One Brain Cell: Double Issue
How is this year almost over already?
Hello folks! It’s been a surprisingly social couple of weeks for us both, and October disappeared without a trace. Here we are with lots of links and somehow, again, the end of a month.
Why Do You Tattoo? Is a tattoo that disappears over time still a tattoo? Is it still art? Someone invented a quasi-permanent tattoo that is inked into your skin but fades over a few months — essentially the H&M of tattoos. Tattoo artists and wearers question if this devalues the actual tattoos, but I’ll leave you to answer that question. – glo
Jony Ive’s first major design since leaving Apple isn’t what you’d expect. The more I look at this, the more I appreciate it. Is it valuable in the terms of design I’ve been trained to espouse? Not really. But maybe beautiful design only needs to exist for itself. – sh
Hu Xia and George Lam sing《那些年》. I have been watching Chinese singing shows with my mom, and this rendition of one of my favourite songs made me tear. For the uninitiated, 《那些年》is from a Taiwanese coming of age romance film. One of the singers is the original singer 10+ years after it first came out, singing with a fresh maturity. The other is a 75-yo veteran lao jiao, who brings out a whole different flavor. “那些年错过的大雨” takes on a completely different meaning when George Lam injects 4 or 5 decades of regret and nostalgia into those words. –glo (h/t to my mom)
Vienna museums open adult-only OnlyFans account to display nudes. Our world continues to get weirder and weirder! Because the internet finds their paintings too graphic, Viennese museums have turned to a soft porn subscription site. I actually love the museum and the Egon Schiele piece featured here — it’s where and when I learnt to take in art in-person at the ripe old age of 20. – sh
Museum of Forgeries. MSCHF’s best work to date, imo. Take one real Warhol piece, add 999 exact replicas, and stamp all of them identically so you just might be buying the real piece — but nobody knows! Chance sells at infinite demand. – sh
A Unified Theory for Designing Just About Anything. 4 things - Context, Architecture, Mechanics, Poetics (aka CAMP, cos everything needs a neat acronym). I find the Poetics point particularly interesting: “they do not exist until an end user (customer, player, audience) interacts with them”. A designer can have an intention but the poetics or aesthetic response an experience evokes is something out of their control, and differs from user to user. – glo (h/t to Charles)
May 1, 1969: Fred Rogers testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications. My gosh. Just watch how Fred Rogers speaks from the absolute bottom of his heart as he convinces the committee to preserve the $20 million worth of funding for public TV. Just so full of love and kindness at every moment, and all-round wholesome vibes. If this was a masterclass in oration and rhetoric, the greatest lesson is the power of deep yet gentle conviction. – glo
Rittenhouse trial judge still baffled by pinch-to-zoom. Given the outcome of the trial, I can’t find any of this as funny as it is. When policymakers and members of the judiciary cannot understand basic tech functions which rule our lives, there are very real consequences. – sh
How to Work Hard. Paul Graham, simple and to the point as usual. When I was young I lived under the assumption that talent was what mattered; and for a long time, talent got me through without much effort. Now for the first time, as an adult, I’m making myself focused and intentional about what I want to work hard on — paid or unpaid — and how. This quote from Carrie-Anne Moss, on Keanu Reeves, stuck for me too: “His work ethic is unlike anyone I’ve ever met, and I’ve seen it up close: He trains harder, works harder, cares more, always asks more and more questions to understand the depth of what we’re doing. And while he was doing all of that for himself, he always had an eye out for me.” – sh (h/t to Nicole, who reminded me the Keanu interview was languishing in one of my open tabs)
Timeline of Science Fiction Ideas, Technology and Inventions. I love science and I love fiction. This ingenious website traces the lineage of sci-fi inventions, from Bio-Energy from Gulliver’s Travels (1726, look where we are today!) to Scuttle Bots (2020, “An all-purpose surveillance robot that climbed rather than flew”). Funny to see what from the past are actually real today, and what writers today are conceiving of our future. – glo
"of all the ways to approach the future, the vehicle that gets you to the most interesting places is Romance". Currently trying to devour all talks and transcripts from the brilliant mind of Alan Kay. – sh
‘Zombie’ Urchins Are Destroying Kelp Forests. Can’t We Just Eat Them? As someone who loves both uni and kelp, this article hit home hard. We visited an omakase restaurant recently who likewise reported unprecedented weather patterns that have caused winter fish to come early and Japanese uni is in ridiculously short supply. That said, I found the solution in the article rather fascinating — why not harvest the “parasitic” uni, put them somewhere else, and grow them such that they become valuable food instead? Win win. – glo
Web3 — Solving trust issues using math. I’ve been going a little bit down a crypto rabbit hole recently and found this to be an excellent primer to why Web 3 matters. To me, it boils down to solving three things: ownership, efficiency and privacy. It remains to be seen if the space explodes or implodes, but I believe that with enough people thinking about Web 3, we’ll get to some very interesting places. – glo
Someone Made a Pirate Bay for NFTs. This guy looked at all the people arguing on the internet about forking over lifetimes of money for JPEGs that you could right-click and download and said: Yep. All. Let’s do them all. I adore this sort of conceptual, up-yours, conceptually sound work. – sh
Being queer saved my life. Every so often I think of this quote, and the gift of seeing your life a different way. – sh
For those in Singapore, let’s rejoice at music being played at eateries again! We swear it makes a world of difference.
- sh & glo