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Art, games, music, zines, and a list of fictional badgers
The blogging platform Cohost (previously) has launched a new section: Artist Alley, where members pay to advertise their podcasts, zines, art, games, and other creations (many of which are free to enjoy). Or sometimes members advertise just to play around - the "#doing a bit" tag is replete with Rickrolling, "Hey check out this picture of a pileated woodpecker I took", a silly survey, etc. Artist Alley is "a take on user-to-user ads we feel good about — a dedicated space which users can access to see promotions from other users, like an artist alley at a convention" and "a revenue product" for Cohost, which had a poor financial forecast in March which has since improved.
"Not-pleasant! I am causing you not-pleasant!"
The short science fiction story "Hello! Hello! Hello!" by Fiona Jones (published March 2024 in Clarkesworld) begins:
I express greetings and most joyful salutations!
I do not mean to interrupt you if you wish to be without company. It is only that I noticed you have been drifting alone for six flares of star-home-past-great-star-birthplace, and that is many flares! Your movement has been aimless, and I express concern!
"One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea"
When you often notice people "why-don't-they-just"-ing their way into a proposed solution to a gnarly problem, you might turn your criticisms into a checklist. "Your post advocates a [( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante] approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work." These templates often offer a summary of the problem space and a glimpse of experts' frustrations. Solution rejection checklists exist for fixing the housing crisis, beating the CAP Theorem, protecting against DDOS attacks, improving pharmaceutical drug discovery success rates, creating new programming languages and distributed social networks, and (MeFi comment!) saving journalism.
Honeylocusts, Ginkgos, Callery Pears, Maples & more in the 5 boroughs
Previously: the official New York City tree map. Earlier this year: Kieran Healy created visualizations of "the relationship between the median diameter of street-trees (i.e., trees not in parks) and median household income for New York City neighborhoods" (for example, Park Slope versus Bushwick), dendograms of "New York City’s street tree species clustered by similarity of neighborhood profiles" (and, conversely, "the neighborhoods clustered by tree profile similarity"), and "a Principal Coordinates Analysis of New York City NTA neighborhoods and their street tree species". (NTA means Neighborhood Tabulation Area.) "I don’t really know anything about trees. I do know how to draw pictures, though."
"Animals speak their own language... it’s a lot simpler to figure out."
Digital preservation, access control, and scholarly needs
'So, I hope CLOCKSS does have a complete digital copy of the journal, but the question is: will CLOCKSS make it available? This all depends on CLOCKSS assessment of whether a “trigger event” has occurred here.' Ross Mounce, commenting on the disappearance of recently-concluded chemistry journal Heterocycles from the web more than four months ago, raises questions about nonprofit digital archive CLOCKSS ("Controlled LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe)"), and similar "dark archives" that preserve research journals in a kind of escrow. (CLOCKSS has, so far, released "66 journals comprising 13,000 articles" into Open Access.)
Lengthy how-I-get-to-sleep notes
"Notes on sleep" by Jed Hartman: "For many years, I had various forms of insomnia, and I still occasionally have trouble falling asleep and/or wake up too early and can’t get back to sleep. This page covers some of the things that have and haven’t helped me with that." And: "2024 sleep masterpost" by Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz for short): "Occasionally people on the internet ask for the community's collected wisdom about sleep. This is what I can think of for my own sleep routines, tips, and tricks, plus what I do about various confounding factors.... I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, primary insomnia, sleep maintenance insomnia, and ADHD." The latter has people sharing their experiences in the comments. (Disclaimer: I know both these people.)
Managing risk and taking care of accidents in the wilderness
"Wilderness Medicine Wednesday" is a series of ten-minute YouTube videos by Brett Friedman, a wilderness first aid instructor and a former paramedic. So far he's covered snakebites, hypothermia (including demonstrating the effects of mild hypothermia on himself), ticks, and CPR in the backcountry. In longer videos he's shared his perspective on other YouTubers' recordings of their wilderness mishaps, such as a burn and a hiking misadventure.
Trying to follow the doctor's orders
From February, two pieces on learning and adhering to medical instructions. Zareen Choudhury's short comic "Fasting or No Fasting?" starts: "Last year, I had to take a blood test for Lupus during Ramadan." (Image descriptions are available for each cartoon panel.) And "Doctor's Orders: Making the most of the best care you can get", by an anonymous trans woman, is about the necessity and difficulty of following one's care plan after gender-affirming surgery.
