Friday Finds for February 23rd

Here are some assorted finds and articles that turned up this week that are of interest to me, and possibly of interest to you.

Neanderthals – not modern humans – were first artists on Earth, experts claim As Bruce Sterling pointed out on his Twitter, this is some advanced cognition on display. If Neanderthals were creating this kind of info-rich artwork 60,000 years ago, why did it take 60,000 years to get to this era? Or were homo sapiens dumber? It seems so strange that we lived in relative ignorance for so many thousands of years. Or perhaps, as this suggests, we didn’t. Maybe modern thinking and technology is some kind of aberrant phase… man was not meant to wear suits, blah blah blah.
SpaceX Payload Fairing Survives Despite Missing Recovery Net by ‘a Few Hundred Meters’ – the future of space flight looks to be in good hands.
These Astronauts Saw Earth From Space. Here’s How It Changed Them. – from NatGeo. I still need to read this.

Mute Is an Excellent Film Noir That Just Happens to Be Set in a Cyberpunk World – I’ve been looking forward to this movie for a while. I hope I enjoy it more than Altered Carbon. Ostensibly, I love cyberpunk. Ostensibly…
(2) Behind the Magic – Star Wars: The Last Jedi – Bombing Run – YouTube – I love VFX breakdowns. In another life, I wanted to be a CG artist.
NEWS: Hugo Awards Nomination Period Now Open – John Joseph Adams – some of my work is on this list. You can nominate it if you want.

Styling Themes for Gutenberg – ThemeShaper – Gutenberg is coming for WordPress and I need to start reading more on it as the features lock down. I’m a bit terrified about this major change and what it means for legacy sites.
Properly Working with Ajax Requests in WordPress | Tom McFarlin – I’ve dealt with this before, but I have need for an upcoming project and want to review it.
Making It Pop — 5 Ways to Combat Subjective Design Feedback | Webdesigner Depot – subjective design feedback is the worst, and I can always stand to get better at dealing with it.
Understanding Web Fonts and Getting the Most Out of Them | CSS-Tricks – I mostly use Typekit, but I should refresh my knowledge on this area
• Chart: Websites See Drastic Decline in Facebook Traffic | Statista – color me unsurprised. Stop relying on Facebook to build an audience.

INTEL MADE SMART GLASSES THAT LOOK NORMAL – like everyone else, I was skeptical yet covetous of Google Glass. The exclusion of a camera in this model seems very helpful in insuring there isn’t an enormous public backlash. I could really use these when driving in Kansas City, which despite having lived around here for five years, I still have no geographic sense of.
Kylie Jenner Tanks $1.3 Billion of Snapchat Parent’s Market Value – Bloomberg – this is fine. Everything is fine.
I ordered an iPhone 8 case and the wide angle lens from Moment this week. I’m hoping to avoid taking my big, bulky, and expensive digital SLR to France this summer, and in order to do that, I’d like a little more lens versatility. I’ll post a review here after I’ve received this and had some time to try it out. I’m giving some serious thought into picking up a microphone and engaging in some videoblogging. Why am I all of a sudden interested in plaguing the world with my inanity? Who knows.

Jeremiah Tolbert

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