What a great report by the Norwegian Consumer Council on how digital products and services are getting worse (enshittification)!

Lots of good explanations and examples, but also very actionable with policy recommendations.

https://www.forbrukerradet.no/news-in-english/digital-products-and-services-are-getting-worse-but-the-trend-can-be-reversed/

#BlackHistoryMonth is a great time to celebrate mathematician and NASA scientist Katherine Johnson (née Coleman; 1918 – 2020). One of the first Black women employed as a NASA scientist (and its predecessor NACA), she was known for her mastery of complex manual calculations of orbital mechanics and played a pivotal role in the success of the US crewed spaceflights from the beginning.🧵

#linocut #printmaking #sciart #mastoArt #womenInSTEM #BlackInSTEM #histsci #NASA #mathematician #physics #space

I'm always astonished by just how many incredible #jazz /fusion albums were released circa 1970-1972. A time of unparalleled experimentation & diversity. So rich. Just a few I'm listening to in the image below - and I haven't even included the really big releases by Miles Davis or ECM artists, etc.

The range is huge - everything from avant-garde chamber works to hardcore funk, ethno-spiritual/afro-futurism to free-form big band, experiments with tape loops & electronics to European minimalism.

Twelve years. I started this project twelve years ago, and today I hold the result in my hand. It’s a book that combines bead weaving with math called, “Beading with Algorithms: Cellular Automata in Peyote Stitch.” With help from mathematician and artist Roger Antonsen, graphic designer Zelda Lin, a handful of talented proof readers, and the good people from World Scientific Publishing Company, my dream of combining my loves of math, art, and teaching into a book is finally a reality.

This book is the first of its kind, a recipe book of algorithms that can be used and combined to generate colorful patterns in peyote stitch beadwork in any size and shape you desire. These algorithms could also be applied to other pixelated art forms like tile laying, embroidery, crochet, and quilts. We included projects like bracelets, pill pouches, pendants, beaded beads, and key chains. We also included a bunch of different grids that you can photocopy and color with markers.

Of course I’m biased, but I think it’s a really beautiful book. We included multiple colorful images on almost every page, 172 pages in all. It was a huge layout challenge, but Zelda nailed it. My original goal was to write 128 pages on how to use algorithms to make beaded jewelry, but the more we explored the space, the more we found. Not just millions of algorithms, the space of possibilities is infinite. So of course, we couldn’t include them all. But we used math and Roger’s custom software that he wrote for this project to help us find dozens of the easiest algorithms and more than a hundred more in increasing levels of complexity. We included all of our favorites. 1/2

#MathArt #beading #Genuary #math #beadweaving

Inspiring! Hand-drawn maps.

https://cagrimmett.com/2026/01/23/hand-drawn-maps/