Notices by Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social), page 9

"How I Use RSS To 'Rewild' My Attention"

My essay on the joys of using RSS to follow 400 weird, offbeat, niche blogs and sites that cater to my particular obsessions ...

... and how it helps me find more fascinating, deeper material than I see on algorthmically-sorted-for-virality social media

The piece, for Medium subscribers: https://clivethompson.medium.com/how-i-use-rss-to-rewild-my-attention-7731267a40d8

If you're not a Medium subscriber, here's a "friend" link: https://clivethompson.medium.com/how-i-use-rss-to-rewild-my-attention-7731267a40d8?sk=54d69b1b262db8d3d1a0229ae69816b9

Okay people, I've got some NEW PUNCTUATION for you

The "commash", the "colash", and the "semi-colash"

Back in the 19th century, writers used these *everywhere*. It's hard to open a book to a random page and *not* see one

Yet in the 20th century, they vanished -- practically overnight

It's up to us to BRING THEM BACK

My essay is here, for Medium subscribers: https://clivethompson.medium.com/weird-19th-century-punctuation-marks-you-should-try-using-49d2e2516e5e

If you're not a Medium subscriber, here's a "friend" link: https://clivethompson.medium.com/weird-19th-century-punctuation-marks-you-should-try-using-49d2e2516e5e?sk=0b0b750a1dc3cf296efbf036ebbd2d34

"The psychological benefits of re-introducing work horses to cities"

Some French towns began using horse-drawn carts for garbage, and to bring kids to school

It was to lower the carbon footprint, but it turned out to have another, subtler benefit:

Psychological and emotional

Horses seemed to just *chill everyone out* a bunch

My blog post on it -- click here if you're a Medium subscriber: https://medium.com/@clivethompson/e-ink-playing-cards-steam-powered-spacecraft-and-pissing-off-canadian-geese-61857a149e6f

If you're not a Medium subscriber, here's a friend link https://clivethompson.medium.com/e-ink-playing-cards-steam-powered-spacecraft-and-pissing-off-canadian-geese-61857a149e6f?sk=b9d7847c3c1e9274e1395c87584874ee

@mmasnick

I haven't met any Horace Mann kids so I can't give you any feedback on that, but I've met quite a few Stuy ones -- my eldest son goes there -- and I can confirm that many are impressive as hell, and often super people too

Behold the tiny flipbook machines of J.C. Fontanive, which display fluttering moths and butterflies: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/12/jc-fontanive-butterfly-flipbooks/

They're physical animated gifs, harkening back to the zoopraxicscopes of Eadweard Muybridge in the 19th century

I built this tool a year ago but I feel like Mastodon folks would like it

The "Weird Old Book Finder"

Type in a search query, and it'll find one randomly-chosen public-domain book that matches the query -- and present it for immediate reading: https://weird-old-book-finder.glitch.me

Why only one book? To prevent the paradox of choice! Just *start readin'*

Can't promise every book will be weird, but most are

A longer essay on how/why I developed it: https://debugger.medium.com/a-search-engine-that-finds-you-weird-old-books-3a74fbb5f3d4

This was a search for "mastodon"