I can’t explain why I like this. Suddently I hope someone would actually write a Tumblr client for the Atari 2600 as they did a Twitter client for the ZX Spectrum. I actually had a 2600 when I was a kid, a few year after I had my Spectrum. It rocked my world despite the much poorer graphics and sound (if such a thing is possible), because the games loaded instantly.

My fastest machine ever. (via Topherchris)

Pictures for Sad Children’s art show. (via Inky)

A huge part of my childhood now fits in a website. To think of all the anxious Fridays, waiting for my dad to arrive from work with a bootleg copy of some new game (back the 80s, at least in Portugal, there was no such thing as ‘piracy’, in fact there were quite a few ‘game copy shops’). To think of all the time spent anxiously waiting for that first load attempt, only to see the game crash after 15 minutes of loading. To think of all the constant fiddling with the tape recorder, trying to ‘tune’ it for that particular tape - in a couple of years I’d be fixing radios (or destroying them in a puff of noxious electrical smoke, more likely).

And now, this website has 28 years (up to 2010!) of Spectrum games accessible and always-loadable at the click of a button, and all I can say is that for all the nostalgia, Kick Off looked like shit.

An animation of a Slavoj Zizek lecture about the turbo-capitalist bundling of charity.

This is actually quite tangent to the International School on Digital Transformation I attended last week here in Porto, the gist of most talks being that what applies to individuals - getting help is a good thing but positive change unvariably must come from within - also applies to communities. Having computers and cutting-edge technology rain down on impoverished communities is not only useless, it’s actually harmful. Despite what Bono may have people believe, you can’t just helicopter to a favela like some guy from the future and give away a few Apple surplus products. Even though The Diamond Age is perhaps my favourite piece of sci-fi literature, the whole premise that giving a very poor girl a leather-cased iPad 4 preloaded with the Young Lady Illustrated Primer app will make her a princess is just wrong. Community change comes from the development of sustainable models and practices, finding what you can do with what you have within.

Add these to Zizek’s arguments about why turbo-capitalist ‘charity’ is so harmful. Paying more for an yoghurt carrying a label saying they will give 1 cent to plant trees in the Amazon forest is a bit like paying off the 15th century Catholic Church whenever you sinned.

I also find it quite depressing the people willing to enter the capitalistic-indulgence routine are the ones who are always complaining about taxes, despite driving on public roads, having both sanitation and clear drinkable water in their homes, having access to very cheap education and (still) very cheap healthcare, and all kinds of entrepeneurship benefits. They’ll be happily ‘vanity-taxed’ on their coffee beans - feeling good about arguably giving some third world producers more money -, but God forbid paying IRS/IRC/IVA taxes that will be redistributed - for instance through unemployment benefits - to the “lazy bastards” they’ve just laid off so that they could afford that 300 horsepower Lexus hybrid. They’re like those people who go crazy if they wait for 10 minutes in a line at their local Registers Office, immediately comparing it to Soviet Bloc bureaucracies, but are more than willing to do the same without even questioning at their cable companies’ public helpdesk - you know, because the State is Evil but private companies aren ‘t.

Bring on the ‘soft apocalypse’! In the meantime, there are a few more interesting animated lectures here.

The Commodore Amiga was announced 25 years ago today. My late A600 is still the very best computer I ever had (for its time).

Up to a point, John. These things matter as long as you don’t pretend your tastes are achievements. Any idiot with a bank account can buy Criterion Collection DVDs at the local Fnac or, even better, a book containing select quotes from the French New Wave… (via Filmquotes)

Robert Overweg’s The End of the Virtual World is a collection of virtual worlds’ ends (Half Life 2’s, in this image). It’s funny to think that once upon a time people believed Earth had boundaries like this - which it doesn’t, right?

Right?! (via Daily Meh)

Sets of Mexican soap operas. I admire the ingenuity that goes into designing a set that must last the shooting of 10.000 episodes while being flexibile enough to allow for multiple light and blocking situations. On the other hand, look at that colonnade. Just look at it. It’s the wrongest thing I’ve seen all day. (via Dailymeh)