VOL 5, NO 5
★
Unskinny slop. / Re-read Player Piano for the first time in a long time:
❝A fully automatic setup like that makes culture very cheap. Matter of fact, culture’s so cheap, a man figured he could insulate his house cheaper with books and prints than he could with rockwool. Don’t think it’s true, but it’s a cute story with a good point. The way they keep culture so cheap is by knowing in advance what and how much of it people want. They get it right, right down to the color of the jacket. Gutenberg would be amazed.❞
Several of the less-talked-about Vonnegut books — Player Piano, Jailbird, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater — are pretty on point these days. Brahouna, Takaru, indeed. Kurt don’t miss.
☆
The Entertainment Machine, Peter Phillips, 1961
☆
Confusions. / 🌐 The last days of social media. ❝These are the last days of social media, not because we lack content, but because the attention economy has neared its outer limit — we have exhausted the capacity to care. There is more to watch, read, click and react to than ever before — an endless buffet of stimulation. But novelty has become indistinguishable from noise. Every scroll brings more, and each addition subtracts meaning. We are indeed drowning.❞ / A long profile on Tim Berners-Lee. / Create a phishy URL. / 🎨 The found art and identity of Michaelina Wautier. / Auctioning Bob Ross paintings to raise money for public television. / Interlude Docs, a digital archive committed to “archiving the impermanent.” / Marina Minis. / Monodraw, ASCII art editor. / 🌎 The scale of life. / ✍️ What the fuck happened to designers and design? ❝That social purpose which accompanied the birth of design as a profession quickly dissipated, hijacked by capitalism as a sales schtick, a way of selling newer, more fashionable, more expensive products. Modernism became marketing.❞ / 📷 The 25 most influential magazine covers of all time. / 🎸 Trailer for Ozzy: No Escape From Now. / The night Fear got banned from SNL. / Every televised Joy Division performance. / Soulwax have a new album. / Peaches, too! / Bill’s Beatles collection. / 📰 The enduring value of student newspapers. / 👾 Vectrex Mini. / Retrocide, a very cool monospaced font with no descenders. / ✌️
