- Suuuuper intriguing line of thought in this 🧵 by Adrian Hon: Theory: QAnon is popular partly because the act of “researching” it through obscure forums and videos and blog posts, though more time-consuming than watching TV, is actually *more enjoyable* because it’s an active process. Game-like, even; or ARG-like, certainly.
- Followed up by an equally smart 🧵 by his brother Dan Hon: That rush of “making sense of something” and sharing it in a social sense is right there in QAnon. QAnon is a massively multiplayer, distributed, bottom-up, undirected effort that is strikingly gamelike and has its tendrils now in politics and is a threat to public safety.
- 🇵🇹 💯 After coronavirus, Lisbon is getting rid of Airbnb and turning short-term holiday rentals into homes for key workers. “Prioritising affordable housing for the hospital staff, transport workers, teachers and thousands of others who provide our essential services is possible. We’re offering to pay landlords to turn thousands of short-term lets into “safe rent” homes for key workers. ”
- 🇦🇹 🚆 Austrian Airlines increases AIRail offering between Salzburg and Vienna Airport for greater climate protection. “Austrian Airlines and the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) are expanding their ‘Train to Plane’ offering several times over. Starting on 20 July 2020, up to 31 AIRail trains will be operated each day between Salzburg Central Station and Vienna Airport. This comprises more than a tenfold increase compared to the previous average of three rail connections per day.”
- 📀 The Electronic Whole Earth Catalog : Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, Broderbund Software : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming. “The Electronic Whole Earth Catalog is a very early CD-ROM presentation of The Whole Earth Catalog. Utilising HyperCard, The Electronic Whole Earth Catalog consists of over 9000 cards connected to one another with hypertext; essentially the web before the web existed, but offline! ”
- 🖥 📷 Vintage computer 🧵 by Marcin Wichary I’ve been trying to find a good photo of a 1970s/1980s microcomputer store for my book and I haven’t had great luck – but sharing what I found so far could make for an interesting thread!
- 🚜 Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts of CO2 from air. “The rock dust approach, called enhanced rock weathering (ERW), has several advantages, the researchers say. First, many farmers already add limestone dust to soils to reduce acidification, and adding other rock dust improves fertility and crop yields, meaning application could be routine and desirable…. Basalt is the best rock for capturing CO2, and many mines already produce dust as a byproduct, so stockpiles already exist.”
- 🇯🇵 🔋 Nissan Pioneer Touts Resin Battery That’s 90% Cheaper to Make. “Horie’s innovation is to replace the battery’s basic components — metal-lined electrodes and liquid electrolytes — with a resin construction. He says this approach dramatically simplifies and speeds up manufacturing, making it as easy as ‘buttering toast.’ It allows for 10-meter-long battery sheets that can be stacked on top of each other ‘like seat cushions’ to increase capacity, he said. Importantly, the resin-based batteries are also resistant to catching fire when punctured.”
Note — Jul 12, 2020