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Before Facebook and Twitter, even before the web, there was sinister… paper. → The 19th Century Moral Panic Over … Paper Technology
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I’m not sure how I feel about oyster vending machines, but the prospect doesn’t make me hungry.
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Wow, almost 30,000 recordings of early 20th century wax cylinders and 78 rpm records at the Internet Archive!
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I shared an article about this story a few issues ago, but this deserves sharing for the headline alone. → Calibri in spotlight as Fontgate could leave Pakistan sans Sharif
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Is the fear of malevolent artificial intelligence rooted in a reasonable fear that it could be as destructive as our own?
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I had no idea there was a lost Sylvia Plath novel. Thanks, Reader B.!
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Greece’s disappearing whistled language. Thanks, Reader V.!
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Not as obvious as a first glance at the headline might make you think… → Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse
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Unsurprising, but interesting, particularly those who are playing both sides against each other to their profit and our detriment. → Inside The Partisan Fight For Your News Feed
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Today is International Lefthanders Day (#lefthandersday). Supposedly founded in 1976 by publicist Dean R. Campbell (though I can’t find any documentation for this oft-repeated claim), the official site says today provides “a chance to tell your family and friends how proud you are of being left-handed, and also raise awareness of the everyday issues that lefties face as we live in a world designed for right-handers.” Maybe you’ve wondered, “Why are some people left-handed?” If you’re a left-hander, did you know there’s an Association of Left-Handers? And even non-lefties might enjoy browsing a collection of famous left-handers. Good further reading: Adrian Flatt on “The sinister handed”. Good watching: ► Right.Left.Write., a short film about growing up left-handed.
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Links, links, links…from a certain, uncertain mind.
Links: August 6, 2017
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The 2017 National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year prize winners are all wonderfu…but the grand prize winner is extraordinary.
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Powell’s Compendium of Readerly Terms contains punny entries such as wordigo, readultery, camareaderie and many (well, 39) more. [Thanks, Reader S.!] || See also, a punny bonus.
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Did you know Banksy operates an “art hotel” in Bethlehem? Open for the year of 2017, at least. It’s just as—Banksian—as you’d expect. → The Walled Off Hotel
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The British Library flickr account has more than a million (1,023,714 images in over 1000 albums at the time of writing) free images for your browsing pleasure. Clamorites might enjoy starting with Book Covers, Illustrated Letters & Typography, Ghosts & Ghoulish Scenes and Maps, found by the community.
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I’m not sold on the sales pitch for the book, but I do love writing letters…and combining letter writing with random acts of kindness sounds like fun. You can play too! → Secret Letters to Strangers Month – Global Kindness Initiative
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You might remember the beautiful Keaton Music Typewriter shared here a few years ago (because you memorize every link, right?). Turns out there is one for sale for just $12,000. || See also: a ► video demo of the typewriter in action.
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I once gave a presentation that changed my own life…and it involved automatons, simulacra, technology and we, the ghosts in the machine. So the mechanical age “pre-history” of artificial intelligence fascinates me. And hopefully you. → Frolicsome Engines: The Long Prehistory of Artificial Intelligence
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The ghostly radio station that no one claims to run. Via [Reader B.], who adds, “Bonus for the Dead Hand theory.”
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Today in 1991, Tim Berners-Lee publishes a short summary of his new “World Wide Web” project to a public USENET news group (remember those?), describing a “world” that consisted of “documents and links” that could be “clicked by a mouse” to follow links to “other documents.” Today you can navigate 8K porn with your voice and pay with BitCoin while bots concoct a custom fake news stream just for you. Ah, progress.
Links: July 30, 2017
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Is the world really better than ever? And is that mindset, or the pessimism it is intended to counter, holding us back?
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When a font choice goes really wrong… → Glitter or Hitler?
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These Accurately Titled Novels are hilarious (because they’re true). || While we’re at it, how about 11 Fictional Restaurants We Wish Existed?
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You might remember the delightful paint colors generated by a neural network? Well, now peruse similarly generated British style placenames (who wouldn’t want to live in Colon-in Mead or Galling Compton)? If you like the placenames, you might enjoy the Twitter feed…at the time of this writing the featured name is Lickley Stalhay). || See also: terrible fruit names, not-so-terrible metal band names and mystifying Broadway musical names.
