Warren Ellis's Blog, page 15

As you can see.  Pull it over your head and wear the visage of Scroobius Pip as a mask.  Insane.  Also, frankly, a bit disturbing when they’re the first thing you see on Instagram in the morning.

Buy them here.  Scroobius notes that, although they’re a men’s cut, “The girls in the shoot were liking the small and mediums.”

You all know Scroobius Pip, right?

A new album by the purveyors of fine ambient salve for the mind.  Good night.

Calico Sunset by former selves

I missed this earlier, due to being out of the house and nobody emailing to tell me it was going live today.  I’m looking at you, Greg. 

LADY SABRE is a very entertaining webcomic by Greg Rucka & Rick Burchett.  Sky-sailing 19th Century spy-privateers from Cascadia?  Read a bunch of it for yourself, for free.  The team are Kickstarting the collection, digital and physical versions.  Please take a look at their Kickstarter campaign.  Greg’s a writer I have great admiration for.

Because I swear it looks to me like she’s breathing out a word in water.  Exhaling liquid language.  The shot is by Francesca Woodman, an artist who died in 1981 according to this collection of her work at Fluid Radio.  Click through for some more fascinating images.

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The day I can do without a keyboard case for the iPad, I’m getting one of Miranda’s Moodycases.  These things just look gorgeous.

Nice video, too.

Sun Glitters – It takes me from Victor Ferreira / Sun Glitters on Vimeo.

Future Perfect » A Sense of Ownership
"Facial recognition will be a growing source of friction because the companies that are building businesses around connecting the physical you to some form of online identity will, over time connect people to the online you that makes them the most revenue, rather than the online you that makes the most sense to you. A lot of this will happen in the background, but there it will have sufficient visibility to be annoying e.g. a picture of your face as a search parameter triggering an advertisement for a particular kind of product."
(tags:tech social money comms )
America Elect — Minimally Minimal
"I am a Canadian that studied industrial design. It’s not surprising that I often got strange looks when I told people about my thesis project to redesign America’s voting system. The reason is simple though – I find America to be an amazing and fascinating nation and also like exploring the diverse applications of industrial design thinking. The 2012 election was the first time I experienced an American election first hand. I found it to be absolutely exciting and intriguing. I loved it." This is, as all his posts are, beautiful and interesting. It is also full-on Bigend-Draperism — control through the emotional leverage of nostalgia. Quite brilliant.
(tags:design )
Status Flight and the Gendering of Google Glass » Cyborgology
"I thought about titling this post, “Google Glass: The Beginning of White Flight from Smartphones,” but instead I’m going to propose a new term, status flight, to describe what happens when elites abandon a status symbol that’s lost its signifying power after becoming too quotidian and ubiquitous."
(tags:culture social phones comms )

The network is the drone’s native environment. So, we must – like our colleagues in biology – see them as part of this wider ecology, if we want to better understand their use and their meaning.

A great “state of play” talk by Honor Harger, who ran the IMPROVING REALITY thing I spoke at last year.

Anab Jain gave an updated version of her barnstorming “Design For The New Normal” talk at NEXT13 that was heavily buzzed about.  Shamefully, NEXT13 hasn’t gotten a video of it up, but Anab has put up the text and slides of the talk.  It’s an upgraded download of the present strangeness, and very much worth your time.