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Our parents didn’t grow up with this.

 

I know being an 80s kid was the last great era of being a kid, but did any of us really believe the sci-fi films and realize we’re born into the end of civilization and the collapse of our environment? Did any one of you imagine that scenes like this are simply commonplace? In fact, 1942 – 2001 was likely the most carelessly serene and implicitly gloriously self-absorbed moment of all of human time. No I am not being negative. The sky doesn’t have to fall. It’s just something you can’t ignore anymore, in that sweet “oh I heard about climate change” naivety we walked around with.

This shit is *exhausting*.

 

Anyways, books are great.

The below is not a fancy pants literary smorgasbord just because I’m insecure in recommending world changing science fiction in last week’s newsletter… it’s because I’m sorta documenting my favorite books of all time. The newsletter title is from Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men”. These quotes too:

“If the rule you followed led you to this of what use was the rule?” or “How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?”

I can’t get Cormac McCarthy out of my head. It’s like Melville, or HST, or even Sagan… these authors and people live rent free up in the dome.

Herman Melville wrote the literal Great American Novel in Moby Dick or The Whale… a book about capitalism, oil, a reckless, entitled and selfish monomaniacal focus that risks everyone else’s lives… the ultimate revenge novel where the human becomes unmoored from reality and a slave to passion. Moby Dick is likely more relevant today than ever before, about madness, death, destiny vs free will, and accountability vs consequence.

 

Hunter S. Thompson documenting the spiralling cynicism of the failure of the 1960s, which took a decade of the 70s to nihilistically sprawl into the excess and gluttony of the 1980s, and the culture and politics that surrounded it on all sides. I know those themes are present in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but if you really want to get to the meat of it, I would read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. If you ever thought things don’t change… 50 years later, a quote that I also can’t get out of my head, and it sounds like the modern GOP:

“Remember the Whigs, Larry? They went belly up, with no warning at all, when a handful of young politicians like Abe Lincoln decided to move out on their own, and fuck the Whigs which worked out very nicely, and when it became almost instantly clear that the Whig hierarchy was just a gang of old impotent wind-bags with no real power at all, the Party just curled up and died . . . & any politician stupid enough to ‘stay loyal’ went down w/the ship”

 

Carl Sagan is someone who’ll get his own post. The Demon Haunted World helped make sense of a world that has so many social and cultural forces, all embedded inside the framework of capitalism, which all tend to make you bend to their needs, or influence the person you are in ways that makes the person you are far hazier and more complex than necessary. I mean, this stuff was written in 1996, and you can just slap it on 2015-2021, and yeah, he basically called Idiocracy:

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness… The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

 

But Cormac McCarthy has tied together the random chance of existence in America, the unhinged, insane, and unaccountable bloodlust of domination crushing those men unfortunate enough to be fated to witness it, in Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West. It documents the guerilla warfare of partisan racism, madness, and hatred which built this country.  Then No Country for Old Men… watching a man’s desperate attempt at building a framework of sensible morality in this same lawless country, where lives are left to little more than chance, and litter the American plains in the wake of justice falling to greed and power within the changing times of a country wasting away. His simple writing style has a cadence of honest poetry. He’s masterful, and I highly encourage you to read him, however dark and brutal his works are. Even The Road, if you wanted an “upper” of a book. Sheesh…

 

IN OTHER SELF-AWARE REALMS:

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SPACE

 

 

  • So, what you’re looking at is the docking, then initial ice crystals from thruster fire, and then you see the ISS spinning in relation to the earth’s horizon. This is crazy.

 

 

  • THIS is the relative visual of the actual event, in Blender:

 

I CANNOT COMPREHEND THIS. I CAN NOT. The story from this is bigger than anyone will ever understand.

 

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, & STEVE JOBS’ DRY HUMOR

 

BECAUSE: RUSSIA: OUR KILLER ROBOTS DON’T NEED ANY PESKY INTERNATIONAL LAWS… also, I rarely post Futurist links because they are a premium news site, that is literally just an aggregator… a premium aggregator? WHAT? But as it’s the only one without a paywall and 5 free articles a month. Also, never use Tik Tok’s video editor to post a video anywhere it’s the worst thing ever: https://futurism.com/the-byte/russia-killer-robots-international-laws

 

The argument from Russia is that the AI algorithms driving these killer robots are already advanced enough to differentiate friend from foe from civilian, and that therefore there’s no need to burden the autonomous death machines with unnecessary regulations. Uhhh…..

