Monday, February 2, 2015
Finding yourself in an episode of Black Mirror
DL:
Over the past two years, Shanley Kane achieved a kind of celebrity on Twitter, where, as @shanley, she claimed to be leading a crusade for women in tech. But now some people wonder if the whole thing was a massive hoax.
...
It's not clear if we've seen the end of the Shanley Show. If so this would no doubt be a relief to people who have been persecuted by Kane and her followers. But a question remains about whether the whole thing was just a huge hoax — a "mega-troll," as one person put it to me.
One of Kane's victims has an interesting notion, which is that Kane and her purported opponents are actually all part of the same community. Basically, they're an online theater troupe. They start by finding issues that elicits strong emotions, like racism and sexism. Then they pick sides, and fight. They dox each other. They cry foul. They get revenge. They create scapegoats and enemies.
Most important, they draw in an audience, and the audience gets sucked into the drama and even participates in it. This is, in effect, a new form of entertainment, made possible by Twitter. It's better than TV, if only because it feels so real. In fact it is real, in the sense that real people do suffer real harm. Often those people are unwitting victims who have no idea what's going on. That only makes the show more compelling.
Private island home being built off the coast of New York
SNY:
A few months ago, I had to charter a boat to take scout pictures of Davids Island, located in Long Island Sound off the coast of New Rochelle. As we were curving around the southern side of the island, I noticed something in the distance…
A squat, one-story structure on its own private island.
Though it seemed dilapidated and possibly abandoned from a distance, as we drew closer, I began to see signs of modern activity: a huge solar panel on the roof, along with construction equipment scattered about. My guide explained that this is Columbia Island, and that the owner is currently converting the building into what will be the only private island home off the coast of New York City.
Whatever happened to Barry Windsor-Smith?
Tom Scioli laments the fact that Barry Windsor-Smith has become a forgotten man in comics, and speculates as to the reason why:
I think the barrier that keeps his work from being adopted by a new generation is the way his work is recolored. I blame the widely available reprint volumes, like Weapon X, but most especially the Conan reprint volumes Dark Horse puts out. Now keep in mind that at the time they thought they were doing these old stories a huge service, giving them a state-of-the-art makeover, the kind of expensive, careful color treatment they’d never had.Many more examples at the link.
Unfortunately, the color reprints of Conan obliterate Windsor-Smith’s line work and created a barrier for our generation to appreciate his work. If you don’t have access to the expensive original newsprint versions, you’re unable to read these stories the way they were intended.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
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