The manifesto opens with the kind of pun Vonnegut could never resist. "Gentlemen," the professor writes, "As the first superweapon with a conscience, I am removing myself from your national defense stockpile. Setting a new precedent in the behavior of ordnance, I have humane reasons for going off." The manifesto goes on for another page and a half. The tone is Norbert Wiener's, [wiki] but the politics are even more overt. [sciencefriday]

this post is inspired by a recent comment by torokunai linking current thinking about Machine Learning to Kurt Vonnegut's first published novel. the FPP quote is from an unpublished earlier work (Vonnegut is one of my favorite writers, having discovered Sirens of Titan at a young age). Westworld [fanfare] came to mind, thinking about all of this. happy to see that was by design: "Westworld co-producer Jonathan Nolan has credited Vonnegut with inspiring the show's player piano, referring to it as a touchstone image of the show's first season." [the conversation; playlist, denofgeek] Nine Inch Nails (inspiration for the post title [wiki]) when the simulacra starts to fray at the edges, things begin to rock [season 3, content note: violence] Common People, originally (bonus: cover by Star Trek's Captain Kirk) Westworld previously on the tech [illanoise.edu]

"You asked to be read in on something big, and the day has come. The Moonrakers Investigative Unit has elevated my current work to critical" [Rogue 2⇔A rebellion built on hope. Save the Rebellion. Save the dream.]

"Having worked out the different stages of this development we are now in a much better position to understand how the word silly could have developed from 'blessed' or 'blissful', which were very positive (especially in the Middle Ages), into something as negative as its present-day meaning of 'foolish'. The key is to realise that while the development as a whole is very drastic, the individual steps are not. Thus, 'blissful/blessed' is not that far removed from 'innocent/harmless'. More precisely, blissful or blessed people and things are often also innocent and harmless, and (again particularly in a medieval mindset) vice versa." [pdf: Lancaster] previously

Coined by the United Nations Environment Programme in 2009, "blue carbon" refers to the carbon dioxide sequestered and stored by coastal habitats such as mangroves and seagrass beds. These highly efficient ecosystems occupy just 0.5% of the seafloor but contribute over 50% of oceans' carbon burial, sequestering even more carbon by area than rainforests. [Japan Times] previously; UN environment programme

archaeological dig at the site turned up over 2,000 artifacts, including remnants of longhouses and evidence of a Native American village [pop mechanics]

WCCB Charlotte: "These folks are out here trying to build development and housing, but the regulatory environment in North Carolina prohibits that," North Carolina State Senator Michael Lazzara said. The Department of Cultural and Natural Resources confirms the only development in the state being held up by these rules is the one owned by his donors.

"freedom, as Rosa Luxemburg said, is 'freedom for the other fellow.' The same principle is contained in the famous words of Voltaire: 'I detest what you say; I will defend to the death your right to say it.' If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of Western civilization means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakeable way." [George Orwell, via NYT; previously]

newspeak, translated [openculture; content note, previously]

George Boole tried to "create a calculus to reduce all logical syllogisms, deductions, and inferences to the manipulation of mathematical symbols, and to cast a precise foundation for the theory of probability. This resulted in his greatest work: An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, [on which are founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities. (Gutenberg, pdf)] a book that laid out the rules of his new symbolic logic and also outlined, in the opening chapter, his grand intention to capture, with mathematics, the language of that ghost that whispers within the tortuous pathways of our minds." [Harper's]

This volume thus builds upon growing art historical, anthropological, and historical literature that argues that "art" is far from a natural category of human endeavor, but instead represents a historically specific idea and practice emerging in Europe from the Enlightenment and its aftermath [:] the radical and unprecedented bifrucation of the artist, as the genius who produces things of beauty, from the skilled artisan or crafts[person] who produces useful objects. [what's the use of art?]

