Another postcard gamepoem. I played a storytelling game with friends recently, and came to the conclusion that I am bad at making up narratives on the spot that actually go somewhere, and feel coherent. Every time I tried to come up with a short story for the game I would get as far as creating a striking image (or at least, striking to me), but struggle to come up with any real narrative impetus for it.
So this is maybe the game equivalent of that, a striking image divorced of narrative context (though it hopefully at least suggests a wider world). I'm getting the itch to work with code again though, so this will probably be the last postcard game for a wee while.
Lu Wilson's SandPond Saga is a wonderful introduction to cellular automata.
Aditya Bidikar writing about The Bear's first season, touching on some of what I love about that show.
A VST plugin devoted to recreating MP3 compression artifacts(!)
This is wild: a contest challenging developers to create ways of encoding information such that it can only be perceived by viewers under the influence of psychedelics.
Some neat examples of mimicking physical drawing mediums in code.
Speedrunning Soulja Boy's Crank Dat beat.
A long read by Grace Glass and Sasha Tycko on the battle to prevent the construction of Atlanta's cop city.
"The military has become the police, the police mimic the movies, the movies are all for children, and the children have no future."
Was reminded this month of the 2005 Animal Collective Planet Claire sessions. Particularly Avey Tare's performance on Purple Bottle, morphing a sweet song about a crush into uncontrollable, feral, delirious screaming. His feelings too big to be contained within his body, too big to be contained within a song.
A wonderful conversation between Olivia Laing and M. John Harrison about the ways fantasy and our imaginations have been, and continue to be, commidified.
The genocide in Gaza continues, and is spilling over into Lebanon, Syria and Iran. I've set up a monthly donation to Medical Aid for Palestinians. I still feel woefully ill-equipped to talk about the unfolding horror, but here are some people who are less tongue-tied:
"“Nothing we do is sufficient,” wrote the historian Dan Berger a few weeks ago, “and everything we do matters.” I am talking about Palestine, but I am also talking about everything, because the genocidal, world-wrecking terror of empire is not confined to the Gaza Strip. It lives in prisons and in presidents, in corporations and in capital; it thrives in the police, in weapons factories, in deep-sea drilling rigs, in cobalt mines and in cop schools; it writes policy, it passes laws, it invests; it invents nation-states and borders; it generates commerce; it leaves migrants to drown in the Mediterranean and die of thirst in the desert; it warps our weather and spills ruin; it seethes through every available fissure into every place we hold sacred on this earth. It has its bloody teeth in all of us and in everything and everyone we love. Nothing we do is sufficient. Everything we do matters."
An explanation of Joe Biden's continued, full-throated support of Israel.
Omar Sakr: arguing with my sister in the genocide
I got covid in the run up to Christmas, and self-isolated over the holiday as a result. I seem to be fine now though. And honestly, there's a part of me that was relieved to have an excuse to just hole up for a couple of weeks and not have to go out into the world and interact with all the people out there.
I'm lucky. My symptoms were uncomfortable rather than debilitating, it doesn't appear to have turned into long covid, I live alone so I didn't have to worry about infecting or taking care of others, my workplace closes over the Christmas holidays anyway so there was no pressure to work while ill, and my brother lives nearby and was able to drop off groceries for me. I couldn't have been much luckier, short of not contracting the disease in the first place.
But I'm increasingly aware that that relief I felt, the impulse I have always had to avoid other people, and the awkwardness and anxiety I associate with in-person interactions (especially with people I don't know, or don't know very well), is a problem. It keeps me from acting in accord with my politics, it keeps me from acting in solidarity with others.
I've never really made new years' resolutions, but this year it feels like I really need to start taking concrete steps to address that problem. We are living in a world consumed by the horrors of capitalism, empire, climate collapse, fascism, an ongoing genocide, state-sponsored transphobia... I need to do more to live my politics, not just read about them. And I guess I'm posting that here as some form of public accountability.