Another Labor Day is behind us, and I saw the first few autumn leaves this week, incongruous amidst temperatures in the upper 80 degree range. we hope you’ve have a good week and look forward to an even better weekend.
This week, Yale launched a massive web-based platform called Photogrammer that allows users to search and access a collection of 170,000 Depression-era photographs. The actual collection is housed in the Library of Congress and contains work by several prominent photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorthea Lange, and Gordon Parks. Users can search by photographer, date, location, or keyword. There is also an interactive map and visualization tools. The project was funded by the NEH. read more about it in Open Culture.
How much thought have you given the “Typing Awareness Indicator,” otherwise know to iOS users as those three little dots that tell you when someone is composing a reply to an iMessage? These three dots are “quite possibly the most important source of eternal hope and ultimate letdown in our daily lives,” according to Maryam Abolfazli in The New York Times.
Zeynep Tufeki as written a smart take on “Why Twitter should not algorithmically curate the timeline.”
Happy Birthday, John Cage! From Brainpickings.org: “Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists.”
Finally, The Guardian reports on an interesting new project called “The Future Library.” Margaret Atwood has signed on as it’s first contributor. The catch: her work won’t be available for a century.
Our video of the week is the Parrot Sketch from Monty Python:
[Creative Commons licensed image by Flickr user Pavlina Jane].