In August of 2009, I bought a Kindle. I was immediately quite happy with it (see “Impressions and advice from a new Kindle DX owner“), and I continue to be so these two and a half years later. My Kindle has become a major part of my reading world as a whole, particularly as a…
Author: Matt Cardin
Teeming Brain founder and editor Matt Cardin is the author of DARK AWAKENINGS, DIVINATIONS OF THE DEEP, A COURSE IN DEMONIC CREATIVITY: A WRITER'S GUIDE TO THE INNER GENIUS, and TO ROUSE LEVIATHAN. He is also the editor of BORN TO FEAR: INTERVIEWS WITH THOMAS LIGOTTI and the academic encyclopedias MUMMIES AROUND THE WORLD; GHOSTS, SPIRITS, AND PSYCHICS: THE PARANORMAL FROM ALCHEMY TO ZOMBIES; and HORROR LITERATURE THROUGH HISTORY.
Recommended Reading 1
In the wake of my exit from Facebook a couple of weeks ago — something I still intend to write about here in the near future, in tandem with an explanation of my reasons for leaving Google as well — I’ve taken the time, energy, and attention that I was using to post things over…
Bad grammar on PBS: The fall of civilization?
Last night my wife and I watched the new National Geographic documentary “Quest for the Lost Maya” on PBS. At one point the narrator uttered this sentence: Though badly decomposed from the acidic soil, Stephanie can still make out the remains of a human skull, and arm and leg bones. The Maya created a great…
“Solipsist”: A surreal short film that’s “a meditative and hypnotic experience for dreamers”
SOLIPSIST from Andrew Huang on Vimeo. As I type these words, I’m still in a daze from this short experimental film, and I invite you, too, to come and have your mind turned inside-out. Anything I could say by way of introduction or explanation would only be a hindrance, so I’ll just leave off talking…
On learning to read Joe Pulver’s ‘Portraits of Ruin’ by writing the introduction to it
Today I stumbled across the first full review, or at least the first one I’ve seen, of Joe Pulver’s imminent new book Portraits of Ruin (due out next month from Hippocampus Press) at Hellbound Times. The book will arrive with an introduction by me, and I was surprised to see the reviewer not only mentioning…
Your personal filter bubble, or What Facebook and Google are hiding from you
You would have had to be hiding under the proverbial rock in order to avoid hearing about the concept of the “filter bubble” in the past year. It comes from peace activist and MoveOn.org cofounder Eli Pariser’s 2011 book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. The basic idea is that the…
A real-life Skynet?
Last week Wired magazine made waves by publishing an epic article about a vast spy center that’s currently being built by America’s National Security Agency in the Utah desert. The real bombshell was the revelation that the project is ground zero for a galactically powerful and all-encompassing surveillance program that targets literally all communications and…
Advertising is pseudo-therapy. Consumers are its patients.
Neil Postman wrote this in 1993. It still holds true today. Maybe even more so. [A] discovery which for convenience’s sake we may attribute to Procter and Gamble [is] that advertising is most effective when it is irrational. By irrational, I do not, of course, mean crazy. I mean that products could best be sold…
Gamma (short SF/dystopian film)
GAMMA from Factory Fifteen on Vimeo. (Be sure to expand the frame and watch this film in full-screen mode. It looks simply amazing. Many thanks to Jesús Olmo for bringing it to my attention. -Matt) SYNOPSIS: In a post-nuclear future, when the earth is riddled with radiation, a new urban developer proposes to regenerate the…
On the demise of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s print edition
Have you heard? After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print. Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books that were once sold door-to-door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, company executives said. In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age…