"nobody has really considered what they might look like to an outsider"
More in my series curating work by finance expert Daniel Davies, this time focusing on academia and on the cultures and norms of research in general. In "why i am (still after all) an economist" (2023), he asks, "Is there anything that is actually definitional, something that you have to believe or you’re not an economist?" and offers his answer, which is that (I'd summarize) economics treats historical facts as descriptive but not necessarily prescriptive.
"new perspective on things by looking at your fundamental assumptions"
Continuing my series curating work by finance expert Daniel Davies, some of his commentary on travel, Ezra Pound, coffee, and the culture of the Internet and how to manage one's equanimity while writing for strangers.
"try to analogise these great matters of state to your daily life"
Daniel Davies is a finance expert, journalist, and former investment banker whose writing I've been reading for over 20 years on Crooked Timber and on his own blog as well as elsewhere. Sometimes he writes analogies, games, or flights of fancy to help readers think about complex issues more clearly.
Ghosting
"Ghosting" by Kelly Lagor (2023) is an uncomfortable science fiction novella involving reinvention, memory, betrayal, drugs, sex, and a drier, hotter Southern California. She thought of her trunk, covered in stickers from places she could only confirm she’d been to by looking at entries she had no memory of putting in her diary. But these people were fellow like-minded misfits. They felt like a kind of home. She didn’t want to lie. Author's commentary.
"Not everything that is private is meant to be secret"
From 2003: Danny O'Brien wrote:
...we have conversations in public, in private, and in secret. All three are quite separate. The public is what we say to a crowd; the private is what we chatter amongst ourselves, when free from the demands of the crowd; and the secret is what we keep from everyone but our confidant. Secrecy implies intrigue, implies you have something to hide. Being private doesn’t....There are only two registers on the Net; public and secret.with further thoughts on implications for conversation and norms.
Colonoscopy strategies
"Before I get into the whys of it, let me say that having my first four colonoscopies all happen within one twelve-month period allowed me to rapidly refine my prep techniques. 'Prep', here, being the common nickname for the nasty stuff you must swallow to thoroughly clean out your guts for a proper examination. I learned that prep takes many forms, today." Jason McIntosh shares "How not to screw it up" and a preparatory technique that includes "Eight coins or other tiny objects you can use as tokens." He further recommends "the delightful 'Welcome to Colonoscopy Land' by Anne Helen Petersen" (previously) which aims to break taboos and discuss "pooping your guts, the best fake sleep of your life, and having no memory of getting a camera pushed up your butt."
"I wake up later and I can’t pretend anymore."
Maureen F. McHugh (previously) wrote two short scifi stories recently in which folks navigate modern uncertainty with a fantastical twist. In "The Goldfish Man" (2022), "Before everything went to hell I was making double vases." In "Liminal Spaces" (2024) (which feels in conversation with Ursula K. Le Guin's Changing Planes), "There was a broad corridor going off to the left that she definitely didn’t remember. It shook her out of her ruminations."
Free emergency medical quizzes
What signs suggest a soft tissue infection? If your friend falls during an outdoors adventure, what's the correct treatment for an open fracture? Check out a 303-question free wilderness medicine quiz, and a 536-question EMS, EMT, and paramedic quiz. Free to play in browser, no login needed. You can modify the difficulty of questions you're given, in topics including anatomy, initial patient assessment, pediatrics, conditions caused by illness and trauma, and more. Some questions are about field-specific mnemonics or terms like MOI, AVPU, or OPQRST, but they're still informative. (Via NOLS, home of NOLS Wilderness Medicine.)
"Never stop doing stuff! Always stop doing stuff!"
"Start Often, Finish Rarely": "start as many things as you have the ability, interest, and capacity to, with no regard or goal whatsoever for finishing those projects..... You can be finished with your project whenever you decide to be done with it. And 'done' can mean anything you want it to be. Whose standards of completion or perfection are you holding yourself to anyway? Forget about those! Something is done when you say it is. When it's no longer interesting. When you've gotten a sufficient amount of entertainment and experience from it. When you've learned enough from it. Whatever, whenever. Done is what you say it is." A bit of inspiration, for the subset of us who'll find it helpful. Related: the No Maintenance Intended badge.
"codewords to use on doctors and such"
Te shares scripts one can use in a medical setting to make it more likely one will get adequate pain medication and mobility devices; other Tumblr writers share additional tips on bringing a patient advocate ("medibuddy"), bringing written notes and defending using notes, etc. "Remember not to use too *much* *correct* medical jargon — they get suspicious about that."
"So, when do the cops actually enforce gun laws?"
