Perhaps we are fetishising physical things because our digital creations are social media junk food:
It’s easy to fetishize Brutalist buildings when you don’t have to live in them. On the other hand, when the same Brutalist style is translated into the digital spaces we daily inhabit, it becomes a source of endless whinging. Facebook, for example, is Brutalist social media. It reproduces much the same relationship with its users as the Riis Houses and their ilk do with their residents: focusing on control and integration into the high-level planning scheme rather than individual life and the “ballet of a good blog comment thread”, to paraphrase Jane Jacobs.
The story of one site’s disgraceful handling of acquisition and shutdown (Punchfork, acquired by Pinterest) and how its owner actively tried to block efforts to preserve user’s data.
Jessica’s handy guide to writing the right quotes and accents on a Mac keyboard.
Fnar, fnar, and indeed, fnar.
Why not become a lifetime member of the Muff Diving Club? Makes a perfect gift as you will get a Muff Diving Club membership card posted out to proove that you’re an official Muff diver.
James Bridle is my favourite Blogpunk author.
The secret life of punctuation.
Bruce Sterling on Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and the unintended consequences of cypherpunk.
Instruction manual to operate and maintain Charles Babbage's 2nd Difference Engine built by Barrie Holloway and Reg Crick, June 1991 for the Science Museum, London SW7 2DD.
A handy page for looking up HTML entities.
I'm not sure I can resist ordering one of these T-shirts featuring crime-fighting duo Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace.
A text to punch card translator. Who wants to be the first to pipe Twitter messages through this?
A look into the future that never was. This stuff is right up my alley.
A humorous comparison of the em dash and the semicolon; but this online setting scuppers the author's wit by using hyphens instead of em dashes — punctuation-derived humour fail!
I think this has to be my favourite contribution to Ada Lovelace day. Brilliant!
I know this sound uncharitable but there's a good chance that the reason why Bruce Sterling's books aren't selling is because he's just not a very good writer. And I say that as a big sci-fi fan. I mean, really... have you read Distraction? I tried ...and failed.
This article is an oldie but a goodie. I find myself referring to it all the time: "Beating typographic correctness out of (X)HTML: more than you ever wanted to know about dashes, spaces, curly quotes, and other vagaries of online typography."
Beautiful steampunk jewellry.
Trying to teach legibility, one legal document at a time.
A zeppelin over London. No, this isn't some steampunk flight of fancy; it's for real.
Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes! "A new generation of environmentally friendly 'hybrid airships' could be just about to take off." Anything that makes everyday life more like Steampunk must be good.
I love the idea of this bit of real-world steampunk alternative history. From May 22nd to June 15th you will be able to use the telectroscope to look into a tunnel through the earth from London to New York.
I would kill to get hold of this Steampunk Mac mini, flat panel monitor and brass keyboard.
The Economist style guide: the "dos and don'ts" section is particularly useful.
One of my 43 Things is to eliminate the grocer's apostrophe. Still... this is a well-reasoned argument in its defence.
My mission while I'm in San Franciso is to get a hold of a copy of this book for Jessica. 25 Punk, Rock, and Goth Knitting Projects.
I think it was Lenny Bruce who said that comedy is tragedy plus time.