Wonky Crisis.

-  I’m sitting outside in my new wooden chair with the cat and the birds watching THIS movie.  It’s a free documentary that’s been uploaded to YouTube called The Crisis of Civilization.  The movie is essentially wholly narrated by Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, the Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development.  The film discusses how all the “crisis’s” we face today — everything from ecological disaster to financial meltdowns to terrorism — are just manifestations of a civilized, industrial global system that is failing.  If it has an overall thesis statement, it is that this current global system (and every aspect of it) cannot continue to exist as it does through the entirety of the 21st Century… at least without catastrophic consequences.

-  Relatedly, China Warns That Its Rare Earth Minerals Are Running Out.

“The white paper outlines a series of challenges currently facing China’s extraction of rare earth minerals. China holds 23 percent of the world’s total quantity of minerals, mostly sourced from three main sites in the south of the country. Those sites are now heavily depleted to the extent that China believes two-thirds of their total supplies have now been mined, and the remaining seams are of a much poorer quality which will increase the cost of extraction.

Illegal mining, and the theft of supplies, has also meant that prices have been kept far lower than China believes they should be — so as demand for copper, iron and other metals has shot up over the past 20 years, rare earth mineral demand has not increased prices commensurately.”

-  KROWNE — of my Black Lantern Music family — has won the Orbital/Beatport remix contest of the track “Wonky”!!!!  Congrats Gary!!  Fuck yes yes yes.  Here’s his SOUNDCLOUD.  Krowne is a really talented producer who creates these tricky sound designs, think complex architecture (curved glass, laced rafters like braids), steeped in on-the-go DJ skills and a keen sense of how to tickle an earhole.  He’s good.  And if you go to his Black Lantern page, you’ll find a bunch of albums for free.  I really dig “Quantum Living” a lot.

I’m getting married tomorrow

-Sonny

Ghosts Of Mars.

-  Label Conscious: The Ghosts Of Def Jam’s Past.

“In 1995, the head-trauma wing at a nursing home in Bensonhurst began acquiring the lost memories of Def Jam’s first rapper. Terry Keaton, a new patient at Haym Salomon hospital, had emerged from a coma unaware that he was T La Rock. Or that T La Rock had a hit in 1984 called “It’s Yours.” What was known is that the history of T La Rock — and perhaps the time of his life — had been purged from Terry Keaton’s mind with a blunt instrument.

The assailant was never caught, and Keaton spent much of his rehab listening to “It’s Yours,” recollecting lines that the rest of the hip-hop world had been quoting for the past decade. Though “It’s Yours” wasn’t exactly targeting the Yiddish-speaking Russian-granny demographic, this Def Jam moment essentially became theirs: a new memory that required an additional memory for all that excess bass. Listening to an 808 drum machine certainly beat not recognizing your loved ones.”

-  And speaking of ghosts and hip-hop: one of those albums I was referring to yesterday is the oft-delayed Ghostface & DOOM record “Swift & Changeable“.  Since first getting into Wu-Tang, Ghostface quickly rose to the top of those 9 rappers for me personally.  I’m a big fan.

And since we’re on the subject, if you do not already have WUGAZI on your computer I’d suggest getting it.  It’s free, and awesome.  Now here’s more links:

-  Third Lunar Mineral — Tranquillityite — Found In Western Australia.

“Birger Rasmussen, paleontologist with Curtin University in Perth, and colleagues have found natural samples in several sites in Western Australia, and as they describe in their paper published in Geology, it appears likely the mineral is more common here on our home planet than anyone might have surmised.

The mineral has been found in six sites in all, in various remote spots in Western Australia, and occurs in very small amounts. The samples found were actually about the width of a human hair and just microns in length, and that’s part of the reason why it’s taken so long for those that study rocks to find such samples here on Earth. Another reason is that tranquillityite is comparatively delicate and tends to break down when exposed to normal surface climatic events such as heat, rain and wind.“

-  A natural hangover cure?  For real?

-  Warren Ellis: Five Predictions About The Immediate Future Of Comics.  Among them:  indie creators being offered deals to do their own bidding via digital storefronts/apps, more self-publishing/direct to book publishers, several of the DC staff will begin exiting the company due to the constant shifting of… everything.

-  Our Tools Don’t Make Us Who We Are; We Make Tools Because Of Who We Are.

“Cyberculture legend RU Sirius, editor at the Acceler8or webzine, interviewed Joel Garreau and myself about the Prevail project. (Short summary for those who missed the earlier post: Prevail is an Arizona State University-sponsored non-profit organization looking to build collaborative knowledge about transformative technologies and culture.) In a series of back-and-forth email among the three of us, we discussed everything from the logic of transhumanism to the power of the Occupy movement. “

-  And:  Should We Terraform Mars?

-Sonny