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Greylodge Occult Review (GLOR) Archives

Back online, the archives of the legendary Greylodge Occult Review

The Alterati Archives

The gigantic podcast archives of Alterati. The Inside Scoop on the Outside Culture.

Is This Virtual Worm the First Sign of the Singularity?

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For all the talk of artificial intelligence and all the games of SimCity that have been played, no one in the world can actually simulate living things. Biology is so complex that nowhere on Earth is there a comprehensive model of even a single simple bacterial cell.  And yet, these are exciting times for “executable [...]

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Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology (2012)

The first sustained exploration of Simondon’s work to be published in English. This collection of essays, including one by Simondon himself, outlines the central tenets of Simondon’s thought, the implication of his thought for numerous disciplines and his relationship to other thinkers such as Heidegger, Deleuze and Canguilhem. Complete with a contextualising introduction and a [...]

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The Rise Of The ARG: games™ investigates alternate reality games and what the future has in store for the curious experiment.

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Matheny himself was there at the beginning of the ARG, when the increasing prominence of online media got him thinking about new forms of storytelling. “I’ve been a tech person since the Eighties,” he reminisces. “I was an IT expert and moved up into software, and I used to play the Steve Jackson games a lot. I also played the Flying Buffalo play-by-mail games, which were kind of like a LARP but done through mail, phone and faxes. You would send your mailing address and your phone number and you would start getting stuff in the mail.

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The Term Conspiracy Theory is Officially Dead Language, Let’s Move On to Mind Control Facts – disinformation

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Wait, where was I going with that? Oh yeah, I’ve been saying this for years, but the term “conspiracy theory” is officially over. Here’s the problem. A long time ago, because of a quite coordinated campaign by monolithic mainstream media conglomerates, they slandered it to mean batshit. You see a lot of the word “tin [...]

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Snooping

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The FBI is pushing for expanded power to eavesdrop on private Internet communications. The law enforcement agency wants to force online service providers to build wiretapping capabilities into their products. But a group of prominent computer security experts argues that mandating “back doors” in online communications products is likely to compromise the security of Americans’ [...]

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BBC News – Nasa buys into ‘quantum’ computer

A $15m computer that uses “quantum physics” effects to boost its speed is to be installed at a Nasa facility. It will be shared by Google, Nasa, and other scientists, providing access to a machine said to be up to 3,600 times faster than conventional computers. http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22554494

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Congress Asks if Google Glass Will Be a Privacy Nightmare

Google Glass makes it easy for wearers to surreptitiously take pictures or video of unknowing subjects. That’s caused more than a few people to ask: What does Glass mean for our privacy? Now Congress, too, wants answers. Eight members of Congress’ bi-partisan privacy caucus sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page Thursday seeking answers [...]

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The Priests of High Strangeness

Co-creation of the “alien abduction phenomenon” Sometimes an event comes hurdling along and scatters wellintentioned plans left and right. I had intended to wait several more years before writing about my hard-won insights into the alien abduction phenomenon. During my ten-year marriage to UFO researcher Budd Hopkins, I’d actively participated in some of Budd’s UFO [...]

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Close encounter: Asteroid nearly 2 miles wide to pass Earth this month

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It’s a dark rock that’s a full 1.7 miles wide. It’s an asteroid. Scientists compare it to the one that killed off the dinosaurs. But, before you start scrambling for the next shuttle flight off this planet, rest assured: It will not strike Earth. But, it will come very close to us in just a [...]

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Cyberspying?

The death of an American computer engineer, Shane Todd, in Singapore has created quite a stir. His parents contend he was murdered, but authorities say it was suicide. The mystery seems to have links to the dark world of cyber-spying and could possibly involve China. Rick and Mary Todd traveled from Montana to Singapore to [...]

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Survey finds 97% climate science papers agree warming is man-made | Dana Nuccitelli

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Overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed papers taking a position on global warming say humans are causing it http://m.guardiannews.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/may/16/climate-change-scienceofclimatechange

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Why Do People Believe Unbelievable Conspiracy Theories?

From the beginning of writing TSSBP, I consistently railed against two things: idiotic people who believe in unbelievable conspiracy theories and submarines flying “clean sweep” brooms when returning from 2 day underways for Alpha Trials. Somehow, I missed a post from the “Israel did it” 9/11 Truther website with the stunningly deceptive name of “Veterans [...]

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Into Reality: Top Star Trek Warp Speed Concepts : Discovery News

J.J. Abram’s second Star Trek outing “Into Darkness” will hit movie screens this week, no doubt packed with excitement, explosions, mind-melding Vulcans and phasers set to stun. But there will also be the USS Enterprise traveling faster than the speed of light, carving up the vast expanses of interstellar space as if it was a [...]

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Most Transparent Administration in History Releases Completely Redacted Document About Text Snooping

The American Civil Liberties Union was curious about warrantless government snooping on citizens’ text messages. So the group filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Justice Department. Here’s what they got back: Totally Redacted FOIA response   Totally Redacted FOIA response A memo header:  “Guidance for the Minimization of Text Messages over Dual-Function [...]

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LA Times – U.S. diplomat accused of recruiting for CIA in Russia

Russian authorities detained an American diplomat accused of attempting to recruit a Russian intelligence officer into the CIA, the Federal Security Service said Tuesday. Ryan Christopher Fogle, the third secretary of the American Embassy in Moscow, was held overnight before being handed over to U.S. authorities Tuesday, according to the Federal Security Service, or FSB, [...]

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Spate of US spying revelations reminiscent of covert surveillance of Watergate era – US News | Latest US News Headlines | The Irish Times – Wed, May 15, 2013

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Not since the covert surveillance exposed during the Watergate scandal of the 1970s has such a rash of revelations about spying and seemingly politically motivated investigations emerged publicly in the United States. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/spate-of-us-spying-revelations-reminiscent-of-covert-surveillance-of-watergate-era-1.1393481

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How climate change denial works

Chris beat me to the ludicrous ‘Global Warming is Over‘ story by David Rose in the London Daily Mail last October, but I wanted to finally delve into the issue a bit more, as it’s a great illustration of how climate change denialism works. http://americablog.com/2013/05/how-climate-change-denial-works.html

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LA Times – Citizen scientists: Help crowd-source climate change research

Citizen scientists, environmentalists and anyone who lives near a power plant — your services are requested. Climate change scientist Kevin Robert Gurney needs your help in a grand undertaking: the mapping of all the power plants in the world. http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-75898406/

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