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Ian Bogost

@ibogost.com

32K followers 3.1K following 680 posts

Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor at WashU; Contributing writer at The Atlantic; author of 10 books (soon: Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life) https://linktr.ee/ibogost https://www.theatlantic.com/author/ian-bogost/

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 8h

Jellycat has a desert island now, and also a potato.

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 8h

Few remember how bad this was.

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 10h

Alas but also hurrah?

Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 12h

That doesn't mean that concentrating infrastructural power in a very small number of American megacorporations is a good idea. But it also doesn't mean that the internet was once resilient.

Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 12h

Just a reminder that the commercial internet was never resilient at global scale in the way the nuclear-disaster-grade, but much smaller ARPAnet was designed to be. On September 11, 2001, for example, 5 years before AWS, the only place to get news was television or radio.

The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 12h

Amazon Web Services said the massive internet outage that originated in its cloud-computing data centers has largely been fixed, more than 13 hours after an initial shutdown hit businesses big and small. on.wsj.com/3L0Ftvt

Amazon Says Web Services Have Largely Been Restored

The company said its systems have recovered after disruptions affected services from major retailers, airlines, social-media apps, financial-services companies and more.

on.wsj.com

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 13h

You are underestimating how popular Alf once was.

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 20h

I can neither conform nor deny

Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 21h

"Assuming Bogost hasn’t had a change of heart since 2022"

🤔🤔🤔

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

Yep, this is true. Very confusing!

Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

You would. The button was mostly used to *slow down* processing to run older software developed for earlier microprocessors, using timing methods mated to the processor's frequency, rather than other, fixed methods. Games were especially susceptible.

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

Still convinced that button wasn't connected to anything.

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

(Sound of your hard disk grinding as your 386SX swaps virtual memory to run CorelDRAW!)

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

Interesting guy. I think he was also the first employee at Pixar or something like that.

Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

Fonts were really expensive back then. Especially well-hinted ones with good outline and bitmap designs, and especially multiple masters. If you didn't pirate them, it was common to use knockoffs (typefaces are not protected by copyright). It was embarassing to be using a knockoff font.

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

It does, because it's a handwriting font.

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

Tekton was designed by David Siegel, who also made another once (but less) popular architectural-hand font called Graphite. These were "multiple master" fonts, which meant you could vary weight and width arbitrarily.

Siegel is also famous for inventing the early-web "single-pixel gif" trick.

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

Hard to explain how common Tekton used to be. Everything was typeset in Tekton for a while—it was considered immensely cool. The idea of type with character (in this case architectural) finally met up with legibility and screen/print output capacity.

(This is from a mid-1990s high school yearbook)

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

Persimmons of Mercy

Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

Bittersweet

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

Move over seasonal gourds, it’s Persimmon time.

Persimmon spice latte
Persimmon bisque
Persimmon burrata slop bowl
Persimmon ginger pie

Persimmon Salsa

Summer might over, but salsa season never is! This persimmon salsa is a delicious seasonal replacement for traditional salsa.

www.stetted.com

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

“Who’s in charge here?”

Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

Two quick notes on The Gobots:

1) The complete lyrics to The Gobots theme song are

The Gobots, the Gobots
The Gobots
The Gobots!

2) “Bogost” is an anagram of “Gobots”

THE GOBOTS INTRO

YouTube video by LADYTHUNNDER

youtu.be

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

Yeah, although, Word has become real bad at handling long documents (such as books) with lots of change tracking. Chuggville.

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Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

It's good for redlining, yeah. Which isn't collaboration!

Ian Bogost @ibogost.com · 1d

I'm glad that worked for you. I wasn't asking for advice. You don't have to reply to everything you see online (I say, replying, like a dope.)