HYPOCRITE IDLER 4Q2024
By:
December 24, 2024
To idle is to work on meaningful and varied projects — and to take it easy. The title of the series refers to this self-proclaimed idler’s inability to take it easy.
HILOBROW is a noncommercial blog. None of the below should be construed as an advertisement for one of my various, more or less profitable projects. This series is merely intended to keep HILOBROW’s readers updated on the editor’s doings and undoings.
I am deeply grateful to the many talented and generous folks with whom I’ve collaborated during 4Q2024.
MORE HYPOCRISY: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024.
Also see: HILOBROW 4Q2024.
I’m cofounder of the semiotics-fueled consultancy SEMIOVOX. Our methodology provides insight and inspiration — to brand and organization strategy, marketing, design, innovation, and consumer insights teams, as well as to their agency partners — regarding the unspoken local/global “codes” that help shape perceptions of and guide behavior within product categories and/or sociocultural territories.
During 4Q2024, our projects included (but were not limited to) the following.
- SOPHISTICATED WHOLESOME CODES: Earlier this year, we consulted with a videogame company developing a “sophisticated wholesome” social sim game. The audit involved a close analysis of videogames, movies and TV series, and aesthetics-driven trends. During 4Q2024, we provided feedback on initial character and world design.
- OUT-OF-HOME COFFEE CODES: Via the UK-based design-, semiotics-, and anthropology-driven agency Visual Signo, on behalf of an instant coffee brand we conducted an analysis of US out-of-home coffee brand communications. Semiovox was the US partner in an ambitious fifteen-market audit. Marketing optimization.
- BRITISH ICON CODES:
Via the UK research and strategy collective CultureStudio, we analyzed iconic British figures — from the worlds of music, movies, fashion, sports, and beyond — in order to extract British Icon codes.
For more info, see: SEMIOVOX 4Q2024.
This Fall, I returned to RISD’s campus as an adjunct critic in the Masters of Industrial Design program. I co-taught two sections of GRADUATE THESIS MAPPING & NARRATIVE. Fun! Shown above: RISD MID students in the studio.
(Here’s my faculty page.)
On October 29th, I was a guest critic for Tony Leone’s graphic design class (theme: zines) at MassArt. His students are producing very cool stuff! Shown above: Mothra zine.
I’m editor of the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE proto-sf reissue series. During 4Q2024, the MITP production team and I sent the series’ two Spring 2025 tiles to press:
- J.D. Beresford’s The Hampdenshire Wonder (March 2025, with a new introduction by Ted Chiang). “Extravagance… but of so remarkable a character that it keeps you almost spell-bound. What follows is philosophy, psychology, poetry, allegory, what you will.” — The Bookman (1911) | See this title at the MIT Press website.
- John Taine’s The Greatest Adventure (March 2025, with a new introduction by S.L. Huang). “A mixture of H. Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Roy Chapman Andrews, and a bottle of excellent gin.” — California Tech (1929) | See this title at the MIT Press website.
Also, we copy edited the series’ Fall 2025 titles. These titles are:
- Marietta S. Shaginyan’s Yankees in Petrograd (August 2025, translated from Russian and introduced by Jill Roese). “A novel of our time, in which major events succeed each other with purely cinematographic speed….” — Nikolai Meshcheryakov, “Foreword to the First Edition” (1924) | See this title at the MIT Press website.
- Before Superman: Superhumans of the Radium Age (August 2025, edited and introduced by Josh). An anthology of proto-sf stories and novel excerpts exploring the uncanny (and then brand-new) concept of the “superhuman.” | See this title at the MIT Press website.
In January and February, we’ll proof these titles and send them to press. We’re also working on exciting projects for 2026 and beyond.
For recent press about the series, see this post’s GOOD VIBRATIONS section.
RADIUM AGE series updates: 2022 | 2023 | 1Q2024 | 2Q2024 | 3Q2024 | 4Q2024. FULL SERIES INFO.
Here at HILOBROW, I’ve continued to share my Radium Age-related research. For example, via the series RADIUM AGE POETRY and RADIUM AGE ART, I’ve shared proto-sf-adjacent poems and art works from the years 1900–1935.
