Interconnected

1.

The Phantom Time Hypothesis suggests that the early Middle Ages (614-911 A.D.) never happened the implication of which is that Charlemagne was a fictional character and that the year is not 2015, but actually 1718. Somebody jumped the calendar forward; documents were forged.

Mixtape of the Lost Decade: evidence is mounting that points to a ‘lost decade’ between what we now remember as the 1970s and 1980s. Art, toys and music are all rediscovered – a distinct era, the 19A0s.

The Internet was better during the 19A0s.

2.

The city of Guntrum at OpenGeofiction, a Google Maps-style collaborative fictional world…

This world is set in modern times, so it doesn’t have orcs or elves, but rather power plants, motorways and housing projects. But also picturesque old towns, beautiful national parks and lonely beaches.

(About.)

Antarcti.ca, founded 1999, was a web search engine that mapped results to a virtual reality representation of the continent of the same name. More:

The display of search results was a 3D landscape, complete with clusters of structures (related topics) and multilevel buildings (important sites).

And:

The impetus for the Anarcti.ca Visual Net is Mr. Bray’s long-held belief that users find a shared landscape a comfortable, intuitive way to explore various types of information … a “shared landscape” makes complex arrangements of data usable by the human mind.

3.

A timeline of events in the history of the Pokemon world.

Transformers: A History.

4.

Surkov is one of President Putin’s advisers, and has helped him maintain his power for 15 years.

Adam Curtis on Vladislav Surkov and non-linear warfare [video]:

[Surkov] came originally from the avant-garde art world … what Surkov has done is to import ideas from conceptual art into the very heart of politics. His aim is to undermine peoples’ perceptions of the world, so they never know what is really happening.

[creating a politics where] no-one was sure what was real or fake … A ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it is undefinable

A war where you never know what the enemy are really up to, or even who they are.

[using] the conflict to create a constant state of destabilized perception, in order to manage and control.

We live with a constant vaudeville of contradictory stories that makes it impossible for any real opposition to emerge, because they can’t counter it with any coherent narrative of their own.

(Transcript.)

Surkov published a short story in 2014, just before the Russian invasion of Crimea, Without Sky, set in the future, after the ‘fifth world war.’ Review in the LRB:

It was the first non-linear war. In the primitive wars of the 19th and 20th centuries it was common for just two sides to fight. Two countries. Two groups of allies. Now four coalitions collided. Not two against two, or three against one. No. All against all.

Surkov: The only things that interest me in the US are Tupac Shakur, Allen Ginsberg and Jackson Pollock. I don’t need a visa to access their work. I lose nothing.

Russia. Pollock. Modern art was a CIA weapon – The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. Why?

Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.

Patronage:

The centrepiece of the CIA campaign became the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a vast jamboree of intellectuals, writers, historians, poets, and artists which was set up with CIA funds in 1950 and run by a CIA agent.

Several inches were cut from Jackson Pollock’s Mural by Marcel Duchamp in 1943, so it would fit in Peggy Guggenheim’s apartment.

Those inches of canvas have never been found.