Nov 6, 2016

Commonplace Reading - Issue #14

By Adam Tinworth • Issue #14 • View online

Blah blah…sorry it’s been so long…blah blah.

Yeah, been busy (and tired). Since the middle of the summer, my feet have barely touched the ground (pretty literally - I’ve spent over 48 hours in flight over the last four months), and so any time for anything beyond my family and my paying work has been scarce,

But I like doing this, and want to do this - but I can’t promise weekly any more. It’ll arrive when it arrives.

Enjoy.

The Long Read

Trans-Siberian Railway 100th anniversary: Tales from Moscow to Vladivostok

Beautiful interactive feature. Love it.

www.ibtimes.co.uk • Share

Digital Dilemmas

What Its Like To Date Instagram Star, Instagram Husband

Part relationship, part business partner. How would you feel about getting a salary from your social media star other half?

www.refinery29.com • Share

How the Web Became Unreadable

Nice piece from Kevin Marks about how a certain view of design is eroding the usability of the web. We need to walk back from this.

backchannel.com • Share

Politics (Petrifying)

Politics is pretty horrifying right now. It feels as if the fundamentals of democracy are pretty shaky on both sides of the channel. And that’s all the more reason to engage with thoughtful writing on the subject.

Inside The Strange, Paranoid World Of Julian Assange

James’s account is one of the first to match up with what I’ve heard from others who were within Assange’s circle during the early days of Wikileaks. It goes a long way to explaining how we ended up where we are now.

www.buzzfeed.com • Share

Milo Yiannopoulos Is the Pretty, Monstrous Face of the Alt-Right

A horrifying look into the poster child of the alt right. I remember the days when he was just trying to be a tech and politics guy for The Telegraph. I kinda wish he’d stayed there.

www.bloomberg.com • Share

Dilbert creator Scott Adams gets Trump like no one else.

WARNING: this article may destroy your enjoyment of Dilbert forever.

www.slate.com • Share

This is the End. (But maybe in a good way.)

A compelling case that the real heart of Brexit is a collapse in the British public’s trust in our democracy. And, if that’s the case, the only solutions available are drastic ones.

medium.com • Share

Media Matters

Here’s What Happened When I Gave Up Following The News For A Week

Basically, life got better. Are we over-informing ourselves? It’s a pretty challenging idea as we create ever-greater volumes of content.

www.fastcompany.com • Share

Russell Davies: Amateurs and experts

A short - very short read - that accidentally captures the problem with journalism in the digital age.

russelldavies.typepad.com • Share

You're only a journalist if Twitter and Facebook say so.

Hugely popular piece I wrote about the way that Facebook and Twitter have found themselves - partially through their own actions - as the arbitrators of who is and isn’t a journalist.

www.onemanandhisblog.com • Share

15 Not Out

15 years as a blogger

This week, I hit my 15 years as a blogger. I did the maths, and worked out that many of my students were in primary school when I started. Frightening.

www.onemanandhisblog.com • Share

An Email History of the 2001 iPod Launch

Talking of 15th anniversaries, the iPod is a little over 15 years old. This trail through old e-mails reveals a very different Apple and tech world to the one we know today. I enjoyed the Bill Gates cameo in particular.

backchannel.com • Share

Photographic Life

The iPhone 7 Plus vs. the original iPhone: a camera showdown

It’s really, really easy to forget just how bad the original iPhone’s camera was - and how far we’ve come in less than a decade.

www.theverge.com • Share

Fisherman Catches Dead GoPro, Finds Final Moments on SD Card

I’m such a sucker for this stuff. The advent of the action cam means we’re getting to see all sorts of things we never would have without them - often by accident.

petapixel.com • Share