Pete Ashton's Notes & Links

The Aerobic Digest: issue 12

My monthly-ish composting newsletter went out this morning.

Yan Wang Preston – gloriously confronting art history in the nude (Guardian)

Wang Preston’s subversive reworking of Friedrich proposes a different relationship with the land. In her version of the image, the figure (the artist herself) is naked – buttocks exposed to the freezing temperatures of the South Pennines, where the photograph was made. Wang Preston stood there for as long as she could handle (10 minutes).

Part portrait, part witness to this solitary durational performance (which will be repeated, with other people, throughout the rest of the year) the raw discomfort Wang Preston felt in standing naked in snow, she has said, is akin to what she experiences as a Chinese woman encountering the exoticised female nudes in canonical western paintings. Rather than the promise of domination, Wang Preston’s nude wanderer offers endurance and symbiosis with the land. Following the trajectory of ecofeminists, Wang Preston frames her “exotic” body in the landscape to point to the way both have been degraded and dominated by the male gaze.

More of her work.

We can have a different web (Molly White)

The thing is: none of this is gone. Nothing about the web has changed that prevents us from going back. If anything, it’s become a lot easier. We can return. Better, yet: we can restore the things we loved about the old web while incorporating the wonderful things that have emerged since, developing even better things as we go forward, and leaving behind some things from the early web days we all too often forget when we put on our rose-colored glasses.

Notes from Inside the Ecosystem: Joanne McNeil on Apple Vision Pro (filmmakermagazine.com)

When I left the Apple store, I realized that perhaps I had been thinking about the company’s history of big product launches too narrowly. Apple doesn’t just build products, but contexts for its products. The iPod had iTunes, the iPhone has the App Store. Each device ushered with it a marketplace where every offering must adhere to Apple’s rigorous standards for inclusion.

What is the correct speed limit for cities? (YouTube)

It’s a trick question - the answer is 30kph / 20mph, and here’s 20 minutes of reasons why. We’ve had 20mph limits around us for a few years now and the resistance to them from some drivers is utterly bemusing.

Streaming Follows a Trail Paved by Thieves and Pirates (Pixel Envy)

Paid streaming services are not the product of record industry brilliance. In fact, the most clear lineage can be traced back to websites that were repeatedly accused of destroying the possibility of artists making a living. Ironically, the world’s greatest libraries of digital music were created by loose groups of thieves and pirates. And it all started with a pig-themed website.

The 1918 Flu Pandemic Killed Millions. So Why Does Its Cultural Memory Feel So Faint? (Slate)

According to scholar Elizabeth Outka, the tragedy haunts modernist literature between the lines.

Efficiency Is Biting Back (The Atlantic)

Efficiency, in fact, can be hazardous to our well-being, and a strategic amount of inefficiency is crucial in keeping society healthy.

Toiletpaperfullerenes and Charmin Nanotubes (Observable)

Toilet paper tubes have the curious property that you can flatten them, cut out loops, and link the loops together without fasteners.

The most important technology critic in the world was tired of knowledge based on clicks. So he built an antidote. (The Correspondent)

Evgeny Morozov was a critic of Big Tech long before it became fashionable. Then he built The Syllabus, an online system that breaks the laws of the attention economy. At a time when misinformation about Covid-19 can spread faster than the virus itself, his system is even more important. I was with him when he first shared it with the world.

Hail the maintainers (Aeon)

Capitalism excels at innovation but is failing at maintenance, and for most lives it is maintenance that matters more

‘Allostatic Load’ is the Psychological Reason for Our Pandemic Brain Fog (Vice)

I’m doing so much less than I’m used to, and I’m so tired.

Coronavirus Is Making a Lot of People Anxious and Depressed. But Some Sufferers Actually Feel Better Now. (Daily Beast)

Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting (Medium)

Pretty soon, as the country begins to figure out how we “open back up” and move forward, very powerful forces will try to convince us all to get back to normal. Billions of dollars will be spent on advertising, messaging, and television and media content to make you feel comfortable again.

We Are Living in a Failed State (The Atlantic)

The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.

HKMask Manual ( Unofficial )

Reusable DIY Cloth Mask with Disposable Middle Layer Filter.
Cloth Mask + Kitchen Towel Paper = N70

Adjust your clocks: lockdown is bending time completely out of shape | Jonathan Freedland | The Guardian

Coronavirus has robbed us of life’s markers and left us like prisoners crossing off the days until we can live freely again

Painting the shed roof today.

🔗 Teenage bloodbath: the 2010s in review
A solid State of the Union from Sam Kriss, poking at Rise of Skywalker and The Irishman as ways to understand our current cultural milieu. Also some clues as to why nearly all of the people I know under 20 are so very fucked up.

🔗 What the Death of iTunes Says About Our Digital Habits
A decade ago I was a digital hoarder. I was getting rid of physical media but downloading more and more, music especially. I still hoard digital files and have the hard drives to prove it, but I often feel between two stools. Spotify is my go-to music place now, along with YouTube for the occasional lookup. It feels right, but it also feels very wrong.

🔗 Interview with Adam Minter, author of Junkyard Planet
On the wonderfully titled blog Discard Studies, this is a nice Q&A about the myths surrounding recycling, specifically exports from rich countries to poor, and the strong feelings people have about what happens to their recycling as opposed to the origins of the stuff they’re discarding. Fascinating stuff.

Found this rock which looked like it had been sliced by a sushi chef.

🔗 Toward a Grand Unified Theory of Snowflakes
I’ve been fascinated by the study of snowflakes since coming across Wilson Bentley’s photos from the 1880s, so this up to date survey of the field was a lot of fun.

🔗 Proposal for a book to be adapted into a movie starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson
An oldie by Robin Sloan, rediscovered as I’m reading his novel Sourdough (about someone with no interest in cooking who finds themselves in the middle of a Sourdough cult, so kinda apt for my life) and it holds up, so much that I genuinely expect the future to turn out like this.

Surprisingly good sunset for a January holiday in Wales…