During 4Q2024, I wrapped up the RADIUM AGE ART series. Here are its final installments:
1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1931 | 1932 | 1933 | 1934 | 1935
Also, here’s a sampling of the 4Q2024 RADIUM AGE POETRY lineup:
Alexander Blok’s “INTO CRIMSON DARK” | J. Lewis Milligan’s THE SUPER-MAN | John Davidson’s “MATTER INCANDESCENT” | Archibald MacLeish’s SIGNATURE FOR TEMPO | Anna Akhmatova’s “ALL IS SOLD, ALL IS LOST” | Robinson Jeffers’ NOVA.
To see the full RADIUM AGE POETRY lineup, visit this page.
HILOBROW is published by King Mixer LLC; I’m the editor. To see everything that we’ve published recently, please check out the post HILOBROW 4Q2024. Here, I’ll just mention the following series.
SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM is a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of horror movies. Here’s a sampling of the series lineup:
Annie Nocenti on ROSEMARY’S BABY | Carolyn Campbell on WAIT UNTIL DARK | Marc Weidenbaum on DAWN OF THE DEAD | Amy Keyishian on SHAUN OF THE DEAD | Gabriela Pedranti on [•REC] | Mariane Cara on PARANORMAL ACTIVITY | Trav SD on FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY | Colin Campbell on EVIL DEAD (2013) | Lynn Peril on NIGHT GALLERY | Heather Quinlan on THE CHANGELING | Kenny Simek on REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA
Heather Quinlan is the SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM series editor. She is very grateful to the series’ contributors, many of whom donated their honoraria to Covenant House, which provides housing and supportive services to youth facing homelessness.
To see my solo HILOBROW series and posts from 4Q2024, please check out the WRITING (HILOBROW) section of this post; to see what’s coming up soon, please see the post 1Q2025 SNEAK PEEK.
SEMIOVOX, my branding consultancy’s eponymous website, is published by SEMIOVOX LLC; I’m the editor. For a full update on what we’ve published recently, please see the post SEMIOVOX 4Q2024. Here, I’ll just mention a few highlights.
MAKING SENSE is a long-running series of Q&As dedicated to revealing what makes semioticians tick. Here’s the 4Q2024 series lineup:
YOGI HENDLIN (Netherlands/USA) | RAHUL MURDESHWAR (India) | MARTA PELLEGRINI (Italy) | KARIN SANDELIN (Sweden) | JOËL LIM DU BOIS (Malaysia) | KATRIN HORN (Austria) | FRANCISCO HAUSS (China) | MARIE LENA TUPOT (USA) | INKA CROSSWAITE (South Africa).
Via the series CASE FILE, our semiotician colleagues from around the world share stories of things they were amazed and amused to learn (whether or not they proved useful to the client). Here’s the 4Q2024 lineup:
Mariane Cara (Brazil) on MOTHER-PACKS | Whitney Dunlap-Fowler (USA) on WHERE THE BOYS ARE | Antje Weißenborn (Germany) on KITSCH | Chirag Mediratta (India) on “I WATCH, THEREFORE I AM” | Eugene Gorny (Thailand) on UNDEAD LUXURY | Adelina Vaca (Mexico) on CUBAN WAYS OF SEEING | Lucia Laurent-Neva (England) on DOLPHIN SQUARE | William Liu (China) on SCENT FANTASY | Clio Meurer (Brazil) on CHOCOLATE IDEOLOGY.
I’m coordinator for SEMIOFEST SESSIONS, a series of online get-togethers — intended not only to share best practices among, but to nurture collegiality and friendship within the global semio community.
For a full update on recent Semiofest Sessions, please see the post SEMIOVOX 4Q2024. Here are two examples:
OCTOBER: ON COLOUR. Lucia Laurent-Neva invited color experts and theorists from outside our own discipline — Alexandra Loske, Pete Thomas, and James Quail — to share their insights on how colour systems reflect evolving social and cultural dynamics; how the ‘materiality’ of color connects with broader historical contexts and design practices; the cultural biases and commercial interests involved in color naming; and more.
