In 1974, the US National Institute on Drug Abuse commissioned sf giant Robert Silverberg to research and write Drug Themes in Science Fiction," a survey of 75 sf stories and novels that included fictional psychoactive drugs.
Deep Web, Alex Winter's new documentary about Silk Road founder Ross William Ulbricht is out on video-on-demand today at Vimeo.
Here's the trailer.
From Vimeo:
— Read the rest
Deep Web gives the inside story of one of the most important and riveting digital crime sagas of the century — the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the 31-year-old entrepreneur convicted of being 'Dread Pirate Roberts,' creator and operator of online black market Silk Road.
Bob Self says: "Godfather of Lowbrow (although he prefers the term "Feral Art") and founder of Juxtapoz magazine Robert Williams will be signing a limited number of his forthcoming art book Slang Aesthetics at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery this Saturday, March 28th at 2:00 PM. — Read the rest
Two of these should make you smile, one should make you shake your head.
Mark Mothersbaugh, best known as frontman of pioneering new wave band DEVO, opens up to Museum of Contemporary Art Denver director Adam Lerner about his work as a visual artist.
The company expanded the "ex parte temporary restraining order" so it could stage one-sided, sealed proceedings to take away rival businesses' domains, sometimes knocking thousands of legit servers offline.
On Feb. 9, 1855, the residents of Devon in southern England awoke to find a bewildering set of footprints in the newfallen snow. “These are to be found in fields, gardens, roads, house-tops, & other likely and unlikely places, deeply embedded in snow,” ran one contemporary account. “The shape was a hoof.”
Robert Scoble is settling nicely into his new role as a vigorous critic of your privacy. That said, he's unhappy I quoted his remarks about being "so tired of privacy advocates", and is doing that thing where you find a nasty anonymous comment and represent it as the sum of criticism to engender sympathy. — Read the rest
Brought to you by Loot Crate, the epic monthly subscription box for geeks and gamers for under $20. Use the code GWEEK to save 10%.
Writing under the rallying cry "Gender-specific books demean all our children," Katy Guest announces that the Independent on Sunday — one of the UK's great weekend papers — will no longer review any books that are marketed to "exclude either sex." — Read the rest
As ever, Bruce Sterling's closing remarks to the SXSW Interactive festival were a barn-burner; in them, Sterling rattles off a list of people who should be in the room, either because they know something that is lost on mainstream geekdom, or because they serve as examples for what not to become — from GCHQ spies to Italian net-politics ninjas, from the Dread Pirate Roberts to Barrett Brown. — Read the rest
Recommended if You Like is Boing Boing's weekly podcast of conversations with musicians, cartoonists, writers, and other creative types.
The Atomic Elbow is a professional wrestling fanzine published by Robert Newsome with a circulation of 100 copies [same as the first issue of bOING bOING! — Read the rest
Michael Walker trained a Markov chain with the King James Bible and Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, a classic computer science textbook. The result is King James Programming, a tumblr filled with comp-sci-inflected biblespeak. I could read it all day long.
Ryan Holiday is a media strategist who started his career as an assistant to Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power and was the director of marketing at American Apparel for many years.
Last year I interviewed Ryan about his book, Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. — Read the rest
Robert Popper (electrocuted) and Peter Serafinowicz (electrocuted) are back with a new "instructional film made by The Visitors for Human Collaborators on Edité-Frignim (Earth)."
Dug North sez, "The book titled 'Two Odd Volumes on Magic & Automata; has been available in a printed version for a while, but is now available as a PDF. The book is offered for free from LEAFpdx, but I am sure donations would be welcome." — Read the rest
Harvey Kurtzman created MAD in 1952. It started out as a comic book, and the first issues mainly lampooned other comic books (Superman, Archie). It soon branched out to make fun of all cherised American institutions and I would argue that it was the beginning of modern humor that led to Saturday Night Live. — Read the rest
Robert Ansell is the Director of Fulgur Press, which has published the work of esoteric artists for 20 years.
Jazz/hip hop fusionist Robert Glasper is a deeply talented pianist and producer who has worked with everyone from Q-Tip to Mos Def to Erykah Badu. The Robert Glasper Experiment is, well, his more experimental group that features Casey Benjamin, Derrick Hodge, and Mark Colenburg. — Read the rest
Tom says:
— Read the restBlood on the Mink is Robert Silverberg's long lost crime novel, which tells the story of a government agent going undercover to infiltrate a counterfeiting ring.
Acclaimed science-fiction and fantasy author Silverberg, a five-time winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, received the genre's highest honor in 2004 when he was named a Grandmaster by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America.
