Luca D’Onofrio shows us how to make various kinds of pasta. Absolutely incredible, not just his skill, but how well this piece is produced. Notice the video overlays.
Yes, it’s like watching This Old House and knowing you probably won’t be able to use tools like that and they make everything look easy, but, this definitely makes me want to get into pasta making to go along with my bread making.
[via The Kid Should See This]
Mattatuck Trail, Warren, Connecticut.
I took a hike along this new section of the Mattatuck trail that’s right in our little town. It crosses this swamp and I had to bushwhack in deep snow closer to this viewpoint through what looked to be a tick-infested jungle of branches to get this shot.
Around here Lyme disease is a real worry so going off trail in a place like this is a risk. I thought this shot might be worth the risk but having had Lyme disease I can tell you, it wasn’t. I like the shot but Lyme disease is no fun at all and if I had it to do over again, I’d have skipped this off-trail bushwhack.
Here’s some more discussion of the Facebook/ Cambridge Analytica scandal I’ve read in the past few days that I think adds to our understanding of it.
I’m posting these links less as political commentary on the Trump campaign and the Mercers and Bannon’s underwriting this data scrape, more for those of you reading who are Facebook users and/or serious social networkers who are trying to wrap your heads around the significance of what’s happened here.
Alvin Chang at VOX:The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, explained with a simple diagram.
Zeynep Tufekci in an op/ed for the New York Times (recommended by Bruce SchneirFacebook’s Surveillance Machine.
Adrian Chen, Nathan Heller, Andrew Marantz, and Anna Weiner (at The New Yorker): Discussion: How to Fix Facebook.
Cambridge Analytica’s “psychographic microtargeting”: what’s bullshit and what’s legit.
How Cambridge Analytica used Facebook to find out who you are
No doubt you know all about this and other Facebook data scrapes and breaches by now but this cartoon explanation, by Eleri Harris and Andy Warner at The Nib is a useful explainer.
Note: I had an early Facebook account but dumped it after a year as I didn’t particularly like the Facebook design and found it less than useful. When Facebook bought Instagram I dumped that too. To me, there’s something questionable about social tools that attempt to pull people in by appealing to their desire to become more popular. Yes, I realize that Facebook and Instagram are more than that, but these (popularity) tools are deeply engrained in their designs. What people will do to become and remain popular is bothersome to me. Flickr does this and I ranted about it a number of years ago: Flickr Explore.
Of course, WordPress (this site) does this as well… Sigh.
South Egrermont, Massachusetts.
We snowshoed from Jug End east on the Appalachian Trail toward Sheffield. This large oak tree (sometimes called a “wolf tree” as it prevents other trees from growing up near it) is a thing of beauty, with some of its branches actually growing underground. There are a number of magnificent trees on this section of trail although this was the only one we had the energy to get to as the snow wasn’t great and the trail was unbroken.
We couldn’t get closer to this tree because of an electric fence. Too bad, closer framing would have been better.
My Flickr contact Werner Schwehm took this great image of a man wearing a checkered shirt walking beneath a building with a checkered facade and on a walkway with checkered tiles.
This Look Inside Spike Jonze’s Apple Ad Is as Fascinating as the Film Itself
Amazing. I’d have thought that much of this was done digitally but in fact, actual walls move. Amazing.
Here’s the ad again, for those who missed it.
[via 9to5Mac]
Comic from 1919 imagines what it’s like to have a phone in your pocket
“W. K. Hasleden’s ‘The Pocket Telephone: When Will it Ring?’ was first published in The Mirror on March 5th 1919. It is reproduced here with the assistance of the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent and Mirrorpix.”
My Flickr contact Eugene Beckes took this magnificent image of a magpie landing on a branch. Perfect timing.
Flickr member Peter Stewart posted this fantastic image of a wall of apartments in Queenstown, Singapore.
Check out Peter’s Flickr album: Stacked II – Architecture of Singapore. Brilliant work.
The image is great in many ways, one of which is that it is taken at dusk which gives it the same kind of feel as many of the aerial shots of Berlin in the the first few Bourne movies. There’s something about city shots at dusk that creates an ominous mood, something is about to happen…
