Children of the Drone
Andrew Blum on James Bridle and the New Aesthetic in Vanity Fair.
Came Back Haunted (2013)
Nine Inch Nails: “Came Back Haunted.” The new single from the forthcoming album “Hesitation Marks,” out September 3rd. Download “Came Back Haunted” on nin.com and iTunes starting June 6th.
This week’s TIME cover story, which is illustrated by the artist-activist Ai Weiwei, examines China’s place in the world.
Read a preview of the story here.
(Art by Ai Weiwei for TIME, Typography by Post Typography)
eBay's large retail screens could make 'window shopping' more expensive
From fake storefronts to virtual storefronts: “eBay plans to place 9-foot by 2-foot screens in closed retail units in a variety of locations around New York. The idea being that real shoppers will be able to paw at the virtual stores through the glass, and have purchases delivered to them in under an hour.”
Ahead of the G8 meeting, fake shops are hiding the real economic troubles of Northern Ireland.
At a former butcher’s shop, stickers applied to the windows show a packed meat counter and give the impression that business is booming. Across the street, another empty unit has been given a makeover to look like a thriving office supply shop.
Locals are unimpressed.
Local councils in Northern Ireland have painted fake shop fronts to hide the economic hardship being felt in towns and villages near the golf resort where G8 leaders will meet this month.
Northern Ireland’s government has spent 2 million pounds tackling dereliction over the past two years. Almost a quarter of these funds were freed up in anticipation of Britain hosting the annual Group of Eight (G8) summit on June 17-18.
A dog stretches during his walk in front of a fake shop in Belcoo, Ireland on June 3, 2013. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton
View our top photos from the past 24 hours.
HP Lovecraft: the writer out of time
Not only was the work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft uniformly bleak, but what he did write was sometimes execrable. Take this random passage from a 1985 HP Lovecraft omnibus: “But oddly enough, the worthy gentleman owned himself most impalpably disquieted by a mere minor detail. On the huge mahogany table there lay face downward a badly worn copy of Borellus, bearing many cryptical marginalia and interlineations in Curwen’s hand.”
The American writer, who died in 1937, is also widely considered today to have had unacceptable racist views. And yet, despite his prejudices and stylistic shortcomings, his work remains insanely popular. A Kickstarter appeal to fund a life-sized bust of the writer – for the Athanaeum Library, in his hometown of Providence in Rhode Island – roared past its target of $30,000 in a couple of days, closing at $55,000.
Courtesy of Criterion, Toute la mémoire du monde, a short film by Alain Resnais, who turns 91 today.
A European developer has created a new game inspired by Joy Division’s ”Love Will Tear Us Apart.” Mighty Box Games’ Will Love Tear Us Apart? is a “browser-game about relationships on the brink of breaking up.”
