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The Brainsturbator 2011 Reading List
Spies for Hire - Timothy Shorrock. This is the best book I've read in 2012 so far. May we all write good enough to transcend our own opinions, right? Shorrock manages to do that here. I especially appreciate the fact he's not afraid to let details slow down and tangle up...
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Neal Koblitz: "Mathematics as Propaganda"
This is an excerpt from Volume III of Mathematics: People, Problems, Results that had to be shared. One night several years ago while watching TV, I was surprised to see a mathematical equation make an appearance on the "Tonight Show." The occasion was an interview with Paul Ehrlich, author of The...
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Dear Humpasaur: Fuck the Dumb
The Question: I notice you've been a real asshole on Twitter lately, no offense. I also remember an incident last year when I asked you for more information on something and you refused. So I have to ask, what's the point of learning all this great knowledge if you're not going...
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The Human Brain is a Piece of Shit
As I slowly finish off my epic manuscript Human Sexuality for Filthy Apes, I have been given a newfound appreciation for how fundamentally science has failed our species. While most writing on the human brain touts our wetware as a miracle machine, that's just breathless ad copy for highbrow suckers...a...
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Fixing Underground Hip Hop
thanks to f. stokes for the nudge I'm not going to complain -- that's too easy. No need for a laundry list of details or worse, some disgruntled manifesto: underground hip hop is broken as fuck, I know it, you know it, no further explanation needed. This is not about what's...
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#Occupy Itself
"Since August, investigators with the Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have monitored the online efforts of activists to bring demonstrations to Wall Street." -- NYT 9-26-2011 It's easy to write some critical theory noise about asymmetrical emergent rhizomes, and it's easy to wish the #Occupy movement was more...
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James Angleton | 7 Types of Ambiguity
"Deception is a state of mind--and the mind of the state." - James Jesus Angleton As the CIA's own website has the cunning arrogance to tell me: "...observers of the intelligence scene find James Angleton endlessly fascinating." Too true. Personally, though, what interests me the most is that with a small...
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Down Here in the Cave
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." -- William Colby That's a hell of a quote, and like most of the classic admissions of guilt in conspiracy literature, it's completely fabricated. Too late: it's in the lexicon now. The Conspiratainment Complex doesn't do "corrections." That's...
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Life in an Occupied Country
"Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be." -- Marshall McLuhan For the past month, I've been pursuing a new obsession: tracing the historical contours...
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Towards a Psychological Operations Reading List
"Psychological Operations are conducted across the operational continuum." -- FM 33-1 Defining Psychological Operations is straightforward enough, but determining where exactly it ends is extremely tricky. The US Department of Defense has infiltrated institutions around the world, they expend billions every year on domestic and foreign propaganda, yet they still only...