75: Pretty Chill

November 17, 2014

Hello internet friends!

It’s 2014, that poor little probe we landed on a comet is already out of juice. A bit like my iPhone around lunchtime.
Talking about probes: at least Uranus might be full of surprises.

Last week I mentioned Serial and how I wouldn’t listen to it because reasons. Well, those of you who know me might have guessed it: I had to give it a try anyway. I’m still not too sure what to make of it – from what I have heard in my binge-listening-and-then-unsubscribing this weekend, it seems to me the guy did it and now a whole bunch of people who were hoping to put this behind them are in the internet’s spotlight.
Serial is a big hit, though – and suddenly people like podcasts.
Suddenly?

Besides listening to podcasts my weekend was eaten away by 0h h1. Curse you, addictive browser logic game!

Oh, wait, no – back to podcasts. (Sorry.)
The wonderful Allie Brosh was on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast – it is a great interview and oh boy, does it get dark.

Too dark for you? How about some knowledge about the weird reproductive cycle of jellyfish and how they’ll soon take over the world?
Or you know – space sloths.

Be safe.

74: Basil Goes With Everything

November 10, 2014

Hello internet friends!

74 newsletters in and I still didn’t bother to check the rules whether there needs to be a comma behind that “hello” or not.
Onwards.

2014: An enormous bitcoin mine went up in flames.
Is this the future? It sounds enormously cyberpunk-y to me.

Talking about enormously cyberpunk-y things – my copy of City of Darkness arrived this weekend. A stunningly well-made book about Kowloon Walled City I will probably be busy looking at the great photos and diagrams and reading about the inhabitant’s lives for quite some while.
And yes, one of these cross-sections made it into the book as well.

A Call For Web Developers To Deprecate Their CSS ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The big podcast du jour is The Serial which chronicles a reporter looking into a murder case from 1999. Apparently it is very well made and yet – I am not all that willing to give it a listen. Mostly because I am afraid I might like it too much and then forget that these are real people and not something like Lost or Twin Peaks.
Obviously I am not the only one with those ideas. Especially since some listeners seem to start looking into the case by themselves.

And hey, sure, why not? Cooking 101: An Infographic is worth a thousand recipes.

Be safe.

All Tomorrow's Parties

November 3, 2014

Hello internet friends!

This weekend I flooded my kitchen with coffee.

I also finished reading William Gibson’s new book “The Peripheral” and it is unsurprisingly very good.
I always thought that it is unneccesary to tell people about him and his work, but “What’s a William Gibson book? Is that like Harry Potter?” made me rethink that.
Turns out, William Gibson is already here, he’s just not very evenly distributed.

Of course a new William Gibson book also means a lot of William Gibson interviews. Here are some I enjoyed: (Warning, some are quite spoilery)

And then there is this long portrait of Mr Gibson.

That should keep you busy for a while – if you’re not that interested, here, have a sleeping puppy:

Or the best wombat movie ever made.

Or some Japanese rock music.

Be safe.

72: Uncanny Grape

October 27, 2014

Hello internet friends!

I was like “I know a guy who can eat a whole grape.”
Marcel the Shell is voiced by Jenny Slate, who we all know as Mona-Lisa Saperstein and who has a strange little origin story for Marcel.

Talking about women on TV – I am sure we all wondered what happened to the girl in Journey’s “Separate Ways” video? Well, now we know.

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Apparently we use filters on our photos because they would be slightly creepy otherwise? Who knew.

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If you need icons, here are some icons from Google. They’re CC-BY-SA, so go for it.

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If you need to know the time in Japan – and who doesn’t? – here is a handsome man and a pretty lady clock for you.
And then there is always the uniqlock.

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Almost every sitcom is set in New York – but where in New York exactly? Here we go: The Most Famous Sitcom Residences In New York City (↬ @fab1An)

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On Saturday I actually managed to leave the house. I got rained on, which I should have known, but I didn’t.

Stay alive.

Typewriter

October 20, 2014

Hello internet friends!

Finally, a typewriter we can all agree on: Sincerity Machine

Three cheers for Pig Pen Sedaris! – lovely photo, too.

I know I am late to the party – in fact, very late – but I really enjoy SNL. Very much including the title sequence, which has a long and detailed behind-the-scenes article here.

Why I Feel Bad For – And Understand – The Angry #GamerGate Gamers – “An old angry white male nerd looks with sadness at young angry white male nerds.” Worth a read. Same author: Why GamerGate Already Lost

A series of photos that are relevant to my interests: Oliver Tjaden’s “Keep Flying”.

Wow, at least once I have been way ahead of the curve: Our children are getting soft. Not just wimpy, or less sharp, but doughy. And pale, too.

