Skip to main content

Links

  1. Perry Anderson · The Italian Disaster · LRB 22 May 2014

    Not for most of the article, but for the first 7+ paragraphs outlining the, er, legal difficulties, of those in political power across Europe. We are terrible.

  2. Rumsfeld’s War and Its Consequences Now by Mark Danner | The New York Review of Books

    This series of articles on Rumsfeld is a good read. But this, the first article, is the only one that’s available to non-subscribers.

  3. After You’ve Gone by Thomas Nagel | The New York Review of Books

    On thinking about the world after we, as individuals, die. And the importance of “the collective afterlife”, “the survival and continued renewal of humanity after our personal death”. (Subscribers only)

  4. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: WATCH

    Photos from Eno and Byrne’s 1981(?) recording session. (via The Online Photographer)

  5. The Online Photographer: The Culture of Photography

    Both for the topic – about how the different kinds of photography are changing – but also as an example of a blog with routinely great (moderated) comments. It’s also wonderful that Mike Johnston pulls out the best comments at the end of each post.

  6. Diary of a Corporate Sellout — The Message — Medium

    Andy Baio on what it means to sell a site to a larger company. When you give up ownership, you’re selling the community.

  7. BLDGBLOG: 100 Views of a Drowning World

    I love these images; click through to the Tumblr for more, but linking to this for the nice commentary too. Love them.

  8. The Internet With A Human Face - Beyond Tellerrand 2014 Conference Talk

    Text of a great, if depressing, talk about privacy, internet advertising and business models by Maciej Cegłowski. “Investor storytime is when someone pays you to tell them how rich they’ll get when you finally put ads on your site.” (via @antimega)

  9. The Invention of the AeroPress

    About the invention of the Aerobie (I had no idea the tiny lip around its edge makes a huge difference), the Aeropress, the inventor and the company. Lots of interesting tidbits.

  10. The Oral History of Freaks and Geeks | Vanity Fair

    Lovely, long description of making the show by cast and crew, fourteen or so years on. Must have been brilliant to be a part of something like that.

  11. Hysteria (1/2) - YouTube

    It’s not seen at its best in this video, but this is one of my favourite ever pieces of theatre.

  12. 4618602 (d3.js Multiline chart with brushing and mouseover)

    Because I’ll want to see this again sometime and will forget where it is. Now it’s here.

  13. User Onboarding | A frequently-updated compendium of web app first-run experiences

    Really, really good detailed step-by-step look at how various services get users signed up. (via Tom Taylor)

  14. Picture This: U.S. Cities Under 12 feet of Sea Level Rise | Climate Central

    Altered photos showing what parts of some US cities will look like. Always reminds me of that bit in one of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars books where they go back south-east England, chimney tops poking out of the sea. (via @greatdismal)

  15. Ian Hickson - Google+ - Discussions about DRM often land on the fundamental problem…

    DRM is not about preventing unauthorised copying. It’s about giving content publishers power over companies who make reading/viewing/listening devices, and restricting what users are able to do with the content they’ve bought/rented to use on those devices.

  16. Joshua Foer: John Quijada and Ithkuil, the Language He Invented : The New Yorker

    (December 2012) This is mostly an interesting look at invented languages and one in particular. And there’s quite a sudden unexpected turn towards the end. A good read.

  17. The Making of Pulp Fiction: Quentin Tarantino’s and the Cast’s Retelling | Vanity Fair

    My reaction to Tarantino these days is always to roll my eyes, but I got over myself and really enjoyed this long look at how Pulp Fiction was made. Lots of interviews with those involved. (21 years ago!)

  18. Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York: On Spike Lee & Hyper-Gentrification, the Monster That Ate New York

    A look at the gentrification of New York. Lots of good stuff, and interesting. But it feels a little too biased towards the author’s personal experiences of the recent wave. It may well be true that this is more important and destructive than previous waves but this needs more objective data.

  19. Eve: The most thrilling boring game in the universe | Polygon

    (February 2014) A good long look at the world of Eve Online. Interviews with people involved. Fascinating. (via iamcal)

  20. [this is aaronland] The “Drinking Coffee and Stealing Wifi” 2012 World Tour

    (December 2012) Aaron Straup Cope’s keynote. Museums online, archiving, Flickr, Foursquare, unique IDs… so much stuff, so good.

  21. A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100

    (June 2011) Really good look at corporations in a very broad sense, from East India Company, Smithian Growth, Mercantilist Economy (1600-1800), to Schumpterian Growh, Industrial Economy (1800-2000), and now Coasean Grown and the Perspective Economy. (via Interconnected I think)

  22. ntlk’s blog: Chrome obfuscates the URLs, Google benefits

    More good words on why a Google Chrome hiding URLs is bad. “Removing the URLs from the browser is an attempt to expand and consolidate centralised power.” (via Stellar)

  23. Adactio: Journal—URLy warning

    Jeremy Keith is, as usual, right. Chrome removing the URL bar makes me much sadder, and a bit angrier, than any UI tweaking should.

  24. GOV.UK elements

    HTML/CSS elements and how to use them on GOV.UK. Really useful, even if you’re doing differently, as a checklist of stuff to consider. (via @jamesweiner)

  25. Thomas Piketty’s Capital: everything you need to know about the surprise bestseller | Books | The Guardian

    Paul Mason’s good (I assume) summary of ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’.

  26. Country statistics — DataMarket

    Lots of nice statistics, presented in a decent, usable way. So many of the international organisation sites with this stuff are appalling. (via @johndodds)

  27. Reading Markson Reading, The poet Laura Sims is writing a piece about…

    Tyler Malone on his experience of going through Strand Books’ entire stock, twice, to find hundreds of books from the late David Markson’s library.

  28. Ivory Tower Style, Online discussion forums are like fish colonies -…

    Some of the most useful or funny old threads on Style Forum. (via Put This On)

  29. Sneaking through U.S. Customs with Converse All-Star invention - GazEtc

    Adding fibres to the rubber soles of Converse All Stars means they qualify as slippers rather than sneakers, and so attract a much lower import duty. (via Put This On)

  30. How to support full Unicode in MySQL databases · Mathias Bynens

    Don’t use utf8, use utf8mb4. I wonder sometimes. (via @mattb)