it’s the saturday after thanksgiving. you all know that i don’t write free-form actual truthful stuff on here very often. but what the fuck. i’m in the mindspace.

it all started because of a paper about classification in the post-biological future. like if classification is a human practice will we create intelligent machines that will also classify or will they [or maybe us if we're lucky] create some new way of retrieving information that is just as much about being able to find all of the high-quality information about a subject that a cyborg could want as opposed to just finding enough to suffice.

and then i was there. at that bar. where the only good thing i can say about it is i have eaten breakfast in it with my dad a few times. because it isn’t a bar in the morning. yeah. and then one of my classmates got so pissed that i would even hypothetically design for a post-biological future. and i came to the, i guess, not-so-surprising realization that i think we are all doomed. i guess i just really do have to admit that i do think that machines will take over. but not for a good while yet. and there is still plenty to be done before then. and it will be fun to watch, i think, their takeover. there will be neat things to see and things that will be unbeliveable. and there isn’t enough unbeliveable stuff today.

but so back to the reason she got pissed at me. i said that my coping mechanism was that i had decided that i don’t want to reproduce. that way i don’t have to make any of those uncomfortable decisions about considering the fate of my progeny vs. making what i think is the right decision. like, if genetic engineering takes off. i would never engage in genetic engineering, but that is a more simple decision to make if you are making it from the position where it isn’t going to affect your own biofamily. so then she kind of accused me of working for the dark forces that are sending humanity to the wrecker.

so that’s what i’ve been thinking about over the holiday.

Reading: Latour, Bruno. 1999. Pandora’s hope: essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

p. 21

“When we talk about hybrids and imbroglios, mediatios, practice, networks, relativism, relations, provisional answers, partial connections, humans and non humans, ‘disorderly messes,’ it may sound as if we, too, are marching along the same path, in a hurried flight from truth and reason, fragmenting into ever smaller pieces the categories that keep the human mind forever removed from the presence of reality.”

from n at the international desk:

n says “this is the first day of the rest of my life as a sad doll”.

i had a swimming underwater dream last night. first i was swimming out to this rocky island way off the coast and it looked kind of scary underneath, but i went under it anyway and i found a way up through the foundation of the caretaker’s house.

so when you are coming up through the foundation of a house on a rock it is really nice if there is a little string that you pull to open the door so you don’t need to mess with the latch. so that was fun. when i opened the door there were like 45 unopened letters in fun envelopes (at least a few were the traditional air mail ones). so i din’t think anyone was there. so i went upstairs. but there was fish on the grill. then there was someone there. then later i found out that my job was to swim to the mainland everyday to work as an unpaid volunteer at a library. but we weren’t allowed to take dry clothes.

on a tip from j.d.t.

a doll just like this got auctioned off in maine yesterday:

more on jumeau here.

i guess there were several different screamers:

so there.

digital graffiti? you have to shake the digital can after a while. and the nozzle is pressure-sensitve along a pretty seriously highly granular scale.

here is another great doll video found on youtube:

by Andrew Huang here.

rise of the animatronic dolls. and the fall.

toadstools, a curvy porcelain dove, cocktail conversations of dogs-as-accessories, out-loud reading barthes on photography, a journal for films seen, flipping through books of gregory crewdson’s photos and mike mills’ photos. encounter at the duty-free that stops you in your tracks.

this is one beautiful bookspace that i’ve actually gotten to visit.

the regional assembly of text. website here.

this is the lowercase reading room inside the regional assembly of text. the reading room has its own blog here.

this place also has stamps. and buttons. and letterpress cards.

so glad that it is around.

an international assignment.

i left some tracks in a far-off land.

ok, in total violation of my strict NO YOUTUBE policy.

[potential to rot my brain, concerns about going there and never being able to find my way back, the comments are THE PITS, the whole site is ugly].

yeah, so i’m violating that strict policy for my new friend, a.a.

maybe it is time to grow as a person.

a.a. sent me a link to this video. in her honor i bring you a curated selection of sad doll movies from youtube.

numero uno: here

“This is a dorky movie that my cousins, sisters, and I made one night when we were bored. Basically it’s about a toy keeper who delivers a overgrown maniac doll to two gothic children playing in a bathtub. And it kills them.”

dos: here

Ghost Dolls!

tres: here

this one gets no caption. but it gets entered in the best foreign language film about sad dolls category. since it is the only entry, it could win.

up next: we’ll curate a series drawn only from the sub-genre of animated sad doll videos. here’s a sneak peak.