Covered this week; Marvel founder Stan Lee dies at 95… The Art Institute of Chicago has put 50k high-res images from their collection online… The album is in deep trouble, and the music industry probably can’t save it… Shot on iPhone XR, users share portraits, landscapes and more… The ubiquity of smartphones as captured by photographers… Millennials and women fuel 2018 Democratic surge… Now it seems we need to be afraid of Amazon as well…
November 12, 2018
Stan Lee, one of those life well lived stories… and it was a long life that saw him energetic and active into his 90’s. Comic books were never huge for me, but I certainly knew many people for whom that was not true… which is how I came to know Stan Lee. One way or another, godspeed Mr. Lee and thanks for you life’s work.
Under Mr. Lee, Marvel revolutionized the comic book world by imbuing its characters with the self-doubts and neuroses of average people, as well an awareness of trends and social causes and, often, a sense of humor.
In humanizing his heroes, giving them character flaws and insecurities that belied their supernatural strengths, Mr. Lee tried “to make them real flesh-and-blood characters with personality,” he told The Washington Post in 1992.
Added… a really nice illustrated tribute to Stan Lee’s career in the Los Angeles Times.
November 13, 2018
Some great news from my alma mater in that after all these years… they’ve finally redesigned their website and checking it out… it offers many more corners to explore than I would have thought they would… here’s a little write-up on Kottke.org and then a link in the blockquote below to the actual site.
The Art Institute of Chicago recently unveiled a new website design. As part of their first design upgrade in 6 years, they have placed more than 52,000 high-resolution images from their collection online, available to all comers without restriction.
November 14, 2018
The LP, the Longplay… a staple of my youth and paramount in the legacy of recorded music… yet sadly, it appears to be going extinct at an accelerating rate.
Back in 2014, you may remember, Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek had an awkward public sparring match with Taylor Swift, following the superstar’s decision to pull her back catalog from his service. Facing down accusations that Spotify was “cannibalizing” the album, Ek wrote, “In the old days, multiple artists sold multiple millions [of albums] every year. That just doesn’t happen anymore; people’s listening habits have changed — and they’re not going to change back.”
November 15, 2018
I’m a month or two from upgrading my phone and I’ve settled in on the iPhone XR as the direction I’m going… so many great reviews of the photographs it takes… admittedly, I’ve been disappointed in actual results once getting my hands on a phone in the past… but hope blooms eternal, so I’m hyped once again to give this new phone a try, especially looking to investigate the ‘low light’ praise this camera has gotten as I take so many pictures at night.
Photographers around the world are capturing stunning images with iPhone XR, the newest member of the iPhone family. iPhone XR features an Apple-designed, state-of-the-art camera system that enables Portrait mode from a single lens, offering a sophisticated bokeh effect. Portraits look great on the wide-angle lens, even in lower lighting conditions.
November 16, 2018
Continuing the smartphone photography theme one more day, an absolutely stunning piece compiled by Alan Taylor for The Atlantic (be sure to view full screen on the desktop for max effect).
According to reports issued by several market-research firms, including Forrester Research, the total number of smartphone users worldwide will reach 3 billion this year—40 percent of the human population. For many, these versatile handheld devices have become indispensable tools, providing connections to loved ones, entertainment, business applications, shopping opportunities, windows into the greater world of social media, news, history, education, and more. And of course, they can always be put to use for a quick selfie. With so many devices in so many hands now, the visual landscape has changed greatly, making it a rare event to find oneself in a group of people anywhere in the world and not see at least one of them using a phone. Collected here: a look at that smartphone landscape, and some of the stories of the phones’ owners.
November 17, 2018
Politics, a never ending game of hindsight… in 2016 it was Democrats who suffered, in 2018, Republicans. Wave or no wave… Democrats made major progress this go around, from the House of Representatives all the way down to local representation… if it wasn’t a tidal wave, it was still formidable… now just hoping the Democratic Party can build upon the grass roots surge that fueled these midterms. Trump remaining in office should make it easier.
The actions, or rather inactions, of the Republican Party to mitigate this surge were abysmal. The party’s attitude toward avoiding calamity was akin to an airline pilot playing a game of chicken with a mountain. They dismissed millennials and young voters using two flawed arguments: They don’t vote and, when they ultimately do, they will have become conservative because they have “responsibilities” like having a job and paying taxes.
November 18, 2018
It would be nice if with everything else going on, we wouldn’t need to be afraid of Amazon as well…
If the main news source is owned by Amazon’s CEO, and Amazon is simultaneously a major private contractor to the most secretive and powerful agencies in federal government, that doesn’t exactly feel like the Jeffersonian ideal for America’s capital city.
