Aaron Straup Cope
@thisisaaronland.bsky.social
maps and museums and airports / I have come to see these spaces as the absolute worst for anything resembling "conversation" / but I like you all so here I am for now / likely lurking for a while as I figure out how to think about this place
Reposted by Aaron Straup Cope
"Raven had been sleeping so long, he had molted and regrown a full coat of feathers and his new feathers were white and beaming light all over the world and everybody laughed at Raven as he danced around like a kite playing in the wind. ... " #PrestonSingletary #GarthStein
November 20, 2025 at 12:35 AM
"Raven had been sleeping so long, he had molted and regrown a full coat of feathers and his new feathers were white and beaming light all over the world and everybody laughed at Raven as he danced around like a kite playing in the wind. ... " #PrestonSingletary #GarthStein
"Conversations with Large Language Models: Memory Rain, Echo Rain and Echo Cubes" – www.aaronland.info/weblog/2025/...
Conversations with Large Language Models: Memory Rain, Echo Rain and Echo Cubes
That large language models are able to accomplish this and somehow make these texts even duller than they already are is, let's be fair, an accomplishment but if these same texts being immitated are t...
www.aaronland.info
November 10, 2025 at 5:20 PM
"Conversations with Large Language Models: Memory Rain, Echo Rain and Echo Cubes" – www.aaronland.info/weblog/2025/...
"Dancing like no one is watching in a panopticon of slop" – www.aaronland.info/weblog/2025/...
Dancing like no one is watching in a panopticon of slop
We are all living through a time which is noticeably fallow in good will and good intentions. Increasingly there is no discovery, organic or otherwise, and the value of participation can not be measur...
www.aaronland.info
October 23, 2025 at 4:38 PM
"Dancing like no one is watching in a panopticon of slop" – www.aaronland.info/weblog/2025/...
Reposted by Aaron Straup Cope
In the era of cell phones, it seems difficult to imagine how revolutionary telephone technology was for its time. Transcontinental telephone service, made possible by the tube amplifier, officially launched on January 25, 1915. #GiveMeARing #Telephones #TelephoneRetrospective
September 13, 2025 at 12:15 AM
In the era of cell phones, it seems difficult to imagine how revolutionary telephone technology was for its time. Transcontinental telephone service, made possible by the tube amplifier, officially launched on January 25, 1915. #GiveMeARing #Telephones #TelephoneRetrospective
"And yet, in as much as everything we do and say online, and increasingly offline, is being recorded, archived and strip-mined for meaning you can rest assured that this is kind of crap that will most certainly go down on your permanent record." – www.aaronland.info/weblog/2025/...
Conversations with Large Language Models: Battle Decks
So here we are—at the intersection of rockets, rainbows, lava lamp goo, and machine-generated soldiers who think math is hard.
www.aaronland.info
September 5, 2025 at 3:59 PM
"And yet, in as much as everything we do and say online, and increasingly offline, is being recorded, archived and strip-mined for meaning you can rest assured that this is kind of crap that will most certainly go down on your permanent record." – www.aaronland.info/weblog/2025/...
Reposted by Aaron Straup Cope
Our newest exhibition “Give Me a Ring: A Telephone Retrospective” is now on display in Terminal 2.
Early types of telephones ranged from large wooden wall telephones to candlestick desk sets. The rotary dial telephone, with a handset on its base, permeated American homes by the 1930s. #GiveMeARing
Early types of telephones ranged from large wooden wall telephones to candlestick desk sets. The rotary dial telephone, with a handset on its base, permeated American homes by the 1930s. #GiveMeARing
September 3, 2025 at 12:06 AM
Our newest exhibition “Give Me a Ring: A Telephone Retrospective” is now on display in Terminal 2.
Early types of telephones ranged from large wooden wall telephones to candlestick desk sets. The rotary dial telephone, with a handset on its base, permeated American homes by the 1930s. #GiveMeARing
Early types of telephones ranged from large wooden wall telephones to candlestick desk sets. The rotary dial telephone, with a handset on its base, permeated American homes by the 1930s. #GiveMeARing
can someone who is comfortable at the intersection of atproto, "did:plc:" and Go confirm for me that is (or is not) the correct way to mint a new "did:plc:" DID / it seems to work but the documentation on all this stuff is squiggy enough that I am not really sure – gist.github.com/thisisaaronl...
Create new "did:plc:" DID (Go)
Create new "did:plc:" DID (Go). GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.
gist.github.com
August 24, 2025 at 11:58 PM
can someone who is comfortable at the intersection of atproto, "did:plc:" and Go confirm for me that is (or is not) the correct way to mint a new "did:plc:" DID / it seems to work but the documentation on all this stuff is squiggy enough that I am not really sure – gist.github.com/thisisaaronl...
