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Some amazing engineering, ancient and most contemporary.
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My whole life is research into this → Sitting Too Much Can Change Your Brain & Impact Your Memory, A New Study Says
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Every once in a while, a crossword puzzle scratches an itch. A good, free bet: Will Nediger, who posts an original, “erudite, witty idie puzzle” every Monday.
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Lu Xinjian’s City DNA series: complex abstract art based on views from Google Earth using colors based on the city and national flags of each city.
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I knew Kit Kats were popular in Japan because I’ve tried some of their regional variations. But now I know why.
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Mayochup is a thing. I can’t wait for Mustaise or Mayotard.
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Of course an air conditioning company would create a fascinating look at 20 Incredible Ways Animals Keep Cool. And I learned the word (a)estivation.
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Today in 1922, novelist, poet and entomologist Vladimir Nabokov is born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Though English was Nabokov’s second language he was one of its finest craftsman with a penchant for dazzling wordplay and verbal puzzles that reward multiple readings. I don’t think you can go wrong with Nabokov, but if my recommendation matters, Lolita (so underestimated and misunderstood) or Pale Fire are the best places to start.
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Links, links, links…from a certain, uncertain mind.
Links: April 15, 2018
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An amazing thread of grace, borders, trees and hidden treasures that leads to a physical network of Small Pilgrim Places suitable for all of us who are journeying. Thanks, Reader T.
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This is perfect. → If the Zuckerberg hearing were the Gutenberg hearing
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Google has released some cool experiments: Semantris is Tetris meets word association, powered by machine learning. I might have played a few dozen times already. Talk to Books is a Google Books search trained using human conversations (useful!).
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Oh, and the green hair is a mohawk…and it sports fashionable stubble. → Green-haired turtle that breathes through its genitals added to endangered list
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“The first step is for each of us to commit unsuicide.” → An Interview with Richard Powers
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Cool story about how the “Harvard Sentences” Secretly Shaped the Development of Audio Tech. And those sentences have a kind of poetry of their own.
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When algorithms surprise us demonstrates the weird ingenuity demonstrated by AI/neural nets. The tic-tac-toe solution is my favorite || pairs well with neural network-named tomatoes… “sun bungs” or “shart delights” anyone?
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I shouldn’t be surprised this is so well written. → Molly Ringwald Revisits “The Breakfast Club” in the Age of #MeToo
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Why is American currency so boring? → The year’s most beautiful banknotes
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Today is World Art Day, an international day for celebrating the fine arts and promoting creativity. Founded by the International Association of Art (IAA) in 2012 to coincide with Leonardo Da Vinci‘s birthday, activities are held around the world to celebrate…but there’s no reason you can’t celebrate on your own. One place to start: Open Culture’s list of 1.8 million free works of art (online) from world-class museums.
Links: April 18, 2018
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A Major Dictionary Has Officially Added Emoji || A pairing from the other end of the dictionary spectrum: The Nationalist Roots of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary
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This tree has been receiving love letters, upwards of 1000 a year, for more than 100 years…it even has its own postal code and mailman. || See also, a photo essay about Japanese mail boxes and (public) Mailboxes Of Seattle. || And I might as well throw in the ubiquitous (and rightly so) Brocolli Tree parable here too.
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Unruly Bodies, a month-long [pop-up] magazine exploring our ever-changing relationship with our bodies.
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Much beauties in this piece on Astronomical Typography.
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Even people who “don’t listen to podcasts” can enjoy the trend of incredible, short-run, journalistic series such as Repeat and the upcoming Caliphate. The latter features (the awesome) Rukmini Callimachi. Read her recent report, The ISIS Files: When Terrorists Run City Hall, on the strange business workings of the would-be Caliphate and listen to her interview on Longform.
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April Fool’s pranks written by neural network. Thanks, Reader B.
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A wealth of photographic riches: 2018 Sony World Photography Awards || Fukushima, Seven Years On || Cascade of Lava
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Don’t be so sure you know what a lowercase G looks like. Thanks, Reader S.
