Amsterdam is a gorgeous city:

This winter, Amsterdam has lit up once again for the Amsterdam Light Festival. This is the third edition of the winter light festival which, for more than fifty days, illuminates the historical center of Amsterdam with projections on historical buildings, installations on the street,in public parks and on water for a unique experience in the darkest months of the year.

Via Coudal.

John Carey is in Japan, and he’s killing it.

Dave Wiskus and Jaimee Newberry’s new show is awesome:

So we decided to make it asynchronous and put it all on video. Inspired by John and Hank Green, we’re sending each other weekly video postcards via our new YouTube channel, called Hovercraft to Paris. This is an experiment, and all we have right now is the starting point: a conversation between friends. Like the best conversations between friends, it could go anywhere.

Sold.

Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic:

This isn’t to attribute the dearth of charm to some cultural and social declension, although clearly charm—with its emotional, even aesthetic, detachment—could hardly have retained its social sway after that most overwrought of decades, the 1960s. Any culture that celebrates youth necessarily provides stony soil for charm, which is by definition a quality reserved for adults: the young can be charming, which is an inadvertent attribute; they cannot have charm.

Charm as a personal value — that is, a quality that can and should be cultivated, as opposed to an attribute one is born with — is increasingly rarer in today’s society and sadly, that’s not limited to American culture.

Spectacular images, as expected. This year I particularly love the Nature section. So good.

The epic story of Mike Lacher’s unlikely victory against impossible odds.

Via Coudal.

Bernardo Hernandez, Vice-President of Flickr:

We hear and understand your concerns, and we always want to ensure that we’re acting within the spirit with which the community has contributed. Given the varied reactions, as a first step, we’ve decided to remove the pool of Creative Commons-licensed images from Flickr Wall Art, effective immediately. We’ll also be refunding all sales of Creative Commons-licensed images made to date through this service.

Jim Dalrymple nails it:

People treat their iPad purchases like they treat their computer purchases. They expect these devices to last longer and do more than an iPhone. In a lot of ways, it’s a bizarre thought because of the similarities of the devices, but I believe this is what’s happening.

Simply put, the buying cycle for an iPad is a lot longer than it is for an iPhone.

That’s the real reason behind the slump in iPad sales. It’s got nothing to do with tablets being a fad or the iPad not being a desirable product anymore. iPads are still great, and anybody who owns one will tell you that much. In fact, iPads are so great that people keep them around for much longer than their iPhones, because they simply don’t feel the need to upgrade them every year.

The question is, once this knowledge sinks in at Apple, will the iPad refresh cycle get longer as well? On one hand, it’s awesome that iPads keep getting better at such great pace, with significant new features being added every year. On the other hand though, it’s hard to justify spending so many engineering resources on a product if there’s not enough demand to drive sustainable year-over-year growth. At this point, the only reason Apple has to keep their foot on the gas is to maintain the hardware lead they still enjoy over their competitors. That’s certainly no small thing, but is it enough for Apple to stay the course?

Is the iPad headed towards a more Mac-like future?

The final episode of ‘The Colbert Report’ airs tonight:

For nine years, Stephen Colbert has relentlessly maintained his pompous, deeply ridiculous but consistently appealing conservative blowhard character on his late-night show, “The Colbert Report” — so much so that when he puts the character to rest for good on Thursday night, he may have to resort to comicide. The Grim Reaper is his last guest.

It’s sad to see such a great show end, but I’m really looking forward to see what Colbert — the real Colbert — does with ‘The Late Show’.

Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, Gizmodo:

Change comes slowly to the subway. Signs hang for decades. Trains are rarely replaced. A new line can take centuries. So the subway captured in these remarkable images by photographer Danny Lyon in 1966 feels almost contemporary—which is what makes it shocking that they were shot 48 years ago.

I love these stories. Via Kottke.