Bird Mail 017
Merry Christmas (if that’s your sort of thing)!
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This is the last Bird Mail of the decade, and though I haven’t been writing it all that long, I wanted to thank all of you for being readers, clicking links, and sharing these missives with your friends. To round out the year, this list of lists pulls together so many best-of lists you’ll be browsing well into 2020. A few others that I want to make sure you see: The Atlantic’s Photos of the Decade, The Worst Gadgets, and this list that is most definitely my jam (also via Kottke) The Best Clouds of 2019.
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LATA 65 is making deviant artists out of the young people over 65 years old of Portugal. If you want to make some public art of your own, I highly recommend picking up some Krink K-60s or K42s for making your own marks. If you feel like treating your favorite newsletter writer, I’ve been crushing on this MTA-inspired box set.
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I’m sad to announce the end of the Apostrophe Protection Society which closed this year after eighteen long years of pedantry. If you’d like to keep the spirit alive I recommend reading Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style and joining me in politely policing punctuation.
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Kottke’s roundup of the microseasons of the world is a joy. Though Austin feels like it has fewer than four seasons—hot, hotter than Hades, and suddenly 40º—I will be hoping for a week or two of velvet season in the early Spring.
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Yap is an interesting idea that I’m looking forward to testing out. The crew from Postlight has a nice writeup that will explain it better than I can, but I like the idea of having a small, expiring chat room for all sorts of things. Of late I have been thinking about the necessary ephemerality of chat, and how terrible things like Slack and even iMessage are for the containing of information long-term. I’m currently building my own solution for longer-term storage of all the notes that I take—more on that in the future.
I look forward to sharing more with you in the new year. Happy holidays to all of you.
Your friend,
Bruce