Friday Idle Thoughts 11March22

Austin Kleon’s newsletter pointed me to this cool deep read of Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts.” I’ve been itching to take a deep dive into some writer’s work and reading this essay reminded me how little I know about Auden. I’m checking out a bio and a collection of poems this afternoon (from the library!) to see if he’ll maintain my interest.

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Metafilter pointed me to a search engine (Marginalia) that emphasizes the non-commercial parts of the web. I can’t say I had much success with a few trial searches, but I deeply heart the philosophy behind it.

“In recent years, something has been simmering: Some call it the “Small Internet”. I hesitate to call it a movement, that would imply a level of organization and intent that it does not possess. It’s a disjointed group of like-minded people that recognize that the Internet has lost a certain je ne sais quoi, it has turned from a wild and creative space, into more of shopping mall. Where ever you go, you’re prodded to subscribe to newsletters, to like and comment, to buy stuff.

“The formulation of the problem differs from purely aesthetic ones, to ones based on political doctrine. I prefer a humanist explanation. The measure of a website should be how well it enriches the life of – and empowers the visitor, rather how well it enriches the wallet of the website owner, especially not at the expense of the visitor’s long-term interests.”

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Colossal remains one of my favorite sites. If it’s not part of your regular web browsing (or RSS feed), well… maybe drop one of those news sites and add Colossal.

The first time I saw the following image I thought it was an illustration of a dinosaur. It’s not! It’s a for real contemporary photograph.

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The Aesthetics wiki has a truly impressive list of aesthetics. This is where I learned about fairycore.

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A cartoon from Paul Noth.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 039 of 100)