Welcome to this week's edition of our Friday Quality Linkage column. Please enjoy this week’s collection of interesting and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee, find a comfortable place, and relax.
Photo: Benedict Redgrove, Wired UK
The Dizzying Story of Symphony of the Seas, the Largest and Most Ambitious Cruise Ship Ever Built »
Oliver Franklin-Wallis of Wired UK wrote a long, fascinating piece about the insane logistics and challenges of cruise ship design (not to mention how they've all become floating cities engaged in an all-out entertainment arms race):
“We don’t set out to build the largest ships,” [naval architect Harri Kulovaara] told me, somewhat sheepishly. “The goal is to build the best ship. But we have so many ideas that we need a little bit more space.”
[…]
“It’s maybe romantic, but I think ships have a kind of soul,” [Symphony of the Seas project manager Timo Yrjovuori] said. “It’s not like a building. They have a kind of personality. ”
It was a few weeks before Symphony would set out on final sea trials. “It’s such an interesting moment in the ship’s life, when she first meets the sea,” [Royal Caribbean SVP Xavier Leclercq] told me, back on shore. “It’s like a baby being born. Thousands of people, thousands of skill sets… it’s a big human adventure.”
Image: Federico Viticci, MacStories
11 Tips for Working on the iPad »
Like yours truly, Federico Viticci of MacStories has been an iPad-only guy for several years now, except he's way more advanced about it than I am. As if to prove that point, he wrote a handy guide with some tips even I hadn't known about before:
From keyboard recommendations and shortcuts to gestures and Siri, I've tried to remember all the little tricks I use to get work done on my iPad Pro on a daily basis.
After several years of being iPad-only for the majority of my work, I often take some of these features for granted. And admittedly, Apple doesn't always do a great job at teaching users about these lesser known details, which have become especially important after the productivity-focused iPad update in iOS 11. I hope this collection can be useful for those who haven't yet explored the fascinating world of iPad productivity.
These Swedish Kids Designed a Typeface to Celebrate Their Neighborhood »
Designers Göran Söderström and Daniela Juvall worked with a group of ten kids (ages 10–12) to develop the Östberga typeface, mostly from the kids' own imaginations:
Göran and Daniela then picked out the useable letters, scanned them and digitised them using a font editor. The use of brushlike graffiti pens meant that the letters’s bold strokes felt coherent despite their different authors. Daniela says, “It was also interesting to see that the children didn’t care about ”good” or ”bad”, they just did what they did without evaluating what it looked like.”
Love it.
"A Rumor of Angels" by Nicolas Delort
"The Blessing of Athena" by Nicolas Delort
The Scratchboard Art of Nicolas Delort »
As Daniel Benneworth-Gray of the Meanwhile newsletter put it, Nicolas Delort's scratchboard art “hurts my mind it’s so darn beautiful.”
Photo: Bobby Doherty, Grubstreet / New York Magazine
The Last Conversation You’ll Ever Need to Have About Eating Right »
Food journalist/author Mark Bittman and physician/author David L. Katz teamed up to answer tons of the most common questions about diet and nutrition, with none of the unscientific "wellness" drivel you're used to hearing:
It’s beyond strange that so many humans are clueless about how they should feed themselves. Every wild species on the planet knows how to do it; presumably ours did, too, before our oversized brains found new ways to complicate things. Now, we’re the only species that can be baffled about the “right” way to eat.
Really, we know how we should eat, but that understanding is continually undermined by hyperbolic headlines, internet echo chambers, and predatory profiteers all too happy to peddle purposefully addictive junk food and nutrition-limiting fad diets. Eating well remains difficult not because it’s complicated but because the choices are hard even when they’re clear.
Superfoods, keto diets, GMOs...they cover it all.
Everything is Broken »
NSFW for language.
Back in 2014, technology journalist Quinn Norton wrote that your computer and other devices are already absolutely screwed from a security standpoint, you just don't know it yet:
It’s hard to explain to regular people how much technology barely works, how much the infrastructure of our lives is held together by the IT equivalent of baling wire. […]
Computers have gotten incredibly complex, while people have remained the same gray mud with pretensions of godhood.
There's some scary stuff in this article, and if the latest Facebook security fiasco from this week is any indication, not a lot has changed in four years.
+ Related, in a funny sort of way: "It is Weirdly Hard to Steal Mark Zuckerberg's Trash"
Neat Stuff We Published This Week
- Getting clean, the geeky way: Just Bubbly's Periodic Table Soap
- Fight back against allergens: Coway AP-1512HH Mighty Air Purifier
- Nine vibrantly color-coded tools in one sleek package: Kikkerland Rainbow Multi-Tool
- Makes baking more intimate and tactile: Fletchers' Mill French Rolling Pin
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.