Week wrap-up: Oct 20
Here is what I've been enjoying this week!
Debutniverse
I forget where I found this - a neocities site reviewing the first episode of a bunch of retro animated childrens' TV shows. First episodes only!! My husband and I had a great time looking through the list and checking out the reviews of shows he used to watch as a kid. (I really only watched a small number of shows as a kid and none of them are in this list.) Each review has an incredibly detailed blow by blow description of the plot, and a lot of gifs. Check it out!
Bop Spotter
I completely forget where I heard about this online but I did hear about it from someone online so if that is you, thank you. It a commentary on "shot spotter" technology used by cops, software developer Riley Walz has put a cheap Android running Shazam 24/7 on a pole in San Francisco. The site reports any music someone plays below the box. I have been checking it for days, but there was a very long period of time where it did not "spot" any "bops" at all, so I wasn't sure if it was working. But it seems like it worked today! 14 minutes ago as I write this, it spotted a Shakira song.
“Praise Dobler” Means More Than You Think to More People Than You’d Expect
This article is an interview with Praise Dobler, a Philadelphia street artist who praises a 1970s American football player named Dobler. The interview covers why this artist praises Dobler specifically, and what it's like doing street art in Philly.
blockygraphics
This blog from Katherine St Asaph was something I found through the cohost shutdown blog sharing spree - just a lot of old image files from 90s art asset packs. I love what remains for us of the "multimedia" era... the picks here are fun. I love the shots of little 3D scenes in particular.
What Happens Next
Some friends of mine started talking about this webcomic recently - I've been following it for a while now, and artist/author Max Graves continues to hit an absurdly high quality bar with every new plot arc. The trigger warnings are For Real... but if you choose to read this you will absolutely be impressed by the clarity and power of his observations about tumblr, online life in general, and the way that the violence you might experience on the internet intersects and contrasts with the violence many young queer people experience day to day offline. I reread it all this week and I was impressed all over again. It's teaching me a lot about how great comics are at depicting the internet, particularly in comparison to movies. Comics give you the time to read a lot of text, and the 2D plane of a screen obviously works well in a 2D visual artform. Anyway, read this! It's great!