The Kibbo Kift & the Usable Past

By: Matthew De Abaitua

A prehistoric track stretches across 250 miles from the Dorset coast to the Norfolk Wash. For over five thousand years, people have walked or ridden this trail. The first section we know as the Ridgeway, […]

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I, Avatar

By: Peggy Nelson

The last time Pandora opened the box there was kind of a problem. All sorts of uncontrollable wild things got all over the place, everybody started yelling and panicking, and Pandora got into lots of […]

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Leibnizian Spacetime vs. Pincushion Owl

By: Joshua Glenn

Over at Significant Objects today, Margaret Wertheim of the admirable Institute for Figuring tells a story about an owl-shaped pincushion and its role in the discovery that Leibniz was right to reject Newton’s notion of […]

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Breakin’ the Law

By: Peggy Nelson

Don’t you love it when the first thing everyone asks you about your work is, “isn’t that illegal?” [The Cones Project, a performance art/virtual maps mashup, Peggy Nelson, 2009] Craig Baldwin is a scavenger, collagist, […]

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Michael Moorcock

By: Tom Nealon

With the profusion of anti-heroes on television in recent years, from Tony Soprano’s jolly murderer to House’s belittling a-hole pose and from Jack Bauer’s strident seriousness to Dexter’s huggable serial killer, it’s easy to forget […]

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Eloi and Morlocks

By: Peggy Nelson

Hey! I bet you’re wondering how an artist makes a living, especially when I don’t make anythings. I have a day job of course. I design patterns in software to enhance emotional reactions, which in […]

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Philip K. Dick

By: Joshua Glenn

“My books (& stories) are intellectual (conceptual) mazes & I am in an intellectual maze in trying to figure out our situation (who we are & how we look into the world, & world as […]

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Love and Tentacles

By: Peggy Nelson

A few months ago, a friend of mine started Twittering his doodles. An irrepressible draftsman, Walter Sickert has the kind of old-skool muse that demands daily tribute. A sketchbook is always ready pocketside and, at […]

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The Dogs in the Trees

By: Matthew Battles

The first sightings of dogs in trees were reported not long after the Fall equinox. Early rumor came in the form of videos shot at arms’ length on cell phones and hastily uploaded — grainy, […]

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Maila Nurmi

By: Lynn Peril

Finnish-born MAILA NURMI (1921-2008) kicked around Hollywood as a hatcheck girl and pinup model before a turn as the Charles Addams cartoon character later named Morticia changed the course of her life, not to mention […]

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Andy did you hear about this one?

By: Peggy Nelson

[still from Le Voyage dans la Lune, 1902, by Georges Méliès] We believe that it was a largely ceremonial site, as we have found no evidence of agriculture or permanent habitation. And in addition to […]

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The Sovereignties of Invention

By: Matthew Battles

HE STOOD THERE with the box torn open, with ribbons of packing tape and flaccid little packing-bags strewn about on the table. And in the midst of this mess, the prize — the shiny tool […]

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Quatschwatch (4): Cuddly Cthulhu

By: Joshua Glenn

The final paragraph of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth’s The Lurker at the Threshold (1945) describes an uncanny scene that nicely limns the Cthulhu Mythos for those of us who may as yet be unfamiliar […]

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