Magazine spielten schon immer eine zentrale Rolle in unserer visuellen Kultur. Ihre Position an der Vorderseite moderner Kommunikation haben sie zu einer reichen Quelle aktueller Grafikdesign Stile und Techniken gemacht.
Magazine sind ein besonderes Format, das einige essenzielle besondere Merkmale vereint: Tragbarkeit, Fühlbarkeit, Wiederholung und die Kombination von Text und Bild. Dies erlaubte Magazinen sich fortlaufend zu erneuern und zugleich relevant zu sein.

Seitengröße, Raster, Schriftsatz und Details tragen zum visuellen Eindruck und der Identität eines Magazins bei. Jede neue Ausgabe bietet eine Chance für Künstler und Designer etwas Neues zu schaffen.

Als Zine ( Kurzform für Magazin, aus dem Englischen „magazine“ bzw. „fanzine“ ) werden Publikationen bezeichnet, die in kleinen Auflagen für kleine Interessens-gruppen vertrieben werden. Diese Magazine erscheinen oft ohne Bindung an einen Verlag und werden durch fotokopieren oder durch Offsetdruck vervielfältigt. Die durchschnittliche Auflage solcher Zines liegt zwischen 1000 und 5000 Exemplaren. Das Ziel dieser Veröffentlichungen ist es nicht Gewinne zu erzielen. Oft werden die Verkaufspreise kaum der Zeit und dem Material gerecht, die benötigt werden, um eine Ausgabe zu produzieren.

Der Vertrieb solcher Zines erfolgt heute oft durch die Bestellung im Internet und Zustellung per Post oder in kunstorientierten Bücherläden, Designerboutiquen oder aber auch sehr selten in normalen Kiosken.

Zines erscheinen in vielfältigen Variationen, von handgeschriebenen Texten bis hin zu farbig bebilderten Heften. Thematisch wird ein breites Spektrum an Themen, von Politik über Musik und Sport bis hin zu Kunst und Design oder gar persönliche, tagebuchähnliche Geschichten, behandelt.
Schlagzeilen fehlen meist auf den Covern von Zines, da sie nicht mit anderen Magazinen am Zeitungskiosk konkurrieren müssen. Ebenso ist in diesen Publikationen kaum Werbung zu finden.

Die Anfänge dieser Magazinkultur sind nicht genau geklärt, da sich belegte Hinweise erst seit der letzten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts finden lassen. In den vereinigten Staaten fanden sich einzelne Autoren und Künstler zusammen, die selbstproduzierte Zines in Sammelwerken herausgaben. Ein solcher Zusammen-schluss wurde Amateur Press Association genannt. Ein solcher „Apazine“ genannter Sammelband wurde gebunden und an die teilnehmenden Autoren weiterverteilt.

Seit der Erfindung der Elektrofotografie und dem kommerziellen Erfolg der Firma Xerox mit dem Kopiergerät nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg, verbreitete sich die Zinekultur weltweit schneller als zuvor.
Von Umweltbewegung in den ausgehenden sechziger Jahren, mit Publikationen wie dem „Whole Earth Catalog“, über die Punk-Bewegung in den späten Siebzigern, bis hin zu den feministischen Zines, wie „riot grrrl“ oder „amp MINIZINE“

in den frühen neunziger Jahren, wurden Zines als Verbreitungsmedium subversiver Ideen aus Subkulturen genutzt.
Auch in Deutschland hat sich eine lebendige Kultur kleiner Magazine etabliert, sei es für Science-Fiction, wie das „SOL“-Zine der Perry Rhodan-FanZentrale (fünfzig Ausgaben seit 1996) oder die erfolgreichen Kollaborationen der deutschen Bloggerszene wie dem 2009 erschienenem „Ausdruck: ausgewählte Beiträge der deutschen Blogosphäre“ von Christoph Boecken oder dem „CIRCUS: the bloggers bookazine“ des eigens gegründeten Verlags Herznote.

Gerade diese Veröffentlichungen zeigen, dass Internetseiten kein fühlbares Erlebnis bieten können – Selbst, wenn verstärkende Effekte durch das Licht eines Bildschirmes wirken.

Der Großteil sogenannter Art-Zines bildet starke visuelle Eindrücke einer jeweiligen Subkultur ab.

Die Abwesenheit langer Texte, großformatige Fotografien, Illustrationen und Zeichnungen sowie handgedruckte Originale oder collagenartig zusammengefügte Einzeleindrücke prägen den visuellen Eindruck.
Oft liegt die Ästhetik der Hefte außerhalb der Mainstream Norm oder ist geprägt durch explizite Darstellungen.

If you stare at the horizon long enough, all you can see is fire.