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Speaking of very artificial intelligence, soon RealDolls will want to talk (hopefully about how it feels to live in the Uncanny Valley). → How to Choose a Personality for Your Sex Robot
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I recently had my first real-life experience with someone telling me their preferred pronouns. Using them feels like the right thing to do. But perhaps, like me, others started out with questions… → Your Most Awkward Questions About They/Them Pronouns, Answered
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A fascinating Proportional Pie Chart of the World’s Most Spoken Languages. || And while language cartography is a thing, Is the study of language a science?
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I’m a longtime McSweeney’s reader, as are many Clamorites. Thanks to Reader A. for sharing links to a note about the death of the real Timothy McSweeney and an archive link to the story of the man himself.
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FindSounds is a search engine for sounds.
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Today in 1935, Allen Lane publishes the first 10 Penguin books (including titles by Agatha Christie and Ernest Hemingway), selling three million(!) books in the first year, initiating the paperback revolution. The iconic, color-coded design was established with the first 10 books, each of which sold for about the same price as a pack of 10 cigarettes. Penguin has continued to embrace high-quality, recognizable designs…so much so they inspired a book of their own.
Links: July 23, 2017
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This is personal: Please Stop Calling Suicide Victims “Selfish” or “Weak”. || See also: Artificial intelligence can now predict suicide with remarkable accuracy.
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Is the death of reading threatening the soul in a “quiet war?”
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Does (counter-intuitively to me) announcing your plans make you less motivated to accomplish them? Yes and no. || See also, the original study (PDF).
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Whoa! Dan Harmon is bringing Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens Of Titan to TV. In case you don’t know who Dan Harmon is, he created Community and co-created Adult Swim and Rick and Morty. If you don’t know who Kurt Vonnegut is—
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On Swintec’s clear typewriters, the only kind allowed in many prisons, and their role in prison life.
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No one could see the colour blue until modern times? || Embedded within that story, a fascinating Radiolab story: Why Isn’t the Sky Blue? || And within that: Why Red Means Red in Almost Every Language. I dare you not to think of the the dress.
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Take a moment to savor the amazing winners of the BigPicture Photography Competition, a gallery bookended by two of my favorite wildlife pictures ever. [Thanks, Reader B.!]
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Find those elusive songs from TV and movies using Tunefind.
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Following up on a story noted here a few weeks ago: Salvador Dalí’s Remains Exhumed, Revealing A Perfectly Arranged Mustache.
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Today in 1829, William Austin Burt is granted U.S. patent No. 5581X for his “typographer”, called therein, “the first practical typewriting machine.” This wasn’t really true…Italian inventor Pellegrino Turri had invented one nearly 30 years before for his blind lover the Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano, of which some typewritten pages survived.
Links: July 16, 2017
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The only thing better than maps are maps about words! → 25 maps that explain the English language
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Enjoy the 1984 issue of the Post New York Post.
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“The origin of the word ‘prosthesis’ meant ‘to add, put on to,’ so not to fix or replace, but to extend. The Third Thumb is inspired by this word origin, exploring human augmentation and aiming to reframe prosthetics as extensions of the body.”
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Letterpress love! → Amos Kennedy Jr.: From Corporate Analyst To Modern-Day Artisan
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If you’re going to fake historical documents you might want to choose a font a typeface that exists at the time… → A Font Is at the Heart of Pakistan’s Prime Minister’s Legal Troubles
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The Ultimate Latin Dictionary: After 122 Years, Still At Work On The Letter ‘N’
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“Established to create books which aren’t, in the quotidian sense, books at all … Container creates objects which masquerade as parking meters, wallpaper, or crop seed sleeves.” Their first production is a diverse series of Rolodex Books by eight writers and artists. Next up, book objects made from vintage metal lunchboxes.
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Vintage typewriters gain fans amid ‘digital burnout’ :: And who knows, you might get really lucky → ‘€100 typewriter’ found to be German code machine [Thanks, Reader C.]
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The ultimate tattoo? → Scientists Upload a Galloping Horse GIF into Bacteria :: And serendipitously, via Reader B., the science behind this CRISPR encoding.
