full-stop or situational switching

Learning why some can interpret a text message ending with a period as either hostile, insincere or overly formal and that the ability to detect punctuation out of place (not grammatically but contextually) can signal greater social literacy made me reflect on how I’ve nearly completely eschewed periods and commas in favour of quiver of emojis to break up a telegram—but hope that I’m upholding good orthography elsewhere and for other occasions and forums. Here and here are a few other novel ways that new forms of communication are changing the way we frame our words. What changes or tendencies have you noticed in the ways you dash off notes to one another? How much more weight now is attached to a tittle and a jot?

8x8

meltdown: a good primer to the security vulnerability revealed in micro-processors

shorttermism: a look at some of the factors driving factory closures despite long-term, sustained viability

kyngreiðsluskilyrði: the Icelandic government is determined to close the gender pay gap by making it illegal to set wages for women less than men

curb side: a look into America’s valet parking Olympics

investment instrument: a few ideas on how to spend your bitcoin

the insolence of the young: memorandum circulated as a gag to the staff of the Atlantic in 1973 on repulsive topics is weirdly resonant

the blog is dead, long live the blog: a nice reflection on the practise and pursuit with a kind tribute to the Presurfer

border slash: the US expends over a million dollars annually to maintain a deforested boundary between it and Canada—to ensure that the border is more than an imaginary line, via TYWKIWDBI  

coming attractions

In 1999, two friends uncovered a treasure trove in a Nebraska antiques shop of over sixty thousand letterpress blocks used to advertise films in newspapers. Their two thousand dollar investment which covers nearly the entire history of motion pictures (from the silent-era up until 1984) has been appraised at ten million. At the link above, there is a short documentary that showcases a part of the vast collection.

ostalgie

Calvert Journal introduces us to the photographic talents of Karol Palka who has carefully curated several living museums that embody the vanishing sheen of Communist-era interiors of his native Poland and former Soviet satellite neighbours. Take a tour of these ambitious and aspirational settings that are certainly worth preserving at the links above.

free association

Software engineer Alex Mordvintsev, contributor to the neural framework behind DeepDream, has collaborated with his invention to create a rather beautiful (machine learning’s aesthetic can sometimes be slightly off-putting and nightmarish) and mesmerizing series of swirling vortices that pulls one into a zooming tour through Western art history. With the canon of this particular tradition at their disposal, the computer and Mordvintsev (I wonder how fair or honest it is to call the programme a tool and the user, the medium the virtuoso) were able to match colour, resolution and brushstrokes seamlessly to make a nearly perfect transition from one iconic painting to another embedded within.