Link List #85: A history of gay rights, the impact of sleepless nights, the future of human life, and a tendency towards the eloquent and absurd - Friends of Friends / Freunde von Freunden (FvF)

Link List #85: A history of gay rights, the impact of sleepless nights, the future of human life, and a tendency towards the eloquent and absurd

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Once again, we’ve been off foraging for the freshest internet flavors. Our favorite long form piece tracks the life of an ordinary man pushed into the role of a radical because of his sexuality, then we delve deep into the unconscious with the science of sleep. After that, an eye-catching animation considers the future of human genetics, before we sample some articulate irony. And for dessert, it’s an experimental website tracing the history of NASA’s spacecrafts.

    • 1 The Pride parade is approaching here in Berlin, so it’s time for a little bit of a history lesson. The Atavist Magazine have published a long-form piece on the Mattachine Society, a secret group of gay rights activists that gained force in San Francisco when homosexuality was still considered a crime. A fascinating story with some strong storytelling makes this one of the best reads of the month.
    • 2 While we’re getting to know more and more about what our minds go through when we sleep, it seems the we’re getting fewer and fewer hours. So if it’s late, turn on night time mode on your device, and settle down with this article from the National Geographic. Find out what’s so important about the time you spend between waking.
    • 3 Massive Science are exploring the lasting influence of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and asked Moth Studios to create the visuals for their discussion about the future of genetic engineering. The studio uses a colorful, childlike style of 2-D animation filled with quirky monsters and sci-fi characters that help bring Frankenstein’s ideas… TO LIFE!
    • 4 We’ve been busy burrowing into the writing of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. It’s a witty publication that hits somewhere between The New Yorker and The Onion; this checklist for writing your first thinkpiece caught our eye as a trademark display of their pithy eloquence.
    • 5 Recently we stumbled across an intriguing web experiment from designer Yanlin Ma. It’s a visual timeline of NASA spacecrafts and satellites from 1960 to the ongoing plans for 2025. Besides the fascinating skeletal aesthetic and interactive web design, it’s interesting to see how the shapes and uses for the different satellites changed over the years.

Hopefully you enjoyed the reads from this week’s Link List, but if you’ve still got an internet itch to scratch, you can find more here.

Also be sure to check out the FvF Mixtapes to check out some tunes mixed by our friends and favorite artists, and subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date with FvF stories.

Text: Louis Harnett O’Meara

Photography: Kenny Hurtado

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