Welcome to 5 Quick Things that I saw since last month that I thought were interesting enough to share with you. None of them are particularly timely so feel free to just enjoy 🙂

>Number One<

Stop, Collaborate, and Listen

One thing that has baffled me through my life is that notion that people will only do things if they’re getting paid. This was nonsense when I was a child engaging in fandom (which not only does things without getting paid but does things sometimes in the face of getting possibly sued for them) and it’s true as an adult watching the proliferation of social media, blogs, and Wikipedia. This article is short but it’s about what we can learn from the free work people are doing on Wikipedia and how that could help us build a better future.

>Number Two<

Ill Society

I wish we talked more about how COVID has changed us and our culture instead of basically deciding at some point we were done thinking about it and putting it in a locked box. This piece doesn’t quite touch on that but it draws the line between a hundred years of humans being changed by illness and our collective aversion to it through Virginia Woolf’s piece On Being Ill and that’s a start.

>Number Three<

On For the Ride

I follow a lot of people who do theme park explainers/history of coasters and generally they’re interesting but only to a small degree. This video from Poseidon Entertainment about the coaster La Ville d’Ys from Mirapolis a long closed short lived amusement park is France sent me down a two day rabbit hole about the coaster, the park, its demolition, and even chasing after the leftover rides that we moved to a park in Berlin (Spreepark) that eventually closed due after which that owner used a ride to smuggle cocaine! The ride itself was interesting enough but then the circle kept getting wider and wider.

The good news is now that Berlin park is an art grounds. All’s well that ends well?

>Number Four<

Every Ling Everywhere, All At Once

This is a visualizer of every language we are aware of past and present in a connected visualizer. I don’t really have anything to add, it’s just extremely cool.

>Number Five<

It Simply Spits Us Out

There is so much going on in the news that this little event might have passed you by but I think it’s such a strangle encapsulation of the times we live in and our struggles with placing AI as a technology in our society and our lives. Anyway, hats off for the guy who ate a bunch of paper in protest of AI “art”.

That’s all for this month and hopefully I’ll see you back again next month with some more exciting and cool things!