Posts with Recent Comments
The world, filtered through the apps, is not the world we want
This sounds spectacularly self-centered: that you can only quit a thing, or modify your usage of it, when it fails to serve you. But if we think of our phones and social media as addictive products, which they certainly are, then the classic addiction model makes sense: you only consider quitting when the negative impacts (the dead feeling of the soft-brain scroll, the loss of attention span, the weight of comparison, the exposure to trolls, the lack of control over the algorithm) outweigh the positive benefits (the distraction, the serotonin hit, the semblance of connection, the loose ties, the business benefits). from The Social Media Sea Change by Anne Helen Petersen
I'm just gonna dance all night
Everything is terrible, so for a few moments of levity, how about revisiting Saturday Night Live's Taran Killam, Vanessa Bayer, Bobby Moynihan, and Abby Elliott doing a joyful 4:30 AM interpretation of Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend" back in 2011?
And yes, this was posted about here more than a decade ago, but surely it's worth revisiting. Especially since the gang did a follow-up video in 2020, featuring "Dancing On My Own"!
Philosophical questions require more speculative scenarios
Mathematics is extremely precise, but it’s limited to a specific domain. Scientists who speak different languages can use the same mathematics, but they still have to rely on their native languages when they publish a paper; they can’t say everything they need to say with equations alone. Language has to support every type of communication that humans engage in, from debates between politicians to pillow talk between lovers. That’s not what mathematics is for. We could be holding this conversation in any human language that we both understand, but we couldn’t hold it in mathematical equations. As soon as you try and modify mathematics so that it can do those things, it ceases to be mathematics. from Life Is More Than an Engineering Problem, an interview with Ted Chiang [LARB; ungated]
🤘🤘🤘 And so I turn all my tears into a tsunami sea 🤘🤘🤘
backup
together they founded the Data Rescue Project to preserve the enormous data sets that website-focussed efforts had missed. Its tracker now catalogues more than four hundred publicly accessible volunteer backups of government repositories…
By mid-February, the Data Rescue Project was recruiting from r/DataHoarder and a few related networks. Majstorovic and others began teaching the less experienced members how to back up government data with ArchiveTeam Warrior—an app whose creators have launched a data-rescue campaign—and to upload it to a secure public repository called DataLumos [newyorker/archived]
Stan Brakhage's "The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes"
The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes is a grueling, fascinating experience only made bearable by our sense of the real human being gripping the camera for dear life. There’s a moment when Brakhage brings the camera around to take in the newly emptied cranium of one of the autopsied corpses, peering down into the gaping skull, where I felt that he and I were experiencing exactly the same great and horrible feeling of dumbstruck awe at what had become of a human life. It’s enervating but surprisingly humanist in its aspirations -- if it’s ultimately despairing, it remains clearly the work of a master exploring the human condition in every facet. - Bryant Frazer (h/t: languagehat)
"They used our building, so now we’re using their typeface."
The office of London design studio DUDE was vandalized... so they turned the graffiti into a free* typeface for everyone to use. [more inside]
More captive-bred orange-bellied parrots released
Another record expected as more captive-bred orange-bellied parrots released.
Almost 30 of the critically endangered birds have been released from captivity, buoying expectations for a record-breaking winter migration this year.
The Gulf of Unreasoning
Amidst a trade war with American's neighbors and partners, and a crashing economy, US President #47 will address a joint session of the US Congress starting at 9p.m. ET (watch live on YouTube)
That's a lot of sites
While it's self-proclaimed, it's easy to believe that this is the largest collection of links to free sites on the internet.
Notes from the human population implosion
“There is fundamentally no way to do this that doesn’t end up treating women’s bodies as a tool.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus (previously) examines the demographic transition: the decline in childbirth alongside the growing number of elders. A long read, grounded in South Korea's experience.
Jim Goldberg's "Rich and Poor"
"By depicting the rich and the poor in their respective environments, we see life as it is lived by our means, which tells a far different story than would portraits taken outside of these contexts. Jim Goldberg’s other key innovation in this book is how he has allowed his subjects to attempt to capture themselves. As part of his process, he asks for their commentary on their own photos, giving the subject an opportunity to add context, personality, and self-perception to each photo in handwritten reflections. These annotations change not only the meaning of the book, but also the meaning of the act of taking the photos." - Abbey Lee
Jewish comedian dropping truth bombs
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Addresses General Assembly, 78th Session (pdf) - "Terrorists have no right to hold nuclear weapons." [more inside]
Now you're playing with power. Super power.
An unexpected discovery in the age of planned tech obsolesce: Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) hardware appears to be running faster and faster as the devices age.
Pulped Fiction?
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction have been acquired by Must Read Magazines, a division of a new publishing company, Must Read Books Publishing. All editorial staff from the magazines have been retained in the acquisitions. [more inside]
Why you should treat wombats with respect
Most wombats are shy, gentle, and timid unless you make them angry, but they are very muscular and have sharp claws. A man in 2010 had the misfortune of accidentally startling a wombat that had sought shelter from a bushfire under his caravan: 20 minutes later, he was in a condition that resulted in him being admitted to hospital with significant injuries to his arms and legs. (And yes, if this had happened to the influencer who kidnapped a baby wombat, I would have been on team wombat.) Meanwhile the woman who kidnapped a baby wombat is having her visa reviewed and may not be allowed back into Australia again. [more inside]
Patricia Highsmith's "Little Tales of Misogyny"
Graham Greene: The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with the publication of this legendary, cultish short story collection. With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next-door neighbors into sadistic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In the darkly satiric, often mordantly hilarious sketches that make up Little Tales of Misogyny, Highsmith upsets our conventional notions of female character, revealing the devastating power of these once familiar creatures — "The Dancer," "The Female Novelist," "The Prude" — who destroy both themselves and the men around them. This work attests to Highsmith's reputation as "the poet of apprehension". [more inside]
It is possible to arrest someone for crimes against humanity
Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on an ICC warrant for crimes against humanity in Manila. According to his daughter, who is currently the country's vice president, “As I write this, he is being forcibly taken to The Hague tonight. This is not justice – this is oppression and persecution.” Internal Philippine politics made the arrest possible, as a former power-sharing agreement between the Marcos family currently in power and the Dutertes broke down.
Chinese Democracy
Good Enough Ancestor - "This is the story of Taiwan's democratic transformation as seen through Audrey Tang's eyes, amid a global crisis for democracy." (Taiwan, Sunflower Movement, Audrey Tang previously) [more inside]