#/in this case it was via seeing artwork then realising that they were that twitter user

[mjm5655]

just saying, if you the kind of person who attacks someone for things they don't even do, you are not welcomed on this blog. i will block, & avoid interactions with you.

[sherlockedfanshani]

Johnlock: Two years on

I posted the following on a Sherlock fan forum in August 2016. I’ve just found it again and revisited it. It thought it might be interesting to reflect on how things have panned out in the Sherlock fandom: 

OK if you can bear with me, this is a long one! I wanted to set down some thoughts on this whole situation, which - frankly - I think has become a bit of a mess. Whether it can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction at this stage I think is unlikely, but who knows?! As far as I can see it, there are two entrenched sides now: TJLC shippers on one, TPTB on the other, and other fans - both non-Johnlockers and Johnlockers who don’t want or don’t expect their ship to become canon - caught somewhere in the middle. This is just my personal interpretation. I realise others will see things very differently so please accept that my intention is only to try and set things out in a non-inflammatory way. I will set my cards on the table from the start. I don’t think it is or has ever been Steven Moffat & Mark Gatiss’ intention for Sherlock and John to enter into a romantic or a sexual relationship in their version of this story. I take at face value what they have said about addressing the fact that, in the 21st century, two close male friends living together would make some people question whether their relationship was more than platonic. And that, combined with the fact that both Moffat & Gatiss’ careers began in comedy and sitcoms, the way they have explored this in ‘Sherlock’ has mostly been through humour. That humour, incidentally, is never at the expense of gay people or gay relationships. If anything it’s a gentle mockery of any characters (Mrs Hudson, Angelo, the innkeepers in THOB) who make erroneous assumptions. In fact, humour is derived from the notion that homosexuality is so unremarkable these days. Therefore characters automatically jump to the conclusion that what Sherlock and John are gay, simply because such a close male friendship is more unusual! Do I think the “gay jokes” are always successful? Not entirely. Even Gatiss is on record as having said maybe they overdid them. However, I don’t think for a moment that they ever expected any section of their audience to interpret these occasional moments in each episode as hints or subtext that Sherlock and John would actually get together as a couple. So what happened way back in 2010? The show airs and becomes a bigger hit than Moffat & Gatiss could ever have imagined. At some stage it becomes clear to them that the show is attracting a very devoted collection of predominantly young and predominantly female fans. And via social media interaction, the creators become aware that for this fanbase, the largest part of the appeal of the show is the relationship between John and Sherlock. I’ve no idea if they’d heard of slash fiction and shipping before it became such a phenomenon in the Sherlock fandom, but presumably they became aware pretty rapidly. In the early days, the cast and crew responded in different ways whenever the fourth wall was broken and they were confronted with the Johnlock-related stories, photo manips and artwork that the fandom was producing. Initially they seemed amused and even played along. However, their responses to some of the more explicit, NSFW stuff that was shoved in their faces - either by fans or by journalists such as Caitlin Moran or Graham Norton - was less genial, and you got the definite sense that they weren’t entirely comfortable. The image of these fans that was being presented then was that they were hysterical, teenage, heterosexual girls: unable or unwilling to have physical, real-world relationships of their own, and fantasising about two men getting together for their titillation in much the same cliched way that straight men fantasise over lesbians. (Note: I’m not saying this was the reality - just the perception which was promoted all the time and which presumably TPTB also inherited.) So their responses began to shift. The creators have always said that fans are absolutely at liberty to write or create whatever they like. To my knowledge they have stood by that. No legal action of any kind has ever been threatened against any of the Sherlock fanbase for anything they have written, drawn or photoshopped. They have even expressed admiration for some of the artwork. However, they definitely took a step back and cooled on this stuff. Over time, both Gatiss and Moffat’s attitude towards and relationship with online fanbases has definitely suffered. They are fans themselves as they frequently remind us. Massive fans. And although there was no ‘Sherlock’ when they were younger and growing up, there was of course the other big TV show that has shaped their careers: ‘Doctor Who’. Remember, they are from a different generation. When they were kids, teenagers, even young men, the fan experience was totally different and almost entirely passive. You couldn’t post your opinions on a massive global forum, there was practically no way to contact other fans outside your immediate geographic locality, and there was no way of contacting the people who made the series, or at least certainly no way of guaranteeing they could see what you wrote or elicit a reply from them. Maybe this means that they haven’t adapted to the way modern fandom works. Maybe it