“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it […]
Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beaton, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. With the singular goal of paying off her student […]
The Public Domain Review features new books and films that have come into the public domain in the US on Jan. 1, 2023. Read more here. Meanwhile, Duke University has a resource listing sound recordings as well and discussions of copyright and the public domain here.
At Slate, Dan Kois goes searching for poet and songwriter Rod McKuen. “I wanted to know who this incredibly famous poet was, and who his fans were, and how he was forgotten. I went searching for Rod McKuen, and I found a young man so hungry for fame […]
At The Hustle, Mark Dent writes about the history of “Easter eggs” at Atari. “Clayton had picked up a dot, a secret key, in a black castle and carried it back to an earlier room where the dot granted him access to a door. Inside the door was […]
At Smithsonian Magazine, Fritzi Kramer writes about the importance of recovering lost silent films. Read it here. “These lost films have a resonance beyond film history. They might offer historians an opportunity to see historical figures like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Teddy Roosevelt. They might feature real […]
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The Cultural Gutter 