We drove home in silence. The first thing I can remember saying was “Well … it looked cool.” The droid army was absolutely intimidating. Yoda didn’t look like a pile of spoiled lunchmeat. And it certainly wasn’t weird that Samuel L. Jackson was on the Jedi council … at all. I had developed Stockholm Syndrome — I’d become a full-fledged Lucas apologist. “No, that was just bad. Really bad.” Kate paused, “And you’re not allowed to pick out any movies anymore.”

Some wounds take longer to heal.

via WSJ

Swiss artist Felice Varini has a fantastic series of anamorphic illusions. It took him 30 years to complete the body of work.

“Basically, if Tumblr were a city of 42 million,” Ms. Bennett said, referring to the number of Tumblr blogs that exist, “I’m trying to figure out how we cover the ideas, themes and people who live in it.”

Journalists covering online communities – a novel idea.

A short film by Alistair Banks featuring the art of Etsuko Ichikawa.

I can’t remember if I’ve already shared this particular project, but it never hurts to revisit good art.

I definitely just lost complete contact with people that normally would have been part of my life. I mean it’s also an interesting metric for your life to see who some of your closest friends are, you know, and who’s willing to take the time.

I find it an interesting thought experiment to contrast this idea with Clusterflock, which is the clearest example in my life of the relationship-building power of the internet and social technology. The internet made it possible to seek out an entirely new tribe of people – people with which I have so much in common and so much to talk about, but that I hadn’t realized existed.

But then there are social networks like Facebook, which at their worst takes all of the people who are already part of your life – your co-workers, your school chums, your family – and hands them a level of intimacy about our lives that they haven’t really earned and don’t particularly deserve. I think that’s why it’s so interesting when these online relationships predicated on intimate knowledge but passive communication go bust when one party pulls out of Facebook – we’re just learning a hard lesson about the differences between that kind of intimate knowledge and true friendship, which for the longest time I thought were one and the same.

A couple relatives recently found me on Google Plus (I use it primarily for the sad remnants of what was once Google Reader). I hadn’t even acknowledged their existence before they were already commenting on every single piece of information attached to my name. This, I’m told, is keeping in touch.

As for the top-ranking military personnel with whom I’ve spoken who argued that an attack on Iran was either unnecessary or would be ineffective at this stage, Barak said: “It’s good to have diversity in thinking and for people to voice their opinions. But at the end of the day, when the military command looks up, it sees us — the minister of defense and the prime minister. When we look up, we see nothing but the sky above us.”

Look, we’re idiots: None of us knows what, exactly, goes into city planning, but we assume it’s probably a lot of distinguished gentlemen emailing each other about math, statistics and blueprints. But somewhere along the line, somebody accidentally CC’ed the insane asylum, and we wound up with the following civilizations that simply should not be.

(via @tylercowen)

Eric Fischer has been mapping Twitter traffic in major cities, resulting in beautiful cartographic representations of our information flow. It’s all faintly reminiscent of blood vessels or a network of neurons. I think there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

(via Animal New York)

As part of their TateShots series of artist interviews, the Tate Galleries spoke with Maurice Sendak about his books and career. I love this bit about his subject matter:

I do not believe I have ever written a children’s book. I don’t know how to write a children’s book. How do you write about it? How do you set out to write a children’s book? It’s a lie.

Also, he’s obsessed with William Blake and comic books.

Via: Papertastebuds