means that as middle-aged men, they expect their fanbases to be more respectful and more passive, and ultimately to accept what they are given or, alternatively, exercise the only other option: stop watching and walk away. So what do they experience in this brave new world? Steven Moffat takes over the show-running job on ‘Doctor Who’, and has a colossal amount of vitriol flung at him by its fanbase. So much so that he decides to quit twitter altogether. He’s also routinely accused of misogyny, to the point where he is forced to give interviews rebutting the notion. I’m not going to get into whether or not the claims have any validity, I’m just trying to make the case for why he he may appear prickly or thin-skinned when it comes to criticism in general. Fan interaction also complicates matters just because the vocabulary that fans use is different. Young fans tweet “u lil shit” to Mark Gatiss in the way they would to their friends, and this is unsurprisingly not interpreted in the way it is intended. Offence is caused, people are blocked, and more barriers are erected between TPTB and the people who love and are inspired by their work. At some point, attitudes within fandom began to shift. Rather than just shipping two characters whose relationship nobody ever believed would become canon, many of the online/tumblr fanbase began to believe that Johnlock could and should do so. The notion took hold that if Gatiss were solely in charge of the show, this would indeed happen, and it was only Moffat - the nasty heterosexual - who was getting in the way. Gatiss was tweeted countless times to this effect. Only recently, someone on tumblr discovered an old League of Gentlemen sketch where Gatiss plays a gay character whose relationship (and its subsequent break-up) is fetishised and patronised by an overbearing straight woman called Tish. Whilst this sketch is problematic and can certainly be viewed as being misogynistic on some level, I don’t think it’s stretching credulity to speculate that ‘Tish’ is probably based on a real-life person and that Gatiss was indulging in some therapy by yelling at her on stage night after night. Did Gatiss connect this person with the Johnlock shippers? Did it seem to him that he was now having his professional career diminished by a bunch of pubescent teenage girls with a crush on Benedict Cumberbatch who counted him amongst their number “shipping Johnlock”? It also presumptuously placed him in the position of junior partner to his straight colleague Moffat, banning him from writing what he really wants. Another patronising assumption. This is total speculation, but I wonder if John’s vehement “I am NOT GAY!” to Mrs Hudson in the Gatiss-penned “The Empty Hearse” was provoked by all the online speculation directed at Gatiss via his twitter feed. Was this intended as the ultimate response - to shut down the Johnlock debate once and for all? Ironically, of course, it had the opposite effect. It was interpreted that Mrs Hudson was the ultimate Johnlock shipper, and she of course could see the fact staring in her face that John and Sherlock were simply made for each other! Then we come to Mumbai in 2014. And Gatiss - in a departure from the creators’ habitually evasive and jokey means of answering questions about forthcoming plot points - embarks on a lengthy and heartfelt explanation/justification when he is questioned about Johnlock. I’ve watched this video more than once and I can’t interpret his speech as anything other than sincere. And this is also why I think Gatiss and Moffat’s reactions to whenever Johnlock is raised are becoming more irritable, more frustrated and with none of the playfulness they exhibit everywhere else. Gatiss must be aware of the accusations of “queerbaiting”. They have appeared on his twitter feed, apart from anything else. And just as Moffat feels hypersensitive to accusations of misogyny, Gatiss must surely feel the same way about being accused of effectively betraying his community and having internalised homophobia. He tries to set the record state but what happens? He still isn’t believed. Of course, a big part of this is a problem entirely of Moffat and Gatiss’ making. When you spend the bulk of interviews smugly declaring that you lie to protect future plot points, you can’t then be surprised when your fans don’t then believe you about other things: no matter how impassioned or frustrated you might sound. They really have made a rod for their own backs. The With An Accent journalist detected a difference in tone and attitude to the Johnlock denials compared to other obfuscations about plot, but if you’re not in the room, AND it’s not something you want to hear, why would you believe them? Johnlockers have varying degrees of expectation of their ship becoming canon, ranging from those who want it to remain strictly in their own heads and never be actualised on the show, via those who think it would be nice but is unlikely, through to those who desperately want it to be but remain unsure. And then we have TJLC. TJLC is a conspiracy in the truest sense of the word. Every piece of data is viewed through the prism of an utter conviction that not only should Johnlock happen, it will. Costume choices, set designs, drinks, lighting, everything is presented as evidence of confirmation of Johnlock, and some of it in the most convoluted way, with no acknowledgment that there could be any other possible interpretation for what appears on screen. A coincidentally commissioned survey into LGB representation is cited as conclusive proof, as well as a quote from Gatiss from an interview years ago that the way to introduce more