onfocus

I have collected here many (85) color palettes of Retro CRTs, LCDs, CROs, VFDs, Nixie Tubes, Numitrons, Calculators, Terminals, and Computers (in text mode). Most of these are high contrast and are easy to read.

These are fun!

One day, I saw what felt like Gorton on a ferry traversing the waters Bay Area. A few weeks later, I spotted it on a sign in a national park. Then on an intercom. On a street lighting access cover. In an elevator. At my dentist’s office. In an alley.

Beautiful story of discovering some surprisingly ubiquitous typography that tells us about past production methods.

Alarmed about the possibility of being seen as “woke” or partisan, Shogan is purging the museum of everything that could substantiate such an allegation, such as exhibits that treat Native Americans, Japanese Americans, and civil rights activists as human beings with valuable and important stories.

The preemptive surrender to white supremacy is also something we need to constantly fight against. This washing of history from a Biden appointee is disappointing.

Juneteenth’s history prevailed through sheer will and a fight for representation. Black activists have been fighting for Juneteenth to become a paid federal holiday for decades. It was only on July 17, 2021 that US President Joe Biden finally signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, declaring Juneteenth an official federal holiday.

A brief, shocking (to me) history of Juneteenth. Shocked to learn people continued to be illegally enslaved into the 1960s.

McKinsey is to the middle class what flesh-eating bacteria is to healthy tissue.

Edward Zitron reads Google's internal emails revealed in a DOJ suit and names names:

These emails are a stark example of the monstrous growth-at-all-costs mindset that dominates the tech ecosystem, and if you take one thing away from this newsletter, I want it to be the name Prabhakar Raghavan, and an understanding that there are people responsible for the current state of technology.

Scathing.

So in the story of the loss of ancient Greco-Roman literature, library fires are just a footnote. No single library had a monopoly on the classics anyway. A much bigger role was played by a format shift that affected every book, everywhere: the shift from scroll to codex. That format shift took place in the years 100 to 400 — in antiquity: most of the loss occurred before the dissolution of the western empire.

Interesting history of preserved Greek texts. Expiring formats have always been a problem, I guess? When Word, Powerpoint, and PDFs eventually die we're going to lose a lot of knowledge. It's easier to copy data once it's digital, but it's also easier to erase.

This overview of the historic origins of these Artificial General Intelligence boom or doom cults by Timnit Gebru should be required viewing. We have a real world with existing needs that these ideologies ignore. The result of these scifi inspired beliefs is promoting authoritarian politics. As mentioned in this video, the main question to ask: who benefits now?

See also: The Wide Angle: Understanding TESCREAL — the Weird Ideologies Behind Silicon Valley’s Rightward Turn.

It could have been a lot better. Trump didn’t just “raise eyebrows” with his vermin line; Welker should have said it was redolent of Nazism. Welker let it drop instead of following up. It also shouldn’t have been a yes/no question, but rather something like “how do you feel when he says something like this”?

Small signs the media is evolving on Trump coverage.

Statement from Brewster Kahle, digital librarian of the Internet Archive: “When people want to listen to music they go to Spotify. When people want to study sound recordings as they were originally created, they go to libraries like the Internet Archive. Both are needed. There shouldn’t be conflict here.”

Argh, still mad about this. Scratchy 78s are not competition for Sony or Universal. These companies should be helping the Internet Archive preserve music.

The labels' lawsuit filed in a federal court in Manhattan said the Archive's "Great 78 Project" functions as an "illegal record store" for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday.

Yes, because everyone today signs up for streaming services to listen to old 78s and if this history project is online it means no one will sign up for streaming. WTAF? These companies think they can lock up all of our history and culture behind a paywall. This makes me want to never buy anything from these music companies again.

Gun policies, I argue, are downstream from culture, so it’s not surprising that the regions with the worst gun problems are the least supportive of restricting access to firearms. A 2011 Pew Research Center survey asked Americans what was more important, protecting gun ownership or controlling it. The Yankee states of New England went for gun control by a margin of 61 to 36, while those in the poll’s “southeast central” region — the Deep South states of Alabama and Mississippi and the Appalachian states of Tennessee and Kentucky — supported gun rights by exactly the same margin.

Interesting look at the roots of regional attitudes about guns from the author of American Nations about the different groups that settled America and their differing beliefs.