“And I looked up and saw a sign, and my words were in the sign, and the sign was in a meme, and the people of the Book of Face were deceived.” Go read a book, for God’s sake. Similar:Iffy "Cloak of Darkness" on Inform7/Parchment”Iffy Cloak of Darkness” is based on the…CybercultureThe girl rehearsing as…
When he talks about his business being threatened by YouTube parody video-makers, he’s talking about the fact that the public’s yen for parodies is being met by amateurs. Earlier this week, a young woman turned an infamous recording of a Comcast customer service call into a belty ballad. Between the release of that recording and…
This article analyzes (and skewers) that lilting steamroller tone of voice that so many poets use when reciting their work. During this banter the poet uses a slightly performative but mostly natural voice. It’s the voice they’d use to introduce you to their grandmother. Then they read the title of their first poem and launch…
I wish I had time for cool stuff like this… only a month left of summer break for me, and my wife is going out of town Monday-Friday, so I’m both father and mother to the kids this week. Not much chance for playing with retro design elements, but I can at least save the…
A good collection. I’m only linking to it because there are 8 or 10 photos all on one page — I wouldn’t give it the traffic if it were a “slide show” with separate ads on each clickbaity page. The rest are on imgur. Similar:Techno-greebles. Geometrically these are identical plain cubes, with custom shaders that…
Wonderfully weird retro pop art. Jon recalls his first encounter with the iconic Peter and Jane books: ‘Like many people of my generation, I learned to read with Peter, Jane, Mummy, Daddy and Pat the dog. As I struggled with the unfamiliar letters, my eyes where invariably drawn to the picture on the opposite page,…
“[S]ince Cooper Hewitt is a government institution, “utilizing a well-crafted, American-made product was important. And not something that’s Helvetica.” Jenkins echoes that sentiment: “The design was created for the Smithsonian, which is owned by the people of the United States, so the typeface should likewise belong to the people of the United States.” —qz.com The…
“In which the origin of the word “robot” is traced, precursors and context are briefly examined, and the Human soul is displayed for your consideration.” Karel Chapek’s 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) coined the word ‘robot,” which in the play was applied to an artificial worker, a living being manufactured with a chemical substitute…
I wish I understood Russian, so that I could make sense of this 1935 Russian film featuring a mechanical man remote-controlled via saxophone. Apparently the capitalists take control of the invention and turn it on the workers, at least temporarily. The climax features the workers gaining control of the machines and using them to fight…
The current commander of the International Space Station initially designed a mission badge that paid homage to Klingons. Too bad that design didn’t fly. Swanson, who currently is commander of the International Space Station, collaborated with his daughter to create an insignia for the outpost’s Expedition 40 crew. What he and his fellow astronauts and…
From a culture where silent reading was unusual and a bit antisocial, it’s not surprising how much the “banderole” (the scrolls medieval artists used to represent speech in illustrations and other media) can teach us about the relationship between written and spoken language.
How can the busy writing teacher interested in new media storytelling deepen the pedagogical value of multimodality in the classroom — especially for students with limited programming experience? Students who learn to design, code, revise, and publish multimodal texts are empowered by their encounters with technology, and can be more critical of the interfaces they…
Generally, it is the chemical breakdown of compounds within paper that leads to the production of ‘old book smell’. Paper contains, amongst other chemicals, cellulose, and smaller amounts of lignin. Both of these originate from the trees the paper is made from; finer papers will contain less lignin than, for example, newsprint. In trees, lignin…
Kids learned better in a sparse lab setting than they did in a decorated room. Of course, if they were familiar with the room, and the decorations came from their own artwork and class projects, perhaps the items would be reminders rather than distractions, but the study didn’t test that possibility. For the study, 24…
“It doesn’t have to be good. It just has to be a pun.” The Punslingers event may be the only sport on Earth in which the highest level of play is the most painful to watch. –Ted Trautman, Paris Review.
Adam Savage took a few minutes today at the Maker Faire Bay Area to share what he feels are the 10 Commandments of Making. Make something Make something useful Start right now Find a project Ask for help, advice, and feedback Share Recognize that discouragement and failure is part of the project Measure carefully Make…
Well, it’s cheerful unless you touch something red, in which case you DIE. Similar:The internet’s memory is fading in front of us. Preserve what you can. Long, self-indulgent essays from a wri…BusinessIf you win the very first time you play a game, that means you are skilled and brilliant, …Awesome80 Days: "1872, with a steampunk…
“From a photographer’s perspective it makes our photography process more similar to the days of film, where you went out you did your assignment, dropped off your roll of film, and went off to do another assignment. Now you download your cards, color correct and caption it. It takes away from the creative process of…
This is one of the reasons I’ve become more interested in local theater. The dropped lines, unexpected blackouts, and last-minute casting replacements are what makes it so much more engaging to me than a slick professional production. Avatar left me completely numb… yes the visuals were stunning, but I feel much more connected to fantasy…
I realized that each one of these technologies set out to help people do something but consequently grew and changed over time. Each ultimately provided a way for large groups of people to talk about and think about very difficult problems: Microsoft Office: How do we communicate about work? Photoshop: How do we create and…