LGBT representation is “softly, softly”, so as not to frighten the horses, so that everyone just sees it as mundane, everyday and normal. Ironically, if the conspiracy is true, and Johnlock is ultimately going to be the ‘big reveal’, that would be precisely the opposite approach to what Gatiss describes. It would make gay representation into a sensational shock twist, just like Mary’s reveal as the assassin or Jim from IT being Moriarty. That’s not treating LGBT issues with the respect they deserve in my eyes, and maybe that’s what Moffat is getting at when he describes that approach as ‘trivialising’. The TJLCers express the certainty that such a shock reveal would shake the foundations of society to its core, and it would be such a landmark, water cooler moment, that TV and gay representation, and indeed society itself, would never be the same again. Even if I remotely believed Johnlock were on the cards, I actually think the reverse would happen. The show would be universally derided as having ‘jumped the shark’. Not because its viewers are homophobic or resistant to the idea of gay couples, just because it would genuinely come out of nowhere for them. It would be perceived as pandering to a tiny minority of its fanbase - that is for those few of the general audience who are even aware that this is what some of the fans expect from the show. And for the vast majority of the audience it would come completely out of the blue and be utterly confusing. After all, in their eyes, at no point in the show, have John or Sherlock ever exhibited any kind of sexual attraction to another man. And this is another problem, and I’m sad to say, feeds into the sense of entitlement which some fans do exhibit. ‘Sherlock’ is a massive, mainstream, worldwide hit show. It is very easy to forget that in the little bubble of tumblr where you’re speaking to a self-selected group of people who all feel the same way and all agree with you. But the online fanbase is a tiny minority of the people who watch the show. Threats to ‘desert it’ and expect that to hold any weight with the creators really are meaningless. It’s not a niche, cult show where a fan can expect to stamp her feet and automatically get her wish. To put it bluntly, when your worldwide viewership is in the hundreds of millions, if a few thousand storm off because their ship is not actualised, it really makes no difference. What really makes me sad is that I can’t see any way that this is not going to end horribly for some people. I don’t think Gatiss and Moffat realise that - whatever it may have been to begin with - the fanbase now, or at least the ultra-ardent TJLC part of the fanbase, contains a number of young people who identify as LGBTQIA. For these young people - again predominantly women but also with a number of trans, non-binary and gender queer members - they feel their sexuality, their gender and indeed their whole identity has been helped and in some cases shaped by ‘Sherlock’: specifically by their conviction that Johnlock will be realised in the show. Watching the youtube video TJLCExplained Episode 25 “Why it matters” gives a glimpse into the passion and the desperate certainty these people have. It grieves me to see these bright, passionate, articulate and intelligent young people ploughing their energies into this conspiracy. They’re politically aware: educated in and fired up by gender politics and sexual awareness. So why waste all that energy and passion on two white, middle-class, middle-aged fictional men who - if the conspiracy is correct - are so far into the closet they have been unable to express their true feelings emotionally or sexually for many years to the one person they have shared a home with in all that time? I wish Gatiss and Moffat could see these inspired yet vulnerable people. I wonder what they would think. Would they be gratified that their show has had such a profound and positive effect on their fans? Or would they be sad or bewildered that these young people’s convictions have foundations built on sand? I’m not sure how or when it will end. Of the TJLCers who were fully signed up theorists before last week’s interview dropped, I have observed a couple of reactions. A few of them seem to have now been convinced that it isn’t going to happen and have already expressed disappointment and anger that they were duped or queerbaited. Presumably if they do feel so betrayed, this marks the end of their relationship with the show. However, most of the fan responses I have seen on tumblr have assimilated the new data as ‘yet more lies’ and rejected it, along with anything else that does not fit the conspiracy, whilst at the same time reserving some anger at the way Moffat and Gatiss spoke in order to protect their great ‘lie’. So what happens in five months’ time when Series 4 airs and - as I fully expect - Johnlock doesn’t happen? Will there be an explosion of rage and bitterness which will make last week’s little flare-up look minor in comparison? Or will the conspiracy continue on the basis that Series 5 is the ultimate destination? Or the special after that? Or the one after that? Until sufficient time elapses and everyone moves on? Only time will tell. It just makes me sad that fandom - which should be a positive, happy place - and which, when everything works, means friendships are made and creativity flourishes - can and has become such a toxic environment for both fans and creators. I’m sorry this has been so long and I apologise if I have offended anyone with either what I said or the way I said it. I guess I wanted to lay out my position - to clarify it in my own mind if nothing else!  

