Meanwhile, moose space

Underpass

Can’t stop looking at this photograph Moose Allain shot while out and about. So many little details, such fantastic composition. The graffiti dwarfed by its concrete canvas reminds of Lee Madwick’s art.

Myspace

Myspace launched TWENTY YEARS AGO. You kids won’t remember this, but it was huge. And yet its existence is almost entirely anecdotal. All we have are mentions in old blog posts, articles, jokes, a weirdly dated mention in the first Iron Man. An entire social network – at the time, the social network – can now only be inferred from the impression left by its impact. Actually, there is a way to peer back into the really-not-that-distant past: if you can remember your old username, visit Internet Archive and try myspace dot com / username – chances are, your younger self will still be on there, frozen in a CSS hellscape of your own coding.

Slight immediate correction: the website myspace.com is still a thing, but it’s now a broken down entertainment news aggregator in a state of undeath. Why has nobody bought it for pennies and turned it into something? Anything?

Crichton

Love this Michael Crichton quote on the art of the editor:

In my experience of writing, you generally start out with some overall idea that you can see fairly clearly, as if you were standing on a dock and looking at a ship on the ocean. At first you can see the entire ship, but then as you begin work you’re in the boiler room and you can’t see the ship anymore. All you can see are the pipes and the grease and the fittings of the boiler room and, you have to assume, the ship’s exterior. What you really want in an editor is someone who’s still on the dock, who can say, Hi, I’m looking at your ship, and it’s missing a bow, the front mast is crooked, and it looks to me as if your propellers are going to have to be fixed.

Also

• There are less than fifty working analog photo booths remaining in the world now – FotoAutomat are busy restoring them and oh boy are they pretty. The behind the scenes shots of their workshop is well worth a gander.
• Michael Crichton’s feedback on Chip Kidd’s Jurassic Park cover. Best fax ever.
• While London’s skyline continues to look like a tribute to Albert Steptoe’s teeth, Paris’ longstanding ban on buildings above 37 metres proves that cities don’t need skyscrapers to thrive.
• “They’re not actually about death, they’re about life” – Austin Kleon on getting motivated by reading the obituaries every morning.
• Jaap Biemans (aka CoverJunkie) talks to MagCulture about his new magazine cover exhibition The Originals, currently at Madé van Krimpen in Amsterdam. PLEASE BRING THIS TO THE UK, ANYONE.
• This photo by Julie Hamlin.
• Interesting interview with The Made Shop’s Marke Johnson about the design of the Poker Face opening titles, including one particularly lovely detail: that tiny copyright line – “[There was ] a back and forth with lawyers and legal, and even Natasha Lyonne got involved and went to bat for it. Everyone fought for this copyright block. It seemed like such a small thing, but in my mind, it makes it.”
• “If it moves, shoot it with a Canon”