pastperfect-online:
On this day in 1888, “the most severe winter storm ever to hit the New York City region reaches blizzard proportions, costing hundreds of lives and millions of dollars in property damage. Although the storm also struck New England, New York was the hardest hit, with the 36-hour blizzard dumping some 40 inches of snow on the city. For several weeks, the city was virtually isolated from the rest of the country by the massive snowdrifts.”
In this photo you can see “a postman trying to get from a car in the middle of Atlantic Avenue to a drug store on the southwest corner of 4th Avenue, during the Blizzard of 1888.” This photo and others from the Blizzard can be found in the online collection of the Brooklyn Historical Society.
(not actually “on this day” anymore, but I’ve loved this photo and BHS and NYC and snow and history etc etc for far too long not to reblog this.)
Obsessed with the Cooper-Hewitt website’s new “browse by color” feature. AWESOME.
emturner:
strandbooks:
Love it!
(6/10)
(Source: radioon)
Buttons also resist. Over time, their use causes stress to the human body, known as carpal tunnel syndrome. Like its related postural malady, “text neck,” these syndromes are signs of how computation is beginning to stretch us, both cognitively and corporally. The resistance of the button is an intimation of the way technology increasingly seems to be pushing back.
With my e-book, I no longer pause over the slight caress of the almost turned page—a rapture of anticipation—I just whisk away. Our hands become brooms, sweeping away the alphabetic dust before us.
One of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever wasted my time reading. Nobody forced you to buy a Kindle, buddy.
"The old saw “information wants to be free,” a relic of the early information society boosterism of Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly, is no longer sufficient to describe the behavior of information flows and data patterns. The tendency of information to be free in both senses of the word—not restrained but also very cheap—is just one of many characteristics… Information can be shared or exploited. It can be privatized for the good of the few or to amass capital for large projects; or it can be made public to aid in development of industries and the redistribution of wealth. Information does work and its exchange can result in material (not just semiotic) consequences. The tendency to make sweeping claims about the behavior of all information– from medical records to big bird memes– ignores the complexities of the social. Information is contingent, reactionary, and anarchistic."
What Information Wants, by David Banks, on post-truth politics, the election, and what information is and can do.
In love with this 1969 bicycle safety manual from Brainpickings.
But there is a deeper problem with the digital humanities in general, a fundamental assumption that runs through all aspects of the methodology and which has not been adequately assessed in its nascent theory. Literature cannot meaningfully be treated as data. The problem is essential rather than superficial: literature is not data. Literature is the opposite of data.
(Could not possibly agree less — this is an interesting piece insofar as it totally misses the point. Enjoyed reading the comments, as well as this response.)
readmorewikipedia:
Age disparity in sexual relationships: The “never date anyone under half your age plus seven” rule is a rule of thumb used by some in Western cultures to judge whether the age difference in an intimate relationship is socially acceptable.
I am having an unusually light semester of grad school and as a result am bringing back readmorewikipedia. For now at least. Even though it lost like 5k followers since I was last on it a year ago.