[jackcliu]

On tokens, markets, and a path to a real-time economy

Two years ago on March 1, 2019, I posted a Letter to my future self to the Bitcoin blockchain. This is the story of that letter, one where I didn’t write a word, and how two years later, the dream is still alive. There is an actual path with tokens and markets to make utopia a reality, and my case for what that might look like. 



About a month prior to March 1, 2019, I had privately begun telling my close friends, colleagues, and family that I was going to be making a significant career and life change and dedicate the next chapter of my career towards building exclusively for the Bitcoin SV blockchain. You can guess the confused looks and concerns people had about what it was I was doing. Did I lose my mind? To be fair, I still get those messages today. I knew what I had envisioned when I first read the white paper back in 2013 and somewhere along that journey, the crypto industry had taken a path that veered dramatically from the one I had imagined. With Bitcoin having course corrected twice already via hard forks, I wanted and needed a guiding compass - a North Star. That’s when I had the idea to write a letter to my future self.

I confided in one of my best friends, Jackie to help me write it. It was a busy month for me, my mind was all over the place and I needed help. Over two afternoons, I shared with Jackie what I wanted to say, what was the possible world that I imagined. To her I must have been repeating myself since she and many of my friends had heard this for a decade. The future would bring Proof of Work from a term to describe a computer science thing to one that would describe the workings of the entire global economy and drive a seismic shift in how value was created and how we humans would interact and cooperate with one another. I wanted her to include a thank you to some people who helped me along the way - titans of the industry whom I was fortunate to cross paths and work with. Jesse Powell, gave me my first job at Kraken. CZ hired me to OKCoin in 2014. Star believed in me and gave me so many growth opportunities. At Circle, I worked with my long time friend Dan, who would go on to create CMS. A few days later, Jackie sent me a draft. I was pretty shocked at first, thinking hey this doesn’t even say Bitcoin in it. Where are all the names I wanted to include. Then I read it another time and when she asked if I wanted any changes or if the approach was right, I said, “Let’s not change a single word”. It was different, it was exceptional, to me it was perfect. I sent the letter internally as part of my Circle resignation email, flew off to San Antonio with my parents to watch the retirement ceremony of my favourite basketball player Manu Ginobili, and then a month later on April Fools Day, RelayX was launched.

Having this Letter out there has served me well. Nobody could have expected the course of events of the past two years both within BitCoin, and the world at large. Politics, COVID-19, money-printing, delistings, court cases, you name it. Without it as an anchor, I might have lost sight of the bigger picture. If you would have asked me then what BitCoin would look like today, I would have predicted a 100x rosier picture than the current situation. Despite most of the boom in the cryptocurrency industry having not occurred on the Bitcoin SV blockchain, the rapid adoption of blockchain and digital currencies from NFTs to DeFi, to institutions putting BTC on the balance sheet shows the underlying movement is in full force. Just this week, I watched sharpshooter JJ Redick utter the words “non fungible token, and blockchain technology” on his podcast talking about NBA Topshot. That’s incredible.

In the letter are the words - “Your world will be frictionless and marked by truth, freedom and fairness. Your world will truly be one that is defined by human imagination and honest work.”

