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More than 100 of The Oldest Color Photos Showing What The World Looked Like 100 Years Ago. Seeing such old images in color still tickles some dissonance deep in my brain.
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Some nice visualizations → Bias, She Wrote: The Gender Balance of The New York Times Best Seller list
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“Facebook doesn’t want your money. It wants your time. ¶ minutiae is a response to our current moment: an anonymous anti-social media app that forces its users to document the in-between moments of life.” I kind of love this app. → minutiae: the anti social media app
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A powerful photo essay → The Apple Pickers of the Yakima Valley
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The Quiet Majesty of America’s Public Libraries :: Pairs with Millennials are the most likely generation of Americans to use public libraries.
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“Whether divining ancient wisdoms or elevating the art of cold reading, tarot is a form of therapy, much like psychoanalysis” → The truth about tarot
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“We analyzed 100,000 drawings to show how culture shapes our instincts” → How Do You Draw a Circle?
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Surprisingly interesting…and it seems so simple in hindsight: why are different eggs shaped the way they are? → Cracking the mystery of egg shape
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The Hyperloop Will Be Only the Latest Innovation That’s Pretty Much a Series of Tubes
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Today in 1876, General George Custer is killed in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. In what would come to be known as “Custer’s Last Stand,” more than 250 U.S. soldiers would be killed in well under an hour by a combined force of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. Though victorious, the battle was a turning point in a protracted conflict, marking the beginning of the end of the Indian Wars. Custer’s legacy has been, to put it lightly, mixed: for nearly a century Custer was seen as a heroic military figure who gave his life for the cause of his country; in recent decades assessment of his military strategy, not to mention his own conduct, has been greatly diminished.
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Links, links, links…from a certain, uncertain mind.
Links: June 18, 2017
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What the Bard can teach science about language and the limits of the human mind → Shakespeare’s Genius Is Nonsense
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DNA evidence exonerated six convicted killers. So why do some of them recall the crime so clearly? → Remembering the Murder You Didn’t Commit :: See also, The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony.
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A Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction: What to make of our new literature of radical pessimism.
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Did Bob Dylan Crib Some of His Nobel Prize Lecture from SparkNotes? Hilarious, if true.
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Jane Solomon’s Dictionary Playlist of songs related (sometimes tenuously) to language and linguistics. Can you think of more?
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This Guy Spent A Year Exploring The Subculture Of Competitive Punning
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A Postal Museum photo essay following a package in the 1960s. → Sorting the Past :: Pairs with The lost genius of the Post Office.
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Hysteria over hyphens :: pairs with A Linguist Says ‘Yes!’ To The Exclamation Point.
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Today in 1984, talk show radio host Alan Berg is gunned down in his driveway in Denver, Colorado. Berg’s loud, bitter and mostly liberal views angered and engaged radio listeners, though his style was tame by today’s standards.
Links: May 28, 2017
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“The library building once housed an insane asylum—so notorious that the park was known as ‘Barmy Park.'” → The Library of Books and Bombs [Thanks, Reader B.]
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“Stab” appears rather early… → I’ve tracked (and graphed) all my son’s first words since birth
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“Fifty years ago, Marottichal was rife with alcoholism and illicit gambling, but everything changed after one man taught the town to play an ancient game of strategy.” → The ancient game that saved a village
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Talk of adjective order (and “GSSSACPM” … and ablaut reduplication) has spiked of late…and it is a fascinating (and ultimately complicated) topic! So, some links old and new. → A surprisingly good article in Slate | Language Log’s Big bad modifier order | Mark Forsyth’s Bish bash bosh | Neil Whitman on Ordering Your Adjectives | A bit more technical but intriguing, Donka Minkova’s Ablaut reduplication in English: The criss-crossing of prosody and verbal art
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A brief essay on true “first editions,” AKA books published during the incunabula, with a few nice illustrations. → On the Nature of Things
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“…This mark is based on the Tilburg dialect word ‘jè’ (which sounds more or less as ‘yeah’) that is used as a confirmation but often expresses some doubt or mild irony. The jè-mark bridges the gap between the exclamation point and the question mark.” → TilburgsAns introduces a new punctuation mark
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Sweden has just listed the entire country on Airbnb :: Speaking of Airbnb, they are launching a print (!?) magazine because they found that existing travel magazines had “almost no people in them.”