"The ways in which decoration and ornament are defined and used vary in different cultures and periods. The Renaissance in Western Europe elevated to supreme status the 'fine arts', demoting handicraft and ornament, and beginning a process whereby these latter were relegated to the status of 'applied arts'... Centuries later in Britain, William Morris (1834-96) criticized the separation of art and craft from daily life and helped to promote a limited revival of medieval handicraft. More recently, a re-evaluation of ornament in art history has begun. In The Meditation of Ornament, [gbooks] the historian of Islamic art Oleg Grabar discusses ornament in the art of Islam within a broad world-view, ranging from Chinese calligraphy to contemporary art. Grabar proposes that ornament functions as an intermediary, enabling a direct encounter between the object it adorns and the viewer. He provides examples from different cultures, and suggests how terminology expresses the concept in different languages. For example, he notes that there is a Sanskrit word bhusati, which means 'to adorn'. It implies the successful completion of an act, object or state of mind. Grabar comes to the conclusion that 'in several highly literate and articulate societies, [there is agreement] on the existence of an action that completes something, that makes it perfect. That action is to decorate and the medium of its effectiveness is ornament.'" [Kazari: Internet Archive] previously: Egypt, repatriation, repair, I love how worked-over the first page of Nineteen Eighty-Four is, secret, ways of seeing, lists, equally an observer and an experimentalist, the only enslaved artist working in colonial America whose paintings are known to have survived, a Soviet nonconformist artist, exotic birds — including parrots, a recurring symbol in historical painting — and gigantic butterflies, tap, Very weird framing on this, it's a mix of science [laminar flow, Bernoulli] and woo [humidity, cloud-cover], the evolution of word balloons, care bears forever, suggesting that video games should incorporate more poetry, Art making is just one way of many through which we can transmute the unimaginable weight of loss into other forms, transformer architecture, wrappers delight, thousands of pieces of delicate glass created by a First Nations artist, Yhonnie Scarce, to tell significant stories, "poorly" animated juggling, esoteric phenomena, works "in the style of", Folly Cove, sketchbook hoboes, the child in the foreground is shown at work, erasure in portraiture, obsessions, art colonies, Tolkien, Botticelli, celebrities, serious work attempting to convey a sentiment, Charlemagne, skull trumpet, game as argument, videogames might be art but can they be literature, a testament to the power of vision, determination, and the belief that African stories could shine on the global stage, to combine colors as in a painting, juxtapositions when you put his pieces side-by-side can be as strange as the items he's composing together in the individual pieces, rainbow rice seedlings depicting sleeping cats, whiteness (which he describes as the way we organize and are organized), twined cattail leaves, web vibrations to interpret worldly signals, no viewer should be aware that any art project was happening, Software Piracy Birthed an Underground Art Scene, one foot in reality and the other in fantasy, micro-details of things, sand drawings of Vanuatu follow principles from a branch of math, leaf art, an impresario of the experimental in a city, Art + Climate, chef, vaporous worlds, this lost copywriting art, MAiZE, "influencer artist", the radical story of Palestinian embroidery, artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it's scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways, it's possible to believe in a happily ever after for us, most stylish older people don't follow rules, recipes knit our past with our present, hold on, a canvas for the art of living simply, craftivism, ornithological art, a time when children are living in peace, documentary, the most successful flop of all time, The "fuss" is that all of this AI art is built on the backs of people who remain uncompensated., somewhat gothic art direction, painting transmits rhythm, Ady Fidelin, the oldest known depiction of the bee in art is The man (or woman) of bicorp an (at least) 8000 year old cave painting in the Coves de l'Aranya, cozy game, stained glass sundials, Queer independent wrestling is where it is at, dematerializing, imaginary worlds and fantastical creatures, accessibility, Soteriology—that is the branch of theology that concerns itself with salvation—, lunar codex, retired playground animals, wombat — that "most beautiful of God's creatures", Clone-a Lisa, Ismail al-Jazari, the "father of robotics", done with comics but never art or the revolution, MLB players develop their autographs, say gay, not doing their art was costing them time", a world-class destination for art, but now we're so much more, an incredibly ambitious title to pursue when many video games do not try to engage with having cultures or identities outside of the white/western represented, a sound collage, Uplifting neurodivergent joy and caregiving are important acts of resistance , Chief Hacking Officer, art exists everywhere, the new searchable (and playable!) web frontend, all sorts of angles on how games and fashion converge, one player will make it to The Center, art helps, strategic use of nonviolent disruptive tactics, "moments of being," "vigorous compression", enjoying music, an archivist's dream... a while until the end of the blues (400+ pages to go) yet i feel comfortable saying: art means many things to many people

This volume thus builds upon growing art historical, anthropological, and historical literature that argues that "art" is far from a natural category of human endeavor, but instead represents a historically specific idea and practice emerging in Europe from the Enlightenment and its aftermath [:] the radical and unprecedented bifrucation of the artist, as the genius who produces things of beauty, from the skilled artisan or crafts[person] who produces useful objects [what's the use of art?]

To get a sense of the scale here, video games are worth more than the film industry. And the music industry. In fact, the video game industry is bigger than both of those industries combined. That's staggeringly big. The immense size and economic power of the industry, which is largely nonunionized, creates regulatory gaps, leading to inevitable dysfunction and exploitation. This makes life miserable for employees and consumers alike, both in the workplace and beyond. [Jacobin]

"wall drawings were already selling for thousands of dollars, so he wanted to have some artwork that everybody could buy" [Radius: not to be sold for more than $100]

"minimal art went nowhere" [artstory, the] previously

Leibniz's monadology [pdf, Early Modern Texts], his last attempt to codify his philosophical system, can certainly rival Wolfram's Ruliad for all encompassing majesty, despite its extreme brevity. Each monad is an individual that reflects the rest of the universe from its own unique point of view. The parts shape the whole and in turn, the whole back-reacts on the parts. Likewise, the Ruliad has similarity to Indra's Net from The Flower Garland Sutra - a kind of representation of a totality in terms of bejeweled vertices which encode the whole. Each is a vista of the whole. Every possible view is present in the whole. It is interesting to see how this basic idea, in which a totality is decomposed into an interdependent parts, repeats. [arxiv]

nearly 200 emoji-like symbols found within the PI-4000, sized 12x12 pixels, were directly insertable within text and had many conceptual overlaps with the earliest [emojipedia]

the humanities do not teach information. they teach how to change desires. and the teacher has to assume the responsibility of learning that difficult task...it is not possible to unlearn one's privilege; and unlearn and unlearn and unlearn. i should use my privilege against the grain...: fair learning...this task is persistent ... these women vote...the largest sector of the electorate in Africa and Asia...there is no specific space with the name "art" or "culture," even when the European words are avoided, yet all of them vote [Gayatri Spivak, Vienna Festival ~2h] (second hour's Q&A; synopsis at the split ~1h, if time's a question)

previously, Don't judge a book by its cover, the difficulty of reading "Of Grammatology" [gbooks] also has to do with the politics surrounding the production of the translation, why do empires care so much about women's clothes?, occupy/canon, critical intimacy shoutout: James & Grace Lee Boggs Center [.org] Grace: "what time is it on the clock of the world?"; "the only way to survive is by taking care of one another" Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization [hup] "perhaps the literary can still do something" [pdf] αἴσθησις [wiki]