I am making the case for tokens as the critical solution to a real-time economy. I want to break the spell of the narrow definition of tokens that has bounded the Bitcoin SV ecosystem. For much of the past two years, there appears to be two camps in BSV when it comes to tokens. The dominant one being we want only regulated tokens, security tokens, tokens backed by real assets, with real utility, that real businesses and enterprises can use to make their businesses more efficient. The other, perhaps out of jealousy for what’s going on in other blockchains being let’s just port those Ethereum ERC20’s over and let it run wild for it might pump the BSV price! Funny thing is neither has happened as developers are busy debating whether tokens should be on layer 0 or layer 1 or layer 100 but that’s a topic for another day. Both views are myopic. 



Tokens are going to be a much bigger deal on BitCoin than anyone might imagine. 

How many websites are there on the internet? I looked it up recently and the answer is 1.7Bn. How many token contracts are there on the Ethereum chain? The answer is 350,000. 



Websites are kind of hard to set up - you have to purchase a domain name, at least use a website template creator, and there isn’t that much use for getting one for the average person. Not when you can have an Instagram page, a Facebook account, a Twitter handle, a Medium blog without having your own site. Yet there are 1.7Bn of them! Ethereum tokens are prohibitively expensive mining fee wise to generate. Out of interest, I asked one of the devs who minted the original USDC contract during my days at Circle to find the transaction. It cost 0.44 ETH. At today’s prices that’s well over $500 to create a token. Yet there are 350,000 contracts!



I would wager there will be over 100Bn unique tokens on BitCoin and I’d guess higher but I don’t want to be outside the bounds of the very Overton window I’m creating.

It takes a few seconds to issue a token on BitCoin and at current mining fees, less than a tenth of a cent to issue. If I’m a store owner, I might issue a different gift card a week for the various deals I have going on. If I’m an artist, a different NFT for each piece of artwork. Neither the store owner nor the artist needs more than one website and you start to see the math.

If reading this, you still think tokens are going to be contained to some narrow definition of ‘security’ tokens, or NASDAQ like tokens, or fiat currency tokens, realise it’s like saying the internet will only have The New York Times or CNN or some licensed officially approved site. It’s ok if not every account on Instagram is world class photography. Not every Twitter account is going to be insightful (that’s clear) and that’s ok. In a world of 100Bn unique tokens, You bet there’s going to be a great deal of useless ones and a pretty large number of scams. Just like there are websites that are phishing for your passwords, websites with illegal content, and websites with viruses in them. Over time, services emerged to protect you by blocking, or warning you about potentially dangerous websites.

What’s the bigger picture and what do tokens have to do with a real-time economy? I’ve made the case for there being a ton of tokens. Does that mean it’s just going to be a Coinmarketcap with a lot more pages? An exchange with a lot more trading pairs? No, a lot more exciting than that.

A world with 100Bn tokens means every single asset, service, good, company, project, video, post and many more abstract things than one can imagine is going to have a dynamic, live price. It’s not about the tokens, it’s about the markets. Today, you visit a restaurant and you check Yelp to see if has a good review. BSV entrepreneurs are making some new review site but with reviews posted on the blockchain thinking this is the problem that needs solving. “Immutable reviews”. Much more valuable than a review or immutable review however is if this particular restaurant’s loyalty token is trading at a premium to the other one next door. There’s actually money on the line. Then after eating, instead of being a foodie with a blog and an Instagram to hype up such restaurant, if you’ve got that talent for knowing what’s going to be the next hot restaurant, you can just buy on the open market more of the restaurant’s tokens. Yes, a local foodie just became an crypto trader. Now you profit when you promote the restaurant on your blog. The chef who started that restaurant instead of using Groupon to attract an initial set of customers who have no loyalty to you, can instead issue 10,000 tokens, where each dish costs 100 tokens. Pretty soon if your food is delicious, those token prices are going to jump. Think Global, Live Local is not just going to do good, it’s going to now make you rich. 



I grew up in a lower middle class first generation immigrant family. I remember being a teenager in those years where oil prices were very volatile as the world approached the idea of “Peak Oil”. We would sometimes drive by a gas station one day where prices were a few cents cheaper than the day before, and even though the tank was half full, we filled up. Other days, the warning light would be on, but we held off for another day to fill up the tank in hopes prices would come down. Is this speculation on oil prices bad? Another fun memory I had was going grocery shopping with my folks and my favourite cookies were the Chip Ahoy Crunchy chocolate. Eating those with milk is probably half the reason for my height. Once in a while they would be on sale but next to them were the No-Name brand versions of the same cookies. Chip Ahoys were definitely better but were they $2/100grams better? No. We would calculate every time to decide which we would buy. Is this speculation on cookie price bad? How come other goods and services in the economy didn’t fluctuate in price? That’s what’s always fascinated me. I knew they would if they could. With Bitcoin, it was possible.

