Traces I is the sound of synthesizers wrapped in cheesecloth being broadcast from the last radio tower of a dying world… in the shape of a 5-track pay-what-you-can album on Bandcamp. I’m enjoying it a lot.
You can contribute to the artist’s patreon, too.
The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park is doing a live stream of their Amorphophallus titanum, aka Corpse Flower, blooming. This plant blooms once every 10 years, and during the bloom grows almost two times its normal size and emits a foul stench for two days before shriveling up and starting over. It’s pretty cool. Corpse Flower!
If you’re in the bay area you should go visit.
“Dinosaur Comics!” “Hyperbole and a Half” and “xkcd” are among the initial class of now-nationally-archived webcomics I grew up reading.
The library will announce Tuesday that the Webcomics Web Archive is officially launching at loc.gov as part of its growth in “born-digital” collections.
The first phase of the webcomics online collection will include nearly 40 titles, including such long-running works as Josh Lesnick’s “Girly” and Zach Weiner’s “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.”
I’m so happy for all of these folks.
Apparently Maciej acquired it for $35,000. Former Delicious community manager (and fellow waferbaby alumni) Britta Gustafson is running the twitter account.
Indivisible has a complete guide to letting your lawmakers know that they need to oppose Trumpcare. Make use of it.
A beautiful list of valid HTML colors which are also english-language words. There’s a poetry to how some of these match up; “defied / #DEF1ED” for example seems perfect somehow?
What a zany thing to have existed:
This is the instructional video that was bundled with the Singer IZEK sewing machine/Game Boy Color combo. Hopefully this will help others who may be struggling to set up or operate their IZEKs or for those who just want to enjoy awesome VHS goodness!
A longish read which is better summed up at the very top:
[…] if you’re using a technology that originated at a large company, but your use case is very different, it’s unlikely that you arrived there deliberately; no, it’s more likely you got there through a ritualistic belief that imitating the giants would bring the same riches.
I see this a lot, and even sometimes have to fight it myself. The new tool usually isn’t the best one. In fact, it almost never is. One of the reasons we have the old tools is that they worked and still work really well.
Apparently there are now about 70 Radio Shacks left across America. I’ve scavenged a few closings here in San Francisco. I will cherish those still-overpriced-at-70%-off toggle switches forever:
But buried in the recent news about store closings—which have largely decimated a chain of thousands of locations—is the fact that the company is auctioning off much of its storied history in a Ubid estate auction that’s going on for the next month or so.
And the stories behind some of those objects are better than you think.
The uBid auction has some pretty surreal stuff in it. Did you know Radio Shack produced an LP of trucker jams (such as Convoy), called Put The Hammer Down? And that it was certified gold?
Bob Dylan finally delivered his Nobel Prize lecture in the form of a video (you can also listen to it on Soundcloud). Over the course of just 27 minutes, he talks about his influences, both musical and literary, and muses on the differences and similarities between music and literature. Listening to the speech, instead of just reading the transcript, is well-worth your time, if only to experience Dylan’s lyrical delivery while exalting Buddy Holly or explaining Moby Dick.
I grew up listening to a LOT of Bob Dylan. A LOT.
Open Culture has the rundown. You can buy back issues for $2.99 a pop, or read them all with Kindle Unlimited.
But that’s not all:
Jerrick Media, owners of the Omni brand, have also begun to make available on Vimeo on Demand episodes of Omni: The New Frontier, the 1980s syndicated television series hosted by Peter Ustinov.
My favorites include “Mind Blark”, “Farming”, and “Barking Sphere.”
Quite the demo, in-browser live rendered 3D animation and music using Three.js. Just press start. (via waxy)
My surprisingly popular 3D wireframe skull is available for purchase from Shapeways. I’ve done a test print through them, and it definitely works! The prices range from $40 for white plastic, to $100,000 for one in platinum. I’m not joking, you can buy this thing in solid platinum. Eat your heart out, Damien.
Liz Ryerson for Jacobin magazine:
It’s hard to think of a piece of media that understands itself less than Duke Nukem 3D.
Hard to argue with that.
The web’s most useful tools and sites according to the readers of Kottke.org.
Adam Silver with some good horse sense. This is a surprisingly common practice here in the Year of Luigi 2017. It’s mostly surprising because we spent so much time talking about this during the original web standards push that I’d hoped it had sunk in.
It’s been awhile since we’ve done one of these, eh?
I, Phil Nelson, am a web developer, designer, game tinkerer, professional wrestling aficionado, and son of the once-great state of Michigan.
Lately you can find me standing too close behind you in line at the following places:
Turkish photographer Aydın Büyüktaş creates ‘Inception’-esque composite images of American landscapes.
Source: Mind-Bending Drone Photo Manipulations Turn America into a Roller Coaster – Creators
Rediscovered after being lost since 1987, and now available for download on itch.io: Duck Jumper. Jump on ducks! Keep doing it!
Name your own price, and yes, $0.00 is a price.
Phil Nelson