5 Intriguing Things
1. Proto-beliebers: there was an insane fan community on Prodigy centered around New Kids on the Block.
"We traded bootleg analog content with a new efficiency brought on by the speed of electronic communication. Tim Berners-Lee had not even posted the first photo on the Web when I was using Prodigy to trade 35mm photographs of Danny, Donnie, Joe, Jon and Jordan in my collection. New Kids fans knew every setting on our VCRs and traded tapes of every television appearance we could find. We posted lists of our available shows and bootlegs, copied the tapes by linking up multiple VCRs and arranged our exchanges over private messages. I led a proto-crowdfunding campaign to cover the cost of converting a video a European pen pal sent me from PAL to NTSC."
2. A Portland State University professor has been working on a DIY space suit for years.
"In 2008, Cameron Smith, an anthropology professor at Portland State University in Oregon, decided to build a space suit. He designed the Mark I to protect himself on a high-altitude balloon ride, and so far it’s passed tests in a hypobaric chamber and underwater. Last year, independent space program Copenhagen Suborbitals offered him a potential path to the stratosphere (between about 30,000 and 165,000 feet above Earth). Smith will make a suit for the Danish group this summer, and they’ll help him build a helium balloon craft. Traditional pressure garments can cost upwards of $30,000. Smith’s materials set him back about $2,000, thanks to creative use of junk parts and spare kitchenware. 'We’re trying to make it easier for people to get into space,' he says."
"Everyone is born with an endowment of labour; why not also an endowment of capital? What if, when each citizen turns eighteen, the government bought him or her a diversified portfolio of equity? Of course, some people would want to sell it immediately, cash out, and party, but this could be prevented with some fairly light paternalism, like temporary ‘lock–up’ provisions. This portfolio of capital ownership would act as an insurance policy for each human worker; if technological improvements reduced the value of that person’s labour, he or she would reap compensating benefits through increased dividends and capital gains. This would essentially be like the kind of socialist land reforms proposed in highly unequal Latin American countries, only redistributing stock instead of land."
4. Former Apple designer Bret Victor thinks about reading in some fascinating ways.
"Explorable Explanations is my umbrella project for ideas that enable and encourage truly active reading. The goal is to change people's relationship with text. People currently think of text as information to be consumed. I want text to be used as an environment to think in."
5. NYPL Labs releases a wonderful tool for looking at street art through time in Google Street View.
"As a web developer who works on a screen and an illustrator that works on paper, I have always admired those who could paint big—often on impossibly large and inconveniently placed walls—only to be erased in a matter of weeks or days. The ephemeral nature of street art is what makes it simultaneously appealing and frustrating as a viewer. However, Google Maps recently rolled out a feature allowing users to go back in time on its Street View. I immediately thought to check out the well-known wall on Bowery & Houston and found that Google captured the painted wall dating back to 2007. Here's a sampling from 2007 to present. I added a few images of the wall that I found while perusing the web to fill in some of the gap years that Google didn't capture."
Today's 1957 American English Usage Tip
cachet is mainly a LITERARY CRITICS' WORD (bears the cachet of genius &c.), & should be expelled as an alien; stamp, seal, sign are good enough for English readers. For synonymy, see SIGN.
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