onfocus

This is a nice take on the idea that Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy. "Science fiction didn’t see the mobile phone coming. It certainly didn’t see the glowing glass windows many of us carry now, where we make amazing things happen by pointing at it with our fingers like goddamn wizards." [via merlin] See Also: The future is already here, it just isn't evenly distributed.

What does it take for a society to be sickened by its own behavior and to change its attitudes? Where is our threshold for self-awareness? [via kottke]

Great article about the difference between Twitter and Facebook from Matt Haughey. Short version: Twitter = present, Facebook = past. See also: kottke, torrez

Errol Morris on Walker Evans, photography, documentation, and history. This is part three of a seven part series from 2009.

This article is a good reminder to mix math games into the daily routine. We do some of this, but we have more fun with language than math.

You might need some fancier desktop wallpaper.

The Kleptones did some exhaustive research into the music that inspired Paul Simon's Graceland and put it all together into a fantastic mix and story.

Rushkoff looks back at Boorstin's seminal media book written in the Mad Men era. He describes our collective nostalgia for those times as: "Those last wonderful moments before we drifted off to sleep."

"HistoryTag records the histories of specially tagged things, so you can see how they were made and how they live in the world." The Internet of Things is off and running. This is a great idea.

Joshua Schacter's latest project: tagging people's Twitter handles with skills they can perform. It's a way to see what people are known for among their peers. More tagging!

A nice collection of railroad company logos from 1845-2000. [via kottke]

Kurt Vonnegut to the member of a school board that burned his books: "If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own."

Does what it says on the tin. !important

"Linux, and the Internet broke everything wide open. It’s taken 20 years to get a lot of it boxed back up again. I hope there are still air cracks by the time my kids are old enough to jam screwdrivers in there."

"Cities cannot 'come to the end of their patience' because they’re not people. Mayors and local officials can come to the end of their patience. So can cops. But cities?" Analyzing and comparing the coverage of Occupy Oakland violence with Kent State coverage. [via bluishorange]

It's not a great idea, but if you want to write a regular expression to define a numeric range, this tool makes it easier than doing it by hand.

Andy put together a handy list of geeky Portland spots. Wish I could be up there for ROFLcon tomorrow.

A great blog about futures past has moved to the Smithsonian Magazine. Seems like a good fit.

huh, Corvallis has the largest percentage of bicycle commuters in the country.

Nice sampling of speedometer design.

Handy tool to unminify JavaScript.