Sunday, November 25, 2012

Places I Visited on the Internet Today #8

Here's what I was looking at on the Internet today:
  • I had no idea, but there's still a few ninjas left.
  • A cute lion cub on ZooBorns.
  • I started reading this Vanity Fair cover story on Kate Moss until I paused to ask myself, "Why am I reading this?"
  • "3 Great UX Resources" that I didn't find to be great. 
  • A very short article profiling a few microeconomists who work in online commerce. I wish that this was a more in-depth article, because this felt like a very brief and basic overview of an interesting subject.
  • Newcastle, England, is cutting all of its funding to arts and culture. It seems like dismantling government is in vogue throughout a lot of the world right now, with it being done in the name of "austerity" due to economic circumstances, but it feels like a sham to me. There's been this big push to reduce government debt over the past couple of years, even though most economists say that reducing debt during a period of unsteady recovery is a bad idea. I think that this is occurring because conservatives have been able to push the narrative that it is somehow government debt that is keeping people from having jobs. So now that conservatives are controlling that message, government spending is being cut, and - conveniently - the things that conservatives don't like (arts and culture, social services) are the first things that get the ax. Of course, the irony of cutting government spending is that it puts people out of work rather than creating jobs. Excuse me now while I go look up "Feudalism" "Plutocracy" on Wikipedia. (BBC link via @barryjohnson)
  • From Wired, a fascinating article about cracking the cryptography of a 250-year-old secret society.
  • An opinion piece on micro-apartments. In cataloging all of the links that I visit, I am starting to see a real pattern of articles/posts that are so brief and half-formed as to be negligible. This article is like the one on microeconomists above - it doesn't feel complete. Maybe this pattern only exists for "micro" subjects.
  • Here's a book review of Jeff Speck's "Walkable City", which sounds like it may be worth going to Powell's and flipping through if not buying. I really need to read Jane Jacobs' "Life and Death of American Cities" in the near future.
  • http://transportationtown.com/
  • High transit corridors create more real estate demand
  • Refreshingly, there are still parts of the world where they believe in public transit and making the rich pay their share. 
  • CSS Zen Garden, because I was listening to this podcast with the creator of the site. I only listened to the first half of the podcast because it kept cutting out on me.
  • "We are in full apostasy boogie." And, oh boy, from the same source: Obama got re-elected because women love George Clooney.
  • CAT AND FOX BUDDIES.
  • @PortlandAfoot shared this link where he defines his mission statement in response to some crank in the comment sections.
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