I half-listened to The Incomparable 216 on the weekend and decided to buy myself “London Falling” by Paul Cornell. If you like completely strange, dark detective fiction with weird occult stuff, you might like it.

Take care, all of you.

70: Much to Learn

October 13, 2014

Hello, internet friends!

Tinyletter, which is the service I use to send this email, uses the slogan “Newsletters for people with something to say.”
Luckily it is also for people like me who don’t really have anything to say. Thanks for reading anyway, folks.

Stuff like this should not happen. WTF, people.

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Related: Why nerd culture must die

Related, but more enjoyable: I did buy Brianna Wu’s Revolution 60 and played through it in one sitting. It surely is different from other games I have played so far and I quite enjoyed it.

How to beard. I have much to learn.

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Landscape, Redacted

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I hope you all have a great week ahead of you.

69: Hehehehe.

October 6, 2014

Hello internet friends!

Here are some links for your enjoyment:

There is much to learn from the paper towel – Craig Mod is praising single use tools, both digital and “in the real world.”

Andre Braugher, the Undercover Comedian of ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ – a great article on a great actor.

How the Shinkansen bullet train made Tokyo into the monster it is today – a ride on the Shinkansen is pretty high on my bucket list. Great photos, too.

I love advertising because I love lying – cynical? Sure. Funny? Yes.

The Semiotics of Bubble Tea – because bubble tea. (I know. Sooo two years ago.)

Have a great week!

68: Beta

September 29, 2014

Hello internet friends!

So, what’s the deal with Ello?

By now we know it’s some sort of new social network (getting excited about those seems to be so 2004) with some issues.

What do we want?

We want a free, ad-free, un-tracked, archived social network with privacy controls, outside of the sphere of influence of governments (except when that leads to behaviour we don’t condone. Can’t they do something about that?) and corporations. We want our own blog, de-centralized but simple.
And surely not self-hosted, ugh.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(And who are “we”?)

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Did you watch the Black-ish pilot? No? You might want to look into that, it’s a funny show. Certainly funnier than this weekend’s SNL.

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Empty cities are inherently creepy. At least this one has self-driving people-pods in them.

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If you have 56 minutes, you can spend them in worse ways than listening to/watching this talk by Merlin Mann about Advanced Tricycling. (You know it’s a metaphor. It is really about how we learn stuff and how to know what we need to learn.)

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Tinder, ugh. AirBNB, ugh. Instagram, ugh.

Oh well. At least this might be useful.

67: Glancicle

September 22, 2014

Hello internet friends!

I seem to have settled in that habit of only writing these on mondays – mainly to wake myself up, which seems to work in some way.
Does this work for you? Or do you really need more email?

It is not even that I have much to say lately, but hey – that didn’t stop me before.

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So, links!

I quite like Ian Bogost’s essay on Future Ennui at The Atlantic.

I’m less interested in accepting wearables given the right technological conditions as I am prospectively exhausted at the idea of dealing with that future’s existence. Just think about it. All those people staring at their watches in the parking structure, in the elevator. Tapping and stroking them, nearly spilling their coffee as they swivel their hands to spin the watch’s tiny crown control.
[…]
The emergence of a new, laborious media creation and consumption ecosystem built for glancing. The rise of the “glancicle,” which will replace the listicle. The PR emails and the B2B adverts and the business consulting conference promotions all asking, is your brand glance-aware?

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Timothy B. Lee writes about Digg and how Betaworks is rebuilding it.
I personally quite like the new Digg. (Don’t click on it, though. It’s where I get most of my links.)

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It has been ten years since Lost? Adam Epstein writes for Quartz about How “Lost” changed the way the world watches TV.

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Do you like aviation videos? I do. So here is a fancy video to watch.

Have a good week!

66: Ditch

September 15, 2014

Hello internet friends!

Another monday, another week.

Chongqing City has set up China’s 1st "exclusive sidewalk for mobile phone users ” to avoid possible crashes.

This is a great idea. It’s also a very 2014 idea.

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What is a U2 and why is it on my phone??!

Related:

Apple ‘gifting’ each user with a U2 album downloaded into iTunes. At least one of my friends reported that he had wireless synching of his phone disabled; Apple overrode his express preferences in order to add the album to his music collection. The expected ‘surprise and delight’ was really more like ‘surprise and delete’. I suspect that the strong negative response (in some quarters, at least) had less to do with a dislike of U2 and everything to do with the album as a metonym for this widespread culture of nonconsensual behaviour in technology.

– Metafoundry 6: Accident Blackspot

And still related: The Fantasy and Abuse of the Manipulable User

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Erin Kissane on why Twitter is not as enjoyable as it used to be and what she does about it: Ditching Twitter

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Have a good start into the week, with or without the Twitter.