March 2012
22 posts
Do a lot of you guys not get on Tumblr during the day? Or whatever time it was 4-8 hours ago where you live? Because today was a seriously fun day on here. Just curious.
Wind, ocean currents, hipsters, elevator death, Republicans and early hominins. I love our mosaic of wonder.
“You cannot hide what you’re listening to from your friends on Rdio. You cannot have a private pinboard on Pinterest. You cannot hide your favorites on Twitter. You cannot delete titles from your Netflix history. (Netflix isn’t shared on Facebook right now, but it’s not for lack of wanting to.) Spotify freaks out a little bit when the social thing isn’t working and harangues you constantly to connect it to your social networks (even though it, admirably, has a private mode). Washington Post Social Reader shares whatever article you’re reading in real time, unless you dive deep into Facebook’s settings and decide to only share with yourself (which is kind of weird, to think about it that way; there is no not sharing, just sharing by yourself).”
—We Need A Private Mode For The Whole Internet
“I think what’s most interesting about this study is the way it suggests that plants have a rudimentary form of language based on releasing these chemical compounds. These tobacco plants have the ability to modulate the signals they send out, depending on the kind of attack they’re suffering.”
—The smell of freshly-cut grass is actually a plant distress call
“The best part of us is not what we see, it’s what we feel.”
—
Duane Michals
Mr. Michals will be appearing at the Library on Tuesday with creative director Sam Shahid to discuss his memoir The Lieutenant Who Loved His Platoon, which candidly describes his experience as an insecure and green second lieutenant during the Korean War.
“First things first — “curation” is a terrible term. It has been used so frivolously and applied so indiscriminately that it’s become vacant of meaning. But I firmly believe that the ethos at its core — a drive to find the interesting, meaningful, and relevant amidst the vast maze of overabundant information, creating a framework for what matters in the world and why — is an increasingly valuable form of creative and intellectual labor, a form of authorship that warrants thought.”
—What We Talk About When We Talk About “Curation” | Brain Pickings
“Microsoft Research is doing research on software that could bring you your own personal data mining center with a touch of Proust for returns. In a recent video, Microsoft scientist Eric Horvitz demonstrated the Lifebrowser, which is prototype software that helps put your digital life in meaningful shape. The software uses machine learning to help a user place life events, which may span months or years, to be expanded or contracted selectively, in better context.”
—Lifebrowser: Data mining gets (really) personal at Microsoft
ChronoZoom →
chronozoomproject.org
ChronoZoom is an open source community project dedicated to visualizing the history of everything to bridge the gap between the humanities and sciences using the story of Big History to easily understand all this information. This project has been funded and supported by Microsoft Research Connections in collaboration with University California at Berkeley and Moscow State University.
“Every day—in an effort at “self awareness”—I have automated systems send me a few emails about the day before. But even though I’ve been accumulating data for years—and always meant to analyze it—I’ve never actually gotten around to doing it. But with Mathematica and the automated data analysis capabilities we just released in Wolfram|Alpha Pro, I thought now would be a good time to finally try taking a look—and to use myself as an experimental subject for studying what one might call “personal analytics”.”
—Stephen Wolfram Blog : The Personal Analytics of My Life
“One of the most satisfying experiences I know is just fully to appreciate an individual in the same way I appreciate a sunset. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a little on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple in the cloud color” — I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch it with awe as it unfolds. It is this receptive, open attitude which is necessary to truly perceive something as it is.”
—Carl Rogers (via oatmealcakes)
“I love all waste / And solitary places; where we taste / The pleasure of believing what we see / Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be…”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley, from “Julian and Maddalo.” Learn more about Shelley and his circle of literary friends and family at Shelley’s Ghost, a new exhibition.