NOVEMBER: JURI LOTMAN. Maarja Ojamaa invited Max Matus, Maria Papanthymou, and Auli Viidalepp to discuss how key concepts — including the “semiosphere,” cultural “unpredictability,” and the “growth of meaning” — of the University of Tartu’s Juri Lotman (1922–1993) can inform applied semiotic work around branding, public education, artificial intelligence, and more.
During 4Q2024, in addition to the RADIUM AGE ART series, I wrote the following solo HILOBROW series and posts.
- For the SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM series, I contributed an installment on the 1978 version of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Excerpt: “Like today’s tech bros who’ve remade the city in their own image, what the aliens offer is a disruptive final solution — no more yearning for rebirth, your problems efficiently solved.”
SEMIOPUNK is an irregular series dedicated to surfacing examples (and predecessors) of the sf subgenre that HILOBROW was the first to name “semiopunk.” Here’s the 4Q2024 lineup:
Iain M. Banks’s FEERSUM ENDJINN | Grant Morrison’s run on DOOM PATROL | Philip K. Dick’s THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH
The series FIRST TIME AS COMEDY, which wrapped up this month, is devoted to surfacing examples of a recursive, often middlebrow syndrome whereby comedy is adapted (without acknowledgment) as drama. Here’s the 4Q2024 lineup:
LITTLE BIG MAN vs. DANCES WITH WOLVES | THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO vs. BE KIND REWIND | LEN DEIGHTON vs. LEN DEIGHTON
In December, I wrapped up the series SCHEMATIZING. Over 50 posts (plus 10 STREET SCHEMA posts), since January 2023 I’ve attempted to depict the intellectual and emotional highs and lows of developing a semiotic schema. The final post is an overview of the series.
ALSO: I’ve continued to add installments in the solo series SCREENSHOTS, PHOTO DUMP, and NOT TODAY, EBAY.
I continue to toil at fiction-writing — every weekday — with the support of my teleconference-enabled writer’s group, The Space.
Getting the word out, during 4Q2024…
For a full update on recent Radium Age series publicity, please see the post RADIUM AGE 4Q2024. Here are a few examples.
- In October, Michael Dirda’s annual “Best Spooky Stories for the Halloween Season” had the following to say about the MIT Press’s edition of William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land: “It’s an enormously long and wordy novel, but… MIT’s Radium Age [series] offers a more manageable abridged edition. It’s one of those visionary, over-the-top masterworks like George MacDonald’s Lilith or David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus.”
- “What makes the Radium Age series so valuable is how it illuminates the origins of science fiction tropes we take for granted,” writes Mark Frauenfelder in a November 25 Boing Boing post. “The Greatest Adventure reveals the literary DNA of Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, while The Hampdenshire Wonder tackles transhumanism decades before it became a preoccupation of science fiction and posthumanist philosophy.”
During 4Q2024, I started collaborating (in fits and starts) on exciting new projects with Rob Walker, Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair, and Jennifer Vasilache — all of which I hope will come to fruition in 2025. What Orson Welles has to do with any of this is a story for another day.
During 4Q2024, I continue to oversee operations at GO WEST, the coworking space that I cofounded in Boston’s West Roxbury neighborhood.
In October, we continued to host friends and family in Kingston. Here’s some charismatic detritus spotted at Opus 40 (in Saugerties, NY) — which we visited with our friends Rick & Nancy Pinchera.
We continued to enjoy the company of Kingston friends, new and old, during October and November. For example: Mimi Lipson (right), on whose front porch we spent much of Halloween — along with Lucy Sante, Annie Nocenti, Sean Howe, and others.
Max and Diana were visiting us in Kingston, in early December, when our Boston friends Tom and Mandy Nealon swung through town on a work trip — buying books from Lucy Sante.
Susan, Sandra, Sam, Kayla, and I visited Max and Diana in NYC right before heading to Kingston for Xmas together. Shown here: Diana and Kayla waiting for a train to Queens with Diana’s mother Victoria.
On to 1Q2025…
MORE HYPOCRISY: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024.