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(found@RetroKitten)

Will there be a war against the world after November 2?. Virtual retina displays. Use of narrative in interactive design. Guerrilla news network 2.0 beta. Remix masters: a conversation with the Beastie Boys. GM hypo-allergenic cats. Temporary travel office. Occulture: the Secret Marriage of Art and Magick. Declaration of Europe's precariat. A sex angel for Nagoya's lumpenproletariat?. Digital dada library. Biotech hobbist magazine.

If you live in California you just might want to vote NO to Proposition 69 on November 2.

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The artwork of Pooch.

"Raised on a diet of Walt Disney World , Ray Harryhausen films, H. P. Lovecraft novels, Comics, and Florida tourist traps, Pooch paints images that seem to exist in a bizarre afterlife. Early on, Pooch was exposed to artists and illustrators, such as Frank Frazetta, MC Escher, Dali, Bosch and HR Giger. A self- taught artist, Pooch owes much of his painting skills to over ten years of daily tattooing and drawing. His art is a visual cocktail mix of Far East mysteries, the magic of European painting with a shot of tattoo culture, shaken and stirred, and served up in a souvenir tiki skull."

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Dj zebra kicks the boot(leg) into the Sex Pistols with this great remix (mp3 - thanx boom selection) of anarchy in the UK. Oh, and by the way, do mind your bollocks. Here's some semen sweetner.

A few evenings ago in a bar in a out-of-season seaside town, just south of Rome, three men are standing, animatedly discussing the fresh football season, in a re-run of a discussion they have had on other nights and previous years. Outside, it drizzles yellow tears under silent lampposts.

A few weeks ago, flying for work I sit next to a geezer dressed in a grey suit and monogrammed shirt. He never looks up. His eyes fixed on the board of directors' report he holds in his lap. Something about fruit and distribution channels. Then, as we are about to land, he scribbles with a Mont Blanc pen: "oranges are up, lemons are down".

A few days ago, I leave work early to attend the first teacher-parent meeting at my daughter's nursery school. Out of sixty children, only 20 adults are there. I am the only male.

(images sampled: top, under burqua; middle; bottom.)

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Praying the thief for urban protection.

"The Gangsters' Pantheon is part of the Maria Lionza cult, which brings together a mysterious trinity of deities -- the mythical Amazonian goddess Maria Lionza, the historic Indian chief Guaicaipuro and the black slave rebel Negro Felipe...

Figurines of the criminal "saints" are found more frequently in the spiritualist and amulet shops common in poor neighborhoods in Caracas. For less than $1 one can buy a statue of a muscular figure armed with a revolver and wearing dark glasses, basketball shirt and cap."

Trends and technologies in sex selection.

"MicroSort technology tags sperm bearing X chromosomes (those which determine females) and sperm bearing Y chromosomes (those which determine males) with a fluorescent dye so that they can be segregated into different batches. The dye harmlessly attaches to the DNA molecules that make up genes. Female-determining X chromosomes are much bigger than male-determining Y chromosomes, which means that human sperm carrying X chromosomes have 2.8 percent more DNA than do sperm with Y chromosomes."

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I found the University of Chigago 1978 first edition of Writing and difference at the bottom of a pile of books beyond structure, in the back room of a flea shop, somewhere in East London. Years ago. Since then I've religiously resisted reconstructing a book. Never read.

Jacques Derrida est mort.

New world disorder points to Revisiting Foucault and the Iranian revolution.

Well worth reading for its contemporary implications, and as a case study on the thorns that often line the liminal space between theoretical speculation and practical application.

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As I opened the email I had a lateral vision of Bruce Sterling predicting the present in prankster mode. Here was my first biotech spam offering me DNA-Polymerases at a very special price. This was the text I got from the CEO of ATG biosynthetics:

"Dear Scientist,

we like to introduce to you ATG:biosynthetics GmbH, located in Germany and Canada. ATG offers bioproducts for research in life science as well as for related industries. In future in addition to our own products and services ATG will offer products and services of other biotech companies via our ATG:warehouse data base. Most frequently used enzymes in research today are DNA-Polymerases. We like to offer to you FIREPol, THERMIPol, and HOT FIREPol DNA-Polymerases an in addition Desoxyribonuclease I for a very special price".

My first reaction was that this was a new variant in the surreal tactics adopted by some porn spammer. But curiousity (which killed the genetically modified cat) grabbed me and I clicked through. Lo and behold! Instead of landing on a mutant online casino site, this actually looked kosher. I even googled up the CEO's CV. All authentic.

One question remained though: why is that having deciphered the building blocks of life, websites are still getting built with more twists than a helix?

A flickr reblogs
deliciously. A feed falls
on an autumn screen.

Populardelujo is populated with the visual and textual popular urban culture of Bogotá.

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Office Voodoo:

"... is an interactive film installation for two people. It tells the story of Frank and Nancy, two bored Irish officemates, condemned to spend their lives in an office. This infinite film is an algorithmic sitcom inspired from Sartre's play "Huis clos", crossbred with an office life simulator.

Two physical voodoo dolls, that represent the protagonists, can be manipulated in order to change the emotions of the characters in the film. It is a social laboratory where the viewers can experiment on the influence of emotions as initial conditions in any social interaction. As viewers get skilled manipulating the dolls, they can control the emotions of Frank and Nancy, and see what happens when : Frank is cranky and Nancy is hyperactive? Frank is horny and Nancy is depressed?

The interactive film is made exclusively of real lens-based footage shot with real actors, but it runs on a real-time editing engine that fluidly assembles the film shot by shot as one watches it, while respecting the conventions of continuity editing.

The installation is built as a little immersive wooden house for two people - a cross between a confessional, an arcade game booth and a kinetoscope parlour."

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The sexy shock project includes a women-run indie sex shop, inspired by ventures such as sh! and remixed with a more radical edge, and an online space documenting initiatives, visuals and bibliography.

An Austrian provocation: S-77CCR eyes in the skies / democracy in the streets.

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Cinematic trends from the Iraqi capital:

"...videos on display or sold for as little as 30 cents apiece are all over Baghdad these days.

'Soon after the regime fell, porno discs were all the rage,' said Attallah Zeidan, a co-owner of a second hand bookshop in Baghdad's Old City. 'Now it's beheadings.'

Before the suicide mission footage, the crowd in the Bab al-Moazam market watched footage of half buried human skeletons and a man using a stick to better display the skulls. The background music was a folk song praising the insurgents fighting the Americans in Fallujah".

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(Photo by mr. Damon, who is currently teaching out in Doha, and posting impressions and experiences to his blog.)