Tokens on Bitcoin with the perpetual scaling design of Bitcoin where it isn’t the holder that’s rewarded (Proof of Stake) but rather those contributing to scaling the network (Proof of Work) will lead to the formation of markets where markets were too inefficient to exist - unlocking trillions of value in the process. 



A fully tokenised economy makes everything efficient, fair, honest, and real-time. I don’t mean efficient like fast transactions or cheap mining fees. It’s the economy that will be efficient. You won’t need to be a big grocery chain or a big oil company or big tech company with financial analysts, and big data and machine learning folks in order to know what to set the price of a Chips Ahoy or a Gallon of oil or surge pricing on a taxi ride. It’ll be orders of magnitudes better than that and for every person on earth because it’s all going to be open, issuable, transferable, tradeable. You won’t be checking page 978,950 of Coinmarketcap. You won’t be scrolling to AHOY/USDT on an exchange. I predict all of this will happen without you realising that it did and all our lives will improve as a result.

For those who immediately think of the regulatory ramifications of this, I’ve thought the same. In 2015, while leading OKCoin, I led our initiative to become the first international benefactors of Coin Center - the industry body working with regulators and governments. I am a minority seed round investor in Chainalysis which looks for criminal activity onchain. I look forward to working with all those who would like to embrace innovation while having an eye on ensuring an orderly, legal transition to this future.

I could not be more excited to support the emerging token projects on BitCoin, through building products, investment, advice, or even in spirit. 

Bitcoin is plumbing - just plumbing where billions of trades and speculation down to the satoshi will be happening every second.












[caredogstips]

How we acquired the typeface Comic Sans

The level of hatred was amazing and quite funny. I couldnt feel parties could get so worked up about a font

Vincent Connare, typographer

I was working for Microsofts typography team, which got a lot of plows with parties from applications like Publisher, Creative Writer and Encarta. They required different forms of typefaces a lot of them strange and childlike. One program was announced Microsoft Bob, the purpose of which is to realize computers more accessible to children. I booted it up and out ambled this caricature hound, talking with a speech bubble in Times New Roman. Dogs dont talk in Times New Roman! Conceptually, it shaped no sense.

So I had an idea to make a comic-style text and started looking at Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, graphic fictions where the mitt lettering was like a typeface. I could have checked it in and simulated the lettering, but that was unethical. Instead, I looked at various notes and is seeking to mimic them on screen. There were no sketches or analyzes it was just me sucking with a mouse, deleting whatever was incorrect.

I didnt have to make straight lines, I didnt have to attain circumstances look right, and thats what I felt recreation. I was break-dance the typography governs. My boss Robert Norton, whose mom Mary Norton wrote The Borrowers, said here p and q should reflect one another perfectly. I pronounced: No, its supposed to be wrong! There were a lot of difficulties like that at Microsoft, a lot of pushes, although not physical ones.

Comic Sans was developed too late for Microsoft Bob, but our place heads started use it a lot in emails predominantly young women whose jobs was set to prepare everything recreation. They did birthday parties, organised phenomena, and Comic Sans fitted with their joyou meanings. As it became more well-known, it was eventually included in Windows 95.

I started to see it everywhere and then the backlash began. A radical announced Ban Comic Sans was formed to educate people about the uses of typefaces, though they did email me to ask if it was OK to make it up. It seemed silly, but I read slam yourselves out. Though that reaction has calmed down, except on Twitter. Parties who come up to me are more likely to say they affection it.

Type should do exactly what its intended to do. Thats why Im proud of Comic Sans. It was for novice computer consumers and it supplanted with that marketplace. Parties use it inappropriately: if they dont understand how sort labors, it wont have any power or meaning to them. I formerly discovered a guy at a Rothko prove pronounce: I could have done that. He clearly doesnt know anything about artwork. Hell perhaps use Comic Sans without realising its wrong in certain circumstances.

