Thanks, Google!

It’s now clear that the demise of the Google Reader was first really loud warning that you can’t rely on a publicly traded, profit-driven Silicon Valley tech company to deliver content.

A Spectre is Haunting Unicode

In 1978 Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry established the encoding that would later be known as JIS X 0208, which still serves as an important reference for all Japanese encodings. However, after the JIS standard was released people noticed something strange – several of the added characters had no obvious sources, and nobody could tell what they meant or how they should be pronounced. Nobody was sure where they came from. These are what came to be known as the ghost characters (幽霊文字).

Why we love the Shipping Forecast

To many it’s a reassuring, poetic reminder of our island nation. To those whose work depends on the high seas, it can be a lifeline. In the words of one yachtsman: “It’s more than just a shipping forecast – It’s iconic and beautiful”.

Charming animated short explaining the Shipping Forecast.

Annoyed by Restaurant Playlists, a Master Musician Made His Own

Last fall a friend told me a story about Ryuichi Sakamoto, the renowned musician and composer who lives in the West Village. Mr. Sakamoto, it seems, so likes a particular Japanese restaurant in Murray Hill, and visits it so often, that he finally had to be straight with the chef: He could not bear the music it played for its patrons.

Be sure to give the playlist a listen.

/thx @kalefreeman

The Life and Slow Death of London’s Pie and Mash Shops

The rules are as follows: It’s a “shop.” Never a “restaurant.” Mash has no butter. Gravy is forbidden. Ask for either, and in Cooke’s words, “You are gone.” Pie and mash is served with a fork and spoon. Request a knife and it’s not unlikely that you’ll be told to fuck off.

/thx David

Jack Schulze and Timo Arnall on the importance of material exploration and experience design

I liked this bit:

I’ve always been interested in technologies that are widespread and a bit boring. A good example of this is the pager motor. It’s the component inside your phone that makes it vibrate. There are about 3 billion smartphones running right now, and if you think about every mobile phone that has been manufactured since about 2000, they all had pager motors in them, which means on Earth there must be 10 billion motors of this kind. They almost never burn out and are incredibly efficient. They’re amazingly well made pieces of technology.

How to Start Knitting (and Learn to Love It)

I do, however, want to dispel the notion that some people aren’t “crafty” and therefore can’t knit. Anyone can! It doesn’t take some special crafting gene, and you don’t need superhuman dexterity (or even a lot of patience). You just need to follow a few basic rules and, most important, you have to want it.

Salvage Beast

With roughly 100,000 large merchant ships in the water at any time, scores sink, burn, break apart, run aground, or explode each year—often with toxic consequences. It is Captain Nick Sloane’s job to board troubled vessels and salvage what he can. Against heavy odds, he recently refloated the doomed cruise ship Costa Concordia.

Deceived By Design

How tech companies use dark patterns to discourage us from exercising our rights to privacy.

How to spot a perfect fake: the world’s top art forgery detective

Leaving straight forgeries aside, any discussion about the “authenticity” of an artwork opens suddenly, like a trapdoor, into the murk of semantics. On the sliding scale of attribution that art historians use – painted by; hand of; studio of; circle of; style of; copy of – each step takes the artist further from the painting.