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.
Featured Links
Photo: Laura Vinck
What It Felt Like to Almost Die »
Last month, Christen O'Brien shared a deeply personal, poignant story about a near-death experience she had 9 years ago, and what that actually felt like:
The clouds.
The clouds.
The clouds.I would never look at clouds the same way again. Though usually only children take enough care to notice, there is so much light and vibrance living within them. They danced above me like the hundreds of times I watched them as a kid, only this time there was something new I saw. No, I felt. A feeling of meaningfulness. Not the religious clip art kind of “meaning”, but a deep sense of calm derived from purpose. Energy derived from honesty. Gracefulness derived from confidence.
[…]
But as I lay on that concrete, unable to breathe, my heartbeat taking full liberty, the truth revealed itself. I didn’t actually control anything, nor was it my burden, guilt, or shame to take on. It was simply — life. I was just a leaf dancing in the wind, whether I knew it or not.
“Talent is Everywhere. Opportunity is Not.” »
Google software engineer Mekka Okereke recently wrote a Twitter thread about the importance of even a small nudge when it comes to getting bright kids to pursue their interests as careers:
Somewhere in flyover country, there is an aviation tech who could be building rockets, but they didn't receive the right nudge in high school.
Somewhere in Georgia there is a black woman teaching HS math at a rural school, that could have advanced the state of the art in ML.
GoodMoves.tv »
Good Moves is one of the cooler sites I've stumbled upon recently. Run by motion studio Breeder, they curate the very best of motion from around the web daily:
Good Moves is the crème de la crème of motion design. Every day our algorithm scours the web to surface the videos that are turning heads around the world, before we hand-select that day’s top dog.
This is just an amazing archive of motion design and animation that's been continually growing since 2016. Take today's short-and-trippy (https://vimeo.com/314492839) for example:
I also like this one from January 14th:
Miscellaneous Links
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Oliver Jeffers' "Space Explorer" Tattly set is good fun, collecting pictures from three of his award-winning picture books: Here We Are, The Way Back Home, and How to Catch a Star.
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Since 2017, Sicilian graphic/motion designer Federico Leggio has been doing an ongoing seres of "type animations" that you've gotta see to understand. Hypnotic and beautiful.
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[Video:] Nearly 17 years later, I still contend that Incubus' "Morning View Sessions is one of the greatest live concerts ever recorded. These guys were absolutely in their prime here.
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[Video:] Freelance animator Nick Murray Willis recently took pieces of nonsensical NFL commentary and animated them. It's funnier than it sounds.
Neat Stuff We Published This Week
- Guide: 5 of Our Favorite Scissors
- A fresh take on an ancient classic: Homer's The Odyssey: Translated by Emily Wilson
- Tripod created specifically for vloggers: SwitchPod — The Minimal, Versatile, Handheld Tripod [Kickstarter]
- Pre-order the Bang & Olufsen Beoplay E8 2.0 true wireless earphones. (Releases February 14th, 2019)
- Color-coded compound-action snips: Wiss 3-Piece Aviation Snip Set
- There are only a couple days left to order Hard Graft's 1st Edition Travel Bag.
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.