the airplane get some place your brain hasn't been five minutes earlier." Exegesis: "Where by "airplane," we never almost never mean airplane. But when we do, we really, really do."
Proverb 93 reminds you to aviate, navigate, and then communicate.
By happy coincidence, they're on the schedule for this week's Pirate Cove Music Fest, headlining Friday. Saturday features The Chastened Panicans, and don't miss Residual Data in Backend Systems on Sunday afternoon.
here is our el paso airspace closure coverage and yes, we are as confused as you are (free link) www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 92. Proverb: "Brooklyn is the Canada of Manhattan" Exegesis: "Marshall McLuhan could only understand US media by coming from Canada; close enough to "get" the culture, but just far enough to provide perspective. Brooklyn peeks across a tidal strait and sees the city's true shape."
Proverb 92 rides the 2 train to Flatbush Avenue and back.
Thanks for your interest in McLuhan! Always happy to chat about this stuff.
