this is an advent calendar:
1 - Built to Last - Mar Hicks - Logic Magazine
"When overwhelmed unemployment insurance systems malfunctioned during the pandemic, governments blamed the sixty-year-old programming language COBOL. But what really failed?"
2 - Hyperspace, 2020. - bhoka
"It’s about intimacy, and software. It’s about how corporations have gentrified the internet, and what it felt like to fall in love over IRC. It’s about finding unsecured security cameras in Ukrainian night clubs, and adventures in digital voyeurism. It’s about a culture of hate-reading and hate-fucking. It’s about the girls and the gays and my first Saturn Return. It’s about how one green text bubble can encapsulate techno-classism, and scaling platforms devolve into virtual white-flight."
3 - on unsticking myself - mary retta
"someday soon I will feel normal, someday soon I will feel sane. Because this has to let up sometime. Right?"
4 - Purple Noon - Washed Out
"the most accessible Washed Out creation to date"
5 - main pop girls 2015-2018 (the demos) - jaime brooks
"when i listen to it i hear someone comically grasping at masculine tropes, trying to do goofy impressions of elvis and bruce springsteen, as if that music contained some secret power that would help me stop wanting to be a woman so bad. [...] that person no longer exists in this world, except here, in these recordings. here, safe among friends and situated amidst a body of work i know she would be proud of, i hope she finds peace."
6 - "Link In Bio" is a slow knife - Anil Dash
"I’m not a pollyanna about the wild, open web being some panacea for all the harms that technology and the internet can enable. But I do think coercive methods of controlling people are a danger, and some of the most insidious techniques are when a platform subtly erases empowering opportunities for its users."
7 - Crisis Mode - Stefan Higgins - Real Life Magazine
"Platforms thrive on making you feel bad [...] Crises, like sparkplugs, spur us into action: gathering information, waiting for updates, searching for opinions. This process keeps us forever suspended, forever updating, and forever in “crisis mode.” When platforms show us things that make us feel bad and anxious, it is not because they are working defectively but because they are working correctly."
8 - The worship of billionaires has become our shittiest religion - Tom Whyman - The Outline
"Nobody should have a billion dollars, and those who do are something other than fully human."
9 - Drawings - Carl Burton
Carl Burton is a very talented visual artist. Love his style, and in particular, these drawings.
10 - ‘Real’ Programming Is an Elitist Myth - Paul Ford - Wired
"Code culture can be solipsistic and exhausting. Programmers fight over semicolon placement and the right way to be object-oriented or functional or whatever else will let them feel in control and smarter and more economically safe, and always I want to shout back: Code isn't enough on its own. We throw code away when it runs out its clock; we migrate data to new databases, so as not to lose one precious bit. Code is a story we tell about data."
11 - Hi, This is Spline - Spline
"A design tool, for 3d - Easily create and publish 3D web experiences. Build and iterate fast with production-ready results."
12 - Late sleepers are tired of being discriminated against. And science has their back. - Brian Resnick - Vox
"But most striking to me wasn’t the health implications of messing with your clock. It was the stigma late sleepers feel in a society ruled by early risers. Simply put: These late sleepers are tired of being judged for a behavior they cannot easily control. If they can’t change their sleep patterns, maybe society should become more accepting of them."
13 - Emotional Tools for Our Time - KRYON
"Your brain doesn't have a delete key..."
14 - Regrets of the Dying - Bronnie Ware
"Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness."
15 - The Best Time I Pretended I Hadn’t Heard of Slavoj Žižek - Rosa Lyster - The Hairpin
"I could see that he thought I might be messing with him, but he could not prove it. He gave up on me shortly afterwards, and ignored me for the rest of the night. Later I saw him talking to his friends and pointing at me. I imagined what he was saying: “That girl over there, she doesn’t even know who Žižek is. ŽIŽEK.” I smiled at him and waved."
16 - Chrome is Bad - Loren Brichter
"Google took on the responsibility of architecting an updater in a brittle and dangerous way when better / simpler alternatives existed. Good engineering would make a problem like this structurally impossible. If not malice, hubris, disparaging skepticism (“works on my machine”), apathy, and poor organizational prioritization would explain it."
17 - Why Software is Slow and Shitty - Pirijan Ketheswaran
"Some people care. Those people suffer."
18 - Kinopio - Pirijan
"the visual thinking tool for new ideas and hard problems" - From the author of "why software is slow and shitty." what a beautiful interface! it's highly functional and an absolute delight to use :)
19 - a day in the life at the etch-a-sketch help desk... - jonah jones?
"pick it up and shake it" - one of my most favorite jokes
20 - Radical Sounds Latin America - Dengue Dengue Dengue (LIVE) / November 4 - HÖR BERLIN
"Radical Sounds Latin America is holding a fundraiser to benefit and celebrate the work of Taller Salud, a Puerto Rican feminist organization and community-based initiative dedicated to eradicating gender-based violence."
21 - The Great Conjunction of Jupiter & Saturn with its moons - Prabhuskutti
"Composite of 2 images: one for the moons and other for the planets - GSO 16" Dob - ZWO1600mmpro - IR 685nm - GSO 16" Dob - ZWO462MC - IR/UV cut filter - Stacked 2000 frames for the planets and 100 for the moons."
22 - Look Alive - Unwed Sailor
J. Ford blessed us with a new album this summer. We sure do appreciate it :)
23 - Heavy Age - Unwed Sailor
J. Ford also blessed us with a new album last summer. The first new Unwed Sailor album in 11 years (and it's beautiful, of course!)
24 - Interview w/ Glenn Kimball about the hidden history of Jesus - Art Bell
From December 11, 1998 - Dr. Glen Kimball discusses the real life of Jesus and the state of the world during (and after) his life.
25 - Ambient Mix 1999 - Canton Becker
Please can we all just chill the fuck out? Peace on Earth or whatever...
26 - The Burnout List - Frank Chimero
"Metastasized independence: America’s supernatural skill to transform systemic problems and inefficiencies into personal problems and responsibilities, e.g. health care, privatization of public services, imperative to “work harder” to overcome gender- and race-based pay gaps, etc."
27 - Places you in the Pool Labyrinth (thread) - Natalie Redden
So many of my dreams take place in a labrynth of rooms like this hmm...
28 - Moon Phase & Astronomy Calendar - Canton Becker
Yes, from the same Canton Becker who made Ambient Mix 1999, it's a public ICS calender with dates of moon phases and notable celestial events. He graciously hosts it for anyone to use...all you have to do is subscribe.
29 - Datamix's - Designer Drugs
Archive of every Designer Drugs "Datamix" mixtape. They're all good, ofc, but 13, 15, and 11 are the best.
30 - The Moon (2) - Poorly Drawn Lines
"Mouse, come to the moon with me." "Can't. I've got work."
31 - It's better to be naive than jaded - Tom MacWright
"I think we need to make a conscious effort to realize: every time is different. Even if you put the same effort in and make the same decisions, the world, the people in it, and you, have all changed. What worked before, might not work now. The idea that failed before, well - maybe its day has come."
for the evolution of your consciousness.
How do you know this is the experience you need?
Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.
— Eckhart Tolle
(archive)