Aug 15 2018

White Dragon Noodle Bar Brings Blade Runner to I, Robot

A guest post from Burner Cedric. Check out their fundraiser in San Francisco on Friday, August 17: https://www.facebook.com/events/237054556942919/

The White Dragon Noodle Bar, led by a group of Burners from San Francisco, is coming to the playa for the first time in 2018 as part of the Golden Guy Alley camp at 7:15 & Bender.

We are addressing this year’s theme of “I, Robot” by constructing and replicating the White Dragon Noodle Bar from the iconic 1982 movie Blade Runner, in which Harrison Ford’s replicant-chasing cop character enjoys a bowl of noodles for far too short a time before being removed from the scene. We are excited to be honoring the vision and legacy of Larry Harvey and hope that our neighborhood noodle bar, from which we will gift noodle soup and sake, will become a place for community gathering and storytelling.

The vision for this originated when three of the bar founders in 2017, as part of the Hotel California camp, ended up having a drink at one of the original Golden Guy bars, The Pickle and Eggs (a Scotch whiskey bar). After a drink or two, the inspiration came to create an Asian noodle bar, and these formerly non-handy friends ended up with another founding co-collaborator and, in a radically self-reliant way, a lot of paint and sawdust on their hands. The result, we hope, is a pretty damn accurate representation of Blade Runner’s White Dragon bar that will be memorable for all who make their way there or end up there unexpectedly.

Of course, an undertaking like this takes more than just a village of helping hands and some blood, sweat, and tears (of which lots have been shed!). The cost of build materials and transportation has taken us over budget and we are looking for additional donations to help cover expenses. We fully expect to take this project to future Burning Man festivals as well as local burns so that we can spread this gift to more people and more broadly!

We’re grateful for this community and we look forward to interacting with everyone who’s excited about what we’re bringing to life!

Our GoFundMe donation link: https://www.gofundme.com/the-white-dragon-noodle-bar-bm18

Our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/thewhitedragonbar

Our fundraiser in San Francisco on Friday, August 17: https://www.facebook.com/events/237054556942919/

Jul 24 2018

Rockstar Librarian 2018 – A Great Way To Help With Communal Effort, Gifting,and Radical Self-Expression

If it was up to BMorg, Burning Man would have no music and would be 100% transformational blowjob workshops. Fortunately we have about 1000 stages, 10,000+ DJs, and RockStar Librarian to help us ignore their foolish ideals.

This year, Rockstar Librarian wants to make the world a better place with music. Support her – if you like music at Burning Man, you will appreciate her guide which comes from a team of volunteers every year. Thank you so much to Rockstar Librarian and her team, and thank you from the bottom of our hearts to all the DJs, art cars, and sound stages that have ever played at Burning Man – it’s you who makes the party.

If you’re going to support any art project this year, support the music.

Check out our collection of mixes from previous Burning Mans at our Music page.

Here’s Our Chance to Leave A Legacy

In order for an angel investor to fund the 2018 RSL Music Guide, we need to raise $11,000 for Josie’s Well/Water Access Now, a non-profit to build a safe water well in Ghana.

We have until August 15th to raise the funds and still get the Music Guide produced and to the playa.

So let’s work together to create the music guide, create lasting change in Ghana, and leave a legacy.

I’ve also streamlined my RSL contacts database so everyone gets the chance to get the Music Guide and notices.

The Why: The Story

I didn’t realize how powerful leaving a legacy was until I attended AfrikaBurn in 2017.

It was in the wee hours of the morning sunrise, sitting under the DMV’s red beduin tent while sipping South African boxes wine, that I engaged in philosophical conversations with AfrikaBurn founders Paul Fletcher, Paul Jorgensen and Robert Weinek.

In those wee hours we discussed, “What comes next, from Leave No Trace?”

These beautiful, gritty influencers had an intention: Leave a Legacy.

For AfrikaBurn it looked like this: save plywood from dismantled camps and build outbuildings for a local school; leftover non-perishable food to stock an orphanage’s pantry. “We have so much,” they all agreed.

Then earlier this summer I met an eleven year old girl named Josie, from Seattle, Washington area, who at age nine, raised the money to build her first well in Ghana.

She created her own non-profit, Josie’s Well, in partnership with the local non-profit Water Access Now, and now at age eleven, Josie has realized her vision threefold!

