✱ 5ives 016

1. Visualizing Algorithms

...algorithms are also a reminder that visualization is more than a tool for finding patterns in data. Visualization leverages the human visual system to augment human intellect: we can use it to better understand these important abstract processes, and perhaps other things, too.

2. PHOTO FINISH

When architecture devolves to a set of binary reactions to pre-existing images: a HOUZZ “Ideabook” made manifest, our humanity is diminished. Rather than celebrate new ideas we find defendability in reprocessing predigested pastiches we revert to the 19th century idea of “Style” as the controlling aesthetic authority.

3. 10 Tricks to Appear Smart During Meetings

Like everyone, appearing smart during meetings is my top priority. Sometimes this can be difficult if you start daydreaming about your next vacation, your next nap, or bacon. When this happens, it’s good to have some fallback tricks to fall back on. Here are my ten favorite tricks for quickly appearing smart during meetings.

4. The longevity gap

Costly new longevity drugs could help the wealthy live 120 years or more – but will everyone else die young?

5. The Putter: A Meditative Video on the Art of Making Scissors by Hand

On its most basic level, this is a five minute video of a guy making a few pairs of scissors by hand. But what could have been a mundane shoot of a master craftsman using archaic tools to create common household objects, is completely elevated by filmmaker Shaun Bloodworth into something strikingly beautiful. The film’s subject, Cliff Denton, is one of the world’s last “putters” (literally “a putter togetherer of scissors”) who works at Ernest Wright & Sons in Sheffield, a company that has been hand-making scissors and shears for 112 years. Watch and be transfixed. Is this another example of autonomous sensory meridian response? Music by The Black Dog.

And a quote for the weekend:

“” — Adam Savage

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