May 2012
4 posts
“You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the...”
– How To Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon
“And so, if we can hang on, it will be in the twenty-fifties that the manners and...”
– Adam Gopnik, The 40 Year Itch
1 tag
April 2012
7 posts
Goodbye TXL :(
The last airport in the world where taxi and airplane are separated by about 100 feet.
“Airport architecture is always metaphorical architecture, Tegel looks like a spaceship — like the building itself might take off at any moment. The euphoria of the space age is inscribed in the architecture. You can argue that the new [airport] reflects our time in that it looks more or less like a shopping...
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“Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way...”
– John Steinbeck on messy reading
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The Glory
You know those moments. When your senses sharpen and your belly warms and something, either you, or the earth or both are shaking and you are indescribably delighted to be alive.
I just came across a passage in Steinbeck’s East of Eden describing such a feeling and it reminded me a similarly visceral experience reported by a character in one of Saul Bellows novels. Both texts below:
John...
Three C's of Content
I’ve been collecting thoughts about creating, consuming and curating content online. Provoking, if a bit despondent:
“The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from ‘Why publish this?’ to ‘Why not?“ - Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody
“People are ignorant, not through a lack of information but through an...
1 tag
March 2012
6 posts
2 tags
Communities within Communities
Yesterday we released a new version of Amen. We added support for music, pictures, Facebook friend referencing and much more. We also made adjustments to the core service based on what we’ve learned over the last six months of activity on Amen while watching our community develop and grow.
Specifically, we saw one group of people come together from all over the world that had met each other on...
2 tags
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The Hunger Games
I just read The Hunger Games. It was fun. Lots of young adult fiction themes, dystopic future, kids fighting against adults and the grownup world, first loves and so on.
There is a deeply creepy side to the story about government instituted surveillance which is edited down into broadcast entertainment for society. Because people enjoy the entertainment they put up with the surveillance (and...
“Despite a huge knowledge base emerging about how startups work, startups have...”
– The Entrepreneurial Enlightenment - Startup Genome via Jen Carlile
3 tags
“I do know that no recipe in the world is independent of the tides, the moon, the...”
– MFK Fisher
February 2012
10 posts
8 tags
Darwinian Interlude
Yesterday I ordered a DNA testing kit through a company called 23andme. In six weeks I’ll get a report with information about my genetic ancestry as well potential health risks and inheritable conditions.
Why, you ask? Many smart people are predicting that this century’s scientific and technological advances will be in biogenetics and I want to get a head start. Besides, as my mother...
“Authentic dissent can be difficult, but it’s always invigorating,” Nemeth says. “It wakes us right up.” Brainstorming Doesn’t Really Work : The New Yorker
“But the Infantile part of me is insatiable - in fact its whole essence or dasein or whatever lies in its a priori insatiability. In response to any environment of extraordinary gratification and pampering, the Insatiable Infant part of me will simply adjust its desires upward until it once again levels out at its homeostasis of terrible dissatisfaction.”
- David Foster Wallace in A...
1 tag
“In the end its laziness and magic that makes you use a service”
– via Fiahless
January 2012
5 posts
We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting. - William Gibson in Distrust That Particular Flavor
“My concept for the .data domain is to use it to create the “data web”—in a sense...”
– Wolfram|Alpha Blog : A .data Top-Level Internet Domain?
I believe that in our culture of simulation, the notion of authenticity is for us what sex was for the Victorians—threat and obsession, taboo and fascination. - Sherry Turkle
December 2011
3 posts
"Keep Your Head Up" by Ben Howard →
New Music
November 2011
5 posts
Super Fancy Velcro Ibex: Sometimes I Get a Good... →
Nice Post by Ashley on the online Expression, Transmission and Consumption of good things.
It’s a known affair, but today I can’t help but comment on the beauty and inspiration I find in the convoluted world of social media and everything digital. A few days ago, I posted this:
That was after I heard the song Maps on David’s blog, which referenced the Ann Arbor …
“The potential miracle of the cookbook was immediately apparent: you start with a...”
– Adam Gopnik, New Yorker: What’s the Recipe? (via christmasgorilla)
October 2011
9 posts
Watchfred-wilson:
this is a great intro to soundcloud
soundcloud:
This is a great 4-minute interview by Fast Company with Alex.
If we wouldn’t already be working at SoundCloud, this would definitely make us want to :)
Europeans like to sit on thief furniture while Americans like to sit in it. - IKEA Ethnographical Research
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Saul Bellow
I began to feel the sensation in my gums warning of something lovely, and with it a close or painful feeling in the chest. People allergic to feathers or pollen will know what I’m talking about; they become aware of their presence with the most gradual subtlety. In my case the cause that morning was the color of the wall with the sunrise on it, and when it became deeper I had to put down the...
“Hey guys!” “Oh.. hey man! How’s it going? Weird seeing you here…!” “Haha yeah I know! Well actually I was walking down the street and my iPhone told me you guys are all here so I figured I’d come sit with you.”
“Oh…!” “…” “…”
- The Awkward Horrors of the Knowing Where Everyone Is All...
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Jaron Lainer
Disclaimer: By sharing these quotes on Tumblr I am participating in the exact type of behavior that Lainer believes is watering down the net creative output of humanity.
“Pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise. Online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture that existed before the onset of mashups… It is a culture of reaction without action.”
“The...
September 2011
2 posts
This city is not about other people or buildings or streets but about your mental structure. If we remember what Kafka writes about his Castle, we get a sense of it. Cities really are mental conditions. Beijing is a nightmare. A constant nightmare.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/08/28/ai-weiwei-on-beijing-s-nightmare-city.html