Ben Templesmith says wakey wakey:

Dave Winer’s conceptual notes on, essentially, transforming Twitter from SMS to MMS. Thereby probably ruining Twitter for everyone, but what the fuck.

• Kyöpelinvuori – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Kyöpelinvuori, in Finnish mythology, is the place where dead women haunt.
  (tags: myth)

A Dogme95 for videoblogging, essentially. Melissa, I think you’ve (accidentally?) done one of these already…

Just got announced, apparently.

First lot of ASTONISHING X-MEN: SECOND STAGE redesign notes are in. The cast for the first book, at least, is set. (I envision my run as four “books” of six issues each.) Also, I think I’ve settled on my Big Bad (for want of a better phrase, and since I’m taking over a Joss Whedon project here) for the first book, and also for the entire four-book arc. Because it builds and then it builds, see? I are much clever wrietr heee.

Shannon Lark is one of the Living Dead Girls who protected me from my Enemies at the San Diego comics convention this summer. Please view her Miss Horrorfest short film, click through and rate accordingly, or else, frankly, I don’t know where in my body she’s likely to sheathe that chainsaw:

“…Yes, they are indeed horrible green boxy things that make Trabants look like sex on wheels. They may in fact be Second Life Trabants…”

She’s going to hate that I’ve linked this, but Ariana Osborne just wrote a short and sharp burst of web theory that manages to crystallise a lot of my current thinking about blogs, groupblogs and podcasts:

I wanted the web to be radio.

Two-way radio that didn?t lose signal going over the mountains. Short-wave radio for a shrinking world. My voice sometimes on the same channel as yours, your channel silent when you went to bed, all the rest fading in and out as the sun swept around the world. Blogs are so. fucking. close. The closest anything?s come, really. Blogs begin their broadcast when you wake up in the morning, and go off air when you go to bed…

Whoa:

Google is thought to be set to trial an online virtual universe based on its popular satellite imagery software that would rival Second Life.

Arizona State University students are to be given the opportunity to test a new product “that will be publicly launched later this year”.

An announcement by the university, which already has significant ties with Google, said that the project was being developed by a ?major internet company? and contained hints that it would include features related to 3D-modelling and video gaming ? two possible components of a new virtual world.

Brain-Eating Amoeba Kills Arizona Boy — CDC: Cases Are Spiking In 2007

I’d never heard of this before:

Codex Gigas, also known as the Devil’s Bible ? a medieval manuscript said to have been written 800 years ago with the devil’s help ? has returned to Prague after an absence of 359 years.

The priceless piece, considered the biggest medieval book, was taken from the Prague Castle by Swedish troops at the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. It is in Prague on loan from Sweden’s Royal Library in Stockholm. It was put on display under high security at the Czech National Library.

According to myth, a Benedictine monk promised to write the book overnight to atone for his sins. When he realized the task was impossible, he asked the devil for help.

The manuscript was likely written by one monk from the Benedictine monastery in Podlazice located some 100 kilometers (65 miles) east of Prague sometime at the beginning of the 13th century, said Zdenek Uhlir, a specialist on medieval manuscripts at the National Library.

It contains “a sum of the Benedictine order’s knowledge” of the time, including the Old and New Testament, “The War of the Jews” by the first-century historian Josephus Flavius, a list of saints, or a guideline how to determine the date of Easter, Uhlir said.

“I would estimate it took him between 10 and 12 years to write,” he said about the piece, which weighs 75 kilograms (165 pounds).

Apple: You’ll Do As You’re Fucking Told

…surely some mistake?

Raining too relentlessly to leave the house: fail condition. No Red Bull for daddy. But wait! Open the door, find four pallets of Red Bull left on the porch by The Red Bull Company: Victory Condition!

Wil Wheaton’s new book is out, which I provided a back-cover blurb for: “Wil Wheaton’s made a new career out of doing well that which is in fact the hardest thing to do at all: he writes, brilliantly and simply and gloriously, about joy.”

(Visiting Cardiff)

(I swear I’d live in Atomic Books if I could.)

“Turning my penis into a tote for batteries!”

Shannon Larratt of BME and ModBlog has made what looks like an emergency post:

Over the last month or two Rachel and Jon have taken control of key aspects of BME without my consent in what seems to be a hostile takeover attempt. Last night false charges were filed against me and I just got out of prison, upon which I discovered that I had been locked out of administrative sections of all the servers as well as being totally locked out of BME. I don’t know how long this account will remain before it is deleted or locked out as well, because attempts were made to lock me out of IAM also. I do not have control over zentastic.com or any of my other servers either so I am unable to fully post this update. Please pass it on because it may be deleted.

I can be reached at snowrail@gmail.com.

If my access here is cut off or they deactivate the site I will post updates to bodytwo.com and elsewhere.

I hope that a reasonable resolution to this can be found, but never in my life have I felt so betrayed or had such underhanded, despicable, and deceptive attacks launched at me. If a claim is made that this situation has been resolved and it is not co-posted to at least bodytwo.com, do not assume it is me making the post.

UPDATE: the post has indeed been removed.

• Cave Entrances Found on Mars
  The holes, which the researchers have dubbed the “Seven Sisters,” are at very high altitudes on the planet
  (tags: space caves+of+mars)
• Police raid doomsday cult born from floods | Oddly Enough | Reuters
  Apocalyptic sects are a particularly sensitive subject for the east African nation, where another group killed nearly 800 followers in massacres and a mass suicide
  (tags: cult)
• RIA Novosti – Russia – Boy survives two-hour flight to Moscow hanging onto plane wing
  The airport did not confirm the report. “We have no information on this,” the Vnukovo press service told RIA Novosti. However, Moscow’s air and water transport control department said the radio’s claim was true.
  (tags: bullshit good+story+though)

My old mate Charlie Stross, one of the best science fiction novelists alive today, is being shipped out of Edinburgh on an October western-US signing tour. Seattle, Portland and San Francisco. All details are here. I urge those of you in these areas to go and see him, and certainly to buy a book (I personally recommend ACCELERANDO and SINGULARITY SKY). Also, you should throw panties at him.

(“Battle Ready?”)

Out today for free download.