Investigative journalist David Forbes (previously) writes on the US gun control debate: "As a journalist I've investigated police departments for over 20 years. The reality is that they will not enforce gun laws against white supremacists, the far-right or the kind of abusive guy that makes up 95 percent of mass shooters on any scale that matters. They do not do so now and they won't in the future." Her post "A reality check on cops and gun laws", published June 5, 2022, aims to rebut assumptions "often held unconsciously by people who are in good faith trying to find an answer to appalling violence." Content warning: police and gun violence, hate crimes, domestic abuse. Disclaimer: I know David Forbes and she is a friend of mine.
Stakes, the magic circle, fun, ethics, law, consent, and game design
Game designer James Ernest plays and makes games of many kinds, including tabletop games and casino/gambling games. In "Black Box Mechanics And the Ethics of Gambling in Games", published on January 12th, 2021, he writes, 'Are gambling games ethical at all? That's the root question here and of course the answer is complicated. In theory? Yes. In practice? Not always.....I often see folks in computer games decrying the use of “gambling mechanics” in games, but I think we need to be a little more specific.' I learned from his comparisons of laws, practices, and intuitions surrounding swimming pools and casinos, and "Context Part 2" on what's particularly pernicious about "black box mechanics [being] dicey outside of the casino," as well as his definition of an ethical payout.
Light verse, free to read
Light is an online poetry magazine that's been going since 1992. If you often think of poems as stodgy and hard to understand, you might want to give the sparkling light verse produced by their stable of poets a chance -- archives include work by Wendy Cope, frequent higgledy-piggledy (double dactyl) appearances, an "impossible rhymes" compilation including Tom Lehrer, Ogden Nash, and Roy Blount, Jr., and more. Poems reacting to current events, large and small, appear in the magazine's long-running Poems of the Week feature.
"I found it interesting and rewarding"
Jim Ray riffs on the satirical 2021 tweet about "Don't Create The Torment Nexus" with a short fiction story told as a thread on Mastodon starting: "Like seemingly everyone on this app I have plenty of opinions about the launch of The Torment Nexus, the opening of the Xthonic Gateway, and release of the arch-demon Tzaunh MAY HIS REIGN BE DARK AND ETERNAL, who has begun his foretold 10,000 years of suffering and torment. I figure now is a good time to open up a bit about my experience at the company." The skewerings in the 17 following posts call to my mind The Bug by Ellen Ullman or the Knives Out films. Ray noted, "The Call of PMthulu writes itself".
"how it will be allowed to be interpreted"
Fred Clark of Slacktivist (previously) quotes Biblical scriptures on honest weights and measures while critiquing corporate survey metrics and their dishonest usage by bosses to punish individual workers. "Your job is simply to give all 5s. To everyone, everywhere, every time. This is your task because it is the only honest answer available to an honest person. Because 4≠0. Because differing weights are an abomination and false scales are not good. Because your wealthy are full of violence with tongues of deceit in their mouths and bags full of dishonest weights." From June 2019.
"decided to allow myself the pleasure of this singular experience."
"Well, one day I found out he was actually coming into town to play as the featured soloist with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra." A sweet story by a pianist about a risk she took when she was much younger, and what happened next. Told in a Mastodon thread, 8 posts long (you'll have to tap/click "Read more" to read each post in its entirety).
Patience, craft, experience, affirmation
In a self-help-y/inspirational vein: "just as yeasts free-floating in the kitchen alight anew on resting dough long after the bread that brought those species there was baked and eaten", "Honestly, it's all single steps, right to the finish. And if you don't make it a thousand miles, you at least get a change of scenery." Sometimes, "not doing their art was costing them time, was draining it away, little by little, like a slow but steady leak". But also, "people want doing the right thing to be like pulling the correct lever at the correct time but actually usually doing the right thing is more like holding a moderate weight at arm’s length continuously for seventeen years".
“What did you mean, ‘Not again?’”
A new wrinkle on the old story of three wishes, set after the end of the world. "As Good As New", by Charlie Jane Anders, published on Tor.com in 2014. "The door to the panic room wouldn’t actually open when Marisol finally decided it had been a couple months since the last quake and it was time to go the hell out there. She had to kick the door a few dozen times, until she dislodged enough of the debris blocking it to stagger out into the wasteland." A short fantasy story with no villain, where two people work together to make stuff. It’s a hopeful story -- with creativity and love and working together and systematic thought, we can turn things around.
things, sensations, experiences, places, memories
A list of good things. "...dirt paths and the way dirt lies at the base of tree roots, the internet, babies laughing uncontrollably, the sound of sprinklers, mohair sweaters..." By Holly K. Hein.
