- ‘Why Indian internet traffic routes from outside of India?’ by Anurag Bhatia for his blog
- ‘Bear plus snowflake equals polar bear’ by Andy for his blog
- ‘One Day the Music Goes Away‘ by Will Hagle for Passion of the Weiss
- ‘The airwaves of Navajo Nation’ by Karen Fischer for The Verge
- ‘This is the Awful Voice Inside My Head’ by Charlie Warzel for his Substack
Anurag Bhatia writes about poor usage of IXes in India leading to bad routing of Indian traffic. This is similar to what I talked about with Bell Canada and not peering at IXes.
Andy writes about some Unicode shenanigans.
In other words, regardless of the byte count of a Unicode emoji character, it will never count as more than 2 characters.
Will Hagle talks about the temporary nature of music in the age of the internet.
The meme reactions get much happier, however, once you accept that the internet—despite its ability to document its own past—offers, at best, a temporary experience. Like life IRL, it pulls us constantly to the past or future. Pulling up old photos on Friendaversaries. Reminding you to check Ticketmaster, because covid’s over and concerts are back this fall. But also like life IRL, living online is less anxiety-ridden when you accept that nothing is real, you couldn’t possibly “own” music, and every time you hear a song might be the last time you’ll hear it.
Karen Fischer writes about the importance of radio in the Navajo Nation.
Radio has carved a presence in Navajo life because of a logistical reality: folks spend a great deal of time commuting to go shopping in border towns or to work in them every day. The average Navajo must drive three hours round trip to shop for groceries alone. Long daily commutes are reserved for getting up to date on the news.
Charlie Warzel writes a good rebuttal of the incredibly asinine take Gruber of Daring Fireball had regarding the recent Apple employee letter on work from home policies.
I don’t particularly enjoy giving such an uncharitable take extra oxygen, but in this case, I think talking about it is instructive. It is a near perfect representation of an antique, paternalistic mindset toward employee/employer relationships and work culture. Reading it, I immediately recognized the tone because it is the very voice that has been drilled inside my head since my first job as a teenager. It is a voice and an argument that I’ve heard repeated by my bosses, family members, teachers, and even some friends throughout my life. It has taken me years to stop listening to this voice. Even now, in odd moments, I find myself feeling guilty for trying to resist it.
That is all from me this week, see y’all next week!