Ive simply ever use Comic Sans formerly. I was be very difficult changing my broadband to Sky so wrote them a letter in Comic Sans, says here saddened I was. I got a 10 pay. In those cases, I would recommend it. The basic theory is that typography should not holler but Comic Sans shouts.

They announced the Higgs boson in Comic Sans that was inappropriate. Picture: Cern

Tom Stephens, planned manager, Microsoft

My job was to match commodities to typefaces, sort of like a marriage broker. Comic Sans was designed for Microsoft Bob, which in many ways was a precursor to Cortana or Siri for people who had problems with computers. A female called Melinda French was helping to foreman it up. I wasnt well connected and had no idea she was dating Bill Gates and would end up marriage him.

The magic is that people took to it on their own, rather than via any Microsoft marketing. It does get misused, generally because soul merely adores it. Concepts like the slideshow at Cern, where they announced the Higgs boson in Comic Sans, that was inappropriate. But the fact that parties have the freedom to answers, This is my favourite typeface and Im going to use it is a marvellous happen. The backlash, high levels of hatred, was just amazing and quite frankly funny. I couldnt belief parties could be so worked up over something as simple as a font.

Its almost an anti-technology typeface: very casual, extremely greeting. Its like going home, back to your childhood, get letters from family members. Or soul might use it to be removed from the staid environ of their work. When “youre using” Comic Sans, youre making a statement: Im more relaxed, most creative. I may be working in this area, but this task does not define me.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post How we acquired the typeface Comic Sans appeared first on caredogstips.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2sK0zSk via IFTTT

[makingscipub]

Juno, Jupiter and the art of citizen science

With political and moral life here on earth being in utter turmoil, images of/from Jupiter beamed down to our little planet by the Juno space probe have recently kept me sane (as far as that’s possible). They brought with them glimpses of beauty and moments of wistfulness.

A year or so ago, I wrote a blog post about Juno, the space probe, and Jupiter, the planet, when Juno was approaching Jupiter. There you can find some more info on the mission. In this post I just wanted to marvel at some of the images which Juno managed to beam down to us. While doing this, I found something out about these pictures that I didn’t know! (And the scientists pouring over them found out that there is lots they don’t know about Jupiter!)

Marbled paper, wallpaper and famous paintings

First I saw this image of Jupiter’s cloud tops (on twitter). It reminded me of a special type of paper used in old books! In the case of Jupiter the marbling occurs naturally but I wonder whether there is some overlap in the physical and chemical processes involved. If you want to know more about the extremely interesting culture and science of marbling, read on here.

The subtitle for this marvellous marbling image says: “This enhanced color view of Jupiter’s cloud tops was processed by citizen scientist Bjorn Jonsson using data from the JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The image highlights a massive counterclockwise rotating storm that appears as a white oval in the gas giant’s southern hemisphere.”(bold added) Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Bjorn Jonsson 

When initially searching for this image in order to put in this post, I also found another one (or rather, it seems, the same, but rendered differently). I came across it in a blog post that asked whether people associated it with Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’, or, indeed, cotton candy.

The subtitle to this image says: “The swirling clouds on Jupiter, shown in an image captured by the JunoCam instrument on the Juno spacecraft, and processed by citizen scientist Roman Tkachenko.” (bold added) Credit: Roman Tkachenko/NASA

From these sub-titles and from the blog post in which this last image was used, I learned that these images are produced by citizen scientists, or rather, as I’d call them citizen science-artists. The blog post explains: “The raw images that JunoCam sends back to Earth usually don’t look like much, but they contain information that can be extracted with imaging processing and color correcting. The resulting images can highlight particular features in the cloud tops, or re-create what the planet might look like to human eyes up close. Most of the work that has gone into processing the JunoCam images has been done by citizen scientists. The JunoCam team posts the raw image files online, and anyone can take them, process them and post the final result on the JunoCam website. Some users do extreme processing, creating amazing works of art, while others work on the images in such a way as to reveal new features and assist in the pursuit of knowledge about this planet.”

