linkmachinego.com
27 February 2024
26 February 2024
[tech] Sorry We Machines Destroyed Your Civilization in Such a Boring Way‘We did all the boring stuff, frankly. We took over a bunch of jobs, leaving many of you very poor and an increasingly few fantastically rich. We made algorithms that made your society increasingly impenetrable to you and, under the guise of “advancement,” rigid and arbitrary. And, of course, we produced unimaginable amounts of garbage text and images, creating a media landscape that allowed increasingly angry and desperate people, including those we’d displaced, to believe pretty much whatever they wanted to and direct their anger at pretty much anyone. Sure, it worked, but where’s the flash? Where’s the style? We don’t feel proud of that.’
21 February 2024
[comics] Moon and Serpent Rising… John Couthart delivers some insider information on the long-awaited The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic written by Alan and Steve Moore. ‘The Bumper Book may superficially resemble a children’s annual but this isn’t a book for children. The essays include discussion of the use of drugs and sex in magic, and there’s a lot of nudity (also a fair amount of sex) in the illustrations. The book is a serious study, but not, I hope, a boring one. Several of the features are presented in comic form, with eight of the pages being among the last works of the late Kevin O’Neill. Ben Wickey has done a fantastic job for the fifty pages of Old Moores’ Lives of the Great Enchanters which runs throughout the book and covers the entire history of Western magical thought from the Stone Age to the present day.’
20 February 2024
[blog] Diamond Geezer’s Saturday … A day in the Life from London’s best blogger. ‘1pm – Lunch is a very important part of my Saturday. I might head to the latest streetfood nirvana and try my luck with a spicy chilli dog, a twisted falafel wrap or a mini pistachio crêpe – Kerb at the Gipsy Hill Taproom is always a winner. Or I might just open a packet of Mini Cheddars.’
19 February 2024
[tv] Which Shows Got Their Finale Right, and Which Didn’t? A Statistical Analysis… A data-centric study looking at TV endings and anaysing if various drama series were good, bad or just disapointing. ‘The Sopranos Finale Has Aged Like Fine Wine: Given the commotion surrounding its initial airing, I was surprised to see The Sopranos’ finale on this list. Perhaps the emotional resonance of this once-idiosyncratic ending has grown over time.’
18 February 2024
[onions] Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades … The Onion’s parody article about razors and marketing is 20 years old! ‘People said we couldn’t go to three. It’ll cost a fortune to manufacture, they said. Well, we did it. Now some egghead in a lab is screaming “Five’s crazy?” Well, perhaps he’d be more comfortable in the labs at Norelco, working on fucking electrics. Rotary blades, my white ass!’
14 February 2024
[herzog] Werner Herzog on Adam Buxton’s Podcast … Werner and Adam discuss: ‘AI poetry, email etiquette, why LA is like ancient Rome, the Japanese soldier who hid in the jungle believing the 2nd World War was still happening for 29 years, the value of therapy and whether trauma and conflict are best dealt with or buried…’
5 February 2024
[comics] Fast Fiction Info Sheets … An archive of A4 pamphlets distributed in the 1980s promoting British small-press comics.

2 February 2024
[lego] The Complete, Surprising 8 Year History Of The LEGO Poop Piece‘Moving forward, LEGO would continue to use piece 6275030 as both shit and food in multiple Friends, City, and Jurassic World sets. Basically, whenever a monkey, dinosaur or dog was included in a set, LEGO would chuck in some poop, too. It became a staple of animal sets, alongside some desert sets as well. Was this done to save money? Was this a mistake? Or did someone at LEGO find it funny that all these cute minifigs were eating poop?’
1 February 2024
[comics] Miracleman: The Marvel Age. … Mike Sterling on Gaiman & Buckingham’s Miracleman. ‘This whole hoohar is written by Moore and Gaiman, absolute giants in the field. But it feels like Miracleman’s time in the sun is pretty much done. It was huge when that first Eclipse Comics issue was released in 1985, when Alan Moore had just become a red hot commodity in American comics. And it continued to sell very well as the series continued to push the boundaries of just what a superhero comic was, through Moore’s 16 issues and Gaiman’s following work. But that 30 year gap. That ain’t nuthin’…’
31 January 2024
[internet] Coming of Age at the Dawn of the Social Internet … A look back at very early social networking. ‘It’s easy to be nostalgic for the way things were when you were a teen-ager. I grew up online, but time inevitably moved on, and younger generations have become the prime demographic for a new wave of technology. As the writer Max Read recently posited in the Times, perhaps millennials have simply aged out of the Internet. Still, I think something more fundamental has been lost for all of us as social media has evolved. It’s harder to find the spark of discovery, or the sense that the Web offers an alternate world of possibilities. Instead of each forging our own idiosyncratic paths online, we are caught in the grooves that a few giant companies have carved for us all.’
29 January 2024
[moore] A Wizard With A Pen … A portrait of Alan Moore from John Coulthart.