“I just wanted to make food,” Lou said.
"Please be informed, the notification read, that your business, the Sunlight Cafe, has been designated a Moderately Impactful Business. This replaces your current designation as a Negligibly Impactful Business. The Moderately Impactful Business designation comes with increased governance requirements which are listed below. Note that our decision may be appealed and is considered probationary until the appeals process is complete." In the short scifi story "Sunlight" by Shauna Gordon-McKeon, one woman loves that the little café she runs with her wife has become a community space. But her wife doesn't. [Disclaimer: Shauna is a friend.]
Writing to possible or impossible audiences
"Writing for the Bad Faith Reader" by Susie Dumond (Mar 30, 2023) discusses how easy is is for writers today to get discouraged or preoccupied by the potential reactions of "the person who is looking to invalidate the art that you’re making" (quoting Melissa Febos). Dumond shares "some of the ways I avoid writing for the bad faith reader these days." Her advice to write the first draft for yourself as a way to channel the "best faith" reader, and to accept that your work is not for every reader, reminds me of two of the five laws of library science: "to every book their reader" and "to every reader their book".
A primer on Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS)
Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) is an under-diagnosed health condition that can lead to odd symptoms. "Mast cells are a part of your immune system that are present in connective tissue (which is why the disorder is very often comorbid with Ehlers-Danlos...). They store histamine and heparin, and release them when encountering certain environmental conditions and allergens... MCAS happens when your mast cells are very bad at identifying environmental conditions and allergens they should freak out at, and instead they freak out ('degranulate') at literally [effing] everything..." Writer synecdochic discusses do-it-yourself ways to diagnose and treat MCAS, and recommends Mast Attack for more details.
love, beauty, sparkly song, shattering, joy
"Edie tilted her head to listen. It was catchy, full of bouncy rhythms. It made Edie think of sparkly outfits and dancing.....The name of the singer had been said so quickly, and besides that, all musicians gave themselves funny names. They’d done that even when Edie was young." In the short science fiction story "Always and Forever, Only You" by Iona Datt Sharma (previously on MetaFilter), a woman in "what the Sunshine Care Home called Independent Sheltered Living" experiences joy, heartbreak, and togetherness.
strangers doing silly things together
I think the best most human thing in the world is strangers doing a silly thing together A short Tumblr post by calamitys-child lists a few examples, such as "very tiny girl at the pharmacy interviewing everyone in the queue and every single one of us in turn sat down and answered this toddler's questions like we were on Letterman".
"A tool for viewing and querying overlapping administrative boundaries"
This is handy if you live in New York City, and a useful example for folks in other areas with lots of different zones, districts, etc.: "The NYC Boundaries Map is a tool for viewing and querying overlapping administrative boundaries in NYC."
Give it an address and (example) it'll tell you which districts it's in for 12+ different slices, e.g., police precinct, school district, Community District (which Community Board covers it), legislative districts for city and state representatives, ZIP codes, etc. Source code and a longer prose explanation available on GitHub.
"a very one-sided attempt at a contract"
"The older kids have been playing with the concept of contracts, which has often involved attempts to trick the other into signing something." Jeff Kaufman shares the "various forms of contract fraud" recently explored by his children and his attempts at explaining that forging your sister's signature on a handwritten note stating "I _Lily_ Wise will let Anna hav wutevr she wonts from me" does not constitute a valid contract with her.
Fun outings for visitors with limited mobility
"When I am skimming through the various San Francisco related subreddits, there’s one kind of post guaranteed to get me commenting. It’s when someone asks for tips on where to bring their relatives who are elderly and frail and coming for a visit. The responses are almost uniformly ridiculous." Wheelchair user and disability activist Liz Henry breaks down eight assumptions, and offers ten suggestions for "Fun outings for visitors with limited mobility" plus five ideas for at-home activities.
equity, licensing, and headaches
Cannabis has been legalized in New York State, and legal dispensaries could have opened starting nearly a year ago. Yet there are only five legal dispensaries in the whole state. "Meanwhile, about 1,500 smoke shops are selling cannabis illegally in New York City alone, city officials estimate." "Why Can’t Legal Cannabis Sellers Open Shops?" asks the nonprofit news org THE CITY. (Slow, confusing bureaucracy is the short answer.) More coverage.
Self-testing and toys to help you learn about your music listening
The Music Lab has tests for you to learn how good you are at discerning melodic discrimination and recall, mistuning perception, and beat alignment and more (previously). "This Is What It Sounds Like" offers compare-and-contrast samples to help you reflect on your taste in melody, novelty, realism, timbre, and other elements. Its links lead to further online tests and demonstrations.