 

MORE: https://www.axios.com/age-killer-robots-begun-8e8813d9-0fa1-4529-baf9-3358c1703bee.html

& MORE: Was a flying killer robot used in Libya? Quite possibly https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/was-a-flying-killer-robot-used-in-libya-quite-possibly/

(only because it’s important)

 

  • We know how climate change is impacting wine (although it’s gonna be great for Germany and the Yukon Territory) and wine shipping, and that entire business… but now it’s also impacting another hobby of mine- Vinyl:

Climate change is literally melting vinyl records https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2021/07/climate-change-is-literally-melting-vinyl-records.html

 

  • The concept of zero is mind blowing to me, and this post highlights a GREAT book about the mystical nature of Zero and how it shaped our consciousness and ability to process ourselves in context of nature and the universe:

Central to humanity’s quest to grasp the nature of the universe and make sense of our own existence is zero, which began in Mesopotamia and spurred one of the most significant paradigm shifts in human consciousness — a concept first invented (or perhaps discovered) in pre-Arab Sumer, modern-day Iraq, and later given symbolic form in ancient India. This twining of meaning and symbol not only shaped mathematics, which underlies our best models of reality, but became woven into the very fabric of human life, from the works of Shakespeare, who famously winked at zero in King Lear by calling it “an O without a figure,” to the invention of the bit that gave us the 1s and 0s underpinning my ability to type these words and your ability to read them on this screen. Mathematician Robert Kaplan chronicles nought’s revolutionary journey in The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero (public library). It is, in a sense, an archetypal story of scientific discovery, wherein an abstract concept derived from the observed laws of nature is named and given symbolic form. But it is also a kind of cross-cultural fairy tale that romances reason across time and space https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/02/02/zero-robert-kaplan/

 

 

  • This letter is being auctioned starting 14th August. I’ve no dislike of Apple, I get he was a complex guy, but as person who’s not touched an Apple product since the Apple II E, this is my favorite thing I’ve seen in a long time. Carlin did this too.

https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/344176706157003-steve-jobs-typed-letter-signed/?cat=449

 

 

OLYMPICS & SPORTS

I can’t figure this out, although I get the energy. But almost any time I see a Haka, I am overwhelmed by emotion to the point of tears. Every time I’m like “that’s weird and won’t happen again”, and then seconds in…

This is the New Zealand Women’s Rugby World Cup team celebrating with a Haka. Amazing.

They did it after winning Gold, but NBC has seen fit to absolutely eff EVERY SINGLE THING UP that they can, and you can’t embed their videos to play off of Youtube natively, and they’re dumbasses. But here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn1UNGqgZ3g

 

MOVIES AND SCREENS AND MAGIC

 

  • If you’ve not seen Jodorowsky’s “Dune” documentary about the making of, failure of, and magnificence in the madness that was Alejandro’s fever dream of taking a stab at Herbert’s iconic novels, DO IT. It united O’Bannon and Giger which ended up on Alien, and so many other relevant ping ponging of people that went from that project, onto great things because of what they learned from said project. I did a free form (fitting) review of it, but seriously watch it. Because there’s pop culture ICONIC moments like these gems:

 

  • Mark Hamill counts for “Space” and the impression of Harrison Ford is so great:

 

  • NETFLIX SCI-FI! What a GREAT FREAKING LIST of space or space-adjacent films on Netflix. One of the best listicles I’ve seen in a long time. It’s not on Netflix, but check out Moon, for sure. I only list the movies, but they’ve Altered Carbon, and a bunch of series, as well.

The best sci-fi movies and TV shows to stream on Netflix in August: Time to catch up on some long overdue sci-fi, so here’s our handy guide to what’s on https://www.space.com/best-netflix-sci-fi-movies-shows.html

    1. I am Mother
    2. Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo
    3. Mute
    4. Oxygen
    5. Project Power
    6. Prospect
    7. The Signal
    8. Snowpiercer
    9. Space Sweepers
    10. Spectral
    11. Stargate
    12. Terminator 2: Judgement Day
    13. Total Recall
    14. The Wandering Earth
    15. Zathura: A Space Adventure

 

  • Seeking spiritual guidance from the self-ordained Doctor of Divinity (a degree Thompson bought by mail), Miami Vice actor Don Johnson once asked him to answer the famous Zen riddle, “What is the sound of one-hand clapping?”. Said Johnson: “He reached up and slapped me upside the head.” The resulting tinnitus plagued the star for days. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/hunter-s-thompson-10-gonzo-tales-1148130

 

  • I remember hearing that the Oxygenated perfluorocarbon emulsion in The Abyss was real, at the time of release. And I remember years afterwards, prior to internet forums being well organized, to truly not knowing if it was an urban legend. But there was enough real world buzz that explained liquid breathing is real, and that although the rats all survived doing real liquid breathing, only Ed Harris endured the stuff in attempting to shoot the below scene.

