Links
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The Problem with Muzak | Liz Pelly
Although I love having so much music available in Spotify, I’m increasingly aware how often I use it unthinkingly just for “background music for working” which I’m not very proud of. So even aside from these odd industry-changing effects, I’m feeling uneasy about Spotify.
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Future Historians Probably Won’t Understand Our Internet - The Atlantic
On the impossibility of archiving the experience of using social media, even if ignoring the fact, like this article seems to, that so much of social media is private to some degree. (via @kevin2kelly)
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The Dangers of Elite Projection - Human Transit
A useful term. (via several people on Twitter)
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Using pyvenv (venv) With Django on WebFaction. :: Solid Ether
Also for the earlier post it links to. Django-type sites on WebFaction (as opposed to standard Apache sites) do sound a bit messy though.
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52 things I learned in 2017 – Fluxx Studio Notes – Medium
So many interesting things leading to more interesting things to read. (via Kottke)
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HOWTO design a code of conduct for your community | Ada Initiative
Some guidelines.
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Citizen Code of Conduct | A project of Stumptown Syndicate
A sample code of conduct, to use as a basis for your own community’s.
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Tips for in-house teams in a free market software culture
Alice’s really good description of how to develop and improve in-house software tools that people will want to use.
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What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?
About how to, or whether it’s possible to, enjoy the art of people like Roman Polanski and Woody Allen, and whether you have to be selfish, to be an “art monster”, in order to make great art. (via Kottke)
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Just Another Blog: CSV Parser for PHP
The PHP code in this 11-year-old Blogspot post succeeded in reading a CSV file where PHP’s built-in method failed. Web development, eh.
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The Online Photographer: LR Replacement Photo Editing Software
Lots and lots of thoughtful comments discussing replacements for Lightroom. The closest to a consensus might be Capture One, with Affinity Photo as a Photoshop replacement.
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The Great Diary Project
Archiving personal diaries. (via Things mag)
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Adobe unveils all-new cloud-based Lightroom CC, rebrands old application ‘Lightroom Classic’
This doesn’t make me feel good. Wondering if I should jump from Lightroom now (to what?) before becoming stuck in something harder to get out of. (via The Online Photographer)
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The War To Sell You A Mattress Is An Internet Nightmare | Fast Company
The interaction between the internet and “the real world” (i.e. selling objects) has become odder than I would have imagined.
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How Civilization Started | The New Yorker
John Lanchester on re-evaluating the ease of life for hunter gatherers vs settled societies. (via @cityofsound)
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Statistical NLP on OpenStreetMap: Part 2 – Al Barrentine – Medium
On getting computers to recognise the parts of all formats of street addresses from around the world. Amazing, even/especially the bits I don’t understand.
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Fuck You And Die: An Oral History of Something Awful - Motherboard
I’m not sure I was ever really aware of these forums at the time but I do like a good early-days-of-web oral history.
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A WordPress & Git workflow – Marc Jenkins
Seems to make sense, and WP Migrate DB Pro is the bee’s knees.
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George Duoblys · One, Two, Three, Eyes on Me! · LRB 5 October 2017
On the “efficient” teaching and disciplinary methods used in some London secondary schools. Sounds grim.
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@20 (Ftrain.com)
Paul Ford on his website being 20-ish. Lovely, every word. “The things I want to do are strange, simple, and unprofitable.” Hello. (via @jah)
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My essential django package list — /var/
A handy list including a few handy things I hadn’t heard of. Plus useful descriptions of them all. (via Simon Willison)
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Merely an Empire - London Review of Books
Good on Ken Burns’ ‘The Vietnam War’. “We cannot make a movie that will save us.”
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Pipenv: Python Dev Workflow for Humans — pipenv 8.1.4 documentation
I really don’t want to learn yet another way to manage python virtual environment but this does sound like it might finally be The One. (via @simonw)
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Lotechnica - Postgres Full-Text Search With Django
Looks like a good guide. (via @simonw)
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Understanding Uber: It’s Not About The App - London Reconnections
Very good on TfL and Uber. If only newspaper reporting was anything like this good.
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From Clapping to Likes, and Back Again – A Brief History of Attention – Medium
This should be good - a short series by Matt Locke on how attention has been measured.
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frank lantz - don’t die
Long interview that’s interesting on trying (and failing) to make videogames “serious”, the purpose and worth of learning about making games at university, having a shared basic knowledge of games history/culture/ideas. Needs editing.