17th Century Death Roulette ☠️
Spin the wheel: you’ll get a week and a death in 1665.
(Realistically, you probably would’ve died of plague, which outnumbers other causes of death by orders of magnitude.)
Link tags: death
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Why These Social Networks Failed So Badly
Ignore the clickbaity headline and have a read of Whitney Kimball’s obituaries of Friendster, MySpace, Bebo, OpenSocial, ConnectU, Tribe.net, Path, Yik Yak, Ello, Orkut, Google+, and Vine.
I’m sure your content on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is perfectly safe.
Killed by Google - The Google Graveyard & Cemetery
147 dead properties and counting.
I commissioned an oil painting of Barbra Streisand’s cloned dogs
There’s something deliciously appropriate about using a painting cloning service to clone a photograph of some cloned dogs.
“Did you just order an oil painting of Barbra Streisand’s dogs?” is the most Simon and Natalie thing ever.
Although this comes close:
The Ruins of Dead Social Networks - The Atlantic
Digital seems like it’s forever because it’s infinitely reproducible, but someone has to think to make that canonical copy or it’s gone-gone.
In this five-year old eulogy for a BBS, Alexis Madrigal ponders the deaths of social networks. Friendster, MySpace, Vine …plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Passing Away In Pixels – The Interconnected
Justin has been thinking about how we ensure our digital legacy survives our passing.
Shane Becker - Dark Matter and the #IndieWeb
Shane gave a talk recently where he outlined his reasons for publishing on the indie web:
Most people reading this will probably have an account at most or all of these sites: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Tumblr, Wordpress. Many also had accounts at Friendster, Tribe, MySpace, Delicious, Magnolia, Gowalla, Geocities. But no one has an account at any of those (on the second list) anymore. And all of the content that we created on those sites is gone.
All of those super emo feeling you posted to MySpace, they’re all gone. Some of the great web designers of our generation got started on Geocities. That stuff is gone forever. And sure, it was sparkling animated GIFs and neon colors. But that’s important history. Yahoo bought it, left it alone for a while, and then decided one day to turn it off.
Archiving Our Online Communities — Medium
Now this is how you shut down a service:
- Maintain read-only URLs for at least ten years.
- Create physical copies etched in metal held by cultural institutions for ten thousand years.
- Allow users to export their data (of course).
Web projects often lack hard edges. They begin with clarity but end without. We want to close Hi.co with clarity. To properly bookend the website.
And nary a trace of “We are excited to announce…” or “Thank you for joining us on our incredible journey…”
(Such a shame that the actual shut-down notice is only on Ev’s blog, but hopefully Craig will write something on his own site too.)
The Avangelist | What happens to my data when I die?
Having experienced the death of a friend, I wonder how many have considered the ghosts in the machine.
Star Wars: Endor Holocaust
Realistically, what happens when you detonate a large metallic satellite (about the the size of the second Death Star) in orbit around an inhabited world (like, say, the forest moon of Endor).
It isn’t pretty.
The Killing Machines by Mark Bowden in The Atlantic
How to think about drones—an in-depth and fairly balanced article by Mark Bowden on drone strikes and the politics behind them.
In the long run, careful adherence to the law matters more than eliminating another bad actor. Greater prudence and transparency are not just morally and legally essential, they are in our long-term interest, because the strikes themselves feed the anti-drone narrative, and inspire the kind of random, small-scale terror attacks that are bin Laden’s despicable legacy.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: A visualization of drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004
This powerful timeline illustrates how drone attacks have increased dramatically under Obama’s administration.
YOU CHOSE WRONG
Documenting all the ways you could die in a choose-your-own-adventure book.
Dronestagram
A new project from James, keeping track of the sites of illegal drone strikes.
Lasting Statement
I’m in Texas right now.
These are the final statements of men and women who have been executed by the state of Texas.
Incept Dates – Jack Move Magazine
A superb piece of writing from Erin, smashing taboos with the edge of Bladerunner.
The last post - Penmachine - Derek K. Miller
The final post in ten years of blogging. Derek is dead. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to write this.
My Father’s Final Gift « Aza on Design
The beautifully-written and moving story of a father’s last gift to his son. The father is Jef Raskin; the son is Aza Raskin.
Lost Bomber – Techbelly
Using data to help put a single death in the family into a wider perspective.
Cyberspace When You’re Dead - NYTimes.com
An accurately-downbeat look at digital preservation.