Chris Aldrich Blog: BoffoSocko.com

Checked into ARCO

Put air in tires of the Kia Sorrento, they were getting low. (Didn’t get gas this trip.)

Listened to The World, Remade from On the Media | WNYC Studios

How the pandemic has shaped our future: from the built environment, to the way we work, to the way we learn.

With vaccinations underway, we’re edging closer and closer to the end of the pandemic. This week, On The Media looks at how the pandemic has shaped what’s possible for the future — from the built environment to the way we work to the way we learn.

1. Sam Kling [@SamKling2], American Council of Learned Societies public fellow, on whether cities like New York were bound to become hubs for disease. Listen.

2. Vanessa Chang [@vxchang], lecturer at California College of the Arts, explains how pandemics of the past have been instrumental in shaping architecture; Mik Scarlet [@MikScarlet] delineates the social model of disability; and Sara Hendren [@ablerism], author of What Can A Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World, describes how the wisdom of people with disabilities can inform the redesign our post-pandemic world. Listen.

3. OTM reporter Micah Loewinger [@micahloewinger] tells the story of how distance learning saved his friend's life. Listen.

Listened to Unlearning White Jesus from On the Media | WNYC Studios

Examining the consequences of 'White Jesus' in America.

In a time where monuments are being toppled, institutions and icons reconsidered, we turn to a portrait encountered by every American: "White Jesus." You know, that guy with sandy blond hair and upcast blue eyes. For On the Media, Eloise Blondiau traces the history of how the historically inaccurate image became canon, and why it matters.

In this segment, Eloise talks to Mbiyu Chui, pastor at the Shrine of the Black Madonna in Detroit, about unlearning Jesus's whiteness. She also hears from Edward Blum, author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America, about how the image came dominate in the U.S., and psychologist Simon Howard on how White Jesus has infiltrated our subconsciouses. Lastly, Eloise speaks to Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, womanist theologian and Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary, about the theology of the Black Christ.

This is a segment from our October 1st, 2020 program, God Bless.

Checked into Family Room

Replied to a tweet by Dan York (Twitter)

@ambrwlsn90 - Thanks for writing that post. A question - how does Webmentions deal with spammers trying to add links to your posts? That was historically the big problem we wound up with both pingbacks and before that trackbacks.
— Dan York (@danyork) January 31, 2021

Dan, since you’re in the WordPress space, there are several pieces in place there. Akismet and other anti-spam tools can still be used to filter webmentions just like any other comment/response on your site.

If you moderate your responses on your site, the webmention plugin has an “approve & always allow” function as well as domain allow-listing for people you know and trust.

It also bears saying: there’s also nothing that says you have to display webmentions on your site either, you can use them simply as notifications on your back end.

In my experience, I’ve also seen people strip active links, scripts, etc. out of their received webmentions as a security precaution. I believe that the WordPress suite of IndieWeb plugins does this by default.

If you need/want to go further, you could work on implementing the Vouch extension of Webmention. Any additional ideas or brainstorming you’ve got to help mitigate these sorts of harms is most welcome.

For the record, for Webmention to work as a protocol, it requires a link to your site to actually appear on a public web page–something neither trackback/pingback required and made them even easier/cheaper to game.