Welcome to this week's edition of our Friday Quality Linkage column. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Since today is Black Friday and many of you are either still recovering from yesterday, scouring the internet for deals, or otherwise preparing your bodies for the holiday season, I'll keep this week's column light. Enjoy!
The Story Behind the Image of Steve Jobs »
Photographer Albert Watson tells the story behind Steve Jobs' most iconic portrait. It's not a long story, but there are a couple good nuggets to glean about how a professional works with clients.
Photo: Nik MacMillan
Appropriate Answers to Awkward Questions: A Pen Person’s Field Guide to Holiday Socializing »
This one goes out to all you stationery nerds out there:
Like ink stains, holiday parties happen to pen people. Deprived of the companionable silence of fellow nib-gazers, pen people turn into hard starters, struggling to sprinkle bits of non-pen talk over cupcakes and coffee strangely without whisky. Somehow that friend from work will find a way to mention the Pens, thereby launching the annual festival of explanations.
Fortunately, you can navigate by objective, and consider this season festooned with opportunities to practice your social skills beyond “I prefer a much more forgiving cursive italic, myself…” Slink away to the holiday buffet with this menu of appropriate responses to awkward questions.
Photo: Freddy Fabris
Photo: Freddy Fabris
Portraits of Auto Mechanics in the Style of Renaissance/Baroque Paintings »
Fantastic project by photographer Freddy Fabris, where he had auto mechanics mimic poses from classical paintings such as Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson and Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. This apparently went viral a couple years ago, but I don't mind being late to link something, for I'm surely not the first who hasn't seen it.
Photo: Stefan Draschan
Photo: Stefan Draschan
People Matching Artworks »
In a slightly related vein to the project above, photographer Stefan Draschan likes to hang around in museums waiting to capture photos of patrons who accidentally match the artwork around them in some way — sometimes with multiple subjects matching separate things at once! — then posts them to a Tumblr called People Matching Artworks. It's brilliant, often uncanny stuff.
Photo: Rodger Evans
How Not to Make Coffee »
NSFW for language.
Sometimes an expletive-filled rant about Keurigs is just what you need to start your weekend off. Albert Burneko of Deadspin is all over it:
Appropriately, then, it also makes sy, bad-tasting coffee! The Keurig machine is the stupidest machine in the entire g** world; it is as stupid as the society that called it into existence. I would suggest taking your Keurig machine outside and smashing it with a f** sledgehammer, but the exotic materials inside it probably would irradiate a watershed. Bury it in a salt cavern. Jettison it into space.
Photo: "呉" (Flickr)
Their name apparently translates to "giving" in English. —Ed.
Elevator Etiquette in Japan »
Google software engineer Alastair Tse writes briefly about unspoken etiquette for riding elevators in Japan:
- If you are the first to enter an empty elevator, you are the new elevator captain.
The Canvas of My Life »
I know I said I'd keep it light this week, but hey, why not sign off with a heartfelt video about fatherhood? Pride of Gypsies, the production studio run by Jason Momoa — who you'll know as Aquaman in the new Justice League film — teamed up with Carhartt to shoot this wonderful short film:
Long before Hollywood got ahold of Jason Momoa and turned him into a savage warlord and our latest superhero, he was just a kid who grew up the son of an artist from a family of builders and hunters from a small town in Iowa. Raised by a strong single mother, he craved everything his mom opened his eyes to, from art to music to rock climbing and skateboarding. All of this left a deep sense of adventure in his blood.
It turns into a bit of an advertisement at the end, but still worth watching.
Neat Stuff We Published This Week
- It's here: The 2017 Christmas Catalog
- Stop wasting plastic baggies: Planet Wise Reusable Zipper Sandwich Bags
- Variable-temp kettle that pours as good as it looks: Stagg EKG Kettle [pre-order]
- New Solitaire variant that breaks all the rules: FlipFlop Solitaire for iOS
- Sustainable watch with iconic Swiss design: Mondaine "SBB Essence" Watch [pre-order]
- The epic hunt for the criminal mastermind behind the Silk Road: American Kingpin by Nick Bilton
Got any suggestions for articles, videos, stories, photographs, and any other links you think we should be posting in our weekly Quality Linkage? Please do let us know on Twitter.