How They Shot the Breathable Fluid Scenes in ‘The Abyss’ If you think it’s CGI … don’t hold your breath. Or, wait, maybe do. https://filmschoolrejects.com/the-abyss-breathing-fluid/

 

 

  • This thread about Miami Vice cameos is something else, and in the comments they’re picking up others like G. Gordon Liddey and Annette Bening. UNREAL.

You have to click through to see the full thread, but this link as well:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1422825829189496833.html

 

 

 

  • FRASER IS BACK! Scorsese, Soderbergh and Aronofsky? Oh my. NO… not the dumb reboot of Frasier without John Mahoney… Brendan!

Brendan Fraser Boards Martin Scorsese’s ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ & Legendary Comedy ‘Brothers’ https://deadline.com/2021/08/brendan-fraser-joins-killers-of-the-flower-moon-brothers-apple-martin-scorsese-legendary-1234808025/

 

MUSIC

  • Just Dave Grohl trolling Westboro Baptist Church with Disco.

 

  • So Japanese Jazz is some of the most important music in human history, but it was a geographically walled phenomenon, and became a VERY expensive prospect for people who fell in love with it in modern days, while it fades from memory in Japan. So, to justify the money I’m spending, here’s some awareness of why it’s REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT:

Japanese Jazz, *OR* people worry about “cultural appropriation”, but what if the melding of cultures makes a cosmic gumbo, a fusion of all the good in all of us?? https://unclefishbits.com/japanese-jazz-or-people-worry-about-cultural-appropriation-but-what-if-the-melding-of-cultures-makes-a-cosmic-gumbo-a-fusion-of-all-the-good-in-all-of-us/

 

  • It’s slightly adjacent to what amounts to my whole world… Library Music. NO not that.

“Library” means – “In short, library music (aka production or stock music) is music recorded in a multitude of contexts and styles by work-for-hire musicians, owned by music-library labels, and lent out to commercial enterprises in TV, radio, and film”. https://pitchfork.com/features/starter/9410-library-music/

 

  • This Turkish DJ is always a treat, but this set of Japanese Jazz is superb. Also, Japanese Jazz has been taking my monies.

 

PEOPLE, CULTURE, SOCIETY, TASTY FOOD

  • I did this thread awhile ago, but it’s a fun twitter thread on food invented in San Francisco.

Here is the entire twitter thread in a organized “unrolled” page:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1126521596615618565.html

 

You have to click through to see the whole thread:

 

Her trademark pantsuit!

 

 

POLITICS

  • Funny enough, I was a “professor” at a grad school that taught Triple Letter Agency people, State Department people, and spies. I had to talk about the nature of human equilibrium to find balance in society as a natural and knee jerk tendency that is ingrained in human culture. The class I taught was 5 out of 5 (Institute of World Politics in DC is AMAZING). If you like global politics, this is for you:

A defense of the inevitability of Equalitarianism: on a road with no map since the year of our Lord, 1215; *OR* an essay about isms. https://unclefishbits.com/equalitarianism-on-a-road-with-no-map-since-the-year-of-our-lord-1215-or-an-essay-about-isms/

 

VEHICLES

 

Build and first flight at the end of this year.

 

Time Lapse:

 

 

  • In 1972, Toyota debuted what can be best described as The Homer of its day. It was a concept car called the Toyota RV-2. The two-door wagon’s body was a stone’s throw from an El Camino, but instead of a rear bed for cargo, it featured clamshell doors that could unfurl, making two glass walls for what turned into a tent. With two front seats that could fully recline, and two people sleeping perpendicularly in the tented area, the RV-2 could sleep four on a whim. (If that gives you a swingers vibe, well, know that the car was featured in a 1973 spread of Penthouse magazine.) https://www.fastcompany.com/3047744/toyotas-horrendous-glorious-1970s-station-wagon-that-never-was#2

More: https://www.topgear.com/car-news/concept/concepts-time-forgot-toyota-rv-2

https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a16197/toyota-rv2-camping-car/

Concepts from Future Past: Toyota RV-2

Motor vehicle, Mode of transport, Blue, Vehicle, Transport, Automotive exterior, Fender, Vehicle registration plate, Rim, Van,

 

NSFW the penthouse spread:

 

 

 

  • John Dodd’s “THE BEAST”: a shooting brake powered by a RR Merlin V12 engine from an ultramarine spitfire ww2 plane.

 

Beast Lore: The Story Of John Dodd’s Merlin Machine https://theamazoeffect.blogspot.com/2014/07/beast-lore-story-of-john-dodds-beast.html

 

By Uncle FishbitsCategories: Newsletter