Aesthetics & Tech

I mainly just love the images from this project, and specifically, this cleaning. If you didn’t hear about it, Microsoft put a data center in that tank and then… sunk it. In the ocean. And it works! The idea feels appropriately solarpunk to me ☀️

Simone's Computer

Simone Marzulli's personal website, feel free to click your favourite buttons!

This is a fun site that catalogs some other fun sites that are built to look like old school desktop computers. Lots of good ones here!

Incidentally, Poolside.fm just released their iPhone app recently. It’s got some very fun playlists of retro-inspired tunes. If you’re interested, use my referral link below and please sign up for an account so they’ll send me free stickers.

Poolsuite ☼

The ultra-summer internet radio station, playing an infinity pool of summer sounds 24/7. Swimwear optional. Formerly Poolside FM.

TikTok, the party don’t stop, oh

We deserve more information about the algorithms that affect our daily lives. TikTok is giving us a little bit more so they can still do business in the US. Also I definitely want to visit their “transparency center” in LA!

The next article has a more skeptical tone, which is a useful counterpoint. “The implicit message is clear: we wanted to change TikTok to actually make it safe, and ByteDance said no.” :-/

https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/14/21436035/tiktok-oracle-deal-bytedance-president-trump-safety

Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web - IEEE Spectrum

A decade before the Internet went mainstream, French citizens were interacting via Minitel, a computer network open to anyone with a telephone

French influence in science fiction is underrated. IEEE tells a great story about a pre-Internet French network: Minitel. It did a lot of things right, including payments and anonymity! This is a bit of a long read but very interesting.

I thought it prudent to mention “link rot” and share this piece about linking to archive.org directly. For the record, Archive.org says you should link to both the original piece and the Internet Archive.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/10/21429159/facebook-campus-app-college-students

What if Facebook made Facebook … on Facebook? Amusing how everything old is new again eventually! I suppose this is timely given that it’s just been “back to school” time, virtually or not…

Folks to Follow

Jaime Valderrama (aka EPOCH) is an LA-based artist I discovered at the LA Zine Fest in 2019. I love their psychedelic science-fiction style. Lots of space stuff, too 🛸

Lordess Foudre is a recent follow of mine. I dig their bold graphics and use of text. Their work is a great mixture of thought-provoking minimalism.

https://www.instagram.com/lordess.foudre/