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Today in 1911, writer and philosopher E. M. Cioran [chore-AWN] is born in Resinár, Romania. Author of amazing, #sadhappy books like The Trouble with Being Born, A Short History of Decay and On the Heights of Despair—titles emblematic of Cioran’s position as a leader of philosophical pessimism–Cioran was also a notable, and notably bleak, aphorist, writing such dark gems as “the fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live—moreover, the only one,” and “melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.”
Links: March 25, 2018
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Anthony Acevedo, a most amazing man, has passed. As a 20-year-old Army medic, Acevedo kept a diary (of events but also sketches) of his time in a Nazi slave labor camp, part of Buchenwald, which can be seen in its entirety online thanks to the United States Holocaust Memorial museum.
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I was skeptical of the host, but World Map: The Literal Translation of Country Names is pretty cool. And they shared their research links and sources || Pairs obliquely with Terrapattern, a “visual search tool for satellite imagery.”
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NITCH is compulsively browsable collection of (mostly) portraits and brief, powerful quotes.
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Ehrmagerd! The Internet Archive has an online handheld History archive with playable games from the 70s and 80s. I literally wore out the keys on a Speak & Spell when I was a kid. And back to it almost 40 years later…I was transported. || Related retro: will 2018 be the (next) year of HyperCard? See (and submit to) HyperCard Zine.
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Let’s whiplash back to the world of very contemporary technology in our lives… → 12 Things Everyone Should Understand About Tech
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On the thriving world of chess as “eSport,” featuring a few of my favorite things (and people) → I Want My ChessTV
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Flat-Earther blasts off into California sky in homemade steam-powered rocket
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Today in 1957, U.S. Customs confiscates more than 500 copies of Allan Ginsberg’s book Howl and Other Poems. You know the one, the title poem begins, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked” (listen to a 1956 recording of Ginsberg reading the poem || view the complete original manuscript and typescript). Two months later, the U.S. Attorney’s office chose not to prosecute. Then, on June 3 of the same year, undercover police with the San Francisco Police bought a copy from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s now famed City Lights bookstore and then arrested Ferlinghetti for publication of obscene materials. Heard before a judge who had recently achieved notoriety by sentencing five women convicted of shoplifting to watching the film The Ten Commandments, Felinghetti (and his business partner Shigeyosi Murao) was supported by a cadre of poets and critics. In the end the judge, Clayton Horn, ruled in Felinghetti’s favor, noting that the book was of “redeeming social importance” and was unlikely to “deprave or corrupt readers by exciting lascivious thoughts or arousing lustful desire.”
Links: March 18, 2018
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A fascinating look at the first AI-generated podcast…a technology in its infancy but growing (and learning) quickly. Thanks, Reader B.
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The Solenodon is a wobbly, flexible-snouted, butt-nippled mammal that injects venom through it’s grooved lower incisors [the name comes from the Latin solen- (channel, pipe) + -odon (tooth)]. It’s also one of the earliest branches of mammal that survived the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs. What more could you want?
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“What is involuntary to most people is a deliberate choice to them, something they can actively switch on if it helps them to achieve their goals, and ignore in other situations.” → How Psychopaths See the World
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The Boston Public Library is asking for your help transcribing more than 40,000 letters between abolitionist leaders from the 1830s-1870s.
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Subscribe to Letterjoy and receive “one historic letter every week, on fine cotton paper” from historic figures such as Lincoln and Einstein.
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Movie poster design is intriguing and Posteritati just might be the one movie poster site to rule them all.
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“False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth.” → The spread of true and false news online (from Science).
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“Old” media continues to reinvent itself: National Geographic begins reckoning with its racist past; The New York Times is publishing obituaries of “remarkable women” they’ve overlooked.
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Only one visible at the link, but I really want to see more of Tony Lewis’s collage art/poems built on Calvin and Hobbes. Thanks, Reader M.
