VPRO Tegenlicht heeft een mooie documenaire over Paul Kingsnorth, voormalig milieu activist en nu schrijver. In de aflevering zien we hoe hij samen met zijn gezin leeft op een afgelegen plek in Ierland, op een zo goed mogelijk zelfvoorzienende manier. De documentaire geeft een goed beeld van zijn disillusie met huidige groene bewegingen en met technologische oplossingen die worden voorgesteld als oplossingen voor de klimaatverandering. Hij pleit eerder voor een zoektocht naar een verbondenheid en duurzame relatie van mensen met de wereld.
DW Documentary posted a new documentary about the ongoing proliferation of tourists and rising property prices in Lisbon, Portugal. The documentary follows someone from the local council and shows the efforts undertaken by the city to save its old, long established shops and their shop owners who are at risk of being pushed out of the city.
I already heard of this problem, but this video also sheds extra light on the issue of golden visas in Portugal. And the problems this program is connected to.
A new article by Input Magazine gives a good example of green washing and why we need the right to repair our own devices. The article is about a “recycling mode” for Sonos devices that effectively bricks a device, and makes it impossible for it to enter the second-hand market. Read the short article here.
Sonos implements a setting called “recycling mode” that bricks consumer’s devices after 21 days, essentially keeping them from being reused or resold on the secondary market. (…) Sonos’ “Trade Up” program is meant to offer its customers an incentive to upgrade, which, naturally, benefits Sonos the most — by reeling customers with older devices back into a new product lifecycle.
Kottke collected some videos on a technology used by Disney to create realistic three dimensional scenes. Well worth looking at the explainer and exmples videos here.
The basic idea is that instead of animating characters against a single static background, you can animate several layers of independently moving scenes painted on glass. In a 1957 film, Walt Disney himself explained how the camera worked:
Martha Claeys heeft een mooi essay geschreven op de Bij Nader Inzien blog over schaamte en schuldgevoelens wanneer we het vliegtuig nemen. Haar artikel geeft een goed overzicht over de filosofische problemen, maar ook het nut van deze gevoelens. Lees het volledige artikel hier.
Het is niet omdat groene schaamte niet de meest efficiënte manier is om duurzamer te leven, dat het niet ook waarde kan hebben. Bovendien is de individuele nood aan verandering noodzakelijk om structurele veranderingen af te kunnen dwingen. Er moet immers draagvlak zijn voor maatregelen die ook voor die 100 grootste vervuilers gelden. Er moet een publieke vraag zijn. Schaamte maakt die vraag dringend.
The title of the following Vox video is a bit misleading. In fact, the video provides an excellent history on the creation of the fisheye lens and its use in music photography and videos. At the end of the video it even goes into a bit of semiotics, with the images allowing multiple or mediated interpretations for different people.
The following video of Vox explores the technique of rotoscoping, used by animators to create realistic motions: “Invented by Max Fleischer of Fleischer Studios (and echoed and practiced by many others), it involves taking filmed footage and using it as a traceable model for animation. The results are fluid and natural in a way animation had never been before.”
Fun article by Kerim Friedman on the semiotics of bubble tea in Taiwan.
An opinion piece in the New York Times by Professor of sociology Eric Klinenberg on the value of public libraries. As someone who loves libraries, I fully agree with his observations. Read his full piece at the NYT Sunday Review.
Libraries are an example of what I call “social infrastructure”: the physical spaces and organizations that shape the way people interact. Libraries don’t just provide free access to books and other cultural materials, they also offer things like companionship for older adults, de facto child care for busy parents, language instruction for immigrants and welcoming public spaces for the poor, the homeless and young people.
Drew Austin writes at Real Life magazine on the new Airpods. Didn’t quite know how they actually worked and make it possible to keep them on all the time. Definitely seeing increasing use everywhere I go, and he makes some great points on how this technology is shaping our social interactions:
AirPods foster a different approach to detachment: Rather than mute the surrounding world altogether, they visually signal the wearer’s choice to perpetually relegate the immediate environment to the background. The white earbuds create what Kantrowitz calls the AirPod Barrier, a soft but recognizable obstacle to interpersonal interaction not unlike that of phone usage. While staring at a phone suggests that attitude indirectly, AirPods formalize it, expressing potential distractedness in a more sustained and effortless manner. You don’t have to look down at a screen to convey that your mind might be elsewhere — that you are dividing your attention between your physical surroundings and other kinds of interactions, hearing other voices. AirPods efficiently communicate your refusal to pretend to be “fully present.” AirPods, then, express a more complete embrace of our simultaneous existence in physical and digital space, taking for granted that we’re frequently splitting our mental energy between the two.