randomWalks Gift Guide 2012
This year we are recommending only things our friends made that we ourselves have bought.
Pickle Gift Set from Lonestar Taco

The Awl’s Weekend Companion published by 29th Street Publishing

We citizens of a modern democracy claim to believe in equality, but our sense of equality is not even close to that of hunter-gatherers. The hunter-gatherer version of equality meant that each person was equally entitled to food, regardless of his or her ability to find or capture it; so food was shared. It meant that nobody had more wealth than anyone else; so all material goods were shared. It meant that nobody had the right to tell others what to do; so each person made his or her own decisions.
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Justseeds: Mary Tremonte: Queer Scouts Patch and Poster Set
Every American wants MORE MORE of the world and why not, you only live once. But the mistake made in America is persons accumulate more more dead matter, machinery, possessions & rugs & fact information at the expense of what really counts as more: feeling, good feeling, sex feeling, tenderness feeling, mutual feeling. You own twice as much rug if you’re twice as aware of the rug.
People who like to share what they’re reading are looking at this material in a very different way from the publisher. They’re looking to cut it and paste it.
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Rinsed Chef Boyardee ravioli with a Yellow Tail red wine sauce, peas handpicked from a Cup-a-Soup, and finished with grated string cheese. (Corner Stourmet, The Bold Italic)
At first when the fire trucks showed up, I wondered if they were an intended part of the ‘performance,’ but I was quickly informed that it was DEFINITELY not part of the piece.
I didn’t want to come off as trying to do some D’Angelo stuff, but I can’t think of any other album that’s been so influential. D’Angelo left such a wealth of unexplored territory musically.
We live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis dine at the White House regularly. The idea that the government felt it so essential to insist that this behavior be marked as a felony is just unfathomable.
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City lights photographed from the International Space Station and Neurons imaged with fluorescence microscopy.
Source images; Cities (1) (2) (3) (4) (5), Neurons (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
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All Watched Over
by Machines of Loving Graceby Richard Brautigan
I’d like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories,” Andreessen says. “People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do.
We would collect a bundle of sticks in the local wood, sell them to a neighbour for a penny, then walk two miles to to the local picture house to see Charlie [Chaplin], it was silent films in those days, talkies weren’t invented then.
With that said, Kwanzaa-hating has always struck me as the most bougie and snobbish of holiday traditions. It’s that cool that Jonathan Safran Foer thinks that “no one is quite sure what Kwanzaa is,” but I’m not sure “what Hanukkah is.” And for most of my life, no one I knew was quite sure either. I’m only barely sure “what Christmas is.” (Celebrating the birth of your savior with an orgy of consumption?) It’s just seems bizarre in America, of all places, to stand on vintage. Has there ever been a more mongrel, more made-up, country that this one? Have there ever been two more “made up people” then the “white race” and the “black race?” This country is a mongrel mess — and its traditions are, too. That’s the whole charm of the thing. No one who takes the Easter Bunny seriously should mock Kwanzaa. This is about equality. Black people have right to make shit up, just as white people have the right to make shit up.
Awesome Kwanzaa: A Made-Up Holiday for a Made-Up Country - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic
Ta-Nehisi stays snatching wigs
(via aminatou)
So often when I’m out and about I find myself in desperate need of some random numbers!
An increasing number of Americans have found that when legal strictures and open discrimination are stripped away they are left not with the reprehensible, but with neighbors, friends, and family members whom they love, and see loving each other. Little wonder, then, that two-thirds of those under thirty support same-sex marriage.
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Off the Grid
“There are growing number of people
who have decided to live light on the earth
to not be a part of problem anymore
I spent the last few years with four of them
striving for harmony with nature
in the most pristine corners of United States.”
The only people in the world who get to act like race and gender don’t matter are white men. I’m a white man myself. And let me tell you: It is amazing. No joke. And if I shave and put on a suit? You would not believe it.
In response to the specific example of Nicolala liking Walmart, Facebook insists it really did happen: “We show that the Like happened on 10/01 at 6:46 p.m.,” the spokesman says.
Why Are Dead People Liking Stuff On Facebook? (ReadWrite)
Three things.
"Every time we have intense, saturation coverage of a mass murder, we expect to see one or two more within a week" Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe 25/03/09
This year we are recommending only things our friends made that we ourselves have bought.
Pickle Gift Set from Lonestar Taco

The Awl’s Weekend Companion published by 29th Street Publishing

It’s really the first time online-native writers have been given a tool they understand how to use with a hook into the App Store’s ecosystem.
When people look us up in the App Store, we’re confident that the first 12-15 apps are going to represent us very well. Our platform is only as good as the people using it. Compared to what publishing has been going through, programming is pretty easy.
They understand that healthy publishing businesses are built from the ground up, not from ‘vast amounts of cash’ on down. There is no ‘moving into profit mode later’ for healthy publications. So 29th Street is making top-notch tools that allow publishers of ANY size to find their fit — and publishers don’t have to burn money that isn’t theirs making delivery vehicles like these.
For the last seven years, at the Metropolitan Police forensic lab in south London, audio specialists have been continuously recording the sound of mains electricity. Comparing the unique pattern of the frequencies on an audio recording with a database that has been logging these changes for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year provides a digital watermark: a date and time stamp on the recording.
a tweet from a friend
Waiting anxiously for @shani_o’s story on the teleology of favoriting. I have a work email thread that I need to fave my way out of.
short version: we should be able to visibly fave emails so we don’t have to reply.