Two weeks ago I asked Twitter if anyone had favourite obscure and/or delightful library or archival words. Here are some of the best replies:
Tête-bêche: From philately, meaning printed upside down or sideways relative to another. (Tara Robertson)
Respect des fonds: A principle in archival theory that proposes to group collections of archival records according to their
fonds — that is to say, according to the administration, organization, individual, or entity by which they were created or from which they were received. (Ed Summers)
Realia: Objects and material from everyday life. (Deb Chachra)
Netflix’s BoJack Horseman was quickly put on many people’s radars when the newest season released in September addressed asexuality. During the new season, Todd Chavez
explicitly comes out to BoJack saying that he is asexual. As someone who is asexual, this representation means a lot to me. Not only am I actually being represented, but he
specifically said the word asexual multiple times. Even though it had seemed the series was building to this scene, I still did not expect it to deliver. It was first indicated
during the season three episode “Love And/Or Marriage,” when Todd rejected having sex with his friend, Emily. Initially watching this scene I did not have asexuality on my mind. I
just came to terms with the fact that asexuality was something that would never be represented in media. Naturally, I explained it away as Todd likely being interested in another
person and feeling like he would be “cheating” on said person if he were to sleep with Emily. But this arc gets a more definitive continuation in the season three finale, “That Went
Well,” when Todd tells Emily, “I’m not gay. At least I don’t think I am, but I don’t think I’m straight either. I don’t know what I am. I think I might be nothing.” This scene and
everything it stands for took BoJack Horseman from a show I enjoyed to one of my favorite shows of all time. Throughout the yearlong wait for season four, I constantly
watched this scene. I rewatched it at least once a week, and more often than not, I cried while watching…
London’s Deputy Mayor for Transport avoids early morning meetings because she relies on Southern Rail to get into the office.
Val Shawcross’ office was trying to set up a meeting and in an email wrote: “Val actually is a morning person but has to use Southern trains to get in to the office so we try not to
have too many early starts.”
I see you’ve changed your Twitter handle, @librarybilkent! Your site still looks like you’ve #stolen the #webdesign from @bodleianlibs, though (and changed the license to a
#CreativeCommons one, although the fact you forgot to change the #GoogleAnalytics ID is a giveaway…).
My dinner-party party piece for many years was to say, “Well, actually, I invented Baileys. You know, Baileys Irish Cream. I did that back in 1973.”
If one of the unfortunate listening group is a woman – and this is based on actual past experience – she is likely to respond something like this: “Oh-my-God. Baileys. My mother
absolutely adores it. Did you hear that, Jocasta? This man invented Baileys. It’s unreal. I don’t believe it. He must be terribly rich. Baileys Cream. Wow!”
And it’s not as if these rather posh people really adore Baileys. Or even hold it in the same esteem as, say, an obscure Islay single malt or a fine white burgundy from Meursault. Not
a bit of it. They might have respected it years ago but most people of legal drinking age regard Baileys as a bit naff. To my mind, they’d be very wrong…
In January 2016, I spent $3,000 to buy 7.4 bitcoins. At the time, it seemed an entirely worthwhile thing to do. I had recently started working as a research director at the Institute
for the Future’s Blockchain Futures Lab, and I wanted firsthand experience with bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that uses a blockchain to record transactions on its network. I had no way of
knowing that this transaction would lead to a white-knuckle scramble to avoid losing a small fortune…
HANOI, Vietnam — I first visited the United States in the summer of 1998, when I was invited to attend a literary conference in Montana with four other Vietnamese writers. We flew
from Hanoi to Taiwan to Los Angeles. As we crossed the Pacific Ocean, passing through many time zones, I buried myself in sleep and woke up only when the plane hit the tarmac. At
passport control, we found ourselves in a huge hall, and I was abruptly taken aback: There were Americans all around us, lots of them! I will never forget that strange feeling. It was
bizarre, unbelievable, surreal, that I, a veteran of the Vietnamese People’s Army, was in the United States, surrounded by Americans.
The first time I ever saw Americans was when I was 12 years old. It wasn’t actually blond-haired, blue-eyed Americans that I was seeing up close. The Americans I saw that day were F-4
Phantom bombers, brutally attacking small towns on the shore of Ha Long Bay. It was Aug. 5, 1964, and I was at the beach on a school trip, swimming with my classmates. That was right
after the Tonkin Gulf incident, the day President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his decision to expand the war throughout Vietnam…
Before the year 2014, there were many people using Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Today, there are still many people using services from those three tech giants (respectively, GOOG,
FB, AMZN). Not much has changed, and quite literally the user interface and features on those sites has remained mostly untouched. However, the underlying dynamics of power on the Web
have drastically changed, and those three companies are at the center of a fundamental transformation of the Web.
It looks like nothing changed since 2014, but GOOG and FB now have direct influence over 70%+ of internet traffic.
Internet activity itself hasn’t slowed down. It maintains a steady growth, both in amount of users and amount of websites…
This is a story of a country that journeyed from rags to riches and back to rags. It’s a cautionary tale of what happens when a nation exploits its natural resources at the expense of
people’s lives…
MOST SONGS give you only one perspective: She will always love you. Billie Jean was not his lover. You can check out of “Hotel California” but you
can never leave.
But popular music history is studded with the occasional duet that serves more of a purpose than simply an excuse for the existence of cool harmonies, or to provide an opportunity for
Paula Abdul to dance around with an anthropomorphized rapping cartoon cat—no offense, MC Skat
Kat (and Posse). These duets actually use the form to explore two different, often dueling, perspectives on the same relationship…often, relationships in which men are getting called
out on their bullshit.
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri[1] (which we fondly refer to here as SMAC,
both as an acronym and in reference to its potent addictive properties) opens in an odd way for a science fiction game. Most such games open with spaceships, star travel,
or some futuristic technology. They seek to hook the imagination. But our game begins much more humbly.
SMAC begins with a largely static image of the stars as a woman reads a passage from the book of Genesis, telling the story of man’s final and irrevocable expulsion from the Garden of
Eden. The reading goes on for about twenty seconds, which is long enough for the lack of action to be quite noticeable. The effect is that we, the players, are being
invited to join the woman in literary contemplation. This, in and of itself, is a strange thing to find in a game – and a strategy game, no less!
The attentive viewer will notice that as the woman ends her quotation, she cites her source as “The Conclave Bible, Datalinks”. Odd … one would normally expect chapter and verse
from a bible quote. What are the Datalinks? And which edition is the Conclave Bible?
There isn’t much time to dwell on those questions, though. As the woman finishes, the music strikes up and we are treated to a series of disjointed images from the Earth we
know. The context isn’t clear, but the message certainly is. These are scenes of chaos: fire; military equipment; rioting crowds; nuclear explosions; escalating debt –
each one flashes by just after it has time to register. The world is out of control. It’s literally on fire. And it’s hurtling toward calamity…
