Amber is the fossilized resin of prehistoric trees; when rubbed, it becomes charged with static electricity. It can attract small bits of matter, such as fluff, and emit shocks, and these properties made it seem magical. Amber pendants have been found dating back to 12,000 B.C., and Jorgensen writes that such jewelry would have been valued for much more than its beauty. In the era of recorded history, accounts of amber’s use abound. The ancient Greeks massaged the ailing with it, believing, Jorgensen writes, that its “attractive forces would pull the pain out of their bodies,” and it is the Greek word for amber —elektron— that gives us an entire vocabulary for electrical properties. In first-century Rome, Pliny the Elder wrote that wearing amber around the neck could prevent throat diseases and even mental illness.

This and many other factoids are in a fascinating article on electricity and the body in the New Yorker.

Of course a ’normal’ person who is not themselves a doctor and who cannot afford to pay a cardiologist who happens to be an expert in arrhythmias for a complex operation would have just died but that’s by the by.

fun with typos

yesterday in a txt i referred to 'twin peaks' by david lunch.

very interesting article (in vk so in dutch) about correspondences between psychosis and mystical experiences.
weblink or pdf file

why do i love this picture by Richard Avedon of WH Auden in NYC in 1960? is it because i know that Auden chose to spend his winters there? can i see that? it must be bitterly cold but he doesn’t look as if it bothers him one bit.

The impressive design pattern in bona fide material adds beauty to the product.

Are you a robot?

having fun with shell logos

didn’t someone say let it be ?

Terrace House combines a naturalistic, even literary aesthetic with layered meta-commentary on the reality TV genre — and on itself. Terrace House’s focus on the mundane aspects of life is, somehow, immediately addictive. The Times reviewer, Andrew Ridker, called it “hypnotically boring” right before saying he’d inhaled 46 episodes in a month. Baffled YouTuber, Derek Fults, rattles off things he loves/hates about the show and then babbling, “I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do anymore!” — which is exactly how a true TV addiction can hit you, scrambling your brain and leaving you unable to concentrate on anything else. A huge aspect of the show’s appeal seems to be a supply of wholesome authenticity — or at least a successful simulation of it. On camera, the show’s “characters” are almost unfailingly nice and caring, even when they’re arguing or making each other cry. Writing for Polygon, Justin McElroy praised Terrace House for “letting actual humans be delightfully, heartbreakingly human.”

vpro anno 2021 : “always playing it safe.”

nee. zeg dat het niet waar is. three of the most unrelenting self-promotors in the world are to be given three hours each on dutch tv over the christmas break to indulge their self-serving wankery while janine abbring blows smoke up their arses, all paid for from the public purse! of all the people in the world you could choose from, is this the best you could do, VPRO!? time to resign my membership!

sufferd!
sul!
domoor!
kluns!
miesgasser!
oliebol!
pannekoek!
bal gehakt!

miesgasser?!
wtf?!

ok so i made it to the 21st year of the 21st century and installed sortify spotify. i always avoided it because i want to learn about music more randomly or via other humans but i was talking to this old anarchist who runs an unusual recordshop. it is only open one afternoon a week and the records are sold at cost price and also there is a whole enormous shelf of records that are free. i was ranting to him about the evils of algorithms and spotify and he stroked his beard and said, ah well actually i've discovered some great new music through spotify and i was like, et tu brutus! but yeah ok.

but i am not paying for it!

and lo the first thing i discover is this CRAZY live version of roadrunner by jonathan richman. it goes off!

ha ha i've written so much shit in this so-called life, i've even written shit about shit.

A secularized doctrine of original sin, a chastened self-regard, doesn’t entail consigning ourselves to the flames. There is much to affirm in our damaged selves and in our damaged lives, even a sort of dignity and beauty we share in our imperfect awareness of our own imperfection, and our halting attempts to face it, and ourselves.

Crispin Sartwell

yeah but no, the problem is the so-called self. this is the greatest sleight of hand in the history and culture of human beings. still, no-one is intelligent enough to be able to see their own stupidity so you need some kind of narrative ha ha.

In 1993, Sophie Calle told the art historian Bice Curiger that everything in “The Hotel” was completely true. That is, except for one room, which she admitted was completely fake: “I took an empty room and I filled it with what I would have wished to find.” This casts the entire project in a new light, sending the reader back to the beginning of the book, this time to try to find the fiction.

link

i knew it.

I ask her for her very best sex tip (“I would say the confidence you have in the bedroom should be the same confidence you find within yourself when you’re masturbating”).

link

kill me now.

so, let's see

1. paul mccartney 2. banksy 3. adele 4. any president of the usa past or present 5. scott morrison 6. anything bad that has happened to children or animals 7. bono

and so on.

the list would take time to compile of course but even waking up in the morning just knowing that i would not see any stories about paul mccartney in my feed that day, that alone would improve my quality of life significantly.

also the service would use artificial intelligence (...) to ask me questions like, ok so you don't want to see stories about or photographs of scott morrison – maybe you also don't want to see stories about or photographs of tony abbott? and i would be like omg yes! no! i do not want ever to see stories about or photographs of tony abbott. thank you. here, take some more of my money.

Please go into Settings > Advanced > Database management and clear your cache.

Is this the new ‘Have you tried restarting your device?’

the times in my life when i would have said 'i am happy' were the times when i was able to most successfully perform happiness and/or hide my unhappiness most effectively.

Things outlast us, they know more about us than we know about them: they carry the experience they have had with us inside them and are—in fact—the book of our history opened before us.

W.G. Sebald Unrecounted

this is boring but ok. if you use firefox you can stop websites preventing you from pasting very simply : type “about:config” in the url window and search for “dom.event.cl” which will bring up dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled

change the value from “true” to “false” and paste, anywhere anytime!

“How do you tell someone in a dream that they’re a character in a dream?”

wired has the guff on timothy morton who is also slowly but surely becoming a hyperobject but that's by the by.

perhaps you would like to hear joni mitchell play 'river' live in london at the paris theatre on the 29th of october 1970? no? what?! why??

oh you want to hear 'both sides now' from the same concert? ok then.

https://now.everythingness.net/files/_both-sides-now.mp3

why the spacebar? it's big.

lol who cares what a couple of old has-beens think of a bunch of other old has-beens?

ok so this is the new everythingness archive site, since i messed up the old new everythingness site good and proper.