The pros and cons of Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I'm a cyberpunk and proud of it, even though I've always been the outsider in every single subculture I've managed to disrupt. I've grown up with Neuromancer, wrote my MA diploma in postmodern cyberpunk SF and I've always worked along the neon-coloured cultural gridlines that made people aware of biotech, the fusion of man and machine and all that stuff. I'm sinking my teeth into anything cyberpunkish with sweet agony and pulsing organs. Deus Ex: Human Revolution left me with broken canines and burst tear ducts with seeping coolant the color of Cherenkov sadness.

I've spent long days playing the press copy I've gotten from PlayOn Hungary to see the game others heralded as the best game of 2011 and the latest and greatest in cyberpunk. Verdict, it's tragically mediocre, a one-night stand gone stale, an equivalent of a fuck turned so boring you decided to watch TV and set up shopping lists inside your head while getting something of a blowjob simile. Don't get me wrong, it's got great aspects to it. In fact, it's got amazing aspects to it. But at the end of the day, it's just another game in the long line of high concept low realization shooters by cyberpunk wannabes. Or maybe it was all very different in the design documents at first. Trust me, I don't bulge with glee when I write this. (Watch out, a thousand spoilers inside!)
Read more


Portal: No Escape (Portal fanfilm by Dan Trachtenberg)

A woman wakes up in a room with no memory of who she is or how she got there... This is a short set in the world of the Portal video games created by Valve Software. Recommended viewing in HD in FULLSCREEN with sound UP...


Escape from City 17 part 2

The sequel for 2009 Half-Life 2 fanfilm Escape from City 17 is nothing short of awesome. Showing off a dozen ways the story could develop into (and the inclusion of Julia Tourianski brings us a lot of drama and future tension, a great plot choice), this is a great reel to boost Kickstarter projects and investor pitches and the like. This is a MUST.

A story about the connection that grows between two people during the battle for city 17. Made in the same gritty guerrilla style as the original, it was made on a $250 budget, previously owned/donated software, time, and an HVX200 camera. (...) Escape From City 17 Part One was created as a long form spec commercial for Ian and David's commercial demo reel. They completed the second short in their spare time and want to thank everyone that enjoyed the first.


Mondo magazin: 48 oldalnyi archívum a Damage Reportból

Aki csak most bújt volna be a gép elé a hőguta és a neogóbi elől: több mint három éve írok hosszabb-rövidebb anyagokat a manga/anime-kultúrára ráhajlott MONDO magazinnak, egy éve rövideket már nem, sokat és vérhabosat ellenben igen: ebből kaptok négy hónapnyi archívumot. A 2010 szeptembere és decembere közötti anyagban találhattok vendégírásokat Vadbaracktól meg Razortől, sminkrovatot Kassai Balázs és Fehérvári Orsi támogatásával, ezeket leszámítva pedig a szokásos gonzót, lemezkritikát, sorozat- és képregényajánlókat, cikkeket divatjövőről, játékokról meg mindenről, ami egy tinimagazinba belefér, a sokak által várt Szex, szerelem, gyengédség-analógia egyelőre kimaradt, de a 2girls1cupon meg angolnapornón nevelkedett fiataloknak nyilván több kell, azt meg nem fizetik meg. Marad a kultúra.

Katt ezeket.
Mondo, 2010. szeptember: The Damage Report 007
Mondo, 2010. október: The Damage Report 008
Mondo, 2010. november: The Damage Report 009
Mondo, 2010. december: The Damage Report 010


Danny Macaskill's factory trials riding video

Industrial Revolutions is the amazing new film from street trials riding star Danny Macaskill. Filmed and edited for Channel 4 's documentary Concrete Circus.

Industrial Revolutions sees Danny take his incredible bike skills into an industrial train yard and some derelict buildings.' Filmed in the beautiful Scottish countryside Danny Macaskill's latest film was directed by Stu Thomson (Cut Media/MTBcut) for Channel 4's documentary Concrete Circus.

Music is 'The Wolves' by Ben Howard courtesy of Universal Island Records.


UCF: Abstract Messiah, the trailer

Laszlo Kovacs and his crew of cyberpunk die-hards is still on the case. Following up on his 2006 movie UCF: Toronto Cybercide (reviewed that in the London issue of The Dose mag, last page if you're looking) here's a new one entitled UCF: Abstract Messiah. Life hasn't changed a bit so I'm still expecting the package to turn up in my mailbox (although the Hungarian postal service has a 50-50% chance of either delivering your stuff or making it disappear beyond a shabby-stinky veil of bad bureaucracy and an untraceable in-land logistics route), until that, do check out the project's trailer, Facebook page and hey, here's some more.


THE DAMAGE REPORT: looking for contacts in Asian countries

日本の連絡先を探して!한국어 연락처를 찾고! 寻找中国的接触!Needing data and experience on how Big Pharma tries evading traditional Asian medicine and treatments by pushing "fashionable" pharmaceuticals to the Eastern markets. Yes, that's urgent.


who needs a google music beta invite?


