Read - Want to Read: Cornucopia: A Source Book of Edible Plants by Stephen Facciola (Kampong Publications)
Complete reference and source book of edible plants of the world, invaluable to gardeners, cooks, economic botanists, those in the specialty and gourmet foods business. Includes 3,000 species and 7,000 varieties of food plants. More than 1300 catalog sources for seeds, plants and food products are listed. Revised, updated and expanded edition.
Read Best Roam Research alternative? Amplenote offers more for less (amplenote.com)
Amplenote and Roam are more different than they are similar, but there are still many common touchpoints. Below, we'll outline how the two compare as of mid-2020. If you would like to import your Roam JSON file to see how it compares in Amplenote, you can start a free trial and then try out our Roam Research Importer here. Paid annually, Amplenote pricing ranges from about $5/month to $25/month.
Looks like yet another silo version of a note taking application. I think I’d prefer something more IndieWeb.
Read - Want to Read: Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra (O'Reilly Media)
Imagine you're in a game with one objective: a bestselling product or service. The rules? No marketing budget, no PR stunts, and it must be sustainably successful. No short-term fads.
This is not a game of chance. It is a game of skill and strategy.
And it begins with a single question: given competing products of equal pricing, promotion, and perceived quality, why does one outsell the others?
The answer doesn't live in the sustainably successful products or services. The answer lives in those who use them.
Our goal is to craft a strategy for creating successful users. And that strategy is full of surprising, counter-intuitive, and astonishingly simple techniques that don't depend on a massive marketing or development budget. Techniques typically overlooked by even the most well-funded, well-staffed product teams.
Every role is a key player in this game. Product development, engineering, marketing, user experience, support--everyone on the team. Even if that team is a start-up of one. Armed with a surprisingly overlooked science and a unique POV, we can can reduce the role of luck. We can build sustainably successful products and services that rely not on unethical persuasive marketing tricks but on helping our users have deeper, richer experiences. Not just in the moments while they're using our product but, more importantly, in the moments when they aren't.
Read Reply to What Is the Small Web? by fluffy (Hacker News)

Reply to What Is the Small Web?

You seem to be under the impression that IndieWeb is a formalized organization where the people operating under its banner are being paid by said organization.

In reality it's a set of shared goals, which a lot of the people disagree on facets of implementation and the like, and a collection of generally-agreed-to protocols that people can choose to support as part of interoperability with other websites.

I am fairly active in IndieWeb spaces and I disagree with others in these spaces all the time. I've also certainly never accepted any Google money (or any other sponsor) for my contributions, not that it's even been offered. This is the first I'm hearing of "us" being sponsored by Google.

I've seen plenty of material support from Mozilla (because there are several Mozillians involved in the projects) and Okta (for the same reason). But those aren't in any way signs that those companies are steering the decisions being made -- they're just offering things like hosting rooms and providing food at our mini-conferences and providing t-shirts and whatever (and those t-shirts, as far as I know, never have any sponsor logos on them).

Also, we take a more user-centric view of things; while we'd all like people to be on their own self-hosted websites and free of the big social networks and so on, we understand that it's not realistic to just ask everyone to jump ship all at once, and running your own web presence is not what most people want to do. It's much better to build bridges so that people can connect in whatever way works for them, and that's why there are services like brid.gy and so on which people run out of the kindness of their hearts, and paid services like micro.blog that try to make it easier for people to dive in without having to Do All The Things, and people who work on IndieWeb integrations for Wordpress and so on.

And I'm very grateful for things like brid.gy; most of the comments/responses I get on my website come in through that, via people on Twitter and Mastodon and occasionally Reddit. Sometimes I get webmentions from other IndieWeb users, but they're the vast minority. And same goes for private-post logins; most people log in via Twitter or Mastodon, and a bunch use my email-based login mechanism as well, and very few actually log in via IndieAuth. If I were to restrict my interactions to pure IndieWeb I'd have a very lonely presence.

