It may seem kind of strange for a company to build a search engine — a pretty costly undertaking — using criteria that it knows to be corrupted. But to Facebook, it’s just business-as-usual. Here’s the difference between Google and Facebook: Larry Page recognized that commercial corruption was a threat to his ideal. For Mark Zuckerberg, commercial corruption is the ideal.
Happy Birthday Johnston and the London UndergroundThis week London sees the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. To commemorate the occasion a stream locomotive used in the 19th century made a journey through the modern tunnels of the Metropolitan line. See more on the BBC
It is also 100 years since its iconic typeface Johnston Sans was released as the the ‘Underground’ typeface. Dan Rhatigan, type director at Monotype and forthcoming interviewee of 8 Faces talks about Edward Johnston and the typeface here.
The structured, based on a calligraphic nib held at a 45 degree angle, is emphasised by Johnston’s diamond tittles shapes (the dots over the i and j), one of it’s most recognisable characteristics.
The Book of Common Prayer has its very own tumblelog!
It doesn’t get more exciting than that, does it, folks? I’ve started a tumblelog devoted to the Book of Common Prayer, of which I am writing a biography, which should, God willing, be available by the end of this year.
The book will contain a handful of images, but I’d love for it to contain dozens, and in full color to boot. Since that won’t be possible, I’ve created this new tumblelog to post those images, quotations, and thoughts that won’t make their way into the book. I hope you all enjoy it.
By the way, new posts to that tumblelog will be automagically posted to Twitter, just like the posts for this tumblelog.
I instantly and irreversibly block based on @replies I find annoying. Yes, it’s selfish. Yes, it’s about me. That’s the whole point….You could very well be “right.” I just don’t care. I don’t want to hear it. I have no patience for conflict junkies or hyper-argumentative people polluting my stream. I don’t want to debate you. I don’t want to trade clever put-downs. I don’t want to go back and forth trying to get the last word. I don’t like to be trolled, nitpicked, or insulted. This is a personal account. You’re not paying for it. Shocking: I don’t like to get hassled, and will block to avoid it. I’m not the guy to satisfy your need for epic battles, flame wars, or online validation. There are plenty of people itching for a fight, just not me. Go be annoying, rude, combative or your positive spin on those things somewhere else. I will ruthlessly curate my online experience to selfishly satisfy my own sensibilities and make it fun for me, period.
In short, Aaron Swartz was not the super hacker breathlessly described in the Government’s indictment and forensic reports, and his actions did not pose a real danger to JSTOR, MIT or the public. He was an intelligent young man who found a loophole that would allow him to download a lot of documents quickly. This loophole was created intentionally by MIT and JSTOR, and was codified contractually in the piles of paperwork turned over during discovery.If I had taken the stand as planned and had been asked by the prosecutor whether Aaron’s actions were “wrong”, I would probably have replied that what Aaron did would better be described as “inconsiderate”. In the same way it is inconsiderate to write a check at the supermarket while a dozen people queue up behind you or to check out every book at the library needed for a History 101 paper. It is inconsiderate to download lots of files on shared wifi or to spider Wikipedia too quickly, but none of these actions should lead to a young person being hounded for years and haunted by the possibility of a 35 year sentence.
Professor Lessig will always write more eloquently than I can on prosecutorial discretion and responsibility, but I certainly agree that Aaron’s death demands a great deal of soul searching by the US Attorney who decided to massively overcharge this young man and the MIT administrators who decided to involve Federal law enforcement.
Aaron had literally done nothing in his life “to make money.” He was fortunate Reddit turned out as it did, but from his work building the RSS standard, to his work architecting Creative Commons, to his work liberating public records, to his work building a free public library, to his work supporting Change Congress/FixCongressFirst/Rootstrikers, and then Demand Progress, Aaron was always and only working for (at least his conception of) the public good. He was brilliant, and funny. A kid genius. A soul, a conscience, the source of a question I have asked myself a million times: What would Aaron think? That person is gone today, driven to the edge by what a decent society would only call bullying. I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don’t get both, you don’t deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you.For remember, we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House — and where even those brought to “justice” never even have to admit any wrongdoing, let alone be labeled “felons.”
In that world, the question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a “felon.” For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge. And so as wrong and misguided and fucking sad as this is, I get how the prospect of this fight, defenseless, made it make sense to this brilliant but troubled boy to end it.
Fifty years in jail, charges our government. Somehow, we need to get beyond the “I’m right so I’m right to nuke you” ethics that dominates our time. That begins with one word: Shame.
“How was The Hobbit?” my wife asks.“It was actually OK,” the youngest one says.
“Are you kidding?” I say. “It was awesome.”
“Seriously?” says the oldest one.
“It was great!” I say. “Rocks fighting each other, people all flying on eagles everywhere.”
“Should I go see it?” the middle one asks, narrowing his eyes sceptically.
“You should go tomorrow,” I say. “The only problem I had is that people speaking Elvish makes me drowsy. I slept through this whole, like, elf board meeting in the middle, but then, when I woke up, there were…”
“Hang on,” the middle one says. “Are you recommending a film that you fell asleep in?”
“I fall asleep in most films,” I say. “It’s not necessarily a criticism.”
“How can they make three whole films out of such a short book?” the oldest one says.
“It’s not that short,” I say.
“How would you know?” my wife says. “You’ve never read The Hobbit.”
I turn to look at her. “You’re goddam right I haven’t,” I say.
[Lionel Trilling’s] last book, Sincerity and Authenticity (1972), is a battlefield report from the conflict between his private and public selves, in the form of a history of the “moral idioms” that art deploys to conceal and reveal personality. He ends by contrasting the demonic madness of someone who fantasizes he is Christ—a madness praised by the psychiatrist David Cooper as a doorway to truth—with the responsible sanity of the real Christ, who accepted “the inconveniences of undertaking to intercede, of being a sacrifice, of reasoning with rabbis, of making sermons, of having disciples, of going to weddings and funerals, of beginning something and at a certain point remarking that it is finished.”Trilling, as he saw it, had accepted all these “inconveniences,” interceding in campus disputes, sacrificing himself to his wife and (in her words) “to decency,” reasoning with professors, making lectures, training academic disciples, attending public functions. The last words of his book were Christ’s last words from the cross: “It is finished.” Trilling had at last united his warring “Olympian” and “sacrificial” impulses in a single straight-faced claim that his life and career had been Christlike.
A few chapters earlier he had mentioned “the peculiar bitterness of modern man, the knowledge that he is not a genius.” As in all his generalizations about what “we” know and believe, he may have made a silent, tentative exception for himself.