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Celestial bling
The “Dream Income” blog is devoted to archiving spam. Actually, the posts are nothing more than the header to the spam, then the message text — as if the spam itself were writing the blog.
It’s quite hilarious to look at, partly because it looks like a real blog, written by a real person. And that reminds us of the most salient fact about spam, which is that quite apart from it being a huge annoyance, it’s also the world’s largest and most successful Turing Test ever: A mass communication by robotized life forms desperately attempting to pose as human.
More significantly, the blog rocks because it is keeping an archive of spam. That’s actually a rather valuable service. Because who saves spam? Hell, I’m one of the few freaks that actually regularly reads his spam, just because I’m interested in it; but not even I save copies of them. The end result is that this no central “Library of Spam”; this enormous cultural explosion of hucksterism is not really being recorded anywhere, and in a purely academic sense, that’s sad. It’s the same way many pieces of pop culture were treated. Public libraries didn’t save copies of comic books, penny dreadfuls, or pop CDs either, and so much of that incredibly rich history is hard to find too.
(Thanks to Jonathan Korman for this one!)
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
The “Milky Way Transit Authority” map
Should automobile software be open-sourced?
My Bookforum review of Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget”
Molecular secrets of the “iron-plated snail”
» visit the Collision Detection archives
January 31, 2010 » 07:29 PM
V. A. To me death seems to be an evil.
M. What, to those who are already dead? or to those who must die?
A. To both.
M. It is a misery, then, because an evil?
A. Certainly.
M. Then those who have already died, and those who have still got to die, are both miserable?
A. So it appears to me.
M. Then all are miserable?
A. Every one.
January 24, 2010 » 03:22 PM
One of the more interesting trends is family, which came in at number five. Specifically, discussion about family, moms, dads, daughters, etc. jumped during 2009. With Facebook users getting older, this isn’t a big surprise. However, the fact that the mention of “kids” jumped by a factor of five this year is rather dramatic. It’s tough to know what this means, though. (via Facebook Unveils Most-Mentioned Topics of 2009
)
January 15, 2010 » 01:36 PM
BEYOND AWESOME. They are announcing a recall of the Plush Uterus “due to a potential choking hazard for children”. To apply for it, “Please send an email to the address below with the subject line, ‘UTERUS OPT OUT’”.
January 14, 2010 » 10:04 PM
“To order, please TYPE “YES” IN CHECKBOX BELOW TO AGREE YOU UNDERSTAND THIS PLUSH MUST BE KEPT AWAY FROM KIDS (it is a sex organ, after all). If it is not checked, WE WILL NOT SEND THE UTERUS.” (via @ibogost)
January 11, 2010 » 01:45 PM
I watched Space: 1999 back in the day, but I swear to god I do not remember this scene.
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