April, 2018 | Chris Aldrich

Replied to Finds at Powell’s Books by Joseph Dickson (LinuxBookPro)

Old, new, odd, and hard to find books all in one expansive store. I think we spent three hours roaming the stacks and only cracked the cover of what they offer.

My favorite, by far, has to be the Eric Meyer (t) hangtag!

👓 Wavelength for Micro.blog | Manton.org

Read Wavelength for Micro.blog by Manton Reece (manton.org)

We have something really big to announce today. Micro.blog now supports hosting short-form podcasts, also known as microcasts, with a companion iPhone app called Wavelength for recording, editing, and publishing episodes.

Micro.blog is about making short-form content you own as simple to post as a tweet because we believe blogging should be easier. Podcasting should be easier too.

Wavelength looks like a cool new app in the podcasting space. While meant for growing category of microcasts, it portends some interesting things. I suspect this is just the start for something that will likely continue getting better over time.

Congrats Manton!

Reply to chenoehart’s tweet about community

Replied to a tweet by

Chenoe Hart (Twitter)

Whenever I find myself actively seeking something to RT it always feels like there’s nothing but noise. Seem to find the most interesting things to share after I’ve already found too many things to RT at once.

Sometimes I find myself wanting to tweet just in general, and wish there was an easy way to just have casual conversations on here, tweet about the weather or something. It’s often really just a proxy for trying to meet people anyway.

I’ve had this feeling before and often long for the earlier days of Twitter when it functioned more like this. The popularization of Twitter in 2009 and the subsequent iteration on the platform and its community killed all the original spirit. It also reminds me of a piece I’d read recently by John Naughton¹ about how toxic the retweet functionality (and other gamification like likes/favorites) can be.

I’ve seen the type of interaction you’re describing in smaller pockets of the internet on services like App.net (aka ADN, now defunct), pnut, and 10centuries, and a few corners of the Mastodon sphere.

The place I’ve seen it done well most recently is on Manton Reece‘s awesome micro.blog service, which I think has some strong community spirit and a greater chance of longevity. They’ve specifically left off “features” like follower counts, number of likes, and made conversation front and center. As a result it is a much more solid and welcoming community. I’m curious, as always, if they can maintain it as they scale, but the fact that they encourage people to have their own website and own their own data mean that you can take it all with you somewhere else if they ever cease meeting your needs in the future–something that certainly can’t be easily done on Twitter.

I hope you find the connections with the types of people you’d like to meet.

Originally bookmarked on April 01, 2018 at 09:22PM

References

Naughton J. How to stay sane on Twitter: ignore retweets. Memex 1.1: John Naughton’s online diary. http://memex.naughtons.org/archives/2018/03/11/25409. Published March 11, 2018. Accessed April 12, 2018.

🔖 Fundamentals of NetLogo | Complexity Explorer

Bookmarked Fundamentals of NetLogo (complexityexplorer.org)

About the Tutorial:
This tutorial will present you with the basics of how to use NetLogo to create an agent-based modeling. During the tutorial, we will briefly discuss what agent-based modeling is, and then dive in to hands-on work using the NetLogo programming language, which is developed and supported at Northwestern University by Uri Wilensky. No programming background or knowledge is required, and the methods examined will be useable in any number of different fields.
About the Instructor(s):
Bill Rand is an assistant professor of Business Management at the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University and a computer scientist by training. He has co-authored a textbook on agent-based modelingwith Uri Wilensky, the author of the NetLogo programming language. He is also the author of over 50 scholarly papers, many of which use agent-based modeling as their core methodology. He received his doctorate in computer science in 2005 from the University of Michigan, and was also awarded a postdoctoral fellowship to Northwestern University, where he worked directly with Uri Wilensky as part of the NetLogo development team.
Syllabus

Introduction to ABM

Tabs, Turtles, Patches, and Links

Code, Control, and Collections

Putting It All Together

Conclusion

h/t to ComplexExplorer

WE’RE LAUNCHING A NEW TUTORIAL!
Fundamentals of NetLogo, a primer on the most used agent-based modeling software, will be available tomorrow.
Stay tuned for our launch announcement, and check out all our tutorials at https://t.co/APIkME07y5 pic.twitter.com/M8qIJp1R6x

— ComplexityExplorer (@ComplexExplorer) April 2, 2018

👓 How American women got stuck in the kitchen | The Economist

Read How American women got stuck in the kitchen (The Economist)

The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook shows the cost of having no federal paid leave programme

You heard it, America is behind… and it doesn’t look like we’ll be catching up any time soon.

🔖 John Stuart Mill’s Ideas on Free Speech Illustrated

Bookmarked John Stuart Mill's Ideas on Free Speech Illustrated (Heterodox Academy)

Heterodox Academy has produced a new book based on John Stuart Mill’s famous essay On Liberty to make it accessible for the 21st century. Here’s what makes our edition special:
1) It’s just the second chapter (out of 5), because that chapter gives the best arguments ever made for the importance of free speech and viewpoint diversity;
2) We have reduced that chapter by 50% to remove repetitions and historical references that would be obscure today, producing a very readable 7000 word essay;
3) Editors Richard Reeves (a biographer of Mill) and Jon Haidt (a social psychologist) have written a brief introduction to link Mill and his time to the issues of our time, and
4) Artist Dave Cicirelli has created 16 gorgeous original illustrations that amplify the power of Mill’s metaphors and arguments.

All Minus One is ideal for use in college courses, advanced high school classes, or in any organization in which people would benefit from productive disagreement. We offer free and paid versions of the book below.

Caveat emptor: though this appears to be high quality, this looks like it’s heavily edited and excerpted.

h/t Claire Lehmann

A wonderful resource for every highschooler & uni student: a condensed version of JS Mill’s arguments for free speech, with accompanying illustrations.

If you have kids, give it to them. (Also it’s free)https://t.co/GWmwffTcmH

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) April 13, 2018

👓 Trump poised to pardon Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff: Sources | ABC News

Read Trump poised to pardon Dick Cheney's former chief of staff: Sources (ABC News)

The president has already signed off on the pardon, sources told ABC News.

👓 Indigenous for Android | realize.be

Read a post by

swentel (realize.be)

Introducing Indigenous for Android, supporting micropub and microsub - sign up for testing if you're interested! https://realize.be/blog/indigenous-android #indigenous #indieweb #drupal #android