Pinboard (coldbrain)

The Slow Death of the Power User

coldbrain — 2026-05-23T12:17:10+00:00

A wide-ranging rant on what’s been lost as computing shifted from instruments to appliances. I’m with it on the open web’s collapse into consumption platforms: algorithmic curation, the end of view-source culture, the atrophy of any adversarial capacity to push back on lock-in. I’m less exercised about things like iOS hiding the filesystem. A pleasurable appliance I don’t have to think about beats a computer I have to fight, and I say that as someone who has spent plenty of evenings fighting one.

30 Years of Writing on the Internet

coldbrain — 2026-02-07T11:43:32+00:00

The ghosts of our lives

coldbrain — 2026-02-03T17:56:31+00:00

The age of average

coldbrain — 2026-02-03T17:42:25+00:00

In the early 1990s, two Russian artists named Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid hired a market research firm to survey the public on what they wanted in a work of art. Across 11 countries they then set about painting a piece that reflected the results. Each piece was intended to be a unique a colla

How We’ll Forget John Lennon

coldbrain — 2026-01-24T14:33:38+00:00

Is Gen X Actually the Greatest Generation?

coldbrain — 2025-12-29T14:11:32+00:00

How one era changed everything about the culture — and why we’re so nostalgic for its creations.

Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?—Asterisk

coldbrain — 2025-12-27T15:55:12+00:00

The decline of criticism might explain the sense that our culture is stagnating. How can we bring it back?

Patricia Lockwood · Where be your jibes now? David Foster Wallace

coldbrain — 2025-12-26T19:34:02+00:00

We knew he was not benevolent exactly (well, some of us knew) but there was the sense that he was suffering on the same...

Are You Enjoying Our Linguine?

coldbrain — 2025-12-26T12:40:54+00:00

How American tourists took over everything.

The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction

coldbrain — 2025-11-24T18:53:47+00:00

What happened?

Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?

coldbrain — 2025-11-23T14:44:09+00:00

The decline of criticism might explain the sense that our culture is stagnating. How can we bring it back?

Bland, easy to follow, for fans of everything: what has the Netflix algorithm done to our films?

coldbrain — 2025-11-15T15:18:48+00:00

When the streaming giant began making films guided by data that aimed to please a vast audience, the results were often generic, forgettable, artless affairs. But is there a happy ending?

How Weezer & The Blue Album Briefly Made Geekery Cool

coldbrain — 2025-08-07T20:07:33+00:00

Weezer were a revelation for 90s alternative rock. Heavy metal and comic books were how Rivers Cuomo was raised. Kiss and the X-Men were the Gods that he pra...

Why Culture Has Come to a Standstill

coldbrain — 2025-05-24T14:16:10+00:00

A Times critic argues that ours is the least innovative century for the arts in 500 years. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Music Versus Lyrics

coldbrain — 2025-04-21T10:48:53+00:00

Or is it a secret third thing

My Taste Is Basic. So What?

coldbrain — 2024-12-29T21:53:10+00:00

In an essay from her new book 'Quietly Hostile,' author Samantha Irby explains how three simple words can stop judgmental friends in their tracks.

Review | Nostalgia was once a disease. Now we’re all infected.

coldbrain — 2024-11-23T08:31:58+00:00

New books examine the emotion’s long history and the politically diverse movements it has served.

"Megalopolis" and "Joker: Folie à Deux"; or, The Virtue of Burning Money | Features | Roger Ebert

coldbrain — 2024-10-14T17:30:58+00:00

How many times in a filmmaker’s life do they get the chance to do something that makes no sense to anyone but them?

