Probably The Best Mashup We've Ever Seen! If you ask me, mashups of metal singers with other genres of music are some of the greatest things in the world. They're simply down-right hilarious, especially when the two elements of the mash-up couldn't be anymore different. For example, Ozzy Osbourne
The Library of Congress announced today that it is making 25 million records in its online catalog available for free bulk download at loc.gov/cds/products/marcDist.php. This is the largest release of digital records in the Library’s history.The records also will be easily accessible at data.gov, the open-government website hosted by the General Services Administration (GSA). Until now, these bibliographic records have only been available individually or through a paid subscription.The Library is also joining with George Washington University and George Mason University to host a Hack-to-Learn workshop Wednesday, May 17 through Thursday, May 18, which will bring together librarians, digital researchers and coders to explore how the data (and other interesting data sets) can be used. “The Library of Congress is our nation’s monument to knowledge and we
That cuppa joe you just sipped? Its long journey to your cup was made possible by shipping containers—those rectangular metal boxes that carry everything from TVs to clothes to frozen shrimp. And there’s a whole host of characters whose lives revolve around this precious cargo: gruff captains, hearty cooks, perceptive coffee tasters, and competitive tugboat pilots. This is the world journalist Alexis Madrigal illuminates in his new podcast Containers. Alexis tells us how the fancy coffee revolution is shaking up the shipping industry, and reveals his favorite sailor snack. Bite celebrates its first birthday, and Kiera gets up-close-and-personal with a kitchen contraption that’s sweeping the nation: the InstantPot.
This is a cool new podcast I hadn’t come across before. This particular episode is a bit similar to my favorite podcast Eat This Podcast, though as a broader series it appears to focus more on culture and society rather than the more scientific areas that ETP tends to focus on, and which I prefer.
The bulk of this episode, which discusses shipping and containers (really more than food or coffee which is only a sub-topic here), reminds me of the book The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Biggerby Marc Levinson which I’d read in July/August 2014. (The book is now in its second addition with an additional chapter.) I suspect it was some of the motivating underlying material for Alexis Madrigal’s Containers podcast series.[1] The book had a lot more history and technical detail while I suspect Madrigal’s series has more of the human aspect and culture thrown in to highlight the effect of containerization. I’m subscribing to it and hope to catch it in the next few weeks. The discussion here is a quick overview of one of his episodes and it goes a long way towards humanizing the ever increasing linkages that makes the modern world possible. In particular it also attempts to put a somewhat more human face on the effects of increasing industrialization and internationalization of not only food production, but all types of manufacturing which are specifically impacting the U.S. (and other) economy and culture right now.
The InstantPot segment was interesting, particularly for cooking Indian food. I’m always intrigued by cooking methods which allow a modern home cook to better recreate the conditions of regional cuisines without the same investment in methods necessitated by the local cultures. Also following Alton Brown’s mantra, it sounds like it could be a useful multi-tasker.
h/t to Jeremy Cherfas and his excellent Huffduffer feed for uncovering this particular episode (and podcast series) for me.
References
[1]
A. Madrigal, “Containers,” Medium, 07-Mar-2017. [Online]. Available: https://medium.com/containers. [Accessed: 18-May-2017]
While listening to the audio from a presentation by Tantek Çelik in 2014 (video on YouTube) I was struck by his contrasting the experiences offered by social networks and blogs/RSS readers.
He argues the most pivotal reason that social networks took over the web was they had "an integrated posting and reading interface" where you could see what everyone else was doing and instantly reply or add your own updates in situ.
At the end of each year (or three months into the following one) I like to reflect on my favourite apps from the past twelve months. I recently switched from an iPhone to a Google Pixel, so the mobile section of this post will be about Android apps instead of iOS for a change.
Watch the first WordPress TV Ads here. They have just launched after Matt Mullenweg committed last year to really start investing in marketing WordPress.
Joe Miller's trial continues as Miller and Hardy try to close the Sandbrook case.
Things continue to amp up in a can’t-stop-watching-this fashion. I’d have continued on last night and finished it off, but it would have taken half the night and ruined my day, so I stopped after episode 4 and showed a bit of restraint.
I will say that the unravelling of the Sandbrook case was a bit too quick and convenient for what could have played out through the episodes and an investigation. Instead we’ve seen small snippets of the past throughout the eight episodes before the murder plays out in about 10 minutes of recap at the end. I won’t say it wasn’t entertaining and very satisfying, just that it could have been done with less of a narrative “cheat.”
Otherwise, I’d say that Season 2 was even better than Season 1. Friends in the UK who’ve already seen Season 3 is well worth the wait–I’m just not sure that I can.
Now to spoof my IP address to see if I can get season 3 on ITV in Britain since I know it aired beginning at the end of February… If it follows prior release schedules, it may not be on BBC America until late 2017 and definitely wouldn’t be on Netflix until December this year, if we’re lucky.
I watched this on the 40″ Samsung in high def with Netflix routed through my Google Chromecast.
Today I finally released the project I’ve been working on for the last two years at MIT CSAIL: An HTML-based language for creating (many kinds of) web applications without programming or a server backend. It’s named Mavo after my late mother (Maria Verou), and is Open Source of course (yes, getting paid to work on open source is exactly as fun as it sounds).
Colin Walker (colinwalker.blog)
Belle B. Cooper (blog.bellebcooper.com)