Reposted by Aaron Straup Cope
Marshall Moxom (1916–2007) was a San Francisco-based photographer active between the late 1930s and mid-1970s. Moxom frequently worked at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), where he made aerial photographs and documented terminal construction, events, and airport personnel. #MarshallMoxom
August 21, 2025 at 11:56 PM
Marshall Moxom (1916–2007) was a San Francisco-based photographer active between the late 1930s and mid-1970s. Moxom frequently worked at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), where he made aerial photographs and documented terminal construction, events, and airport personnel. #MarshallMoxom
"There is simply no universe, in 2025, where a museum app (which doesn't exist by the way) will "let you skip the security line [at an airport] if the museum is at peak occupancy"." – www.aaronland.info/weblog/2025/...
Conversations with Large Language Models: “Tell me about SFO Museum”
Given two incorrect statements the probability that one of them is less wrong than the other doesn't somehow transmogrify it, like water in to gold, into a correct statement. It is still wrong but the...
www.aaronland.info
August 8, 2025 at 2:48 PM
"There is simply no universe, in 2025, where a museum app (which doesn't exist by the way) will "let you skip the security line [at an airport] if the museum is at peak occupancy"." – www.aaronland.info/weblog/2025/...
Reposted by Aaron Straup Cope
What’s happening at SFO Museum? We’re preparing for our newest exhibition “Give Me A Ring: A Telephone Retrospective!”
#GiveMeARing #BehindtheScenes #SneakPeek
#GiveMeARing #BehindtheScenes #SneakPeek
July 30, 2025 at 11:58 PM
What’s happening at SFO Museum? We’re preparing for our newest exhibition “Give Me A Ring: A Telephone Retrospective!”
#GiveMeARing #BehindtheScenes #SneakPeek
#GiveMeARing #BehindtheScenes #SneakPeek
Reposted by Aaron Straup Cope
Working with a team of artists at his studio in Seattle, Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary (b. 1963) finds innovative ways to push the boundaries of modern Native art and glass sculpture. First, objects are created in the hot shop by glassblowing, hot sculpting, and casting. #PrestonSingletary
July 30, 2025 at 12:06 AM
Working with a team of artists at his studio in Seattle, Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary (b. 1963) finds innovative ways to push the boundaries of modern Native art and glass sculpture. First, objects are created in the hot shop by glassblowing, hot sculpting, and casting. #PrestonSingletary
I made the tools / to generate contours from images and video stills / using a webassembly binary / to be honest I'm not sure I remember why either – github.com/aaronland/go...
July 13, 2025 at 4:55 PM
I made the tools / to generate contours from images and video stills / using a webassembly binary / to be honest I'm not sure I remember why either – github.com/aaronland/go...
Reposted by Aaron Straup Cope
For decades, Black musicians have imparted Afrofuturist themes into their music. In the 1970s, women, such as legendary jazz musician Alice Coltrane, explored universal consciousness. #WomenofAfrofuturism
July 9, 2025 at 12:07 AM
For decades, Black musicians have imparted Afrofuturist themes into their music. In the 1970s, women, such as legendary jazz musician Alice Coltrane, explored universal consciousness. #WomenofAfrofuturism
Reposted by Aaron Straup Cope
So happy to have _finally_ sourced a copy of this! It’s a fantastic synthesis of 400k words of oral histories conducted over the pandemic and captures a huge slice of sector knowledge, 50 years of practice, and method that museums have often forgotten
July 9, 2025 at 12:56 AM
So happy to have _finally_ sourced a copy of this! It’s a fantastic synthesis of 400k words of oral histories conducted over the pandemic and captures a huge slice of sector knowledge, 50 years of practice, and method that museums have often forgotten
"There is a special kind of acid-lemon yellow which digital colour spaces produce which is impossible to reproduce in pigment. I have been living this problem since we started doing the prettymaps prints." – www.aaronland.info/weblog/2025/...
I made some jackets
I made some jackets recently. Here are some "process" shots. As always, I wish I had spent more time in the textiles department in college.
www.aaronland.info
June 15, 2025 at 6:07 PM
"There is a special kind of acid-lemon yellow which digital colour spaces produce which is impossible to reproduce in pigment. I have been living this problem since we started doing the prettymaps prints." – www.aaronland.info/weblog/2025/...
Reposted by Aaron Straup Cope
The American Association for State and Local History (@aaslh.org) proudly announced that SFO Museum is the recipient of an Award of Excellence for our recent exhibition "Rosie the Riveter: Womanpower in Wartime."