28 years of web browser usage, visualized
2.5-minute video on YouTube and Reddit, by James Eagle, visualizing what proportion of Web users use particular web browsers (via Unpretty).
bicycling and stop signs
"to maximize its utility and accessibility"
Command line interface guidelines: a "guide to help you write better command-line programs, taking traditional UNIX principles and updating them for the modern day." Related conversations: "The Poetics of CLI Command Names" (pretty opinionated; previously), "UX patterns for CLI tools" (aiming to cover "how these UX patterns help developers replicate the valuable characteristics of most good GUIs"), "Best practices for inclusive CLIs" (focusing on accessibility), and a Mastodon thread about the benefits of color terminal output. And: some programming languages design their error messages to have better user experience as well. Namely...
rescue, bandages, and smoke
A few very different wish-fulfillment pieces of speculative fiction. Stories by lyricwritesprose and by dalekteaservice give us alien points of view on what humans could offer to a troubled universe. And in "Burning Men" by Maria Farrell, certain people start spontaneously combusting. (Author's commentary: it's "about a world where the cost of sexual violence is born by the perpetrators and how that changes everything" as well as "the mood music of brexit and covid.")
“Even for a moment in time, I want to experience that.”
David Do, the new head of New York City's Taxi & Limousine Commission, has just become a licensed cabdriver. He aims to drive "100 trips a year as a way of learning firsthand what drivers encounter daily, whether that’s dealing with traffic and customers, or struggling to find designated spots where they can park and take bathroom breaks....Do tried a similar approach at his previous post, where he briefly drove for D.C. Neighborhood Connect, an on-demand shared-ride shuttle." Commissioner Do had to pass TLC's exam (PDF of sample test) to get a license.
HUMAN_FALLBACK
"When Brenda went off script, an operator took over and emulated Brenda’s voice. Ideally, the customer on the other end would not realize the conversation had changed hands, or that they had even been chatting with a bot in the first place." HUMAN_FALLBACK by Laura Preston, published by n+1 in late 2022 (a shorter version is in The Guardian), details the job Preston did from early 2019 to early 2020, "impersonating a chatbot that’s impersonating a person" for an real estate leasing platform.
Thumpasaurus
The band Thumpasaurus makes silly music videos, particularly the maximalist "TALKIN' BOUT" (like a 2020s answer to Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" video) and the Western-inflected "Struttin'" (caution for a bare butt).
Just nine days till the Ides of March
Actor Jake Phillips does Mark Antony's "Brutus is an honorable man" eulogy from Julius Caesar in a US Southern accent and people from the South comment on what that lends the monologue. And: several Tumblr users collaborate to translate the eulogy: "Friends, mutuals, countrymen, do not scroll past; I come to cancel Caesar, not to stan him..... But Brutus says he was problematic; And Brutus is an honourable man." (via hobo-rg)
"our duty of care outweighs such emotional considerations"
"We believe close partners should be candid with each other when misunderstandings occur. As such, we wish to respond to certain inaccurate statements made today by British officials and media regarding our archaeological activities." From MeFi's own adrianhon, a short science fiction story: "The Taking of Stonehenge".
"negative space to denote premium feel & materiality"
"Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute is an online community dedicated to developing a visual lexicon of consumer ephemera from the 1970s until now." Examples: Cyberdelia, Eco-Beige, Paperback Chic, Corporate Grunge / Grunge™, Genericana, and Dollar Store Vernacular. Each category has a "Gallery" -- select "Show" to display examples of the aesthetic.
That's my jam!
Artist Stacy Nguyen, while making a tomato and onion jam, "wondered: What is jam? What makes something authentically jam?" and learned about the definitions of jam, jelly, curd, preserves, conserves, fruit butter, chutney, confit, and marmalade, then decided "dude, this information would make a good infographic." and made a fun "Fruit-in-Jars 101" graphic. Graphic is near the end of the post, after the recipe.
Abysmal to perfect and neat to dope
What words do English speakers use to describe things as good or bad or eh? In 2018 and 2019, YouGov did some surveys: Britons and Americans read selections of adjectives, such as "dreadful," "satisfactory," "decent," and "fantastic," and scored them from “very negative” to “very positive”. Meanings were broadly similar between the UK and the US but did differ, especially "at the most negative end of the spectrum." Also, across generations in the US, "cool," "awesome," and "nice" were the "top three words for describing something as generally favorable", but "fire," "far out," "superb," "poppin'," "fab," "righteous," and other adjectives differed in usage between age and ethnic groups.