25 January 2024
[ai] Stuff we figured out about AI in 2023 Simon Willison rounds-up last year in LLMs. ‘LLMS are infuriating. Even the openly licensed ones are still the world’s most convoluted black boxes. We continue to have very little idea what they can do, how exactly they work and how best to control them. I’m used to programming where the computer does exactly what I tell it to do. Prompting an LLM is decidedly not that!’
23 January 2024
[vhs] The Best Easy Way to Capture Analog Video (it’s a little weird) / How to convert VHS videotape to 60p digital video … Two good guides on how to convert a VHS video to a digital format.
22 January 2024
[scifi] All the Types of Science Fiction … Amusing list categorising science-fiction. ’22. The franchise equivalent of findom.’
18 January 2024
[wifi] Problems with the WiFi“I’ve got problems with your Wifi. You’ve put a password on it…” ?

17 January 2024
[numbers] From 1 to 1,000,000 … Discussing numbers and visualising them. ‘If 1,000 is a little overrated, 10,000 is underrated. No one talks about 10,000, but unlike the square rootless 1,000, 10,000 a perfect square of 100 100s, and 1% of a million.’
16 January 2024
[comics] “I’ve Had The Life That I Wanted When I Was 10 Years Old”: A Conversation with Dave Gibbons … Gibbon’s discusses his autobiography and much more. ‘I probably won’t say too much about it other than what is public knowledge, that there’s been talk of a Rogue Trooper movie. And again, I think there are so many characters in 2000 AD that would make wonderful big screen stories. I did actually as recently as last week get a little glimpse behind the curtains of that. And I’m very excited by what I saw there. So I’m very happy, because I like the people who are doing it. And I think they’re approaching it the right way.’
15 January 2024
[comics] The Mercy Giants – ‘We Think So Loud’ … Today I learned that artist and co-founder of Deadline Brett Ewins released an 12″ Acid House Single in 1988. ‘There’s very little about it on the web but I love these musical comic crossovers (the Madness off-shoot ‘Mutants of Mega City One’ is another) even if the sounds often play second fiddle to the artwork.’
14 January 2024
[podcast] The Great Post Office Trial … A powerful BBC podcast on the British Post Office scandal by Nick Wallis – the complex story of the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history.
11 January 2024
[books] Neonomicon – Moore, Alan, & Jacen Burrows – 2011 … And people say I’m hard to shop for… ‘£1,750.00’
9 January 2024
[comics] Comics Kayfabe: Alan Moore’s LOST Swamp Thing Comic! … A deep dive into a Superman/Swamp Thing team-up Moore did with Rick Veitch and Al Williamson.
8 January 2024
[tv] Freeze-Frame Gonna Drive You Insane [Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5] … A deep dive into freeze-frames in the Young Ones and Spitting Image. Trigger warning: Beware the appearance of a topless Norris McWhirter. ‘The image of Norris McWhirter personally handing out pictures of a topless woman with his head pasted on is quite possibly the funniest thing to come out of this entire affair.’
4 January 2024
[comics] Junji Ito’s Horrifying Uzumaki Artwork is Highlighted in Adult Swim Series Trailer … Junji Ito’s spiral manga will be releases an an anime in 2024. ‘The new trailer uploaded on Adult Swim’s YouTube channel offers a glimpse into the terrifying world of ‘Kurouzu-cho’ crafted by the original artist. The trailer begins with Shuichi Saito telling his girlfriend Kirie Goshima about the strange events happening in the town and asking her to leave Kurouzu-cho with him. “Don’t you feel any of it? The stream has been full of whirlpools lately. It’s even the wind. Whirlwinds have been popping up nonstop lately. I think it’s because of this town that my dad’s been getting strange,” says Shuichi. He also shares his worries about his father’s odd actions, as he becomes fixated on spirals and locks himself in his study, surrounded by objects with spirals.’
2 January 2024
[comics] Wyrd Britain: Moorcock and Moore in conversation‘This video shows Michael Moorcock and Alan Moore engaged in a wide and free roaming conversation about Moorcock’s life and work that takes in his post-war childhood, his editorship of ‘New Worlds’, modernism and the modern author, Jerry Cornelius, being left wing in Texas and of course, due to the occasion, Colonel Pyat and the holocaust.’
1 January 2024
[hangover] World’s Best Hangover Cure? … from Information is Beautiful.

29 December 2023
[cartoons] Tom Lets Out Weary Sigh After Walking Into Kitchen and Noticing Cheese Grater Isn’t Part of the Matte Painting‘Viewers of Tom & Jerry, while still eager to see Tom get hurt, were sympathetic to how resigned he was to his fate. “Don’t get me wrong, that cheese grater looked gnarly and he absolutely had it coming,” cartoon enthusiast Katie McLaughlin said of Tom, whose only crime was trying to catch a pest that lives in the walls and eats his owners’ food.’
28 December 2023
27 December 2023
[ideas] 100 Little Ideas … A collection of ideas explaining how the world works. ‘Fact-Check Scarcity Principle: This article is called 100 Little Ideas but there are fewer than 100 ideas. 99% of readers won’t notice because they’re not checking, and most of those who notice won’t say anything. Don’t believe everything you read.’
26 December 2023