The entire line of the horizon is burning.

Fires as far as the eye can see.

– Isis – the minus times

“Many adults are put off when youngsters pose scientific questions. Children ask why the sun is yellow, or what a dream is, or how deep you can dig a hole, or when is the world’s birthday, or why we have toes. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before a five-year-old, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that you don’t know? Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys many adults. A few more experiences like this, and another child has been lost to science.

There are many better responses. If we have an idea of the answer, we could try to explain. If we don’t, we could go to the encyclopedia or the library. Or we might say to the child: “I don’t know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll be the first to find out.”

– Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as the Candle in The Dark

(via palahniuk&chocolate)

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that’s bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they’re all I can see

– Snow Patrol, “Chasing Cars”

Confirmed:

• 4k resolution
• Haptic feedback and onscreen textures
• iWork will work now
• Siri now in Khoisan, Sanskrit and Latin
• New name: “newer iPad”
• 1 Gpxl Lytro Lightfield Camera *updated*

Extreme likely:

• Unlimited battery life due new Quantumfluctuationextractor called AQ1
• New A6X chip with 80 cores
• Unlimited storage capacity due quantum entanglement with the iCloud
• Induction carger: Charges the electrical gadgets near you. (Beware, could toast Android Devices)
• All new iMovie (again)
• Active Corners
• Openable with your old iFixit iPad-Opener *updated*

Likely:

• 4k Laser-Projector. (Just trash your TV)
• M8 Ball: iCloud based predictions for the near future
• Shelfs in brushed aluminum
• A really working iWork-Version
• No Homebutton

Not likely:

• Warp core as battery (due the need for dilithium and antimatter, which would have to be changed from time to time, leave that crap to Android & Windows Phone 7 devices)
• Fusion-reactor (same reasons as warp core and it provides not nearly enough power to support the mayan version auf Siri) *updated*
• Brain-to-iCloud interface
• Porn-apps
• Liquidmetal spirit level
• More than 64GB onboard memory

ln -s SourceDirectory TargetDirectory

Mit symbolischen Links lassen sich interessante Sachen machen, aber auch viel Unsinn. Im Versuch das Betriebsystem sicherer zu machen scheint sich Apple der Sache angenommen zu haben, denn ab OS X 10.7 Lion hat das symbolische Linken hin und wieder seine Tücken.
Aufgefallen ist mir das, als ich einen Symlink aus den Documents zum Desktop haben wollte. Egal in welche Richtung, hier erzeugt OSX immer einen Alias, statt einem echten Symlink. Das Verhalten war auch dem Genius im Apple-Store unbekannt, doch mit vereinter Neugier sind wir der Sache auf den Grund gegangen.
Nach einigen Tests stellte sich heraus, das dieses Verhalten weder von mangelnden Rechten verursacht wurde, noch von einer Fehlfunktion im OS. Es scheint als verhindere OSX 10.7 das symbolische Linken auf/in Systemverzeichnisse wie Desktop, Documents, Library, etc.
Als Root werde ich das noch testen, zumindest verhält sich OSX, wohl zum Schutz, unter Admin-Rechten so.

Solltet ihr doch keine SymLinks in den Dropboxordner erstellen können versucht dessen Rechte folgendermaßen wieder so zu setzen das Symlinks in die Dropbox möglich sind:

$ cd ~
# Vorausgesetzt der Dropboxordner ist direkt im Userverzeichnis ~
$ ls -l
drwx------@ XX username staff YYYY hh:mm Dropbox
...
# die Rechte passen nicht aufs Schema:
# drwxr-xr-x
# folgendes Kommando setzt die neuen Rechte:
$ chmod a+rx Dropbox

At their very simplest, anarchist beliefs turn on to two elementary assumptions. The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how. The second is that power corrupts. Most of all, anarchism is just a matter of having the courage to take the simple principles of common decency that we all live by, and to follow them through to their logical conclusions. Odd though this may seem, in most important ways you are probably already an anarchist— you just don’t realize it.

Let’s start by taking a few examples from everyday life:

If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?

If you answered “yes”, then you are used to acting like an anarchist! The most basic anarchist principle is self- organization: the assumption that human beings do not need to be threatened with prosecution in order to be able to come to reasonable understandings with each other, or to treat each other with dignity and respect.

Everyone believes they are capable of behaving reasonably themselves. If they think laws and police are necessary, it is only because they don’t believe that other people are. But if you think about it, don’t those people all feel exactly the same way about you? Anarchists argue that almost all the anti-social behavior which makes us think it’s necessary to have armies, police, prisons, and governments to control our lives, is actually caused by the systematic inequalities and injustice those armies, police, prisons and governments make possible. It’s all a vicious circle. If people are used to being treated like their opinions do not matter, they are likely to become angry and cynical, even violent—which of course makes it easy for those in power to say that their opinions do not matter. Once they understand that their opinions really do matter just as much as anyone else’s, they tend to become remarkably understanding. To cut a long story short: anarchists believe that for the most part it is power itself, and the effects of power, that make people stupid and irresponsible.