The biweekly British vs American food debate

coldbrain — 2024-09-24T18:23:53+00:00

Why Americans should be banned from talking about food online, and why British people should stop taking the bait. Words by Niloufar Haidari

Live Forever: Oasis, ‘Definitely Maybe,’ and the Definitely Misunderstood Legacy of Britpop

coldbrain — 2024-09-14T06:54:52+00:00

Stop the celebrations – Oasis are the most damaging pop-cultural force in recent British history

coldbrain — 2024-08-29T09:50:28+00:00

You Can’t Go Home Again

coldbrain — 2024-04-21T15:30:49+00:00

Our thinking about nostalgia is badly flawed because it relies on defective assumptions about progress and time.

Is It Even Possible to Become More Productive?

coldbrain — 2024-04-13T20:32:20+00:00

I read all the books and tried all the hacks in a mad quest to optimize my time.

Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to.

coldbrain — 2024-03-20T18:08:09+00:00

The pirate preservationists

coldbrain — 2024-03-10T07:14:31+00:00

When keeping cultural archives safe means stepping outside the law

Chuck Klosterman's Decade of Ambivalence

coldbrain — 2023-09-09T15:22:19+00:00

The Movable Feast

coldbrain — 2023-04-21T19:43:13+00:00

Food media, archival repair, and what we expect from recipes

The internet is already over

coldbrain — 2023-04-11T12:57:58+00:00

Where Is All the Book Data?

coldbrain — 2023-04-01T14:11:43+00:00

Industry is already using data to remake culture. To reverse the tide—to make culture more equitable—we need to decode that data for ourselves.

The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the musicology of record production

coldbrain — 2023-02-12T19:44:43+00:00

Nintendo’s Guiding Spirit

coldbrain — 2023-01-30T18:37:09+00:00

How Shigeru Miyamoto captured the essence of play and redefined entertainment.

18F: Digital service delivery | Improving inclusion, continuously: how we iterated on our bot to promote more inclusive and thoughtful language

coldbrain — 2023-01-15T21:19:31+00:00

In 2015, TTS created a Slack bot to help us use more inclusive language. Over time, we found this bot could use some improvements. So starting in 2019, we began conducting research and iterating on our bot to further our goal of a welcoming, inclusive culture.

Yes, I Judge Books by their Cover

coldbrain — 2023-01-13T22:53:15+00:00

A cross-cultural review of books as physical objects 📗

The Instant Pot Understands The History Of Women's Labor In The Kitchen

coldbrain — 2023-01-07T07:05:42+00:00

The following is an excerpt from Women on Food: Charlotte Druckman and 115 Writers, Chefs, Critics, Television Stars, and Eaters, an anthology of essays, interviews, illustrations, and more that celebrate the women who make up the world of food. The…

How millennials became cringe

coldbrain — 2022-12-21T22:32:20+00:00

There are three types of meetings.

coldbrain — 2022-10-15T15:52:30+00:00

The Nostalgic Turn in Music Writing

coldbrain — 2022-10-14T21:22:07+00:00

Are music magazines contributing to the stagnancy of the current scene?

How Gen X Became the Trumpiest Generation

coldbrain — 2022-10-14T21:17:12+00:00

Life After Lifestyle

coldbrain — 2022-10-14T19:29:05+00:00

Why Your Boss’s Boss Wants You in the Metaverse

coldbrain — 2022-10-13T19:14:31+00:00

‘The cultural memory of the UK’: unearthing the hidden treasures of the BBC archive

coldbrain — 2022-10-08T21:12:22+00:00

Nostalgia | Svetlana Boym

coldbrain — 2022-10-02T19:30:04+00:00

Pageviews, assemble! Why there’s no escaping the Marvel Cinematic Universe online

coldbrain — 2022-10-01T22:05:01+00:00

In 2022, few pop-culture brands move the needle, so newspaper blue-bloods and recipe sites alike rally around Marvel Cinematic Universe content as their last stand.

Miki Berenyi: ‘The claim that Britpop celebrated sassy women in bands was a veneer’

coldbrain — 2022-09-25T09:48:12+00:00

How platforms turn boring

coldbrain — 2022-09-23T23:40:05+00:00

How to tell when a platform is going bad.