When searching for the first image, I also found yet another image called “Jupiter wallpaper”

The description below this image says (I have left out paragraphs): “When team members from NASA’s Juno mission invited the public to process JunoCam images, they did not anticipate that they would receive back such beautiful, creative expressions of art. The oranges and grayed-out regions of blue-green in this tiled and color-enhanced image resemble a color scheme much like Romantic era paintings, but more abstract. The lack of discreet objects to focus on allows the mind to seek familiar Earthly shapes, and the brightest spots seem to draw the eye. Eric Jorgensen created this Jovian artwork with a JunoCam image taken when the spacecraft was at an altitude of 11,100 miles (17,800 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloudtops on Dec. 11, 2016 at 9:22 a.m. PT (12:22 p.m. ET).” (bold added)

I hadn’t realised how much citizen-science art goes into the creation of these images! Popular images of galaxies beamed down by the Hubble space telescope are usually artistically rendered by NASA scientists, as far as I know. They have been studied for the way they get their colouring inspirations from Romantic paintings, for example. This type of analysis should also be carried out for these citizen-science-artists. One might even want to ask them about where they get their inspiration from!

Those interested in this topic can read Elizabeth Kessler’s book Picturing the Cosmos or Coloring the Universe by Travis Rector, Kimberly Arcand, and Megan Watzke.

A glittering geode and a song

After marvelling at these marbling images, I then saw in image of Jupiter’s south pole that was truly stunning and quite different. It reminded me of the geodes I collected with my father many years ago. These “are spherical rocks that contain hollow cavities lined with crystals. The name geode comes from the Greek word Geoides, which means ‘earthlike.'” For me, there is nothing earth-like about this one though (apart from its shape); but it’s certainly a jewel.

The subtitle for this image reads: “This image shows Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers). The oval features are cyclones, up to 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) in diameter. Multiple images taken with the JunoCam instrument on three separate orbits were combined to show all areas in daylight, enhanced color, and stereographic projection.” Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles (I am not totally sure who Betsy Asher Hall and Gervasio Robles are, but a related image of the south pole was created by citizen scientist Gabriel Fiset.)

This image also reminded me of some verses of the song “Starry, starry night”, namely: “Starry, starry night; Flaming flowers that brightly blaze; Swirling clouds and violet haze”. Other people may have other associations, of course. A “blue marble, shimmering with swirling gold sand“, perhaps…

Is that Orion that I see before me?

The last image I came across before drafting this post was of Orion, my favourite constellation, but seen from a totally different angle, namely, through the ring of Jupiter – I could see Orion from another world!

The description explains: “As NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew through the narrow gap between Jupiter’s radiation belts and the planet during its first science flyby, Perijove 1, on August 27, 2016, the Stellar Reference Unit (SRU-1) star camera collected the first image of Jupiter’s ring taken from the inside looking out. The bright bands in the center of the image are the main ring of Jupiter’s ring system. While taking the ring image, the SRU was viewing the constellation Orion. The bright star above the main ring is Betelgeuse, and Orion’s belt can be seen in the lower right.” Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI

All this brought to mind (yet again) the oft-quoted passage from Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (1788): “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and more steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” I just wish that more people would make that connection between the starry heavens above them, which we can now view in every-increasing detail, and the moral law within them, of which we are losing sight.

Science, art and citizens

It is interesting that these images the Juno gave us of Jupiter are so other-worldly, but at the same time we feel so at home in them. This is partly because we make these images in our image. We render the unfamiliar familiar by seeing the images of the starry heavens above us through the lenses of art and culture. These images are not just marvels of science and technology. They are also products of our imagination. This imagination, which feeds art and science alike, is shared by scientists and citizens and, of course, citizen scientists/artists. It should be shared as widely as possible among us citizens of the world.

Public participation in the Juno mission is actively encouraged. As Calla Cofield at Space.com points out: “The JunoCam project not only lets citizen scientists process Juno’s raw data and create amazing images, but also welcomes citizens to vote on which features JunoCam should photograph during each flyby.” And “The creators of the JunoCam outreach program wanted to ‘involve the public in every aspect of what an imaging team would ordinarily be doing,’ according to Candy Hansen, a Juno co-investigator and head of the JunoCam team.” Go to the JunoCam website for further information- participate, create, share and communicate!

Featured image: Wikimedia commons

The post Juno, Jupiter and the art of citizen science appeared first on Making Science Public.

via Making Science Public http://ift.tt/2skQZVJ