Tag: magic

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The Existentially Terrifying Scale of the Global Supply Chain
or Mamma’s Got a Brand New Bag

I think about plastic a lot.

As you may know from my last post, I have a 3D printer. This troubles me sometimes in an ecological sense, because even though the PLA¹ filament I use is bioplastic, realistically it is neither recyclable or biodegradable, so the wastage and sprews and support material is going to landfill, where the best case scenario is that it will remain there for a hundred thousand years, and the worst case is that it somehow ends up in the food chain.

Did you know there are now tiny particles of plastic amongst the sands of the furthest uninhabited reaches of the Sahara desert, as well as flowing through the bloodstream of every living human being.

The thought that I was adding to that worried me… And then I needed a bag.

Continue reading “The Existentially Terrifying Scale of the Global Supply Chain
or Mamma’s Got a Brand New Bag”

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Inside
or Outside

This isn’t going to be one of those clever high theory meta contextual posts I’m known for by my one reader. This is about a prop which most magicians know, very few use, and many have simply forgotten about. This post is about the Gozinta Box.

The Gozinta box, in case you don’t know is a pair of boxes, each of which consists of an inner box and a lid which fits snugly over the top. The boxes are different colours to highlight the interesting property that gives the boxes their unusual name: the fact that either box can fit inside the other.

That is to say you can open a red box, take out a blue box, open the blue box, close the red box, put it inside the blue box and then close the blue box.

By itself, a fun effect, but it has a much more interesting application.
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or Outside”

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Slice of Lith
or An Acquired Aesthetic

The year was 2004 and a group of cosmopolitan, metropolitan, Neapolitan (we all liked ice-cream) friends invited me to visit them in London, from whence we travelled to Camden Lock Market and I tried on many cool articles of clothing, none of which would comfortably stretch over my corpulent frame. I did however obtain some jewellery made from old circuit boards, all mounted in fixings that turned my skin green. 3/10, should have gone to Cyberdog.

Cyberdog wasn’t really my aesthetic at the time, but what IS an aesthetic?

Aesthetic is often used as a complicated way of referring to a look or fashion style, such as vapourwave, steampunk, goth, bdsm or the cultural appropriation of the Harajuku fashion scene.

Believe it or not this is a continuation of my series on the future and subversion of coin magic, but I’m coming at it from the other direction so buckle in as I explain a little art history.

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or An Acquired Aesthetic”
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Dolla Dolla Bills
or Die for King Money

Can we just take a minute to appreciate the United States of America. I know their government oscillates between capitalistic neoliberals and capitalistic cryptofascists, their healthcare system is designed to funnel money towards corporate health insurance, they have actual unfiltered nazis marching in the streets and bizarre fiscal loopholes allowing billionaires with more wealth than a small country to not only avoid paying tax but actually receive tax rebates courtesy of the regular citizenry… *deep breath* but damn it if their physical currency isn’t just designed from the ground up for magicians.

The dollar bill is worth so little that it’s cheaper to make a cover for an exercise book with actual money than to use that money to buy nice paper for the cover. The one, two, five, ten, twenty, fifty and one hundred dollar bill are all the same size and mostly printed in the same colours, made from a soft enough paper to fold easily and hold a nice crease. If you ask the average person on the street for a coin you are all but guaranteed to get a quarter, and there’s a statistically favourable chance that the quarter will have the design used for the majority of the 20th century, that of the eagle.

Admittedly the production of state quarters since 1999 has slightly scuppered that last point but the odds are still heavily in your favour that the person you borrow it from won’t even notice if you switch it for one which does.

God Bless America… and fuck the goddamn Royal Mint.

Continue reading “Dolla Dolla Bills
or Die for King Money”
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Going Dotty
or What’s Next

So this is the part where I call back to several other posts simultaneously into a crescendo like those parts of a musical where it turns out you can interleave all three of the main leitmotifs into one epic finale song.

This isn’t my last post¹, it just happens that I have now laid enough groundwork to start getting a little more meta.

This post also contains 3 trick reviews, which seems to be what magicians like²

Continue reading “Going Dotty
or What’s Next”