• Maciej is at it again, studying Arabic this time
  "Arabic… twists healthy minds in twelve ways…" (beautifully illuminated)
  (tags: language)

• B-Bender: Clarence White to Marty Stuart
  forgetting the sartorial solecisms, and listening past the twang, the musicianship here is pretty remarkable
  (tags: musics)
• NASA's view of Antarctic ice movement
  "…a map of every glacier on the continent, down to its individual shape and flow velocity, illustrating how water melting in the interior of the continent makes its way out to the coasts…" via Gizmodo
  (tags: visualization climate)
• Mapping the Republic of Letters
  Athanasius Kircher's eyes are just the FIRST reason to explore this marvelous site
  (tags: literature communication network)

• Who is Bifton?
  …ridin' the upside-down turnip truck to Tuscaloosa…
  (tags: euphemisms dialects)

• Geoffrey K. Pullum on Jamaican Creole
  [Mi na gweng mek piipl afa dem kament-dem, nat fi nuobadi. Nebba, unu onastan?]
  (tags: dialects language argybargy)

• Maggie K-B on 21 xii 2012
  Nice summary of how mythos arises/is propagated, especially worth reading for skeptical souls… NB the Pizza Effect
  (tags: anthropology syncretism mythos millenarianism)

• The Art of Nomography I: Geometric Design
  oh what fun, and see Parts 2 and 3…
  (tags: visualization mathematics)

• A Thousand Fascinations: Massachusetts 1677
  lovely presentation of a different perspective on what's IMPORTANT in New England
  (tags: geospatial New_england mapping)
• 20 years ago, via Mike Wesch
  "…As a society, we continue trending toward individualism and superficiality even as we value connection, community, and authenticity. We disengage from community, social action, and politics. We amuse ourselves to death. And the most amazing collaboration and creativity machine ever created celebrates its 20th anniversary as a distraction device…"
  (tags: learning anthropology wesch)
• Data Visualization: Journalism's Voyage West
  "…plots over 140,000 newspapers published over three centuries in the United States"
  (tags: visualization newspapers map nacirema)

• Oh, well said, Tomdispatch!
  "It’s as if Washington’s leading political players, aided and abetted by the media’s love of the horserace, had eaten LSD-laced brownies, then gone on stage before an audience of millions to enact a psychotic spectacle of American decline…" But READ THE WHOLE THING
  (tags: argybargy nacirema)
• Viaductal Hubris
  good old Shorpy, always something to ponder (and how would YOU like to take a train across that thread? …but don't miss the link to a 2009 article on its longevity!)
  (tags: engineering)

• Something Frozen
  lovely little essay on imaginary cartography
  (tags: geospatial scifi cartography)
• In which Anything is tried once
  hollow laughter…
  (tags: thanatos musics)

Being a fallen-away Twitterer (I played with it for a short time in the early days, but couldn’t find myself in its truncated format), all I do is follow a few people who seem to have figured out personally-relevant adaptations to the service. One from (or is it retweeted by) Bryan Alexander brought me up short:

The macropocalypse isn’t a tiny, momentary debt (policy) crisis. It’s the unravelling of the global macroeconomy. Just a friendly reminder.

Yup. That’s exactly right. Not that a ‘deal’ between President and Congress could do much more than BandAid the unravelling…