Just got time to post these before calling an agent about a possible gig, then popping over the road for a bacon cob:
Happy invoicing!
- The History of the Space Shuttle - Brilliant gallery of photos.
- Lingodroid Robots Invent Their Own Spoken Language - "When robots talk to each other, they're not generally using language as we think of it, with words to communicate both concrete and abstract concepts. Now Australian researchers are teaching a pair of robots to communicate linguistically like humans by inventing new spoken words, a lexicon that the roboticists can teach to other robots to generate an entirely new language."
- The Year of Wonders - "It was midday on a Monday in early August of the year 2000 and the bidding on my first novel had reached six figures, then paused for people to track down more cash. I was 32. I’d never made over $12,000 in a year." Alex Shakar recounts his experience of becoming a published author at just the wrong time.
- My Summer at an Indian Call Center - "Lessons learned: Americans are hotheads, Australians are drunks—and never say where you're calling from." Andrew Marantz tries his hand at pretending to be Australian - or English, or American...
- How Running A Business Changes The Way You Think - "The company expects you to be loyal to them, largely because it is in their interest, and they will often do a lot to convince you that their values are your values. Is this synthetic, external value really one of your values? After much consideration, I’ve come to a conclusion about company loyalty: stuff company loyalty. Companies are legal fictions which we find convenient to use to move capital around and balance accounting ledgers. I’ll save my loyalty for people." Great exposition of reasons to work for yourself by Patrick McKenzie.
- Tracking down my online haters - Jeff Pearlman tracks down some trolls in real life. "When I dialed a number I found for Andy, his mother answered. (I admit, this brought me great delight.) Andy was even more apologetic than Matt -- and more willing to explain his actions."
- The case for and against the Oxford comma - Warren Clements explains, discusses, and ultimately rejects the Oxonian form of punctuating lists. I don't
- Mike Leigh - Good interview with the director: "There are all kinds of insecure people out there called actors. Some deeply untrusting actors—the kind that need to know exactly what’s what and are completely insecure—might be quite good within the parameters of a certain sort of acting. But I can’t work with these people. On the whole, I get people for whom not knowing what’s what isn’t a problem."
- Beans and Noses - Jared Spool on managing expectations: "...if they are intent on sticking the bean up the nose, up the nose it will go. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. Pure and simple. I’m sure you run into them all the time. You’re in a room and someone with power has decided to do something that just doesn’t make sense. You’ve tried logic. You’ve tried rational discourse. Yet, they are intent."
- The Art of the Factory - "For his new project, Err, artist Jeremy Hutchison contacted various factories around the world, and asked if one of their workers would produce an 'incorrect' version of the product they make every day: in doing so, the functional objects became artworks. 'I asked them to make me one of their products, but to make it with an error,' Hutchison explains. 'I specified that this error should render the object dysfunctional. And rather than my choosing the error, I wanted the factory worker who made it to choose what error to make. Whatever this worker chose to do, I would accept and pay for.'" E.g.:
Happy invoicing!
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