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“I designed A Movie Poster A Day in 2016 and here’s the collection.” (many are better than the real ones).
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Today in 585 BCE, a solar eclipse said to have been accurately predicted by the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus occurs, the drama of which, according to Herodotus, ends a decade-long war between the Medes and the Lydians. This event is arguably the earliest historical event whose date is known with precision to the day.
Links: May 21, 2017
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“…a collection of “persuasive” cartography: more than 800 maps intended primarily to influence opinions or beliefs — to send a message — rather than to communicate geographic information. The collection reflects a variety of persuasive tools, including allegorical, satirical and pictorial mapping; selective inclusion; unusual use of projections, color, graphics and text; and intentional deception.” [Thanks, Reader K.]
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Keeping Track of Every Book You’ve Ever Read: A New York Times editor on the coffee-stained list she’s kept for almost three decades
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A hoax paper [PDF] was published by some hoaxers. I don’t think the publication means what they think it means. Neither does Hank Reichman.
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Philographics is a series of posters that “explain big ideas in simple shapes.” Effectively, in some cases, icons.
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The new paint colors invented by neural network story has been going around. I share here because: 1) funny, 2) this is the original story and 3) lost in the laughter is how amazed we should be at what is essentially the early infancy of AI. It’s like judging how the adult version of a two-week old will think and what he or she will come up with.
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This guy going around a museum and using FaceApp to add smiles to classical art has finally found a good use for FaceApp
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The always awesome Strong Language blog has some decidedly NSFW annotations of James Joyce’s erotic letters to his wife, Nora Barnacle :: pairs with Waywords and Meansigns Opendoor Edition, in which over 100 musicians and readers from 15 countries have put Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to music.
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How The Whitest Singer Of The ’70s Became An Icon In The Philippines
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I’m about as prescriptivist as one gets, but The “Jane Austen” fallacy is a sound idea and coinage…though I am confused by the quotation marks in the name.
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Today in 1936, Geisha and prostitute Sada Abe is arrested after walking around Tokyo for several days with her lover’s severed penis and testicles hidden in her kimono. The multi-day search for Abe caused panic, a near-stampede and traffic jams throughout Tokyo. Abe’s actions and trial not only caused a sensation and spawned a multitude of books and movies (most famously In the Realm of the Senses but the transcript of her interrogation and confession was widely circulated, greatly amplifying an already strong tradition of fiction and essays by dokufu or “poison women.” After her release from prison in 1941, Abe toured as an actress in small stage productions before becoming a waitress (and showpiece) in a Tokyo pub. Abe was last seen in a Japanese nunnery in the mid-70s.
Links: May 14, 2017
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Fascinating, layer upon layer, of writing, labor, industrialization, class and…humanity. → The Chinese Factory Workers Who Write Poems on Their Phones :: see also, Iron Moon, the documentary film and the recently released anthology, Iron Moon: An Anthology of Chinese Worker Poetry
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“Each 7×7 invites one visual artist and one writer to engage in a two-week creative conversation. The format, inspired by Surrealist games of the early 20th century, challenges participants to improvise, in their respective disciplines, a spontaneous story that pushes into ever-wilder imaginative terrain.” → 7×7
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“A new study says historic smells are part of our ‘cultural heritage’ and should be saved to bring the past to life.” → Why you like the smell of old books
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A fun exploration and great visualizations… → Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?
