Category: Flotsam-and-Jetsam

What living director has drawn the descriptor “surreal” more often than David Lynch? If you’ve seen, or rather experienced, a few of his films — particularly Eraserhead, Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr., or Inland Empire, or even the first half of his television series Twin Peaks — you know he’s earned it. Like any surrealist worth his salt, Lynch creates his own version of reality, with its own set of often unfathomable and inexplicably but emotionally and psychologically resonant qualities. In 1987, the year after his breakthrough Blue Velvet opened in theaters, the BBC apparently thought him enough of an authority on the matter of cinematic surrealism to enlist him to present an episode of Arena on the subject.

LINK: http://www.openculture.com/2013/10/david-lynch-presents-the-history-of-surrealist-film-1987.html

China officials have launched its latest crackdown on funeral strippers. Yes, funeral strippers.

The country’s Ministry of Culture announced late last month that it will be targeting a slew of rural provinces “for their obscene and vulgar performances at weddings, funerals and temple fairs,” China’s state-run Global Times newspaper reported.

LINK: https://nypost.com/2018/02/21/china-cracks-down-on-funeral-strippers/

A Reseda man planned to detonate improvised explosive devices at several Southern California locations to cause “mass casualties” in a terror plot thwarted by law enforcement officials, authorities said Monday.

LINK: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/california/la-me-ln-los-angeles-terror-plot-20190429-story.html

It’s been nearly 50 years since notorious cult leader Charles Manson and some of his devout followers shocked the world with a series of brutal murders, including that of “Valley of the Dolls” actress Sharon Tate, who was more than eight months pregnant at the time.

And yet, despite knowing what he’d done, one of his followers, Lynette Fromme, said she’s still in love with Manson.

“I don’t think you fall out of love,” she told ABC News. “I feel very honored to have met him, and I know how that sounds to people who think he’s the epitome of evil.”

Fromme and Dianne Lake, two members who lived with the so-called “Manson Family” for years, spoke to ABC News about how they came to know Charles Manson and how the group’s 1969 murders shaped their lives and impacted American culture.

Watch the full story of “Manson Girls” tonight, April 30 at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.

With CIA help, writers were enlisted to battle both Communism and eggheaded abstraction. The damage to writing lingers.

LINK: https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Iowa-Flattened-Literature/144531

US authorities have arrested three men after taking down a dark web drug ring which laundered $2.3 million in cryptocurrency.

LINK: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/04/17/dark-web-druglords-charged-with-laundering-2-3m-in-bitcoin/

Scandals. Backstabbing. Resignations. Record profits. Time Bombs. In early 2018, Mark Zuckerberg set out to fix Facebook. Here’s how that turned out.

LINK: https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-15-months-of-fresh-hell/

Scientists discover large amounts of tiny plastic particles falling out of the air in a remote mountain location.

In what looks like a pristine, remote mountain region, tiny pieces of plastic pollution were found raining down from the sky—raising questions about the global extent of plastic pollution—a first-of-its-kind study has found.

LINK: https://relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/environment/2019/04/microplastics-pollution-falls-from-air-even-mountains

“I think Bostrom has somehow penetrated our private forum.” – The Editor

Oxford philosopher and founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute Nick Bostrom‘s latest research paper seems to indicate our species could be on a collision course with a technology-fueled super villain.

LINK: https://thenextweb.com/distract/2019/04/16/oxford-philosophers-newest-hypothesis-predicts-the-rise-of-super-villains/