This is just mesmerizing.
From the Font Feed. Beck’s new album isn’t an album at all, but a bunch of sheet music so that you have to play the album yourself (You would, Beck. You would). But then this person decided to recreate the album cover with cut paper. Which is really beautiful to watch.
Check out this cartoon from the Oatmeal. I’ll wait.
Now think about the fact that three separate Kickstarter campaigns raised over $1,000,000 last week. Of course it costs more than that to make a season of Game of Thrones ( like, 100 times more. I know). But when they go to make the next season, couldn’t there be a Kickstarter wherein $50 gets you the full season and you get incrementally awesome stuff up to $10 million, which gets you, I don’t know, the pre-credit advertisement slot and a hot date with the lead of your choice? Or a baller product placement? Everyone wins. Except traditional cable companies.
The problem with that is that some distributor would quickly offer $200 million for exclusive access. There’s a price for anything, so the producers accept. The distributor bundles it in with their already-over-priced package of crappy TV shows and calls it “cable”. We pay for it because it’s the only option. But really, we’re paying to subsidize the very existence of these networks rather than the actual content we want. And that model keeps working only as long as people keep paying for it. You see where I’m going with this, yes?
Recommended viewing: Photograph 51 at Central Square Theatre.
It’s a quick 90-minute (pee first, no intermission) play by Anna Ziegler that tracks the period in 1951-53 leading up to the publication of Watson & Crick’s paper on the structure of DNA. I feel like most people by now were at least taught the basics of the story – a number of labs were working out the structure of DNA, but Watson and Crick got there first and shared the Nobel prize with Maurice Wilkins. This prize completely left out Rosalind Franklin, who did most of the x-ray crystallography that eventually proved out the model.
image from centralsquaretheatre.org
It’s a clear injustice, amplified by the fact that Dr. Franklin died of ovarian cancer shortly after Watson and Crick’s paper was published. Despite this, Rosalind Franklin is far from a sympathetic character. She’s actually fairly horrible. The male characters repeatedly insist that they’ve been nothing but “nice” and have done all the appropriate things that “women always like” but she remains hostile and defensive.
Of course it’s clear that acting like a woman isn’t an option – the men have no real regard or respect for any other women in the play, all of whom exist only referentially in vague off-stage locations.
But she can’t be one of those boys either. Watson and Crick are portrayed in a raucous bromance starkly contrasted to Dr. Franklin’s scientific tunnel vision. They share similar backgrounds, similar work styles and have a similar sense of humor. It’s clear that nothing in Dr. Franklin’s upbringing would have prepared her to be a woman in the boy’s club. She’s left in an isolated lab of her own making.
At one point Jim Watson does approach Rosalind to suggest that maybe they’d find the answer sooner working together. But by that point Dr. Franklin has already hermetically sealed off her science.
Photograph 51 was about more than gender, I think, and as we become more gender- and color- and nationality-blind as a society (hopefully) we still have to remind ourselves – maybe even more strongly – that it’s important to actively seek out people with different life experiences, different backgrounds and different points of view. Dr. Franklin was ostracized because she made the men feel uncomfortable and awkward in their own world.
It’s easy (and fun!) to find a tribe and then sit around self-congratulating each other all day. While historically interesting, (and mad props to all the ladies who paved the way in science and business) I left Photograph 51 with a more modern reminder to strive for uncomfortable and awkward situations as often as possible. If it feels easy, I’m probably doing it wrong.
“I got a question to ask you truth, are you a chef? ‘Cause you keep feeding me soup.”
- I Gotta Man, by Positive K
You may be familiar with this song [ed. note: because it's *awesome*], but if you aren’t [ed. note: who *are* you?] all you need to know is that it’s one of those songs that you [ed. note: ok, I] love but would never actually pay to hear. Over the years I’ve done a lot of things to listen to this particular bit of lyrical mastery.
A timeline, if you will:
1995: I load up a fresh long-play tape and tune my tape/radio Sony boombox to Jammin 94.5 and sit for *hours* hoping to catch the intro bass line and then LEAP across the room to hit ‘record’. I miss the first 15 seconds and it sounds like Positive K is actually inside a cereal box, but no matter. Now you can persist and play Don Juan all day, but ain’t nothing gonna change.
2000: I fire up my Compaq DeskPro and open Napster. On the black and green screen I type in “Positive K”. MIRACLE OF MIRACLES! So when I blow up, don’t kick it to me later.
2005: Rumor has it that there’s something on campus called “myTunes”. It will scour the campus network and pull down any song that’s shared publicly. Search: “I Gotta Man”. Bam. Are you talkin’? Psssh whateva.
2007: After two months trying to steal broadband from our upstairs neighbors, my roommates and I finally spring for internet. We take our new wifi broadband for a spin by watching old music videos on YouTube. Three guesses as to what I want to hear. I’ll admit… I like how you kick it.
2011: Spotify hits the U.S. Any song you want. Anytime you want it. On your phone for $10 a month. I drop in my PayPal information (because that’s not real money, right?) and download the app. I start searching for deep cuts and I find my fave cult classic. You gotta what? How long you had that problem?
I’m pretty psyched about this. But then I realize….
I just paid money to hear the over-dubbed tones of Positive K. For the first time in 16 years. Ok, music industry. You win. Sort of.
Really very nice ad (clip? what are they using this for?) from Chipotle. It’s meaningful, totally different and I just watched a 2.5 min advertisement, twice. The were even smart enough to replace Coldplay with Willie Nelson. Well done. Now I’ll have to do some research and see if they’re living up to the cute cartoon.
h/t to Unlikely Words
- Paula Scher, from a PBS minidocumentary on type design. Well worth your seven minutes.
Watching these videos, that is. Gorgeously done. They also make my traveling feet extra itchy. Istambul bound in 10 weeks…
“Some people where I am don’t do anything. Nothing. They just sit. That would be boring to me.” – Hortense Morris, going kayaking for the first time on the occasion of her 99th birthday.
And many more Mrs. Morris, many more.
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1
If you haven’t watched Rachel Botsman’s TED talk about her book “What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption”, you should. The book is quite good, too. Her premise is network technologies are enabling societies to share resources in ways that were not possible before. A classic example Botsman uses is a power drill. The average drill is used for 13 minutes over its whole lifespan. This is because people don’t need a drill. They need a hole in the wall. Zipcar, AirBnB, Freecycle – all awesome examples of collaborative consumption.