I recently shared both stories with a Burner friend of mine and Music Guide supporter. And on the spot he proposed a challenge:

If we rally the Burner community to raise $11,000 to build a well in Ghana, he’d fund the entire 2018 RSL Music Guide.

If Josie can do it, WE can do this!

The HOW:

Your simple way of participating is key to making this happen.

* Make a tax deductible donation to Burn for Water: Leave a Legacy GoFundMe page
* Forward this email to tribes of Burner friends, campmates, and community
* If you have a following, please send this email to your email list
* Share the Burn for Water: Leave a Legacy GoFundMe Page on your social media

Let’s leave a legacy together!

Big Dusty Hugs,

Kate Houston,
the Rock Star Librarian
Share this message on your social media & forward in email:

Forward

PS. I have answers to your questions. So ask them!

Josie’s Well and Water Access Now are volunteer run and committed to transparency, passing donations directly onto building wells in Ghana.
Water Access Now has a sustainability plan in place so that wells don’t just get built and left in nonfunctional disrepair, and it includes community & civic investment & involvement.Your tax deductible donation goes directly to the charity.

Burn for Water: Leave a Legacy!

Oct 18 2017

2018 Theme Announced

irobot

In 2013 we had aliens. In 2014 it was camels. In 2015, clowns. 2016 was Medici. In 2017 we had temples.

I guess Larry and Stuart were trying to figure out how more people could have a transformational experience, and they came up with…

transformers.

Robots burning The Man. Or do we burn the robots?

From the Reno Gazette-Journal:

Burning Man announced its 2018 theme on Wednesday, “I, Robot,” a theme inspired by the 1950 collection of short stories published by author Isaac Asimov. The stories tell the fictional history of robots…

“This year’s art theme will focus on the many forms of artificial intelligence that permeate our lives; from the humble algorithm and its subroutines that sift us, sort us and surveil us, to automated forms of labor that supplant us. Are we entering a Golden Age that frees us all from mindless labor? Everything, it seems, depends on HMI, the Human-Machine Interface. In a world increasingly controlled by smart machines, who will be master and who will be the slave?” …

The theme seems appropriate given the increasing reliance Burners have on technology at the week-long event

Read the full story here.

The robots surveil us.

If you wonder what that means, especially in the context of Burning Man, start here.

You can read more of the philosophy of I, Robot at the BJ.

The allure of immortality and god-like powers is as old as god. The Greeks, who more or less invented humanism, had a word for this ― they called it hubris, making it the basis of all tragedy. This enduring fantasy is lately clothed in cyber-togs. It is said that computational power is increasing exponentially, much like the singularity that created the universe, and charts and numbers are employed to predict the point in time at which this supra-intelligence will take over.

This is a millenarian idea, sometimes called the Rapture of the Techies, and like all such schemes, it is essentially a religious concept now dressed in the trappings of science. In this scenario, the future rule of one vast integrated Robot will exceed all human comprehension. This notion also contains an ingenious escape clause, a sort of intellectual insurance policy. When pressed to pinpoint exactly when this event will occur, its acolytes reply that it may have already happened — its advent will elude the grasp of slimy brains. This is a contest between wet intelligence, something that we barely understand that has evolved on earth over a span of billions of years, and dry intelligence, which in its digital form was invented in 1936

[Source: burningman.org]

Burning Man is a contest? I guess they started the themes with Good vs Evil, and now it’s humans vs robots.

Image: Tyler FuQua

I agree with them that the Singularity has already happened, and Google and the NSA are already inside our heads. We live in a Sentient World Simulation, operated by the Deep State. The Defense Department, defending The Man against the humans that might question him with armies of always on, always faithful robots.

will-smith-i-robot-wide-56186200

Will Smith loved Burning Man so much they named their theme after him?

will smith burning man mask

As I pointed out in Shadow History Part 3, robots are a specific vision of the Church of Satan (as is the “allure of immortality and god-like powers” that are also part of this theme).

Screenshot 2017-10-19 15.11.19

Will Google and Tesla be debuting new walking robots at Burning Man 2018?

In 2004, the DARPA Grand Challenge was launched: for a car able to navigate through an obstacle course by itself. It was a complete failure. By 2007, half a dozen cars successfully completed the course. In 2014, Tesla announced Auto-Pilot – and self-driving cars hit the mainstream. Tesla expects to have completely self-driving cars by the end of this year.

In 2013, the DARPA Robotics Challenge was for humanoid robots to walk, climb over rubble and stairs, open doors and use tools.