Got three Google Music beta invites here. Service is apparently US-based (although I had no trouble testing that in Europe). Upload your favourite tracks to the Google cloud and stream it back to your authorized gear. Very much beta so half the time it behaves like it's on glue and vodka but all the basic necessities are there. Just don't blame me when the dev guys decide to narrow the geo scope and you have your shit deleted overnight. Place your comments under this post and will pick randomly out of you lot (this offer is also out on G+). ROCK!

UPDATE: All invites sent, story over.


the pre-Sziget video voltage bouquet

Originally heralded as video bukkake but then you would have hulkhogan your way into morality. Voltage bouquet sounds more posh. So here's a tour video of Skrillex (thx Sinred!) whose anthem Kill Everybody has quickly become our summer household item and clearly looks like a contestant to anything Headhunterz has done in the past twelve months.

RAGE, slated for release in North America on October 4th, features intense first-person shooter action, breakneck vehicle combat, an expansive world to explore and jaw-dropping graphics powered by id's revolutionary id Tech 5 technology. Set in the not-too-distant future after an asteroid impacts Earth, you emerge into a vast wasteland to discover humanity working to rebuild itself against such forces as bandit gangs, mutants, and more. Obviously reads a lot like Fallout to me.

A release date for the gesture-based adventure game Trauma has been announced: the triple-nominated 2010 IGF finalist will be available to purchase for 5 Euros starting this August 8th. Windows, Mac and Linux users can try the game online for free at traumagame.com, and you can also buy Trauma from Steam (both Windows and Mac) on launch day. (via kotaku)


BlueDanube Films: Eric Roberts in Hungarian dark urban thriller Lord of the Block

This just came in via @Dawe_, our courier of fast cars, fast conspiracy theories and news of importance. BlueDanube Films (apparently based in Budapest, Hungary, so I gotta make some exclusive backstage shots and interviews while I'm still in the city!), a relatively new film company that plans to create micro-budget films (the PRlog mentions 500K-1M euro budgets, is that actually considered micro?) is now working on Lord of the Block (see stuff below) that features Eric "Maroni survives fall, walks away with broken knees" Roberts, script's worked on by Balazs Lovas (Run to Ground) and Gabor Krigler (Born Loser). Curious to hear more about that one, stay vigilant, brothers! (via prlog)

“Lord of the Block” is a dark urban mythic thriller about a disaffected young man’s discovery of a man-like creature living in his apartment building. The creature/man named “Artur” seems to be able to control the emotions of the apartment inhabitants, feeding off of their negative emotions. Although initially entranced by Artur’s abilities, and the fact that Artur wants the young man, Tomi, to become Artur’s apprentice, Tomi finds himself in a battle against the “Lord of the Block”, and the darkness that he stands for.


the mad angelspit gig: 2011, budapest

When relaunching this blog, I said I regret keeping silent about people and acts of ROCK but whatever escapades of AWESOME, chaos, amazingness, bravado, weirdness or fuckery you end up doing, you always have to do it with the strongest spine and the biggest discretion to be able to walk away with your head high. So there's another black box story. What remains in the action logs? Tuesday night, covered in the stage sweat of Valerie, Amelia, Zoog and Matt. Called up on stage. Ending up with a new name Zoog Von Rock granted me, a few autographed memories of sonic RIOT, a whole lot of ideas we exchanged over early morning espresso Hennessy shots, my book concept and the product design itself fleshed out much much more, Zoog completely dumbfounded over the magnificence of Anker Klub's hummus, Sinred Estee and me cutting bike polo plastic sheets at 4am in front of my old university turned into a party place, an action-filled night with Sinred, Estee, Fiction, Lady Aisa, Zeck, Surreal Catharsis, Jinx, Moggio and Typhus - you all fucking ROCK and you have all contributed to this night NOT turning into a disaster. THANK YOU. One achievement unlocked. (PS: Below, that's Esteee's mixtape of the videos she made that night. Yes, we know there's no bass. Look grateful. I still have problems hearing three days later.)



free online artificial intelligence course at stanford

A free, online version of "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence", taught by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. A syllabus and more information about the Stanford course is available here. You can sign up here to receive more information about the online version when it becomes available.

