levinalex

[It] can come as a shock to realise that the world we hear described by travellers of previous centuries (or even previous decades) and biologists of today really did exist. The state it’s in now is only the result of what we’ve done to it, and the mildness of the disappointment we feel when we arrive somewhere and find that it’s a bit tatty is only a measure of how far our own expectations have been degraded and how little we understand what we’ve lost. The people who do understand what we’ve lost are the ones who are rushing around in a frenzy trying to save the bits that are left.

— Douglas Adams

via

The Economist via The Dish

nevver:

because technology and economic logic has gotten so sophisticated, cruelties can be perpetrated now that would have been unimaginable two or three hundred years ago. Therefore we are under more of a moral obligation to try very very very hard to develop compassion and mercy and empathy.

— David Foster Wallace, via Ostap Karmodi via Andrew Sullivan

If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.

Los Angeles Street Crossing Trail

[Reposted from antifuchs]

I need a recipe database that works like this. If you want to code one, let me know :)

[Reposted from supe]

staff:

The Tumblr Backup app is ready for beta testing!

• Download (Mac OS X, requires 10.5 or higher)

Unlike other publishing sites’ approach to backups, our goal was to create a useful copy of your blog’s content that can be viewed on any computer, burned to a CD, or hosted as an archive of static HTML files.

Wherever possible, we use simple file formats. Our backup structure is optimized for Mac OS X’s Spotlight for searching and Quick Look for browsing, and we’ll try to use the same structure and achieve the same benefits on other platforms.

Release notes:

• Sorry, there’s no Windows version yet.
• The output is minimally styled in a plain theme to ensure complete backups, zero external requirements, and a consistent data structure. Custom theme code is included in the backup as a separate file.
• To view the backup in a browser, open the index.html file.
• Photosets are not yet fully downloaded.
• The following are not backed up:
  • Private tumblelogs
  • Submissions
  • Notes
  • Feed-imported posts
  • Audio files from reblogged posts
• You can launch the app every few days and re-run the backup in the same place, and it effectively performs an incremental media backup: image and audio files are only re-downloaded if they don’t already exist in the target folder. Text content and post data are re-downloaded in full every time.
• If you have private posts, be careful if you make the backup publicly available. Private posts are included in a private folder, and their images or audio files are included in the standard images and audio folders.
• Are you a programmer? Each post’s XML data, as specified by our API, is embedded inside an easily-parsed-out HTML comment in each post’s HTML file, in case you want to do anything cool with it.

(via marco)

There is no need to turn a gene pool into a lake

— John Oliver on TheBugle #134