the devastation in Japan is almost unreal
More at the Atlantic.
all foley, all the time
I won’t be around much today, so I figured I’d bring you another amusing look at the life of a foley artist.
tweet of the day
if you happen to be up…
…the earthquake (M8.9) /tsunami in Japan is one of the worst in recent history. – 1:05 AM, CST.
headline of the day, III
Dallas ranked No. 7 angriest place in America
Dear Clusterflock
How many songs are in your library of digital music?
If that’s what they’re going for, they were very successful
Rand Paul on toilets and freedom
“I wish you would come here to extol me…”
But since you haven’t, let me berate you for a little while. Just because.
Frickin’ Worms
Wherein we discover who, or what, has been digging up our onion starts every night:
from the archives: July 7, 2008
all of the lyrics to Kyu Sakamoto’s “Ue wo muite arukou” (released as “Sukiyaki” in the United States, where for three weeks in 1963 it was at the top of Billboard‘s Pop chart).
Great video.
Salman Khan’s TED talk
I don’t usually post TED talks here, because if I did, then I’d be tempted to post all of them.
This is an exception, because it absolutely needs to be heard:
EDIT: The Khan Academy website can be found here. Just read through the course listing if you want to be stunned.
headline of the day, II
Genetic Errors Nixed Penis Spines, Enlarged Our Brains
Carter Sans, a comparison
This might be a little far-afield if you’re not a typography nerd, but in an interview with Matthew Carter about his new font, Carter Sans, Carter and the interviewer, Paul Shaw, get into an interesting discussion about flare-serifs, or the fonts that live somewhere between serif and sans serif. Here’s Shaw’s set up:
The typefaces I mentioned above would have been classified as “Flareserifs” by Bitstream, but I think this is a misnomer because they don’t really have serifs as such. I rather like the term flare serif. But there is always the sticky question as to where the dividing line lies between a sans serif such as Optima with flared strokes and a flare serif such as Icone or your new Carter Sans Pro. Some people get around this slippery slope by declaring that any deviation from a straight stem or stroke disqualifies a letter as a true sans serif. Do such classification quibbles bother you or do they provide you an opportunity for a new design? Are there specific examples of inscriptional lettering that sparked Carter Sans Pro in the same way that the lettering on the reliquary of Justin II provided the basis for Sophia?
Lost and Found
For some reason, I can’t find the original post, but remember the roll of film that was lost in Prospect Park during the snow storm? The guy found the owners and returned the pictures to them.
headline of the day
Brooklyn teen faces felony charge in death of family hamster
spam name
Petronila Sammie.
From Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style
‘But the academic habit of relegating notes to the foot of the page or the end of the book is a mirror of Victorian social and domestic practice, in which the kitchen was kept out of sight and the servants were kept below stairs. If the notes are permitted to move around in the margin – as they were in Renaissance books – they can be present where needed and at the same time enrich the life of the page.’
—pg 62, version 3.2
‘Apostrophes are needed for some plurals, but not for others and inconsistency is better than a profusion of unnecessary marks. Thus: do’s and don’ts; the ayes have it but the I’s don’t; the ewes are coming but the you’s are staying home.’
—pg 88, version 3.2
the best part of lonely
I hate being bothered when I am working and sometimes working is staring idly out the window in a coffee shop. Turns out, there is a good reason why:
The results, which Burum cautions are preliminary, are now part of a paper on “the coexperiencing mind” that was recently presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference. In the paper, Burum offers two possible theories to explain what she and Gilbert found in the study. The first invokes a well-known concept from social psychology called “social loafing,” which says that people tend not to try as hard if they think they can rely on others to pick up their slack. (If two people are pulling a rope, for example, neither will pull quite as hard as they would if they were pulling it alone.) But Burum leans toward a different explanation, which is that sharing an experience with someone is inherently distracting, because it compels us to expend energy on imagining what the other person is going through and how they’re reacting to it.
“People tend to engage quite automatically with thinking about the minds of other people,” Burum said in an interview. “We’re multitasking when we’re with other people in a way that we’re not when we just have an experience by ourselves.”
I also tend to distance myself from the internet when I am processing or creating something. I can’t bear the noise.
Amy said
Someone put a lot of thought and programming into our insignificance.
69 Love Songs, Illustrated
We are a loose collection of mostly London-based comic-artists, illustrators and writers, who have grown up listening to the Magnetic Fields and got together over a mutual love of the songs. One day, on Twitter, a couple of us decided that illustrating — or writing a comic — or a short story — inspired by all 69 songs was a worthwhile and exciting pursuit!
A little hit and miss, but maybe an excuse to go back and listen.
FuckYeahNouns.
Stellar
Stellar helps you discover and keep track of your favorite things online. If you like playing around on Twitter or Flickr, you’ll probably enjoy Stellar. There are a few dozen people using Stellar right now and some of them seem pretty enthusiastic about it, so I’m encouraged to open the site up a bit more.
Update: I’ve got three invites, if you want one. Let me know in comments. All gone. I’ll post again if I get more.
New Unicode Emoticons
Finally! (via The Atlantic)
There’s a pretty complete “cat faces” category, except there’s no kissing cat with open eyes. That’s the one I’d use most.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before
Damn Girl (Regretsy)
DAMN GIRL, YOU KIM JONG ILLIN’.
(Thanks, Jen.)
