Historical superimposition

‘Untouched’ East German flat discovered
[via hawktrainer]

It appears the inhabitant of the humble flat fled in a rush.

Grocery brands from the Socialist state filled the kitchen and old bread rolls still lay in a string bag.

A wall calendar showed August 1988 and an empty bottle of Vita Cola, Marella margarine, Juwel cigarettes and a bottle of Kristall vodka were in the kitchen.

The only foreign product to be found was a West German bottle of deodorant.

See also the most popular bookmarks tagged ‘abandoned’ on delicious.com.

The Siege of Leningrad ended 65-years ago today
[via bldgblog]
Old photographs from the Siege of Leningrad superimposed over photographs from the city as it is today. (English translation of the original page.)

“rising like alien plants on the terraformed lakebed”
[via mtchl]
In order to minimize the carcinogenic dust storms off of barren Owens Lake, the City of Los Angeles built a series of over 5,000 irrigation bubblers on the lakebed at a cost of $425 million. Pruned compares these bubblers—sad, broken sprinklers, really—to fountains:

since time immemorial, fountains have been creating micro-climates, cooling gardens, palaces and sartorially bedecked aristocrats. The array of bubblers, you could say, is also a type of weather modification system: an anti-dust storm.

Looking toward EveryBlock’s future
[via migurski]
Adrian Holovaty announces the EveryBlock publishing system will go open-source when their grant ends five months from today. With so many smart people able to get their hands on that code, I wonder how long until we have the beginnings of a Craigslist for location-based local news.

I also wonder if this decision by EveryBlock will force Sufjan Stevens into open-sourcing his album-writing formula so the rest of us can release material based on the other states.

Homogenizing the internet, criminalizing ornamentation, writing to learn & two blogs

We start with two rants, a hundred years apart. The first is concerned that internet search results increasingly favor a more homogenous bunch of information sources; the second argues that it’s criminal to add ornamentation to useful things.

All hail the information triumvirate!

[via migurski]
For the third consecutive year, Nick Carr reproduces ten Google searches of ten general topics. In 2006 Wikipedia held the top spot in two of the ten searches; in 2007 Wikipedia held the top spot in eight of the ten searches; this year Wikipedia held the top spot in all ten. Carr worries about the homogenization of the internet:

in a blink of history’s eye: (1) a single medium, the Web, has come to dominate the storage and supply of information, (2) a single search engine, Google, has come to dominate the navigation of that medium, and (3) a single information source, Wikipedia, has come to dominate the results served up by that search engine.

I agree with Michal:  ”Google is the only one that’s an actual problem: its methods are secret, its data is proprietary, and its goals explicitly commercial.”

Ornament and crime

[via rodcorp]
Written in 1908, this essay by Austrian architect Adolf Loos argues that “[t]he evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects” and that because ornamentation often forces objects to go out of style it is a crime to waste resources adding ornamentation. The first few pages of the essay are available via Google Books.

Becoming writing, becoming writers

 [via mathemagenic]
I’ve recently finished reading a stack of articles about writing, particularly about writing literature reviews. They’ve helped immensely. The article linked here offers an idea of writing “as a learning tool which enables what researchers know about themselves and their topics” and suggests “that writing should be included more intentionally in our research methods courses” (from abstract).

Designculture in brief

[via anne]
A new tumblelog, centering on “the cultures of design and the designs of culture.”

Sunday is for sounds

[via mtchl]
An mp3 blog. His top five albums of 2008:

1. Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant EP/Fleet Foxes
2. Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
3. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
4. Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
5. The Walkmen - You & Me