Published

July 20, 2019

Written by

Chris Gonzales

Photography

Mariam Kamal

Welcome to this week's edition of our Friday Quality Linkage column. Please enjoy this week’s collection of interesting and entertaining links. Pour yourself a refreshing beverage, find a comfortable place, and relax.

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Featured Links

 

 

Into the Personal Website-Verse »

Here I am once again to beat the drum of returning to the old days of blogging. In a post published a couple months ago, UX designer Matthias Ott wrote a love letter to the personal website:

It’s, of course, safe to assume that a web of personal websites will never be an equivalent substitute for a social network like Twitter. But that’s also not the goal. Personal websites are called personal websites because they are just that: personal. Thus, the primary objective still is to have a place to express ourselves, to explore ourselves, a place that lasts while the daily storms pass by. A place of consideration, and yes, a place of proudly sharing what we do, what we think, and what we care about. A place to contribute your voice and help others. A home on the internet. A place to tell your story.

This bit further down shares the kinds of resources I'd love to see more of:

There are a few really helpful directories that list RSS feeds or personal sites and that can help you find interesting content. For example, Andy Bell’s personalsit.es, Dave Winer’s feedbase, the IndieWeb Directory, or RSS lists like the ones of Sime Vidas or Stuart Robson.

Fun thing I just found out from clicking those links: As I write this, T&T is ranked #29 on feedBase! Wonder if our awesome readers could bump those numbers even higher ?


How to Make Espresso with an AeroPress »

Casey Faris is a YouTuber who mostly does video post-production tutorials, but back in 2015 he did a video on using the AeroPress to make something akin to espresso (crema and all) without needing a separate attachment.

All you need is a second filter on top of the grounds and, uh, a store-bought spice bottle to tamp them. Sounds weird but it works.


Winners of the 2019 Audubon Photography Awards »

The National Audubon Society — you know, the bird conservation people — has once again announced the winners of their annual photo contest, with the backstory behind each shot:

Birds make fascinating subjects, as the winners and honorable mentions of this year’s contest, our 10th, make clear. They’re at once beautiful and resilient, complex and comical. It's no wonder why we love them so. […]

And in the spirit of Kevin Fisher, Audubon's longtime creative director who recently retired, the Fisher Prize recognizes a creative approach to photographing birds that blends originality with technical expertise. The winning image, which Kevin himself selected from among the finalists, pushes the bounds of traditional bird photography.

The grand prize-winning image mentioned is the one you see above, which captures the cold-morning "breath rings" of a Red-winged Blackbird. Absolutely stunning, it looks like it's breathing fire.

While the top winners are all fantastic, some of the honorary mentions in the top 100 are even more impressive to my eye. This one looks like the evolutions of a bird Pokémon:

...and this one reaches cartoonish levels of "so ugly it's cute":

So, so great.

See also: “A Rainbow of Light Diffracts Through Hummingbird Wings in Photographs by Christian Spencer” (via Colossal)


Video is NSFW for language.

The Shining starring Jim Carrey : Episode 1 — "Concentration" »

Courtesy of Jason Kottke, I came across this startlingly realistic deepfake video — riffing on the “you're breaking my concentration!” scene from The Shining — which shows what it would look like if Jim Carrey had starred in the film rather than Jack Nicholson.

I find this technology both fascinating and prospectively terrifying. The guy has a whole series of these too.


Miscellaneous Links

  • Via Tina Roth Eisenberg of Swissmiss comes an interesting research paper on how couples not-so-traditionally meet these days. It seems that “Internet meeting is displacing the roles that family and friends once played in bringing couples together.”

  • Speaking of connections, Karen Young's article on parenting for the long-term might be helpful if the approach you take with your kid(s) often falls on the too-harsh side: “Using punishment (yelling, humiliating, forced exclusion as in time-outs) will make children behave in a certain way, but they will be more motivated by the need to stay out of trouble than by an intrinsic sense of what’s right. This might work okay for a while, but it can be fickle. What happens when we aren’t around? When there is less threat of a negative consequence, how will this play into their decision-making?” Food for thought.

  • A week ago, Paul "Stammy" Stamatiou documented his experience capturing #Manhattanhenge, where like a billion people apparently line up along NYC streets to capture similar photos of a special setting sun together.

    These kinds of overcrowded gatherings are a personal nightmare for me, but it kind of charmingly distills the whole essence of humanity, doesn't it? Sort of reminds me of a recent experience I got to have watching bats stream out from under a downtown bridge in Austin, TX with a bunch of strangers.

  • Remember that whole oat milk fad last year where seemingly every coffee shop had it for about five minutes before running out of stock? Turns out oat milk is pretty easy to make at home, as long as you're okay with it not necessarily being enriched with nutrients like the commercial stuff.


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