Culture
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Why fix a problem that doesn’t exist?
We all know what this symbol means: Two people are not allowed to share an iPad. Just kidding. It means the lavatory in the airplane is occupied. Also that it can be used by persons of either gender. Which gender you are is of no concern to the airline. Or to the lavatory. Because it doesn’t matter. Continue reading
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Dear Adobe, Please buy Flickr
Flickr is far from perfect, but it is also by far the best online service for serious photographers. At a time when the center of photographic gravity is drifting form arts & archives to selfies & social, Flickr remains both retro and contemporary in the best possible ways: a museum-grade treasure it would hurt terribly Continue reading
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BYSMD
Once, in the early ’80s, on a trip from Durham to some beach in North Carolina, we stopped to use the toilets at a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere. In the stall where I sat was a long conversation, in writing, between two squatters debating some major issue of the time. Think of the Continue reading
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The slow sidelining of over-the-air radio
I’ve always loved AM radio. But it’s not a requited love. AM radios these days are harder to get, and tend to suck. The band is thick with electronic noise from things that compute (a sum of devices that rounds to everything). AM stations are falling like old trees all over the band, and all Continue reading
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More thoughts on privacy
(Somebody on Quora asked, What is the social justification of privacy? adding, I am trying to ask about why individual privacy is important to society. Obviously it is preferable to individuals for a variety of reasons. But society seems to gain more from transparency. So, rather than leave my answer buried there, I decided to Continue reading
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The untold pirate radio story in New York
[Update, 4 June 2016—I’m attempting to listen right now to WFAN/101.9 and it’s obliterated by signals flanking it on 101.7 and 102.1. Maybe my tweet about it here will finally get some journalists interested in the topic.] The radio dial here in “upstate” Manhattan and the Bronx is packed with pirate radio signals. Many are Continue reading
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We can all make TV. Now what?
Look where Meerkat and Periscope point. I mean, historically. They vector toward a future where anybody anywhere can send live video out to the glowing rectangles of the world. If you’ve looked at the output of either, several things become clear about their inevitable evolutionary path: Mobile phone/data systems will get their gears stripped, in both Continue reading
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Captivity rules
In one corner sit me, Don Marti, Phil Windley, Dave Winer, Eben Moglen, John Perry Barlow, Cory Doctorow, Aral Balkan, Adriana Lukas, Keith Hopper, Walt Whitman, William Ernest Henley, the Indie Web people, the VRM development community, authors of the Declaration of Independence, and the freedom-loving world in general. We hold as self-evident that personal agency and Continue reading
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Local jazz radio coming to Kansas City
So I just learned that a Kansas City Jazz station is headed toward existence. If you love any of these musicians, this should be very good news. The story begins, By this time next year, Kansas City-style jazz might be bebopping out of a new radio station near you. The Mutual Musicians Foundation in the 18th and Continue reading
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Raising a glass to @AtwatersBakery
No sooner do I publish Let’s bring the cortado / piccolo to America than I discover it has already arrived at Atwater’s in Baltimore: And here’s how it’s featured on the coffee menu: @AtwatersBakery at Belvedere Square Market was already our favorite place to grab a bite in Baltimore. (Here’s a menu.) Could be they Continue reading
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Let’s bring the cortado / piccolo to America
There are ideal ratios of coffee and milk, if you don’t want the flavor of either to fully prevail. To me the closest to the ideal ratio is what in Spain and Peets they call a cortado, some elsewhere call a gibraltar, and Australians and Kiwis call a piccolo (short for piccolo latte). This is a Continue reading
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We’re all going to need clothes
In the physical world we know what privacy is and how it works. We know because we have worked out privacy technologies and norms over thousands of years. Without them we wouldn’t have civilization. Doors and windows are privacy technologies. So are clothes. So are manners respecting the intentions behind our own and others’ use of those things. Those manners Continue reading
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Listening to Serial? Remember the West Memphis Three.
On Saturday I invited Serial listeners to recall the Edgar Smith case. Smith got away, literally, with murder. He did it by convincing the media and the public (and to a lesser degree the courts) that he was innocent man, falsely convicted of brutally killing a teenage girl. After he was released he attempted another Continue reading
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How Radio Can Defend the Dashboard
Dash — “the connected car audiotainment™ conference” — is happening next week in Detroit. It’s a big deal, because cars are morphing into digital things as well as automotive ones. This means lots of new stuff is crowding onto dashboard spaces where radios alone used to live. This is a big deal for radio, since most listening Continue reading
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#10books that changed my life
There’s a challenge going around Facebook: to name ten books that have changed your life. So I’ve thought about my own, and kept a running list here in draft form. Now that it’s close enough to publish, methinks, here they are, in no order, and not limited to ten (or to Facebook) — War and Continue reading
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Frontiers of Typicality
Dear Student Name, Your Remarkable Candidate Application for admission to Uncanny Valley University is already mostly done. Click here to see. We’ve pre-filled lots of stuff to make sure you get a personalized application experience. And, your Remarkable Candidate status also qualifies you to get these Remarkable Advantages: No essay (we’ve written that for you too) Some kind of scholarship Short cut to Continue reading
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A visit to the old ‘hood
A couple weeks ago I took a walk around the historic neighborhood in Fort Lee where my extended family had a home — 2063 Hoyt Avenue — from the turn of the last century into the 1950s. It’s where my parents lived when I was born, and where my aunt and grandmother sat for my sister and Continue reading
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Rediscovering Junkie John, Tim Dawe, and Penrod after 40 years
I used to have an open reel tape of a song I recorded off some New York FM station in 1970 or so. I didn’t know the artist or the title. It was half-talked, half-sung, about a loser in Greenwich Village, “Junkie John,” coming down in a fleabag hotel. And it was very haunting, which Continue reading
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Snow on the Water
I’ve been intrigued by Fotopedia since it showed up in ’09, especially since I do a shitload of travel photography. But I never posted anything there, because I was afraid it would die. And now, says here, it will. In seven days. The reason: As of August 10, 2014, Fotopedia.com will close and our iOS Continue reading