“Bionic Reading”, Solar-Panel-Bred Sheep, and Electrical Fashion From The 1800s

I bring you the finest reading on the Internet, every week

Clive Thompson

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“Back to the Arcade”, Franck Bohbot

Tuesday’s done!

You deserve a break.

Which is why I have carefully scoured the backrooms of the Internet to find the finest reading material, in my weekly Linkfest.

Let’s begin …

1) 🕹️ Moody photos of present-day retro arcades

Video-game arcades make for inherently dramatic photos: The chiaroscuro of faces in a darkened room, lit up as they crowd around a cathode-ray tube — with the particularly engaged expressions that appear when people are playing games, or watching others do it — are little symphonies of emotion.

Franck Bohbot has produced a terrific series of photos of arcades and their arcadegoers. It’s a modern-day arcade, but it contains enough retro games that you can squint and it looks like 1982.

As Bohbot’s web site describes it …

… there is a feeling of criminality here as if you’ve found your way into a speakeasy, where acts are taking place that is both hidden and fringe, yet celebrated by those lucky enough to have produced the password to the doorman. And in the…

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Clive Thompson

I write 2X a week on tech, science, culture — and how those collide. Writer at NYT mag/Wired; author, “Coders”. @clive@saturation.social clive@clivethompson.net