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“The Snail Mail Game Show is an interactive project based in challenges and creativity. Every round, participants receive a prompt with a creative challenge to complete and send back. Any mediums are allowed, the only rule is the submission must be sent via snail mail.” → Snail Mail Game Show
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“For 10 years he’s been posting a new digital illustration—ranging from the abstract to representative, sci-fi to surreal, somber to sarcastic—every 24 hours.” → A CGI Master Made a New Artwork Every Day for 10 Years. Here Are The Results
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Trying to preserve Chinese letterpress printing…the sheer logistics are something. → Taiwan’s last lead-character mold maker works to preserve the past
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Malcolm Gladwell. I know. But this is good…and needed. → Malcolm Gladwell on Why We Shouldn’t Value Speed Over Power
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Such a cool interactive timeline/visualization (“that spans across 14 billion years of history, from the Big Bang to 2015”) to browse around in. Prepare to get lost. → Histography
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Today, the 2nd Sunday of May, is Mother’s Day in the United States and nearly 100 other countries from Anguilla to Zimbabwe…and Benin, where it is celebrated on May 14. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation making the day official. Assumed by many to be another example of a holiday created by greeting card companies to sell their wares, the modern version of Mother’s Day was inaugurated in 1908 by Anna Jarvis, who wanted to celebrate the efforts of her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, a peace activist who had treated injured soldiers on both sides of the United States Civil War and subsequently organized “Mothers’ Friendship Day” to bring together families from opposing sides of the war. If those families could meet and find common ground, perhaps there is hope for us yet in these politically tumultuous times.
Links: April 30, 2017
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This week in weird Wikipedia → Category:Vehicle wreck ballads (it feels like there should be more of them) :: pairs well with the List of car crash songs
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Something to add to your arguments about books vs ebooks and Amazon vs publishers → Amazon expands its literary horizons, making big imprint in translation niche
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An oldie but a goodie → “Toto’s ‘Africa'” by Ernest Hemingway
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A contrasting photographic diptych → Jessica Weiser’s ‘Freckle Project’ (in black & white) and Colourised Pics Of Russia’s Female Snipers
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If you don’t know Zardulu, you should..and probably do without knowing it → Meet Zardulu, the “art villain” behind the latest viral video :: pairs with well with ► Reply All #56 – Zardulu
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An interesting essay by an art critic who returns to—or tries to return to—actually being an artist → Jerry Saltz: My Life As a Failed Artist
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The American Shakespeare Center has never shied away from interpretations of the Bard’s work…now they are offering thirty-eight \$25,000 prizes for plays that “vibe off of and are inspired by Shakespeare’s work” → You could win $25,000 for your Shakespeare fanfic [Thanks, Reader C.]
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A trio of readings about artificial intelligence that should be considered together, probably in this order → Artificial Intelligence Tech Will Arrive in Three Waves + Our Machines Now Have Knowledge We’ll Never Understand + The Myth of a Superhuman AI
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Today is Email Debt Forgiveness Day, where you can send, “without apologies or explanation,” that email you’ve anxiously been avoiding. I suspect even the most ardent Inbox Zero-ists in the Clamor have an email or three they’ve been dreading sending.
Links: April 23, 2017
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From Colgate Lasagne to Crystal Pepsi: visit the Museum of Failure :: See also, the Museum of Failure site.
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When I’m not actually having to listen to the tampering, disabling and destroying of words, I find the language of air travel fascinating. → How to Speak Airline: A Glossary For Travelers
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The long, sad, maddening take of Google Books and what might have been. → Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria :: And if that isn’t enough, pairs well with How Google Book Search Got Lost.
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Access a database of 70,000 books banned around the world going back to 1575
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Literature is built on lone and level sands… → Is Snapchat the sign of a post-literary future?
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Easy to read…not necessarily so easy to do. But still. → Mindfulness in Plain English
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“…explore collections of music, dance, and speech from almost every corner of the globe, recorded by hundreds of pioneering ethnographers” organized by geography or culture. → The Global Jukebox :: Speaking of global exploration, The Google giveth and The Google taketh away…the new Google Earth is amazing.
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Take a moment to marvel at Jordan Matters’ Tiny Dancers Among Us photos.
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Today is English Language Day at the United Nations, celebrating one of the six official UN languages and the “lingua franca of the modern era.” April 23 was chosen because it is, as Clamorites probably know, the day chosen to commemorate William Shakespeare’s birth (and death). If nothing else, it’s a good day to bovver yourself a little to appreciate the beautiful weirdness of English or worry over its place in academia, etc. How will you celebrate?
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