Greetings, Wanderer.

Welcome back to Ley Lines.

1.) Understanding Comics. I've been struggling a lot lately on a few fronts. One of those is to come to terms what I think 'art' is and how that Generative AI factors into that conversation. Another one of those fronts is trying to reconcile if the work that I've been doing most of my career. The last front is in trying to come to terms with my own ability to create ‘art’, and what that might be.

I'm not sure If I went into Scott Mcloud's Understanding Comics hoping for answers or guidance on these. If so, I'd be disappointed: it didn't answer any of my questions exactly, and instead raised new ones.

But that's a good thing. It got me thinking a lot more broadly about art, and it got me thinking deeply about the comic art form.

Go check your local bookstore for Understanding Comics by Scott Mcloud.

2.) Fibre Optic Intensity Every once in a while I think of an obscure profession, and guess that there is probably a sub-Reddit about it populated with experts making their own memes and having their own inside-baseball conversations.

One of those is the R/FibreOptic community.

I knew generally how those cables go: glass-like filaments transmit light, and thus data, across long distances.

I just had no idea just how strong that light was. Based on the picture in R/FibreOptics below, it's powerful enough to melt it's own casing if improperly or accidentally cut.

Via Reddit

And if this kind of thing tickles your nerd nerve you’ll absolutely love “Mother Earth Motherboard”

3.) Reality Has Collapsed - It might be fairly obvious now that Netanyahu isn't dead. There was, however, a moment in time of a few days or weeks when it wasn't so obvious: Every video released of him had obvious artefacts of Generative AI manipulation, which were then fixed only to be replaced with different artefacts with each subsequent video. It was a cat-and-mouse conspiracy game.

What was news, or at least what was interesting to me, wasn't so much the "is he/isn't he" Schrodingerization of a world leader so much as the fact that it was a discussion point in the first place. We now know just how good (or bad) these tools are, and we've mostly accepted them into our life. With that acceptance, and willingness to use them, comes the knowledge that a shared reality no longer exists.

For more on this, including some other examples and rationale, head to The Humanity Archive.

4.) Coherence There's a certain genre of Science Fiction film that makes minimal or no use of special effects. It relies on pure camera work and story telling to bring us into a world of speculation, and to help us ask the question of "What if...?" Primer is one of the greats of the genre, and I believe Roger Ebert said it was a great film because every shot looked exactly the way it was supposed to.

The Man From Earth is another. It asks the question "What if there was an immortal man?" and then helps us answer all of the follow-up questions, both practical and philosophical, in the form of a dinner party with friends.

Coherence, which i just watched a few weeks ago, might not be the best of this particular genre but is well worth the watch. Like The Man From Earth, it takes it's storytelling in the form of a dinner party. Part of the reason it feels so natural is because apparently all the actors were only told to hit certain bits in their scenes, and to improvise the rest. The result is like watching your own group of friends tell stories and talk over each other, and then react to things very realistically. There are some genuine moments of terror. Some of them are the jump-scare type. Others are the more psychological.

All three of those movies are easily findable on streaming or our old friend The Pirate Bay. Watch at least one of them and get back to me.

5.) North Korea's May Day Stadium I think it's possible to be fascinated with what happens in North Korea while feeling empathy for the people who live there, and disgust for a dictator who keeps the country in that sort of condition. Like many, my fascination comes in the form of the immense buildings that the country constructs.

Behold the gargantuan structure of "Rungrado 1st of May Stadium in Pyongyang, with a capacity of 150,000. Gaze up the expanse of green field and imagine a tens of thousands of gymnastics athletes performing together. Picture in your head a frenzied sea of energy of “Collision In Korea,” the world’s largest PPV wrestling performance in which Ric Flair was defeated by Inoki.

The pictures below don’t have that people in them, and instead are the sort of haunting and liminal aesthetic that I can't get enough of, and actually remind me a bit of the community gym I used to go to in Japan.

More on Wikipedia

And some footage of it here.

Lastly:

I've been finding a lot of joy and meaning in a few different things lately, and thought this was a good place to share them:

Debrief Cafe - Last September I launched something called Debrief Cafe that was originally intended to be a breakfast and coffee meet-up for strategists. It's since mutated into something bigger: our WhatsApp community has nearly 300 users from across Canada, and we're holding monthly meet-ups in Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto. If you fancy yourself a strategist of sorts you should join us. Head to DebriefCafe.ca

Democracy Rising - Call it extremism, call it far-right authoritarianism, call it techno-feudalism, or call it fascism: whatever it is, it's here and gaining traction. That's why I founded Democracy Rising with my partner and few other concerned people here in Vancouver. I've felt buoyed up seeing how many people feel the same as I do about what is happening, and who are equally ready to march in the streets and protest the evil we see coming. Visit us at DemocracyRising.ca to get involved.

Writing - Regularly referenced here is the that I've been trying to get better at writing. I'll let you, dear reader, be the judge of that quality. But I'd also like to let you know that I'm not just brute-forcing better writing by simply more desire. I'm actively trying to write more, in different styles and formats. These blog posts are part of it. So is my longer post about Generative AI (clickbaity headline and all), my trend report on the The Future Of Jobs, and a longer piece of experimental fiction called This Is How It Ends.