Month: December 2019

Listened to Curiouser and Curiouser from On the Media | WNYC Studios

A close-up on John Solomon's role in the impeachment saga, and the black nationalist origins of Justice Clarence Thomas.

President Trump’s concerns about corruption in Ukraine began, in part, with a series of articles in a publication called The Hill. On this week’s On the Media, a close-up on the columnist whose dubious tales may lead to an impeachment. Plus, the black nationalist origins of Justice Clarence Thomas’s legal thinking.

1. Paul Farhi [@farhip], Washington Post media reporter, and Mike Spies [@mikespiesnyc], ProPublica reporter, on John Solomon's role in the impeachment saga. Listen. 

2. Corey Robin [@CoreyRobin], writer and political scientist at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, on all that we've missed (or ignored) about Justice Clarence Thomas. Listen. 

This is a fascinating thesis about Justice Clarence Thomas and who he really is. I totally want to read The Enigma of Clarence Thomas now.
Listened to Can We Govern Ourselves? from On the Media | WNYC Studios

Can we govern ourselves? John Adams didn't think so. Brooke speaks with Jill Lepore about her book "These Truths."

As Americans battle for control of the future of the United States, it seems that we're always going back to founding documents and core principles: relying on them and reinterpreting them, in what seems to be an increasingly arduous effort to govern ourselves. It all starts to beg an uncomfortable question: in the end, can we govern ourselves? John Adams didn’t think so. He said that all political systems, whether monarchy, democracy, aristocracy, were equally prey to the brutish nature of mankind.

Harvard historian Jill Lepore wrote a sweeping history of the American experiment called These Truths: A History of the United States. Brooke spoke with Lepore about this country's history and the history of the contested — and supposedly self-evident — truths under-girding our shaky democracy. 

This segment is from our November 9th, 2018 episode, We're Not Very Good At This.

Read An Opportunity Zone Group Called Our Story About a Yacht Club Getting Tax Breaks “Lurid.” We Respond. by Jeff Ernsthausen,Justin Elliott (ProPublica)
A think tank that pushes the big Trump tax break accused us of omissions. Its statement has some curious omissions of its own.

Followed Adam’s Apples

Followed Adam's Apples (Adam's Apples)
Hundreds of apples, plus notes and comment on the harvest and more.
An eleven year old continuously running blog dedicated to apples? Yes, please! Sign me up.

I can only imagine that my following it is going to prompt a future interview by Jeremy Cherfas presuming he may not have come across this before.

hat tip: Jeremy Felt and his obsession with apples

Listened to The Daily: A Small Act of Rebellion from New York Times

One defiant memo is now at the center of a Supreme Court case addressing deportation protections for nearly 700,000 “Dreamers.”

Cover art for The Daily on DACA and Immigration

Watched Connecting to the IndieWeb Movement by Jim GroomJim Groom from bavatuesdays

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Tomorrow at 12 PM Eastern/ 9 AM Pacific I’ll be be hosting a Connected Courses discussion that will explore the IndieWeb movement as a people-centered response to the corporate web. How do core IndieWeb principles such as owning your content, remaining better connected, and redefining control online intersect with the values of connected learning? Take a bit of time tomorrow and join myself, Mikhail Gershovich, Ben Werdmuller, Erin Jo Richey, and Simon Thomson to find out more.

I particularly love how they all underline the humanity that should and does underlie the web. This is certainly a classic for the area of IndieWeb and education. I’m not sure how I hadn’t seen this before.

[Withknown is] the posterchild of the IndieWeb.
— Jim Groom

I’ll agree that it is pretty darn awesome!

Some slight rephrasings from Ben in the video that I thought were spot on:

IndieWeb: allowing people to connect online without caring about what platforms or services they’re using.

IndieWeb puts the learner first. The LMS, which primarily serves an administrative function, should not be the center of the process.

Replied to Reading.am · Issue #2057 · simple-icons/simple-icons by David Shanske (GitHub)
Name: Reading.am Website: https://www.reading.am Official resources for icon and color: Their logo is on the front of their site, and is a black and white hand.
Reading.am has generally used the “Victory hand” aka “peace sign” emoji as their logo/icon, so perhaps a similarly converted emoji to svg would suffice in this case.

Perhaps something along the lines of https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emojione_270C.svg ?