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Today in 1965, Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Leonov becomes the first person to walk in space (or, in jargonese, “conduct extravehicular activity”). Turns out, it was a much more difficult, almost deadly, feat than the Soviets could admit for some time.
Links: March 4, 2018
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From Linkmeister B., two great links: the surreal (phantom sheep! goats that are dogs!) and the surrealer (watch some of the ‘Director of Behavio’ videos).
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Literally found in a cardboard box underneath some old bed sheets: parts of a draft slang dictionary for A Clockwork Orange.
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Barbra Streisand’s dog Samantha died last year. So she had her cloned. Three times. The rich really aren’t like you and me.
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A few weeks ago we went inside one of the last American pencil factories. On the other side of the pond, even holding a pencil is becoming a challenge.
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While indulging my Anglophilia, I have to note that the Royal Mint is releasing a Quintessentially British A to Z Silver Proof Coin Series. Some of the entries—‘S’ – Stonehenge and ‘K’ – King Arthur—are obvious. But I admire the playful entries for ‘B’, ‘F’ and ‘Q’…
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Future Fonts is a marketplace where type designers sell works in progress. The price goes up with each successive release/revision. And at the opposite end of the typography times, see some of the fascinating collection of historical printing artifacts, particularly steel type, in Britain’s St. Bride church: Part 1 and Part 2
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Like many, Michael Harris is convinced that new media has made him forget how to read. Is there anything to our traditional notion of reading being an aberration? See also: the Gutenberg Parenthesis.
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Say what you will about books, but dating sites aren’t going anyplace. If you’re in that particular circle of purgatory (or enjoy some wordy schadenfreude), you might want to read From ‘Bae’ To ‘Submarining,’ The Lingo Of Online Dating.
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Target is selling an exclusive Oregon Trail handheld game. Now you can die if dysentery on your own couch! The floppy-disk style power button is a nice touch.
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Today is National Grammar Day in the U.S. Expect a parliament of pedants (though I prefer a ‘quibble of pedants’ or, even better, an ‘actually’) to use this opportunity to try to foist their almost uniformly baseless rules and preferences on you. Just say no…unless you filled with generosity and can lovingly try to help such wayward souls figure out what they are really afraid of. Or, celebrate by reading a fun book like Ammon Shea’s Bad English.
Links: February 25, 2018
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Issue #28 of Robert Wright’s Mindful Resistance newsletter (highly recommended) has a piece answering the question “What is the Mindful Response to a School Shooting?” I can’t believe I live in a time where something like that needs to be written…and I wish I could believe something will change.
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Jason Kottke is an inspiration to many, not least for his longevity. Any reader of Katexic CLippings has to be familiar with his work and should read Last blog standing, “last guy dancing”: How Jason Kottke is thinking about kottke.org at 20
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Take a gander at the Star Wars posters of Soviet Europe.
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Inside the OED: can the world’s biggest dictionary survive the internet? → Thanks to the indefatigable Reader B.! || See also: a notable link in the article which I shared here years ago, but deserves a new look now that the project is now live: BabelNet
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Daily Art Magazine has painstakingly documented every piece of art in all four seasons of BoJack Horseman.
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Mr. Rogers is getting a stamp. About time. Related new-to-me news: Catherine O’Hara has Canadian stamp.
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Explore the Largest Known Early Map of the World, Assembled for the First Time.
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Take a minute for this beautiful Google Arts & Culture exhibit of Japanese paper wrapping: Ogasawara-Ryu Origata Wrapping.
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The images of the crowd, at least as interested in the woman who was supposed to “pull the trap,” are as horrifying as the photos of the condemned at the last public execution in the US.
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Today the annual plum blossom festival is celebrated at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine in Kyoto, Japan, with a special tea ceremony (Baikasai) performed by geiko (geisha) and apprentices (maiko) for more than 3000 visitors. While the outdoor tea ceremony dates back to “only” 1952, the shrine was built in 947.
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