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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.