Instagram filter used: Clarendon
Photo taken at: UCLA Math Sciences Building
Month: January 2017
🎧 The Power Of Categories | Invisibilia (NPR)
The Power Of Categories examines how categories define us — how, if given a chance, humans will jump into one category or another. People need them, want them. The show looks at what categories provide for us, and you'll hear about a person caught between categories in a way that will surprise you. Plus, a trip to a retirement community designed to help seniors revisit a long-missed category.
The transgender/sexual dysphoria story here is exceedingly interesting because it could potentially have some clues to how those pieces of biology work and what shifts things in one direction or another. How is that spectrum created/defined? A few dozen individuals like that could help provide an answer.
The story about the Indian retirement community in Florida is interesting, but it also raises the (unasked, in the episode at least) question of the detriment it can do to a group of people to be lead by some the oldest members of their community. The Latin words senīlis (“of or pertaining to old age”) and senex (“old”) are the roots of words like senate, senescence, senility, senior, and seniority, and though it’s nice to take care of our elders, the younger generations should take a hard look at the unintended consequences which may stem from this.
In some sense I’m also reminded about Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and why progress in science (and yes, society) is held back by the older generations who are still holding onto outdated models. Though simultaneously, they do provide some useful “brakes” on both velocity of change as well as potential ill effects which could be damaging in short timeframes.
Syndicated copies to:The 86-Year-Old Breakout Star of Sundance | The Daily Beast
After six decades in showbiz—she made her film debut opposite James Dean—Lois Smith is finally getting her due as a grieving widow in the Sundance sci-fi drama ‘Marjorie Prime.’
Continue reading “The 86-Year-Old Breakout Star of Sundance | The Daily Beast”
Syndicated copies to:Trial Balloon for a Coup? | Medium
Analyzing the news of the past 24 hours
Analyzing the news of the past 24 hours
The theme of this morning’s news updates from Washington is additional clarity emerging, rather than meaningful changes in the field. But this clarity is enough to give us a sense of what we just saw happen, and why it happened the way it did.
I’ll separate what’s below into the raw news reports and analysis; you may also find these two pieces from yesterday (heavily referenced below) to be useful.
The Republican Fausts | The New York Times
They struck a deal with the devil, Donald Trump, that comes at too high a price.
Many Republican members of Congress have made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump. They don’t particularly admire him as a man, they don’t trust him as an administrator, they don’t agree with him on major issues, but they respect the grip he has on their voters, they hope he’ll sign their legislation and they certainly don’t want to be seen siding with the inflamed progressives or the hyperventilating media.
Continue reading “The Republican Fausts | The New York Times”
Trump’s voter fraud expert registered in 3 states | Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A man who President Donald Trump has promoted as an authority on voter fraud was registered to vote in multiple states during the 2016 presidential election,
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A man who President Donald Trump has promoted as an authority on voter fraud was registered to vote in multiple states during the 2016 presidential election, the Associated Press has learned.
Gregg Phillips, whose unsubstantiated claim that the election was marred by 3 million illegal votes was tweeted by the president, was listed on the rolls in Alabama, Texas and Mississippi, according to voting records and election officials in those states. He voted only in Alabama in November, records show. Continue reading “Trump’s voter fraud expert registered in 3 states | Associated Press”
The Web Cryptography API is a W3C Recommendation | W3C News
The Web Cryptography Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of the Web Cryptography API. This specification describes a JavaScript API for performing basic cryptographic operations in web applications, such as hashing, signature generation and verification, and encryption and decryption. Additionally, it describes an API for applications to generate and/or manage the keying material necessary to perform these operations. Uses for this API range from user or service authentication, document or code signing, and the confidentiality and integrity of communications.
h/t
The Web Cryptography API is a now W3C Recommendation https://t.co/hz97mKXuYH
— The New Stack (@thenewstack) January 31, 2017
This has to be the most awesome Indieweb pull request I’ve seen this year.
WithKnown is a fantastic, free, and opensource content management service that supports some of the most bleeding edge technology on the internet. I’ve been playing with it for over two years and love it!
And today, there’s another reason to love it even more…
This is also a great reminder that developers can have a lasting and useful impact on the world around them–even in the political arena.
Syndicated copies to:🎧 Entanglement | Invisibilia (NPR)
In Entanglement, you'll meet a woman with Mirror Touch Synesthesia who can physically feel what she sees others feeling. And an exploration of the ways in which all of us are connected — more literally than you might realize. The hour will start with physics and end with a conversation with comedian Maria Bamford and her mother. They discuss what it's like to be entangled through impersonation.
I can think of a few specific quirks I’ve got that touch tangentially on mirror synethesia. This story and some of the research behind it is truly fascinating. Particularly interesting are the ideas of the contagion of emotion. It would be interesting to take some complexity and network theory and add some mathematical models to see how this might look. In particular the recent political protests in the U.S. might make great models. This also makes me wonder where Donald Trump sits on this emotional empathy spectrum, if at all.
One of the more interesting take-aways: the thoughts and emotions of those around you can affect you far more than you imagine.
Four episodes in and this podcast is still impossibly awesome. I don’t know if I’ve had so many thought changing ideas since I read David Christian’s book Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. [1] The sad problem is that I’m listening to them at a far faster pace than they could ever continue to produce them.
References
[1]
D. Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. Univ of California Press, 2004.
Fitbit will lay off 110 employees amid challenges in wearable market | The Verge
Fitbit today released preliminary results for its upcoming fourth quarter earnings report, and the news isn’t good.
Continue reading “Fitbit will lay off 110 employees amid challenges in wearable market | The Verge”
Syndicated copies to:Day 40 – Melancholy | Aaron Parecki
Day 40. This is mostly me playing the piano live. In a few places I adjusted the timing, and I added a couple notes that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to reach. I doubled the piano with two slightly different piano sounds, and they are panned hard left and hard right. This adds a bit of depth to it. I added the drum track at a relatively low volume to kind of keep things moving a bit more than it would without the drums. This one came out a lot more melancholy than I thought it was going to despite it being in a major key.
Needle & thread
IndieWebify.Me and the Knowledge Gap | DataHive Consulting
Last week, a friend asked me what I thought of IndieWebify.Me, a movement intended to allow people to publish on the web without relying on the tools and storage of the giant corporations that currently control the majority of the social web. I’m the kind of person who gladly supports her local independent bookstores and farmers’ markets and food purveyors, links to IndieBound.org instead of Amazon to buy books, and admires the ideals of Open Source Software. So, I’m biased towards an independent and open experience. Continue reading “IndieWebify.Me and the Knowledge Gap | DataHive Consulting”
Updating the getting started documentation for @WordPress at IndieWeb.org
Google Recalls Staff to U.S. After Trump Immigration Order | Bloomberg
Alphabet Inc.’s Google delivered a sharp message to staff traveling overseas who may be impacted by a new executive order on immigration from President Donald Trump: Get back to the U.S. now.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google delivered a sharp message to staff traveling overseas who may be impacted by a new executive order on immigration from President Donald Trump: Get back to the U.S. now.
Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai slammed Trump’s move in a note to employees Friday, telling them that more than 100 company staff are affected by the order. Continue reading “Google Recalls Staff to U.S. After Trump Immigration Order | Bloomberg”