propaganda – Mark Larson

The scaffolding around this essay is my unshakeable belief that images matter, in real time and in retrospect, because visual media can and do shape the way we see the world, frequently more than we bargained for. Does Hersh’s account transform “Zero Dark Thirty” from half fact into whole fiction? If the cinematic treatment of a supposedly true story turns out to be a lie, does that make it propaganda? To what, exactly, can we ascribe the profusion of doubt that’s accompanied this tale of sound and fury, and what does it mean that this is a story we can’t seem to tell, much less find the moral in?

I really liked this essay (and the movie).

Bright Wall/Dark Room June 2015: A History of Violence

–PC Magazine previews Sony’s forthcoming e-book reader, or at least a slightly less-than-full-featured proto. Accepts not only e-books but PDF files and RSS feeds as well. Looks great. This little guy could be wonderful for people like me who are almost always reading something and/or plotting what to read next.
–Well, it looks like I’ve stumbled unknowingly into a series of Russia-related posts. I’ll round out the mix with a collection of a couple thousand posters from our dearly-departed USSR. Propaganda, advertising, all kinds of good stuff. On a side note, this is also the only post I’ve suggested that got Kottke’d, which makes me 1 for 2. For a brief moment, I was a star.

–A fine collection of photos of an old-school Russian submarine base. Looks like it’s straight out of a videogame. [via bb]