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: NASA/ESA
In Praise of Water »
It's always a special treat when Tim Carmody fills in for Jason Kottke at kottke.org. Last week, one of the better things he posted was an ode to water:
Anyways. [The Flint water crisis] shows both the precarity of our water supply and how essential water is, for everything. We drink it, we bathe in it, we cook with it, we clean our clothes and dishes and almost everything. It flushes our toilets and often heats our homes. It’s essential to business and industry, for cleaning and fuel and disposing waste. It’s what grows our food, whether animal and vegetable. We can’t do anything without water. And like everything else we can’t live without, we take it for granted, finding new ways to abuse and squander it every day.
At the same time, water is terrifying. It is human and inhuman. It storms, it floods, it melts, it poisons and murders us. You don’t have to read Moby-Dick to get a sense of the sublime inhumanity of water, especially the ocean. But it does help.
+ Another good thing he wrote: "The Hidden Heart of Howl's Moving Castle"
+ On the subject of Jason Kottke, his site membership is thankfully doing quite well.
Photo: Randy Jacob
Impostor Syndrome »
We've all heard the concept of impostor syndrome. Well, Seth Godin wants you to stop using it as an excuse:
Isn't doing your best all you can do? Dropping the narrative of the impostor isn't arrogant, it's merely a useful way to get your work done without giving into Resistance.
Fake it 'til you make it, baby.
Photo: Efe Kurnaz (Winner, "Interiors and Architecture")
Unsplash Awards 2017 Selects »
I use Unsplash a lot for images here on T&T. It only seems right to feature their selection of awesome photos across 13 photography categories for 2017. After browsing through the slideshow and reading the story behind each photo, you can view and download the entire collection here.
Photo: J. Kenji López-Alt
? Why Does Pepperoni Curl? »
Back in 2012, J. Kenji López-Alt of Serious Eats took on the greatest question of our time: What makes pepperoni curl, and how can we maximize it?
As the pizza bakes, the edge of the pepperoni curls upwards, forming a distinct lip. Once exposed like this, the lip cooks faster than the base, which is insulated by the cheese and crust, and thus crisps and renders its fat faster. This fat drips down into the center of the cup. What you're left with is a gloriously flavorful little sip of pepperoni grease, neatly contained within its own, crisp-lipped edible container. The browned lip takes on an almost bacon-like quality—melt-in-your-mouth crunchy. It's one of the true joys of a pepperoni pizza, and once you've experienced it, plain old flat pepperoni just won't do.
*puts iPad down, immediately orders a whole pie*
The Web Began Dying in 2014, Here's How »
After months of research, programmer André "Staltz" Medeiros wrote an interesting piece about the open web's slow and ongoing migration into something controlled primarily by three tech giants: Google, Facebook, and Amazon:
The Web and the internet have represented freedom: efficient and unsupervised exchange of information between people of all nations. In the Trinet, we will have even more vivid exchange of information between people, but we will sacrifice freedom. Many of us will wake up to the tragedy of this tradeoff only once it is reality.
No surprise to anyone who's been following the tech world these past few years, but something to think about anyway.
LEGO Lawn Mower Man Kinetic Sculpture »
LEGO enthusiast and model builder Jason "JK Brickworks" Alleman built a kinetic LEGO sculpture of a man pushing a lawn mower. It's way cooler than it sounds.
(via The Kid Should See This)
Neat Stuff We Published This Week
- Guide: "Four Awesome Resources for BBQ Nerds"
- New premier Reddit app for iPhone & iPad: Apollo for iOS
- Guidebook for smart, funny dads: Man vs. Child by Doug Moe
- Guided meditation and breathing exercise app: Oak for iOS
- Fingertip water control at the end of your garden hose: Dramm Heavy Duty Brass Shut-Off Valve
- Precision tweezers for all types of fine, detailed work: Pixnor 7-Piece Tweezer Set
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.