Whataboutism

coldbrain — 2022-09-02T21:44:47+00:00

The Internet has only one currency, and that currency is attention

The Beginning of the End of Millennial Discourse

coldbrain — 2022-09-02T21:30:00+00:00

From aardvark to woke: inside the Oxford English Dictionary

coldbrain — 2022-09-02T17:52:51+00:00

Innovation and the incinerated tongue: Notes on hot chicken, race, and culinary crossover

coldbrain — 2022-08-29T08:37:51+00:00

On pretending to have read books | Simon Evans | The Critic Magazine

coldbrain — 2022-08-24T13:27:57+00:00

What defines cultural appropriation?

coldbrain — 2022-05-24T16:47:20+00:00

And why does concern about it matter? Bel Jacobs explores the cultural collaborations that work well, and why a 'spirit of equal exchange' is essential in fashion.

Is there such a thing as ‘Scouse exceptionalism’?

coldbrain — 2022-05-20T20:59:27+00:00

The YouTubers are not okay

coldbrain — 2022-05-19T19:33:50+00:00

Prominent YouTubers keep quitting the platform and then coming back. Call it the result of YouTube brain.

Pop Culture Has Become an Oligopoly

coldbrain — 2022-05-16T13:45:07+00:00

A cartel of superstars has conquered culture. How did it happen, and what should we do about it?

How the Tumultuous 1970s Shaped Modern Football

coldbrain — 2022-04-17T09:20:37+00:00

Football in the ’70s saw vicious racism on the terraces and a creeping commercialism in the game. But it was also a time when most players weren’t millionaires, and many footballing giants knew the meaning of solidarity.

Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present (Ep. 144)

coldbrain — 2022-04-10T19:31:19+00:00

Plus, the slow cancellation of the future.

The 1990s: An age without qualities

coldbrain — 2022-02-27T21:45:35+00:00

Often heralded as the best decade ever, the 1990s brought dark warnings about the future – and many have come to pass.

How the 1990s saved English football

coldbrain — 2022-02-16T13:56:42+00:00

In the 1980s, football was at an all-time low – but Gazza's tears helped to usher in an era that saw the game return to its place at the heart of British popular culture. Gary Parkinson remembers the renaissance...

Interview with Dr Christine Feldman-Barrett

coldbrain — 2022-01-29T08:20:02+00:00

Eating as resisting: preserving my family’s history through Chinese food

coldbrain — 2022-01-25T22:16:36+00:00

How eating Chinese food honours the strength of my ancestors during the Cultural Revolution.

When Did Postmodernism End?

coldbrain — 2021-12-08T21:47:19+00:00

Hauntology, Lost Futures and 80s Nostalgia

coldbrain — 2021-11-28T21:29:59+00:00

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cuckTwitter: https://twitter.com/PhilosophyCuckRecommended reading:"Hauntology: A not-so-new critical manifestation" by Andr...

This webcomic made it okay to be sad online. Then its artist vanished.

coldbrain — 2021-11-28T19:19:38+00:00

The author of 'Pictures for Sad Children' went AWOL after a 2014 Kickstarter drama. In an exclusive interview, she explains why.

Let’s All Remember The Late-’90s Swing Revival

coldbrain — 2021-11-25T13:51:32+00:00

Tongue Stuck

coldbrain — 2021-10-27T21:59:14+00:00

The message: why should hip-hop have to teach us anything?

coldbrain — 2021-10-07T19:05:49+00:00

Why the Term ‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

coldbrain — 2021-09-25T19:55:51+00:00

Delicious biryani, compliments to the robo-chef

coldbrain — 2021-09-10T04:54:03+00:00

Automated ghost kitchens are coming for traditional Indian cuisine.

Deathloop & Time Loops & Stuff | Rabbit Hole - YouTube

coldbrain — 2021-09-09T13:29:11+00:00

Netflix’s Latest Innovation Could Be Its Ruin

coldbrain — 2021-09-02T20:56:01+00:00