Are you a member of a club or sports team or any other voluntary organization where decisions are not imposed by one leader but made on the basis of general consent?

If you answered “yes”, then you belong to an organization which works on anarchist principles! Another basic anarchist principle is voluntary association. This is simply a matter of applying democratic principles to ordinary life. The only difference is that anarchists believe it should be possible to have a society in which everything could be organized along these lines, all groups based on the free consent of their members, and therefore, that all top-down, military styles of organization like armies or bureaucracies or large corporations, based on chains of command, would no longer be necessary. Perhaps you don’t believe that would be possible. Perhaps you do. But every time you reach an agreement by consensus, rather than threats, every time you make a voluntary arrangement with another person, come to an understanding, or reach a compromise by taking due consideration of the other person’s particular situation or needs, you are being an anarchist—even if you don’t realize it.

Anarchism is just the way people act when they are free to do as they choose, and when they deal with others who are equally free—and therefore aware of the responsibility to others that entails. This leads to another crucial point: that while people can be reasonable and considerate when they are dealing with equals, human nature is such that they cannot be trusted to do so when given power over others. Give someone such power, they will almost invariably abuse it in some way or another.

Do you believe that most politicians are selfish, egotistical swine who don’t really care about the public interest? Do you think we live in an economic system which is stupid and unfair?

If you answered “yes”, then you subscribe to the anarchist critique of today’s society—at least, in its broadest outlines. Anarchists believe that power corrupts and those who spend their entire lives seeking power are the very last people who should have it. Anarchists believe that our present economic system is more likely to reward people for selfish and unscrupulous behavior than for being decent, caring human beings. Most people feel that way. The only difference is that most people don’t think there’s anything that can be done about it, or anyway—and this is what the faithful servants of the powerful are always most likely to insist—anything that won’t end up making things even worse.

But what if that weren’t true?

And is there really any reason to believe this? When you can actually test them, most of the usual predictions about what would happen without states or capitalism turn out to be entirely untrue. For thousands of years people lived without governments. In many parts of the world people live outside of the control of governments today. They do not all kill each other. Mostly they just get on about their lives the same as anyone else would. Of course, in a complex, urban, technological society all this would be more complicated: but technology can also make all these problems a lot easier to solve. In fact, we have not even begun to think about what our lives could be like if technology were really marshaled to fit human needs. How many hours would we really need to work in order to maintain a functional society— that is, if we got rid of all the useless or destructive occupations like telemarketers, lawyers, prison guards, financial analysts, public relations experts, bureaucrats and politicians, and turn our best scientific minds away from working on space weaponry or stock market systems to mechanizing away dangerous or annoying tasks like coal mining or cleaning the bathroom, and distribute the remaining work among everyone equally? Five hours a day? Four? Three? Two? Nobody knows because no one is even asking this kind of question. Anarchists think these are the very questions we should be asking.

Do you really believe those things you tell your children (or that your parents told you)?

It doesn’t matter who started it.” “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” “Clean up your own mess.” “Do unto others…” “Don’t be mean to people just because they’re different.” Perhaps we should decide whether we’re lying to our children when we tell them about right and wrong, or whether we’re willing to take our own injunctions seriously. Because if you take these moral principles to their logical conclusions, you arrive at anarchism.

Take the principle that two wrongs don’t make a right. If you really took it seriously, that alone would knock away almost the entire basis for war and the criminal justice system. The same goes for sharing: we’re always telling children that they have to learn to share, to be considerate of each other’s needs, to help each other; then we go off into the real world where we assume that everyone is naturally selfish and competitive. But an anarchist would point out: in fact, what we say to our children is right. Pretty much every great worthwhile achievement in human history, every discovery or accomplishment that’s improved our lives, has been based on cooperation and mutual aid; even now, most of us spend more of our money on our friends and families than on ourselves; while likely as not there will always be competitive people in the world, there’s no reason why society has to be based on encouraging such behavior, let alone making people compete over the basic necessities of life. That only serves the interests of people in power, who want us to live in fear of one another. That’s why anarchists call for a society based not only on free association but mutual aid. The fact is that most children grow up believing in anarchist morality, and then gradually have to realize that the adult world doesn’t really work that way. That’s why so many become rebellious, or alienated, even suicidal as adolescents, and finally, resigned and bitter as adults; their only solace, often, being the ability to raise children of their own and pretend to them that the world is fair. But what if we really could start to build a world which really was at least founded on principles of justice? Wouldn’t that be the greatest gift to one’s children one could possibly give?

