theatlantic:

The Mechanics and Meaning of That Ol’ Dial-Up Modem Sound

Of all the noises that my children will not understand, the one that is nearest to my heart is not from a song or a television show or a jingle. It’s the sound of a modem connecting with another modem across the repurposed telephone infrastructure. It was the noise of being part of the beginning of the Internet.

I heard that sound again this week on Brendan Chillcut’s simple and wondrous site: The Museum of Endangered Sounds. It takes technological objects and lets you relive the noises they made: Tetris, the Windows 95 startup chime, that Nokia ringtone, television static. The site archives not just the intentional sounds — ringtones, etc — but the incidental ones, like the mechanical noise a VHS tape made when it entered the VCR or the way a portable CD player sounded when it skipped. If you grew up at a certain time, these sounds are like technoaural nostalgia whippets. One minute, you’re browsing the Internet in 2012, the next you’re on a bus headed up I-5 to an 8th grade football game against Castle Rock in 1995.

The noises our technologies make, as much as any music, are the soundtrack to an era.Soundscapes are not static; completely new sets of frequencies arrive, old things go. […]

When I think of 2012, I will think of the overworked fan of my laptop and the ding of getting a text message on my iPhone. I will think of the beep of the FastTrak in my car as it debits my credit card so I can pass through a toll onto the Golden Gate Bridge. I will think of Siri’s uncanny valley voice.

But to me, all of those sounds — as symbols of the era in which I’ve come up — remain secondary to the hissing and crackling of the modem handshake.

Read more.

This is how dubstep sounds to me.

This joke is lost on most people who enjoy dubstep.

Six-year-old spelling prodigy Lori Ann Madison was Amercia’s sweetheart this week.

inothernews:

rosa—sparks:

riversideandstockton:

ipomoeaandthestarstealers:

justaturnofthedial:

maxistentialist:

Han Nguyen:

“Amercia‬” is one reason why the Romney campaign needs a new copy editor. Here’s another.

that parallel structure will get you every time

and so will your family members apparently

That is not the Amercia of my dreams.

I don’t know, some Thanksgivings I just want to go all Dangerous Game on my kin.

Amercia - Land of the Free and Home of the Heavily Armed Granny Agnes.

Also it looks like there’s a kinky three-way going on in that stylized “R.”

motherjones:

inothernews:

No, really — the Obama campaign’s emails are a bit jarring sometimes.

We’re basically two months away from the first “Hey grrrrrrl” e-mail subject line. Our money’s on Biden.

This song needs to be on every summertime play list. Every year.

(Source: Spotify)

thepoliticalnotebook:

freelancerrealtalk:

Always relevant.

Department-wide quarterly report is due this week. Yes.

boston:

The Wiggles are breaking up.  Almost.  The blue one (Anthony) will play on.

Damn you, Jenna Maroney.

And they all win!

(Source: doubleadoublek)

“I think same sex couples should be able to get married.” —President Barack Obama, May 9, 2012

Yup. Biden’d.

Seconded. (h/t inothernews.tumblr.com)