Conservatism 2.0

A great post on how the structure of the internet—despite its “libertarian hippy capitalist” roots—potentially facilitates socially-networked, meatspace vigilantism.

All it takes is a right-wing or vigilante version of mySociety, with a less attractive civic vision, and this criminal geo-data can become scraped, distributed, then offered with a Shirky-esque ‘bargain’: ‘I will be outside this crim’s house with a plank of wood at 3am if 10 other people will do the same’. That would be the extreme case, but milder responses are surely inevitable and, to some degree intended. As some proto-Richard Stallman within the Home Office must have put it “information about local criminals wants to be free!

Better than Barefoot

I’d never heard of Vivo Barefoot shoes until this Ask Metafilter question. If I had an extra $100 to throw around I might try a pair of these, though one of the answers gives me pause:

I had a pair of Vivo Barefoots (Barefeet?) which I loved. I didn’t find it difficult to walk in them at all. The main problem I had with them was that the upper didn’t seem to be fully waterproof (it’s hard to make a waterproof and breathable upper, as far as I can make out) and so because the sole didn’t raise your foot off the ground, walking in rain, in dewy grass, on damp ground, etc. all got my feet soaking wet. But this may have been tackled with the newer models - they also used to have a zip all the way around, which was the first thing to break, and now they don’t.

I don’t think I could ever wear a pair of the The Vibram Fiverfingers mentioned in many of the answers.

Simon Stevin

He was a 17th-century Flemish mathematician and engineer. Some interesting bits from the Wikipedia article:

His claims to fame are varied. His contemporaries were most struck by his invention of a so-called land yacht, a carriage with sails, of which a little model had been preserved in Scheveningen until 1802. The carriage itself had been lost long before. Around the year 1600 Stevin, with Prince Maurice of Orange and twenty-six others, made use of it on the beach between Scheveningen and Petten. The carriage was propelled solely by the force of wind, and acquired a speed which exceeded that of horses.

And

Stevin thought the Dutch language to be excellent for scientific writing, and he translated many of the mathematical terms to Dutch. As a result, Dutch is one of the few Western European languages that have a lot of mathematical terms that do not stem from Latin. This includes the very name Wiskunde (Mathematics).

Liner notes from Generator.x 2.0: Beyond the Screen

There are plenty of gems here from Bruce Sterling, on how generative techniques have altered the creative process:

Imagine a three-dimensional kaleidoscope that can generate forms so complex that a coral reef looks like minimalism. In some ways that’s a mere stunt, yet it also breaks the limits of the human creative imagination. Artists have always sought inspiration from found forms in nature. Now we’ve got a huge new arsenal of unnatural, software-based found forms.

The liner notes begin with an interview of Marius Watz, curator of the Generator.x 2.0: Beyond the Screen exhibition showcasing artists working in digital fabrication (also called fabbing).

My concern in putting together Generator.x 2.0 was to show that generative systems go beyond “screensavers” and purely visual abstraction. … Ultimately, digital fabrication allows for a software-based approach to physical production, meaning that computational processes can be used in all parts of the production. It’s an ironic reversal of the last decade’s transition towards the digital, for once it’s a matter of bits becoming atoms instead of the other way around.