Crocuses are showing up next to sidewalks in New York, so it must be Spring, which seems like a good time to finish a pile of links I started compiling in December and forgot about. Here goes…

Photography

• Mattresses, Brooms, and Art in Bulk, Tahtakale, Istanbul: Commerce Direct and Unadorned. By Stephen Lewis in Bubkes. I may have posted this already, but I like it a lot, so I’m pointing again.
• Scouting a New York City neighborhood where the sidewalk endsSlate. Originally in Scouting New York.
• Some of my own sets:
  • 1947+ archive of shots with me in them
  • Panos of Parliament in Canberra
  • Canberra from above
  • Lights on an apartment deck in New York
  • Madrid in late December
  • Kiglapait Mountains of coastal Labrador
  • New York’s skyline on approach to Newark
  • WMCA/WNYC transmitter, from above, in the New Jersey meadowlands
  • Scotland’s Islay, from above
  • Tibidabo, in Barcelona
  • London to Newark, an incomplete and growing collection
  • Approaching New York, a subset of the above
  • Downtown Albany, another subset
  • Some more fun with panos
  • Broadcast Towers in Canberra, in Nfrastructure.

Business

• Frontline.in: Trade Secrets Revealed. It begins, “The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership on intellectual property rights being negotiated secretly, as exposed by WikiLeaks recently, is breathtaking in its overweening ambition to cement the corporate takeover of as much knowledge as possible.”
• Why are American Health Care Costs So High? A video explanation by the VlogBrothers. Here’s more about those guys.
• Lululemon: If you can’t beat your customers, ban your customers. By Timothy Geigner in TechDirt.

Tech

• Dave being Dave. Essential reading.
• Likewise, Phil being Phil. In particular: On Names and Heterarchy.
• Mars Needs Women. My column in the December issue of Linux Journal. In it I grab the third rail of gender. Nearly 100% of the magazine’s subscribers are men, while most of its executives and owners are women. Interesting, no? Susan Sons replied with her own guest column in place of mine, two months later, with Girls and Software.
• Also in Linux Journal: Life on the Forked Road.
• A generic brand video, covered by Jeff Beer: “To illustrate this marketing strategy equivalent of paint-by-numbers, stock video footage firm Dissolve took its goods and created a masterpiece with the words of Kendra Eash‘s brilliant McSweeney’s piece.”
• Dear Google; Next Time You Invade My Home, Could You At Least Knock? (updated), by Steve Kamman in Strong Views, Lightly Held
• Site of the Week: Broadcast Peak, Santa Barbara, by Scott Fybush. Includes a kind mention of yours truly.

Journalism

• Editor Describes Pressure After Leaks by Snowden.
• Brands, explained by a Vlog brother.
• L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department, by Tom O’Donnell in The New Yorker.

Politics

• Landmark Supreme Court Decision Lets Americans Cram Cash Directly Into Politicians’ Mouths, in The Onion.

Surveillance

• Ubiquitous video: Why we need a Robots.txt for the real world. In John Battelle’s Searchblog.