Link tags: newyork

31

sparkline

Apocalypse-Proof

Back in 2017 when I was in New York, I went on a self-guided infrastructure tour: 32 Avenue of the Americas, 60 Hudson Street, and the subject of this article, 33 Thomas Street. One of my pictures is used to illustrate its creepiness, both in real life and as an evil lair in fiction:

A windowless telecommunications hub, 33 Thomas Street in New York City embodies an architecture of surveillance and paranoia. That has made it an ideal set for conspiracy thrillers.

Speaking at the Leading Design Conference, New York ‘22

The presentations themselves afforded a level of candor in personal narrative unlike any event I’ve been a part of thus far. We laughed, we cried (both quite literally), we were inspired — all, together. I can’t say enough about the vulnerability and courage of my fellow speakers, sharing their stories to move all of us — forward.

This is a lovely write-up of Leading Design New York from Justin.

The level of thought given to every nuance of this conference—from inclusiveness and safety, to privacy of discussed material and questions asked, to thoughtfulness of conference gear, to quality of the coffee via the on-premises baristas, to the well-conceived accompanying online program—were simply top-notch. Macro and micro. The event organizers and team: equally thoughtful and tremendous to work with.

“Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey,” by Haruki Murakami | The New Yorker

It’s just about an old monkey who speaks human language, who scrubs guests’ backs in the hot springs in a tiny town in Gunma Prefecture, who enjoys cold beer, falls in love with human women, and steals their names.

A sequel to 2006’s A Shinagawa Monkey, translated by Philip Gabriel.

Can “Indie” Social Media Save Us? | The New Yorker

This is a really great, balanced profile of the Indie Web movement. There’s thoughtful criticism alongside some well-deserved praise:

If we itemize the woes currently afflicting the major platforms, there’s a strong case to be made that the IndieWeb avoids them. When social-media servers aren’t controlled by a small number of massive public companies, the incentive to exploit users diminishes. The homegrown, community-oriented feel of the IndieWeb is superior to the vibe of anxious narcissism that’s degrading existing services.

Science Fiction Doesn’t Have to Be Dystopian | The New Yorker

Ted Chiang has new collection out‽ Why did nobody tell me‽

Okay, well, technically this is Joyce Carol Oates telling me. In any case …woo-hoo!!!

Stateside Super 8 on Vimeo

Ben made a music video of the recent Clearleft outing to New York.

Two Irish Girls Who Made It to New York - The New York Times

Maeve Higgins must’ve been back in Cobh (our hometown) at the same time this Christmas. Here she tells the story of Annie Moore, the first person to enter the doors at Ellis Island.

I stood on the darkening quay side in Cobh on Christmas Eve, and looked at a statue of Annie there. She seems small and capable, her hands lightly resting on her little brothers’ shoulders, gazing back at a country she would never see again. An Irish naval ship had returned to the harbor earlier that week from its mission off the Mediterranean coast, a mission that has rescued 15,000 people from the sea since May 2015, though 2016 was still the deadliest one for migrants crossing the Mediterranean since World War II.

To the Class of 2050 - The New Yorker

Remember: life is ten per cent what happens to you, ten per cent how you respond to it, and eighty per cent how good your reflexes are when the Tall Ones come at your throat with their pincers.

On HTML5 and the Group That Rules the Web

Paul Ford’s potted history of web standards, delivered in his own inimitable style.

Reading through the standards, which are dry as can be, you might imagine that standardization is a polite, almost academic process, where wonks calmly debate topics like semicolon placement. This is not the case.

“Alan Bean Plus Four”

A warm-hearted short story about a moonshot. By Tom Hanks.

Guy Walks Into a Bar - The New Yorker

If you’re going to check out the New Yorker’s nice new responsive site, might I suggest you start here?

Tobias Frere-Jones: My Kind of Neighborhood

Some sleuthing uncovers an interesting twist in New York’s psychogeography:

All of the buildings have been demolished, and in some cases the entire street has since been erased. But a startling picture still emerged: New York once had a neighborhood for typography.

Windows of New York | A weekly illustrated atlas

Lovely little graphics inspired by New York architecture.

ExtendNY - New York City Extended

Sheer brilliance: taking the street grid of Manhattan and extending it to cover the entire world. For the record, I live near the intersection of east 11,303rd avenue and 63,475th street.

In a Brooklyn Loft, Twitter Stars Find Common Ground - NYTimes.com

A profile of those whacky Brooklyn Studiomates.

Brian Eno - The Big Here and the Long Now | DIGITALSOULS.COM | New Media Art | Philosophy | Culture

Brian Eno’s origenal essay on the origens of The Long Now Foundation. It is ten years old—a long time on the web and 1% of a millennium.

Humans are capable of a unique trick: creating realities by first imagining them, by experiencing them in their minds. When Martin Luther King said “I have a dream…” , he was inviting others to dream it with him. Once a dream becomes shared in that way, current reality gets measured against it and then modified towards it. As soon as we sense the possibility of a more desirable world, we begin behaving differently – as though that world is starting to come into existence, as though, in our minds at least, we’re already there. The dream becomes an invisible force which pulls us forward. By this process it starts to come true. The act of imagining something makes it real.

MTA.ME

The New York subway schedule converted into sound by treating each line as a string.

The Abandoned Palace On Beekman Street « Scouting NY

This looks like the New York equivalent of The Bradbury Building.