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Today in 1945, at 5:29:45 a.m., the first atomic bomb is successfully tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The successful Trinity Test was he fruit of the Manhattan Project, which in the usual government fashion saw the initial \$6000 estimated cost end up running to more than \$2-billion. Kenneth Bainbridge, the director of the Manhattan Project, turned to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the chief scientist, and said, “Now we are all sons of bitches.” Bainbridge would later describe the explosion as a “foul and awesome display.” The United States wasted no time, putting the new weapon to use just three weeks later, (perhaps needlessly) bombing Hiroshima, Japan, ending World War II.
Links: July 9, 2017
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Privacy as we think of it is a new (and deeply endangered) thing. → The Birth And Death Of Privacy: 3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images.
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The Positive Lexicography Project is “an evolving index of ‘untranslatable’ words related to wellbeing from across the world’s languages” from Afrikaans to Zulu/Xhosa.
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The 174 videos in the Japanology series cover everything from mushrooms to swords to cram schools and Shinto shrines. Clamorites might enjoy starting with stationery. [Thanks, Reader B.]
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This poet is riding through Denver delivering dreams to doorsteps. Nightmares cost extra.
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Wikipedia: The Text Adventure turns Wikipedia into an interactive, text-based game. Zorks!
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Is the tilde the sarcasm punctuation mark we’ve been looking for? → The Internet Tilde Perfectly Conveys Something We Don’t Have the Words to Explain
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Fascinating to think that the first inventors to record sound never listened to it…they were only interested in the visual picture… → At The Dawn Of Recorded Sound, No One Cared
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On squicks and squees and re-imaging the (tagging) vocabulary of porn → Can These Pornographers End ‘MILFs,’ ‘Teens,’ and ‘Thugs’? :: Balances well with The More Things Change, which examines how, with sex and sexual practices, the more things change, the more things, well, change.
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A Piece of Work is everything you wanted to know about modern and contemporary art but were afraid to ask … In this 10-episode podcast series, [Broad City’s] Abbi [Jacobson] looks for some answers in lively conversations with curators, artists, and some friends, including Hannibal Buress, Tavi Gevinson, RuPaul, and Questlove.
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Today in 1850, a 30-year old Persian merchant known as the Báb (birth name: Sayyed ʿAli Muhammad Shirāzi) is executed for apostasy in Tabriz, Iran. Accounts differ in drama—members of the Baha’i Faith (of which his teachings were the forerunner) tell a story in which the firing squad’s bullets sever his ropes and the Báb disappears…finally being found in another part of the barracks calmly dictating to his secretary—but all agree that the first volley harmed neither the Báb nor Anís, a young follower, who had been suspended 10 feet above the ground for the execution, and they both had to be rounded up, re-bound, and finally killed by a second volley.
Links: July 2, 2017
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The Boise Public Library has installed a vending machine for personal, handwritten letters. → The Letter Box Project
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Salvador Dali’s body to be exhumed to resolve paternity case
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Sometimes you just need a little good news (and if the comment(er)s are lousy, don’t tell me about it). → Strangers buy car for 20-year-old Texas man who walks 3 miles to work every day
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And the data are in…yay scIEnce. → The ‘i before e, except after c’ rule is a giant lie
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8 compelling cats that changed Russian culture. [Thanks, Reader A.!]
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Up a wombat’s freckle: Barry Humphries on the development of Australian slang [Thanks, Reader B.!]
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Baby steps… → How to capture videos of brains in real time: Watching mice think as they walk
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The Cognitive Bias Codex visually organizes more than 180 ways we “think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgment.”
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Highlights from the most recent additions to the Oxford English Dictionary, including “woke,” a new sense of “thing” (originating, in recorded form at least, on the television show The West Wing), the “particle zoo,” and “post-truth.”
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Today in 1990, 1,426 people are suffocated and trampled to death in a tunnel near Mecca during the Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to the city of Mecca. The stampede started when seven people fell from a pedestrian bridge onto pilgrims exiting the tunnel below, causing panic exacerbated by failed ventilation in the 110°F heat. Amazingly, this wasn’t the most deadly such incident: at least 2,236 pilgrims were killed in the 2015 “Mina Stampede.”
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