Alexander Blake Schwarzenbach's 1967 Catastrophe
Poetry, art, droid-anxiety, news events reimagined in the form of hastily constructed cardboard art installations on living-room floors, spiral-bound sketchbooks filled with paintings and an enigmatic journalist alter-ego issuing scrambled reports on the ongoing disaster that is the US. A bizarre blog where personal weirdness mixes with fiercely intelligent, funny and moving writing. I find myself always rereading this post.
Blog of musician Jason Noble, collecting published articles + interviews and asides.
James Gurney shares his curiousity and love of painting with unparalleled generosity. His daily blog is always interesting - I have been following for years.
Poul Webb posts well curated collections of representational artists' work with some biographical information. Nice for taking a dive into artists you aren't deeply familiar with or disovering new ones. The blog format is kinda clunky but there is an index in the sidebar.
Another blogspot treasure trove, Spencer Alley presents the work of many lesser known artists from European art history with background info and accompanying exerpts of poetry. Fans of Renaissance red chalk drawing will find much to appreciate here. Some posts are headlined by one artist, others by whimsical categories e.g. Swagger Portraits Later Than 1700
Giles Fielke is a writer, educator and artist. His articles for Memo Review are an ascerbic, funny and articulate analysis of contemporary art events in Australia, often with a view to drawing out the fraught interactions between art and the state.
You are a hacker co-opted into deactivating a corporate space station overrun by mutants and droids set loose by a rogue AI. Has everything I love: a thumping industrial style midi soundtrack, hybrid 2D/3D design and a UI filled with so many cyborg modifications, gadgets and panels that it occupies 50% of your vision at any one time.
Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor
An anti-adventure that's as real as real life.
It's all there in the name really.
Death is not the end...
The Politics of Images in Machine Learning Training Sets
A Short History of Enclosure in Britain
A fascinating article on means by which commonly held agricultural land was forcibly transformed into private 'property'. This is a subject I had really never really thought too much on previously and I feel like I had my thinking about land and our concepts of ownership radicalised by reading this history.
Time, Work and Industrial Capitalism
Another illusion shatterer, this time a critical evaluation of the change in human attitudes towards work brought about by the development of industrial capitalism and mechanical time keeping. Absolutely changed the way I conceive of my own "free time", and my attitude towards work.
Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
Silvia Federici's Marxist-Feminist writing on the intertwined history of the European witch trials, Early Modern colonialism, New World slavery and industrial capitalism provides a down to earth account of the fundamentally economic motivations for these atrocities. Caliban and the Witch lays out the how and why of the deeply entrenched (and deliberately constructed) prejudices that continue to haunt our world. The footnotes are packed with interesting references and extra reading. Can't recommend this one enough
L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department
"I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief..."
A collection of Orwell's continually relevant essays in English and Russian. My favourites so far are Notes on Nationalism, Politics and the English Language and The Prevention of Literature.
High resolution, downloadable, public domain images of artworks. Really good selection of 19th century naturalism, realism etc. Kind of like Google Cultural Institute but without the creepy surveillance capitalism.
Free/libre, open source chess server. Right now I'm hooked on playing Fischer Random (Chess960 variant). Email me if you want to play a correspondence game. I'm not really informed on chess theory but I love to play.
Ukiyo-e Japanese Woodblock Print Search
Huge database of ukiyo-e prints. I spend hours on here digging through collections. I only wish there was contextual info about the prints/artists.
Interesting and really accessible articles on anthropology related to contemporary events and research.
Distributer of seditious and subversive pamphlets and news. I also like their podcast, The Ex-Worker.
Not as well known as it ought to be. Point your VPN to Germany if you are having trouble connecting.
Website of the Fight Like an Animal podcast by Arnold Schroder. The show is a synthesis of behavioural science and political theory produced by an environmental activist who aims to use the findings of biology and psychology to challenge the underlying ideas and perceptual frameworks of our political beliefs and social movement strategy.