Spam Mail #2

Hi there,

How’s it going?

Welcome to my new subscribers. I’m thrilled you’ve signed up, thank you!

I hope you enjoy this issue. I think most of you will love the first link but don’t skip the 💎 Word gems, they’re worth reflecting on together.

See you next week.

💩 Cool shit

Random and awesome links from the web to end the week with.

How Normal Am I? - Find out how ‘AI’ facial recognition judges your face. I am apparently “violently average”. How about you?

Nobody.Live - Video streams with nobody watching.

Loopy - Ok this is COOL. Touted as a tool for thinking in systems, it's a super simple way to build and play with simulations.

Quiz: Can You Tell a ‘Trump’ Fridge From a ‘Biden’ Fridge? - Turns out as a whole we can’t. I could psychoanalyze this to say that if we can’t tell the difference then our shopping habits have nothing to do with politics, or that we’re all deep down the same and need food. It’s also a fun little quiz to try.

Origami Simulator - Ok it’s not like you can fold paper on the screen, but it’s a cool WebGL demo.

Web Desktops - A list of websites that look like old-school computer interfaces. I nerd out over unique web interfaces, especially anything retro. If you do as well you’ll love this.

How FLASH GAMES shaped the video game industry - Flash is ending in 2020. This is an interactive ode to flash games, looking back at the most popular games on Newgrounds (remember Newgrounds?)

💎 Word gems

Thought provoking long-form reads to savor on the weekend.

The Rise and Rise of Creativity (Aeon / Steven Shapin)

I was surprised to learn how modern creativity is. Taking a historical lens, this article argues creativity is an 'engine of economic growth'.

Is creativity’s history progressive? The word itself, and the expert practices for identifying it, became prominent in the Cold War but, if you’re not bothered about that, you might say that related categories – being creative, a creative person – transitioned over time from the sacred power to a secular capacity, from a sacred to a secular value, from categories belonging to the vernacular to controlled ownership by academic experts, from something no one pays to find out about to elaborately funded expert practices. From the 1950s to the present, creativity has been established as something that everybody wants: in 1959, the director of scientific research at General Electric began an address to government officials with the bland assertion: ‘I think we can agree at once that we are all in favour of creativity,’ and he was right. Creativity had become an institutional imperative, a value that was the source of many other values.

In U.S. and UK, Globalization Leaves Some Feeling ‘Left Behind’ or ‘Swept Up’ (Pew Research / Laura Silver, Shannon Schumacher and Mara Mordecai)

A focus group report on divisive issues of national identity and globalization. This doesn’t analyze the issues head-on, instead it provides a judgement-free look at how different people feel about globalization.

Whether feeling swept away or left behind, focus group participants in both the U.S. and UK punctuated their stories about local change with a profound sense of loss – loss of financial security, loss of employment opportunities, loss of social solidarity.

The 15-Minute City—No Cars Required—Is Urban Planning’s New Utopia (Bloomberg / Feargus O'Sullivan and Laura Bliss)

From global to local. Cars and public transport have shaped modern cities - connecting longer distances via the commute. Accelerated by COVID-19, the increase of bike and foot traffic is now redefining how we imagine cities.

Reimagining our towns not as divided into discrete zones for living, working, and entertainment, but as mosaics of neighborhoods in which almost all residents’ needs can be met within 15 minutes of their homes on foot, by bike, or on public transit. As workplaces, stores, and homes are brought into closer proximity, street space previously dedicated to cars is freed up, eliminating pollution and making way for gardens, bike lanes, and sports and leisure facilities. All of this allows residents to bring their daily activities out of their homes (which in Paris tend to be small) and into welcoming, safe streets and squares.

Reading between Pixels (Rest of World)

And lastly, healthcare professionals in seven countries share screenshots of their home screen, giving a snapshot into their lives. I love this peek into people's ordinary life. It’s almost voyeuristic.

I used my phone for telemedicine. We can talk with all the people who were scared by Covid and share advice. In Romania, some hospitals became Covid-focused, and people stopped going to them — the people who are suffering from other diseases. They started to call doctors. I got these WhatsApp messages: “What can I do?” So I would write a prescription, take a picture, and send it to the patient with my signature.

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