Read Kellyanne Conway to leave the White House at the end of the month, citing the need to focus on her family (Washington Post)
Her husband George Conway, a conservative lawyer and outspoken critic of the president, is also stepping back from his role on the Lincoln Project, an outside group of Republicans devoted to defeating Trump in November.
Apparently both she and her husband are “disappearing”. Makes one wonder what is going on? Is there real family trouble, or is she simply jumping a sinking ship and he’s helping to provide the cover?
Read - Reading: Behavioral Economics When Psychology and Economics Collide by Scott Huettel (The Great Courses)
Lecture 8: Ambiguity—The Unknown Unknowns
In behavioral economics, “ambiguity” refers to conditions in decision making in which we do not know and cannot estimate the probabilities of potential outcomes. Here, investigate three circumstances in decision making that produce ambiguity: “hidden information,” “asymmetrical knowledge,” and “unfamiliar contexts.” Then, learn a two-step approach for dealing effectively with ambiguity.
Finished lecture 8 on ambiguity
Interesting applications to insurance here and some good reasons why the market and capitalism won’t help fix some problems.

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Read How a brand of chalk achieved cult status among mathematicians (CNN)
Hagoromo chalk has developed a cult following among mathematicians. When the company went out of business, chaos ensued.
I’ve read this same sort of article in other venues in the past, but closer to the revival of the company. This seems to have cropped up again because the original owner of the Japanese company has passed away in the last month.
Read WP Rig Starter Theme Project Looking for New Maintainers (WordPress Tavern)
A couple of years ago, Morten Rand-Hendriksen launched WP Rig for WordPress. The goal was to bring a modern starter theme and build process to the theme development community. Now, he and the curre…
I couldn’t take this sort of project over, but it looks like something interesting to look into.
Read - Want to Read: The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan (Ember)
On remote Rollrock Island, men go to sea to make their livings--and to catch their wives.
The witch Misskaella knows the way of drawing a girl from the heart of a seal, of luring the beauty out of the beast. And for a price a man may buy himself a lovely sea-wife. He may have and hold and keep her. And he will tell himself that he is her master. But from his first look into those wide, questioning, liquid eyes, he will be just as transformed as she. He will be equally ensnared. And the witch will have her true payment.
Margo Lanagan weaves an extraordinary tale of desire, despair, and transformation. With devastatingly beautiful prose, she reveals characters capable of unspeakable cruelty, but also unspoken love.
Abby Hargreaves in 5 Excellent YA Books About Selkies ()
Read 5 Excellent YA Books About Selkies by Abby Hargreaves
If books about mermaids aren’t really your thing and you’re looking for something a bit earthier, you might be interested in selkie lore. For the uninitiated, selkies come from Scottish folklore, stemming particularly from the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland. Selkies, a kind of mythical creature that shapeshifts from a seal to a human form. In many examples of selkie legends, part of the lore typically involves a woman selkie who loses her pelt to a man of the land. When this happens, she is tied to him so long as she is unable to find her pelt, and therefore unable to return to her seal form and her ocean habitat. These six YA books about selkies drop readers into stormy seaside towns, sparkling ocean depths, and treacherous rocky crags.
Apparently this is a “thing”? I’m going to download a sample of one and give it a try.
Read Are you a 2X, 1.5X or 1X audiobook listener? by Danika Ellis (Book Riot)
I’ll be honest: since the pandemic began, my attention span has been on a steady decline. Nowadays I watch movies on Netflix in ten minute chunks, because that’s how long I can hold out before I’m clicking away to something else. Between having the attention span of a gnat and not having my usual commute or routine, I haven’t been reading much. Sitting down with a book makes me feel restless, which is frustrating because I’ve built so much of my identity around being a reader. Lately, it’s more my speed to listen to a mindless podcast while I play Animal Crossing (I seem to need at least two forms of distraction at any one time).
I’m usually 1.25x-1.5x depending on the topic. It’s rare that I slow down to 1.0x unless it’s a highly technical topic.
Read How to find the editor of a book by Erin Mayer (Book Riot)
As readers, we love books. We also recognize that books are about more than the author’s name on the front cover. Books wouldn’t exist without authors, but so much goes into publishing your favorite titles. From publicity to copyediting and book design, the publishing world is vast and varied. Have you ever wondered how to find the editor of a book? It’s actually super easy most of the time.
This didn’t have as much useful advice as I would have hoped.