So what do we do when we have a shitload of time on our hands and we're busy working on our book about aspects of our global collective future, we sign up for an AI course just to be sure we didn't get anything wrong. This comes from our friends at techn0ccult.


toyota prius x parlee: concept bike with a mind-powered shifter

Toyota reached out to Parlee Cycles and Deeplocal to build an aero-road bike imbued with the same forward-thinking that went into the design of the Prius. Benefitting from a monocoque carbon-fiber frame, built-in smartphone dock, countless wind-tunnel-tested aerodynamic tweaks and its unprecedented mind-powered shifter, the PXP concept bike has emerged as a purpose-built machine that blends the simple with the complex to become a better and more efficient version of itself. To get a look at John Watson's coverage of the build, go to http://www.toyotapriusprojects.com/#/011


Link comes from mr. minimalgeek! Is it just me or the market still hasn't been flooded with the Emotiv EPOC and other neural headsets to turn our lives into an endless bat country of brainwaves and nibbana?


grant morrison: supergods

Grant Morrison, my favourite shapeshifter (who turned from comics writer extraordinaire to chaos magician to a ROCKSTAR) has just claimed another place on my shelves. So far it's been only his hypersigil series of The Invisibles and its flipside, The Filth, now it's all gone to a book, an especially good one. SUPERGODS is basically a 300-page peek into the evolution of superheroes, their impact on culture, religion and the global sub- and superconscious. There'll be a review soon here (I know I promised to review Bukkake Brawl for JunkDNA, so I'm jumping on that one first) but if you're interested to see what you're about to invest in, check this legal 80-page teaser on Scribd below. And while you're at it, check his Pop Magic! treatise and his (btw quite amazing) drug-crazed presentation at Richard Metzger's Disinfo.

SUPERGODS by Grant Morrison, Excerpt


the damage diary: 2011 so far

Dearest readers of doom, rock, popcultural occultism and flesh flowers, planetdamage.com is back.

Life here at the moment is nothing less than a bubbling cauldron of possibilities and all the time not spent blogging and hunting for stuff was well spent with ladies and lads of ROCK. I had to realize that although I made a promise a few years ago about hiding my personal life (my what? mind you, that's something you'll do sooner or later if your online tulpa is fleshed out well enough), I've also been silent about things I should have posted, said or shown earlier. Or at all. The bubbling cauldron (and the chairleg of truth) will henceforth bring you amazing stuff I've been working on (or thinking about) during these long months. Or in other words: It is time to write. Again. To motivate. And to find like-minded zeitgeist runners. (Great motivation also comes from the blog of Amelia Arsenic, I've been using inspiration boards ever since she posted a few of those. Among others.)

So here's a list of things that happened to me this year (without breaking NDAs or incriminating multiple entities of ROCK, which unfortunately makes this otherwise lengthy list quite short):

  • 2011 began with the wonderful black skull mala gift from Mette of 109jewellery for which I am eternally grateful - both its luscious looks and its peculiar effects are amazing. Go and check out more of the team 109 jewellery here.

  • Joined forces with mixtape maker startup Dragontape for a few months. Ended up with a vatful of conclusions about life, goals, workflow, hierarchies and the whole startup bubble thing and as an experiment, I launched Damage's Razor Coated Candies, an alternative/underground music video compilation series.

  • Mondo, the J-culture magazine I'm working for published its 50th issue, quite a feat in Hungary for a subcultural magazine of high quality. This also marks the 16th Damage Report, my monthly column about music, cuisine and popcultural trends.

  • Learned how to ride a bike on an original Sinred. We had some crazy rides where we lost complete back wheels, back axles and even complete people, managed to crash frontal and almost died twice. As Amelia put it before me, "feels like I've been missing out my whole life!"

  • "So what does a supervisor really do at the final exam apart from asking stuff from students about their dissertations?" "Who was your supervisor, son?" "I'm afraid you got it wrong, professor, I AM their supervisor." Whereas in the autumn term I taught social media at IBS, the spring term was spent consulting and marking social media dissertations. And Facebook will tell you that the previous night turned into a Platipus oldschool psytrance - Christian talk radio mashup. Things usually go wrong with that configuration, we survived this time!

  • My HQ is now in a flat that was previously occupied by a much-debated group of Hungarian Freemasons.

  • Found the music I've made fifteen years ago with FastTracker and uploaded a bunch of the better ones to SoundCloud.

  • Flew a glider sailplane. One of the most electrifying moments of this year was when the pilot turns to me at 2400 feet and says Hey, you wanna fly this thing, like, now? And I did. This (and a whole lot more this year) was all made real by the lovely Miss Toyclouds, my partner in crime and an amazing DAKINI OF ROCK.


  • Moreover, a list of awesome things to happen in the near future:

  • Working on my book about fringe culture, pop culture, cyberpunk and how inadequately we cope with the concept of, well, basically anything and it's all coming together nicely!

  • Soon to land: half a dozen print-quality Damage Reports straight from the Mondo mag - that's something like sixty pages about music, comics and pop culture. Carefully tailored for teenagers, so don't expect the usual damagery. And in Hungarian only.

  • Also working on the photoshoot we've been planning with my long-time friend Balazs Kassai and the gears are already in motion!

  • Half a dozen projects already out of the drawers, complete with paperwork, ready to be realized to make MORE ROCK happen! Yes, will drop info when things clear up.

  • Thanks to all of you who kept me young and alive. Now we can go break reality one more time.

    Always,
    The Damage