Do you believe that human beings are fundamentally corrupt and evil, or that certain sorts of people (women, people of color, ordinary folk who are not rich or highly educated) are inferior specimens, destined to be ruled by their betters?

If you answered “yes”, then, well, it looks like you aren’t an anarchist after all. But if you answered “no”, then chances are you already subscribe to 90% of anarchist principles, and, likely as not, are living your life largely in accord with them. Every time you treat another human with consideration and respect, you are being an anarchist. Every time you work out your differences with others by coming to reasonable compromise, listening to what everyone has to say rather than letting one person decide for everyone else, you are being an anarchist. Every time you have the opportunity to force someone to do something, but decide to appeal to their sense of reason or justice instead, you are being an anarchist. The same goes for every time you share something with a friend, or decide who is going to do the dishes, or do anything at all with an eye to fairness.

Now, you might object that all this is well and good as a way for small groups of people to get on with each other, but managing a city, or a country,
is an entirely different matter. And of course there is something to this. Even if you decentralize society and puts as much power as possible in the hands of small communities, there will still be plenty of things that need to be coordinated, from running railroads to deciding on directions for medical research. But just because something is complicated does not mean there is no way to do it democratically. It would just be complicated. In fact, anarchists have all sorts of different ideas and visions about how a complex society might manage itself. To explain them though would go far beyond the scope of a little introductory text like this. Suffice it to say, first of all, that a lot of people have spent a lot of time coming up with models for how a really democratic, healthy society might work; but second, and just as importantly, no anarchist claims to have a perfect blueprint. The last thing we want is to impose prefab models on society anyway. The truth is we probably can’t even imagine half the problems that will come up when we try to create a democratic society; still, we’re confident that, human ingenuity being what it is, such problems can always be solved, so long as it is in the spirit of our basic principles-which are, in the final analysis, simply the principles of fundamental human decency.

(PDF Download)

by David Graeber

http://imaginenoborders.org

Birds scream at the top of their lungs in horrified hellish rage every morning at daybreak to warn us all of the truth, but sadly we don’t speak bird.

— Kurt Cobain

Zu Hause; angekommen. Einfaches Abendessen, wie so oft. Nur Pasta, Pesto, Rotwein, dennoch ein Festmahl, als ob dies das letzte Mal auf Erden ist, dass ich etwas schmecken werde. Meine Henkersmahlzeit. So gut, so viel Geschmack, so glücklich. Ich trete hinaus auf den Balkon in die Kälte; der Mond hat sich über die Dächer geschoben und strahlt golden in das zartrosa Nachtblau der Stadt. Das Aroma von fruchtig herbem Alkohol explodiert in meinem Mund. So viel Glück. So viel Glücklichsein. Mein Herz steht in Flammen. Lichterloh. Ein Leuchtfeuer in die heraufziehende Nachtkälte.
“Mann, ich hab alles. Alles.” Mehr Glück, und ich bin sicher, ich würde auf der Stelle zerspringen. In tausende Glassplitter die glühend auseinanderstoben und kurz bevor sie klirrend auf dem Boden aufschlagen, jeder einzelne Splitter zu einem goldgelben Schmetterling wird, dem Mond entgegenfliegend. Einsam bahnt sich eine Träne den Weg, meine Wange hinunter bis zur Lippe.
Dann, in diesem imaginären Spotlight des Schicksals stehend, frage ich mich wie es dir geht. Dort drüben, in der anderen Stadt. Die Stadt die ich nur feindlich, fremd, grau und kalt kenne. In der du der einzige Mensch bist. Geht es dir genau so gut wie mir? Kann es das überhaupt?

Ich weiß warum mich dieses Glück nicht zermalmt wie zwischen Hammer und Amboss; ich weiß warum mein Herz nicht stehen bleibt. Weil etwas zu dem Moment fehlt, an dem meine Existenz komplett wäre. Nichts mehr hinzuzufügen. Glücklich. Die Geschichte wäre erzählt, das Schicksal geschrieben. Der Moment in dem die Nornen aus meinem Schicksalsfaden Gold gesponnen hätten.

Du fehlst.

— Drake Rubicon

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as I live it is my privilege – my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I love. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got a hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

— George Bernard Shaw

Unsere Lippen wollen Honig bereiten,
Unsere schimmernden Nächte sind aufgeblüht.

An dem seligen Glanz deines Leibes
Zündet mein Herz seine Himmel an -

Alle meine Träume hängen an deinem Golde,
Ich habe dich gewählt unter allen Sternen.

— Else Lasker-Schüler