There

Posts that focus on and link to the doings of others.

505 Posts

Josef Hoflehner's Jet Airliners

There's an airport in St. Maarten (SXM) that's famous for how close it is to the beach. Josef Hoflehner's got some spectacular shots of the planes coming and going.

You can view the whole series on Hoflehner's site.

For those of you who think these may be faked, or collages, here's an extraordinary vid of one landing (posted 9 years ago, so pre-mainstream-AI):

On Youtube you can also find vids of tourists intentionally standing behind the planes in order to be propelled by their exhausts during takeoff.


HebTroCo

The world needs more companies like HebTroCo, a shop run by two dudes from Hebden Bridge (that's in the UK):

10 years ago we had an idea in the pub. We’d found out that our town, Hebden Bridge, used to be known as Trouser Town. Was it possible to support small British manufacturers with production sized orders, and get more people wearing British made clothing? So we started with trousers. Now we’ve got shirts, jackets, boots and more, all made in factories up and down the UK.


Why Personal Websites Matter More Than Ever

Once again, Joan Westenberg hits it out of the park with Why Personal Websites Matter More Than Ever:

I don’t know why we talk about walled gardens. That seems to imply something beautiful, something worth defending. It conjures images of beautifully maintained flowerbeds protected from the outside world. But that’s not what Facebook built, what Instagram built, what Twitter built. They built paved, unshaded, barren hellscapes, trapped us in them, and surrounded us with guard towers and razor wire, intended to keep us in, not protect us from anyone else. There's no "garden" here.

You can read the whole thing on Westenberg, which, like A Tiny Bell, is powered by Ghost.


Albums App

For many years, I was an Android user. I could not find a decent music app for the platform, though I tried many. In 2023, I switched to iPhone because i wanted to use an Apple Watch for tracking sleep and other health metrics and you need an iPhone to use an Apple Watch.

Though I think Android is unquestionably a better-designed platform, Apple does have one (and only one) great music app: Albums, which is one more than Android. It functions fine in the free version but at $25 per year for the Premium version, I think it's well worth supporting.

The other day, Crucial Tracks posted a how-to: Finding New Releases Using the Albums App which is worth checking out if you use Albums.


Documentary Journalism For People, Not Profit — This is Evident

Evident is a nonprofit news organization producing documentary journalism for the public good. They put crews on the ground and cover crucial issues through in-depth cinematic reporting. Their journalism is accessible and transparent, driven by their mission to inform the public, not by profit incentives.

They just launched a few days ago. Looks like they're made up of former producers from Scripps, Vice, PBS, Bellingcat, and other reputable outlets.

You can subscribe to their Youtube channel; here's their launch trailer:


Takahē — Return to the Wild

I always love learning about new birds. The flightless Takahē is native to New Zealand and for many years was thought extinct. They were rediscovered in 1948 in a hidden value on the country's southern island and scientists are trying to boost the population. Gorgeous bird.

Here's a brief piece on them from TKSST:

When I was living in Vanuatu, I kept hearing a bird that made a sort of Woop-Woop noise. I never laid eyes on one and when I asked locals what they were called, I was told, "We just call them Woop Woop birds." Wish I'd had the Merlin bird ID app back then.


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