[bookos] BookPecker.com … Books summarized into five bullet points. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: ‘The narrative follows a father-son motorcycle trip across the United States, interwoven with philosophical discussions that explore the concept of “Quality” as the foundation of reality. The book delves into the protagonist’s past and his philosophical ideas, which challenge the dichotomy between the romantic and classical understanding of the world.’

[comics] Aard Labour 0: There Are Three Aardvarks … Tom Ewing is working on a spot-on analysis of all the books of Cerebus … ‘Melmoth is the moment where Sim sets out to demonstrate – to his own liking, if not the market’s – that “a 300 issue comic about a talking aardvark” really can include absolutely anything he wants it to. He proved the point: Melmoth is one of the high watermarks of Cerebus. Even if nobody in 1992 understood what “Cerebus can include anything Dave Sim wants” might really entail.’

[comics] This is Fine …

[time] 15 Methods to Master Your Time … Great infographic on various time management methods like Pomodoro and Eating the Frog.

[comics] Aard Labour: Conclusion | Epilogue … Tom Ewing’s reread and analysis of Cerebus concludes.

One thing that does happen when your comic is full of dissemblers and layers of meaning and contradictory versions of reality, and when you go on for 300 issues, is that you’ll have produced a text with enormous discursive potential. Whether that discussion is worthwhile is another matter. I had no idea, starting this project, that it would end up at 60,000 words long. I still feel like there’s more to say, but also that there’s no real way of reaching a conclusion about this extraordinary, accursed, vivid folly of a comic.

I’ve loved writing about it, I’ve often loved reading it, but I feel shocked that I did write to this extent. I think I like the work more than I did going in, but the artist even less. At one point I planned in this final post to try and work out who the best comparison to Dave Sim might be – Ditko? Morrissey? Lovecraft? Rowling? Kanye? In the end it doesn’t matter: what he shares with them all is that initial fascination and horror turns to exhaustion in the end.

[comics] Go look at Tom the Dancing Bug’s Trump Illustrated Bible … ‘Jubilate as he preaches to the prostitutes!’

[mac] Fixing Macs Door to Door … Confessions of an AppleCare Contractor in the 2000s, navigating around Chicago to repair Macs at customers’ homes. ‘Often I’d show up only to tell them their hard drive was dead and everything was gone. This was just how things worked before iCloud Photos, nobody kept backups and everything was constantly lost forever. Here they would often threaten or plead with me, sometimes insinuating they “knew people” at Apple or could get me fired. Jokes on you people, I don’t even know people at Apple was often what ran through my head. Threats quickly lost their power when you realized nobody at any point had asked your name or any information about yourself. It’s hard to threaten an anonymous person.’

[comics] UKCAC Programmes [Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3] … A nostalgic look back at programmes from UK Comic Art Conventions in the 1980s and 1990s.

[life] My Comments Are in the Google Doc Linked in the Dropbox I Sent in the Slack … ‘The document won’t open? I’m not sure how I could make this any easier. Okay, I reset the document permissions, but you’ll need to sign into the email document_view@busycompany.org via the password I texted you via iMessage. Once you sign into the email, it’ll ask you to create a Microsoft Teams account. You’ll find the link to the document in the Teams channel called “NO DOCUMENTS LINKS!!!” From there, you’ll find a link to a couple of WeTransfers of the current .docs. Every WeTransfer link is expired. To find the non-expired link, you’ll have to look through the email thread I forwarded you saying, “FYI.” It should be 110-120 emails deep in the thread.’

[web] The creepy sound of online trackers … A powerful demonstration of how much we are tracked on the internet – listen in to online trackers sending information home. ‘Even though I personally am acutely aware that this tracking is happening on most sites we visit today, the video and its noise still make me shiver. In case you are hard of hearing, the noise in the second video is almost constant, ongoing even as Bert is just scrolling.’