kottke.org Quick Links for March 2018

March 30

Nerd-sightedness, n. "The inability to see beyond a technology's interesting technical aspects, particularly to miss its ethical implications; to see the world from the perspective of a nerd."

"Apple has worked with the American Council of the Blind, the Cerebral Palsy Foundation, and the National Association of the Deaf to create 13 new emojis to represent those with disabilities."

March 29

"Astronomers using Hubble and several ground-based observatories have found a unique astronomical object: a galaxy that appears to contain almost no dark matter."

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School high school senior Isabelle Robinson: "I Tried to Befriend Nikolas Cruz. He Still Killed My Friends."

From 2007: "Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly?" The piece mentions two possible competitors, neither of them Facebook or Twitter.

Remember that sculpture of Cristiano Ronaldo that didn't look very much like him? The amateur sculptor who made it gave it another try...

In several studies, people following the DASH diet (a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, low fat or nonfat dairy) were observed to have lower rates of depression

Janus words: "words that are their own opposites". Examples are cleave, clip, and fast, as in "the car is fast" and "the rope held fast".

Tyler Cowen's great wide-ranging conversation with Martina Navratilova. "You were a contender, and then you became completely dominant, say, by 1981. How did you do that?"

Adnan Syed, the subject of the first season of the Serial podcast, has been granted a new trial

Playlist of 700+ YouTube videos that have been featured on @kottke

Four reasons why Infinite Jest is a timelessly brilliant novel

A fine introspective interview with @craigmod on books, finding yourself, technology, disconnecting, and grace

March 28

Oh look, there's an article about me in The Onion: "Friend Who Listened To Podcast On Watergate Bursts Into Conversation With Guns Fucking Blazing"

Bill Ewasko disappeared in Joshua Tree National Park eight years ago. He's still missing and an unofficial search goes on. "People should not be able to disappear, not in this day and age."

Art of the Title's 4th annual list of 10 women doing title design for TV and film

Marvel has put all six episodes of the 2010 Black Panther TV series up on YouTube

Media impartiality is a problem when ignorance is given the same weight as expertise

This is a simple, fun, and hard little in-browser game

This is fun: play music through a cassette tape web interface (you can adjust the sound quality & hit the eject button to upload your own mp3s)

Love this kind of thing: Sarah Kawahara breaks down the triple axel scene she choreographed in I, Tonya

The 2018 Tournament of Books is down to the final round (the Final Four were Fever Dream, Dear Cyborgs, Pachinko, Exit West)

March 27

Spotify playlist of rap songs featuring technology. There are songs called "Microsoft Word", "Lyft (Fuck a Uber)", and "Twitter Song".

Linda Brown, of the landmark Brown vs Board of Education that led to nationwide desegregation of schools, has died at age 75

"How Stage IV Cancer Taught Me to Live"

Jerry Seinfeld has gone from humble everyman to completely unrelatable billionaire

First good use of AR I've seen: virtually putting stolen art back on museum walls

The New York Human Rights Commission is investigating The Wing, a private social club and co-working space for women

Nothing like a semi-academic encyclopedia entry to suck the fun out of something like calculator spelling (5318008)

Photos of the process of building the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble

New entry in the Wes Anderson Collection of books: Isle of Dogs (w/ an intro from the Every Frame a Painting duo!)

March 26

What makes the Super Mario Bros music sound "fun"?

These retreats about how to conduct field studies from Studio D Radiodurans look amazing

"Mansplain" was recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary; the first recorded use came in 2008 in a LiveJournal comments section

Thousands of photos of vintage cassette tapes

Four "distinguished thinkers" discuss whether a third party can emerge in US politics and only one tiny dismissive mention of our first-past-the-post voting system pretty much guaranteeing only two parties? Really?

This Kickstarter campaign wants to pull coal mine pollutants out of an Ohio stream to make non-toxic paints & pigments

March 25

Sorry for the delay, the Noticing newsletter just went out! Did you know that if you say "Isle of Dogs" out loud, it sounds like "I love dogs"!?

March 23

Wes Enzinna tags along with prolific hitchhiker Juan Villarino on a 1000-mile trip in Africa. "You don't catch a ride with your thumb. You catch it with a smile."

'Isle of Dogs' Backlash: Wes Anderson Criticized for Racial Stereotypes and 'Marginalizing Japanese Culture'

The British Museum of Your Stuff. "A team of museum experts obtained this almost new wallet by jostling a tourist on a Nevsky Prospekt trolleybus in St. Petersburg, Russia, and relieving him of it — tough cheese on him."

Smart profile of David Reich, a geneticist who specializes in mapping the spread of ancient human DNA from bones

How @museummammy became the darling of the art world. "I couldn't find any websites, so I started one."

Slow progress: US kids are more likely now to draw scientists as women than in the 1960s, but "girls still drew female scientists much more often than boys"

iPhone and iPad Games for People Who Never Play Games

March 22

Great behind-the-scenes look at the Spike Jonze / FKA Twigs Apple ad from a couple weeks ago. I *love* the practical effects they used.

"Search the web to plant trees..." The Ecosia search engine donates a significant portion of its profits to plant trees (23 million so far).

The 100 Most Jewish Foods. Love the spinning table interface.

Prompted by a question from my kids: How big is a quark? "the radius of the quark is smaller than 43 billion-billionths of a centimetre"

A Higher Loyalty, the highly anticipated book from former FBI director James Comey, will be out on April 17

Stephen Hawking's ashes will be interred at Westminster Abbey near those of Newton & Darwin

I am really really enjoying @lauraolin's weekly newsletter