June 13, 2025 at 11:48 PM
The American Association for State and Local History (@aaslh.org) proudly announced that SFO Museum is the recipient of an Award of Excellence for our recent exhibition "Rosie the Riveter: Womanpower in Wartime."
everything is terrible / but now you can search the @sfomuseum.bsky.social aviation collection website by colour / you can also refine arbitrary other-property searches by colour too / blog post to follow – collection.sfomuseum.org/objects/colo...
June 13, 2025 at 12:11 AM
everything is terrible / but now you can search the @sfomuseum.bsky.social aviation collection website by colour / you can also refine arbitrary other-property searches by colour too / blog post to follow – collection.sfomuseum.org/objects/colo...
Reposted by Aaron Straup Cope
What’s happening at the museum? We’re preparing for our latest exhibition, showcasing the works of Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary. Have you ever wondered how objects are stored at the museum before they’re displayed?
#BehindTheScenes #SneakPeak
#BehindTheScenes #SneakPeak
June 9, 2025 at 11:55 PM
What’s happening at the museum? We’re preparing for our latest exhibition, showcasing the works of Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary. Have you ever wondered how objects are stored at the museum before they’re displayed?
#BehindTheScenes #SneakPeak
#BehindTheScenes #SneakPeak
Reposted by Aaron Straup Cope
What is going on at the museum? We’re preparing for our newest exhibition “Preston Singletary: Raven Visits SFO” featuring recent works of art by Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary paired with "the stories of what Raven is up to these days” by Tlingit author Garth Stein.
#behindthescenes
#behindthescenes
June 5, 2025 at 12:21 AM
What is going on at the museum? We’re preparing for our newest exhibition “Preston Singletary: Raven Visits SFO” featuring recent works of art by Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary paired with "the stories of what Raven is up to these days” by Tlingit author Garth Stein.
#behindthescenes
#behindthescenes
everything is terrible / so here is a picture of a promotional cigarette lighter in the form of a zeppelin / to capture the moment – collection.sfomuseum.org/objects/1511...
Cigarette lighter: Zeppelin. Polychrome tin, plastic. Anonymous gift, SFO Museum Collection. 1996.21.06.01 a b.
Cigarette lighter: Zeppelin is an object and its permanent ID is 1511907477.
collection.sfomuseum.org
May 30, 2025 at 10:27 PM
everything is terrible / so here is a picture of a promotional cigarette lighter in the form of a zeppelin / to capture the moment – collection.sfomuseum.org/objects/1511...
I wrote a blog post / about tools and tooling / extracting colours and palette-matching / and flirting with the forfeiture of nuance in the rush to probability-driven automation – millsfield.sfomuseum.org/blog/2025/05...
Updates to the SFO Museum text and image "embossers" (and a brand new tool for color matching)
In addition to all these changes the go-image-emboss package now includes a new command line tool, called review-colors, to perform image segmentation, color extraction and "snap-to-grid" matching wit...
millsfield.sfomuseum.org
May 29, 2025 at 5:29 PM
I wrote a blog post / about tools and tooling / extracting colours and palette-matching / and flirting with the forfeiture of nuance in the rush to probability-driven automation – millsfield.sfomuseum.org/blog/2025/05...
Reposted by Aaron Straup Cope
See “Figure” by Isamu Noguchi on display, post-security, in Harvey Milk Terminal 1 and online at: bit.ly/3RSXkEP
Figure | SFO Museum
bit.ly
May 28, 2025 at 11:31 PM
See “Figure” by Isamu Noguchi on display, post-security, in Harvey Milk Terminal 1 and online at: bit.ly/3RSXkEP
in news that will likely only be of interest (let alone mean anything) to a handful of people / and an equal number of AI scraper bots / all the images in the "orthis" archive now have IIIF manifests / it's hard to overstate how dorky IIIF is but it works – projectmirador.org/embed/?iiif-...
May 19, 2025 at 3:36 PM
in news that will likely only be of interest (let alone mean anything) to a handful of people / and an equal number of AI scraper bots / all the images in the "orthis" archive now have IIIF manifests / it's hard to overstate how dorky IIIF is but it works – projectmirador.org/embed/?iiif-...
everything is terrible / here is a picture of a postcard I made for a friend's child in 2021 – aaronland.info/orthis/196/4...
untitled #1964522145
february 10, 2021 / or this...
aaronland.info
May 17, 2025 at 4:23 PM
everything is terrible / here is a picture of a postcard I made for a friend's child in 2021 – aaronland.info/orthis/196/4...
have you ever wanted a simple web application / for calculating dates and times in a bunch of different timezones / which can run both locally and offline via service workers / I did so now it exists – github.com/aaronland/go...
May 15, 2025 at 4:55 PM
have you ever wanted a simple web application / for calculating dates and times in a bunch of different timezones / which can run both locally and offline via service workers / I did so now it exists – github.com/aaronland/go...