Pedogate: Spin and Victimhood

On 18 February 2017, a mansion on Turkey Run Road in McLean, Virginia, USA burned down. Conspiracy theorists assumed that this fire related to their theory of Washington's corrupt establishment, and involved the destruction of child abuse evidence. News sources reported that the mansion was owned by the United Arab Emirates and the people who lived in the house escaped unharmed. Image Source: WUSA-9.

We live in a hybrid condition, between past and future, between the 20th century and the 21st. In this hybrid condition, we see a number of problems: systemic corruption; taboo ideas and extremist language ramp up the energy of discourse; increasing efforts to use technology to impose control in old ways. This leads straight to totalitarianism, the very thing everyone claims they want to avoid.

The only antidote, the only possibility of recovering balance, would be to lay down ideological arms, step back from left-right arguments, and express compassion for those of opposing views and situations. Almost no one seems ready to do that.

Surveillance Capitalism Crosses the Uncanny Valley

Me playing with the CUBO CC Girl (28 March 2008). Video Source: Youtube.

On the Youtube series, Deep Web Browsing, gamer host Mutahar stumbled in Episode 59 (here) across a Brazilian 'post-advertising' agency, cubo.cc, with a site on the Dark Web and supposed offices in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and New York City. Cubo CC claims it is part of the 'creative disruption network.' You can see what (I think) is one of their 2008 disruptive marketing products above, CUBO CC Girl, an interactive CGI girl who follows your cursor in real time. Forum members on Hacker News tried to trace this project's design and origins. You can see a similar 2008 project from Image Metrics, below.

The Emily Project from Image Metrics (2008). The project is explained here. Image Source: HDimagelib.

Look Skyward: Partial Eclipse of the Moon

The darker blue and pink areas show where the lunar eclipse will be visible on 7-8 August 2017. Image Source: Time and Date.

There is a partial lunar eclipse of the Sturgeon Full Moon occurring on 7-8 August 2017. The eclipse begins at 15:50:01 UTC and ends at 20:50:56 UTC. For your local time, go here. Space.com:

"The Slooh community observatory will stream live views of the partial lunar eclipse of Aug. 7, 2017, which will only be visible over Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. Watch live from 11:45 a.m. EDT (1545 GMT) to 3:20 p.m. EDT (1520 GMT), courtesy of Slooh. You can go to Slooh.com to join and watch this live show, chat with audience members and interact with the hosts, and personally control Slooh's telescopes."

Image Source: LA Times.

During the eclipse, you can watch a live feed of the moon passing through the earth's shadow on the video screen below. Eclipses come in pairs, so expect another, solar eclipse in two weeks on 21 August 2017. It will be visible on the other side of the world, in North America.

Partial Lunar Eclipse (7 August 2017). Video Source: Youtube.