Search Results for: label/book reviews/page/5/2011/04/making-it

885 results

I’m Fed Up With Amazon

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Thoughtstylings
11 Comments
...(which has always been very generous to Kelly and I as authors–placing our books prominently and hosting a book launch event for us). Right now I’m left with a problem. I’ve got hundreds of Amazon links embedded on this site and need to ponder what I’m going to do about that. When Amazon dumped California-based affiliates a few years ago rather than pay their taxes I switched to Portland-based Powell’s partner program but nobody used it. I’ve also...

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Bonfire of the Billys

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Design
5 Comments
...uthor and woodworker Christopher Schwartz’s said in The Anarchist’s Design Book that, “it annoys me when I see an IKEA Billy bookshelf in a woodworker’s house.” Schwartz goes on to explain why, Yes, you get about 15 linear feet of shelving, plus a carcase that is ridiculously unstable. Only two shelves are fixed. So unless you secure the Billy to the wall (or other Billys), it will rack in short order . . . I say this with experience. When my wife...

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Dystopia Report: The I-710 Corridor Aesthetic Master Plan

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Design, Thoughtstylings
2 Comments
...may be the best ever proof of the thesis of David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs book, that perhaps half of all people in Western countries are engaged in useless, soul-sucking office work. I mean, spend a moment appreciating the visual chaos that is this image. Ask yourself if it has any purpose whatsoever other than fulfilling some checkbox on a list of meaningless public engagement metrics. What possible purpose does this slide fulfill? Then apprecia...

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Inside the Internet Archive: A Meat World Tour

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Thoughtstylings
...he building, our tour guide showed us the contraption they use to digitize books. He noted that the majority of the books they digitize are sent to the Philippines and digitized with cheaper labor. You can donate books and other materials to the Archive. They have an app that will tell you if they need a particular item and will sometimes pay for shipping. The Internet Archive is a throwback to the heady, more optimistic days of the Internet famil...

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Sorting the Digital Photos of a Digital Pandemic

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Thoughtstylings
...t fondling. Unlike the Matrix there’s no neat way out of the mirror house postmodernity of the eXistenZ universe. Ariadne has left no thread to escape the maze. The best you can do is to map the territory. Towards that end, instead of a photo sorting app, I’ll leave you with two book recommendations: K-punk : the collected and unpublished writings of Mark Fisher which contains the essay on eXistenZ that inspired this post (I’d recommend reading hi...

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