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Friday, August 11, 2023

Hello again and welcome back. This week's issue is really pure Wolmania, nothing but the stuff that differentiates this newsletter from all the others. You're unlikely to find anything useful, timely, thought-provoking, or even interesting here. But by the time we're done you will have learned something esoteric and inane. That's the Wolmania guarantee.

I am obsessed with this 1987 smart home concept dreamed up by a Russian industrial designer named Dmitry Azrikan. In a better world, you would be reading this newsletter at your Sphinx Station:

The coolest workstation the world has ever imagined.

And then you would go sit down on the couch and grab the remote. Not to put anything on the TV, just to marvel at the key layout.

TV remote but with a screen mounted on top. Also the keys are in a very silly geometric pattern. Also the color scheme screams Santa Fe.

And then you would spend a few hours just trying to figure out how whatever this is worked before settling down for bed:

I think it's a keyboard with a built-in phone. But don't hold me to that.

This used to be a proper country.

Item 2: a list

ChatGPT made this for me and it seems correct for once (although I didn't check the math on how many bytes are in all the big units)
ChatGPT refused to make this a chart.

Data storage units, ranked

1. Kilobyte (KB)

2. Byte (B)

3. Bit (b)

4. Gigabyte (GB)

5. Zettabyte (ZB)

6. Megabyte (MB)

7. Exabyte (EB)

8. Yottabyte (YB)

9. Terabyte (TB)

10. Petabyte (PB)

Item 3: a media recommendation

Himiko Kikuchi - Flying Beagle

Item 4: word of the week

Panegyric

Until today I fancied myself a bit of an expert on the crazy carousel called life. But after reading Dan Hill's panegyric on the small vehicles of Tokyo, I'll never be the same.

Item 5: a photograph

NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft in the foreground, with the frickin' moon in front of Spaceship Earth in the background.
(Nov. 28, 2022) On flight day 13, Orion reached its maximum distance from Earth during the Artemis I mission when it was 268,563 miles away from our home planet. Orion has now traveled farther than any other spacecraft built for humans. (Photo via NASA, duh)

See ya!

Thanks for reading. May all your Technical Aesthetics express the ideas of ​​modularity and scalability. See you next week.

Published by:

Jacob Wolman

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