Month: June 2020

Watched The Help (2011) from Netflix
Directed by Tate Taylor. With Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard. An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African American maids' point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.
I can’t help but think that it would be interesting to have a white person’s commentary (in the vein of a traditional director’s commentary, but highlighting different cultural points) to underline some of the unspoken privilege hiding in many of the scenes here. Some of the small and really painful injustices are thrown away in small pieces and then the big emotional moments in the film are left to the end for the white people instead of where they belong.

 

Watched The Help (2011) from Netflix
Directed by Tate Taylor. With Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard. An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African American maids' point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.

Review: ★★★½
Watched The Orchestra in My Mouth by Tom Thumb from TEDxSydney

In a highly entertaining performance, beatboxer Tom Thum slings beats, comedy and a mouthful of instrumental impersonations into 11 minutes of creativity and fun that will make you smile.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxSydney, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Pretty cool to see a internal view of a beatboxer with a laryngoscope through the nose.
Replied to 10 Books That Have Influenced Me by Cathie LeBlancCathie LeBlanc (Desert of My Real Life)
I was challenged on Facebook to post 10 books in 10 days that have had an influence on me. Not surprisingly, it was really challenging to narrow this down to just 10. But it was also kind of fun to…
I’ve got a good bit of overlap here, but also some new ones I should add to my list or even reread. My copy of Piercy’s He, She and It is pretty beat up, but I’ve not read Gone to Soldiers before. Thanks for sharing!
Read Here Comes Everybody - Tummlers, Geishas, Animateurs and Chief Conversation Officers help us listen by Kevin MarksKevin Marks (epeus.blogspot.com)
Bob Garfield's de haut en bas attack on web commenters upset two very skilled conversational catalysts, Ira Glass, and Derek Powazek. The false dichotomy of 'we choose who you get to hear' and 'total anarchic mob noise' was dismissed by Jack Lail too. At the same time, Ben Laurie explained how the IETF's open-to-all mailing lists can be hijacked by time-rich fools, talking about the Open Web Foundation.
In the last few months I came across Derek’s side of the story and so I dug back into archives (literally archive.org) to find the original show and catch the blog post conversation around this controversy. I particularly recall Ira and Jeff Jarvis’ conversations. Somehow I didn’t see Kevin’s portion of the conversation in the comments sections of the others, but I’m glad to have it pop up just a few weeks later to complete the circle.

Of the group, Kevin, as usual, provides some of the best analysis, but he also adds in a huge amount of additional context by way of links.

Society seems to have ripped itself open recently and I can’t help but think that we’re going to need some strong tummelers and heavy work to allow everyone to speak, be heard, and create some change. Kevin’s piece here may be a good starting point.

Perhaps this is the piece some of our mainstream media have been missing from a journalistic perspective? For too long they’ve acted as aggregators and filters, but perhaps they should be spending a larger portion of their time doing some tummeling work on our behalf?

Replied to a tweet by Katherine Moss (Twitter)
There’s a proposed session (IndieWeb GoodReads) to discuss just this at IndieWebCamp West 2020. If you have other ideas for sessions, feel free to brainstorm something or propose it in the etherpad.
Watched "The Good Fight" The One Where the Sun Comes Out from CBS
Directed by Brooke Kennedy. Reddick, Boseman and Lockhart is asked by ChumHum to bring on a specialist, lawyer Brenda DeCarlo, to investigate any remaining misconduct or cultural issues within the firm. Diane begins to question the resistance group's tactics while Blum approaches Maia with an intriguing job offer.
Watched "The Good Fight" The One About the End of the World from CBS
Directed by Brooke Kennedy. Blum is out for revenge when he represents a group of Reddick, Boseman & Lockhart's ex-clients who claim the firm overcharged them. When Lucca finds out she's a candidate for an open partner position, she begins to question her reputation within the firm. Meanwhile, Diane helps Kurt with a work project.
Liked a tweet by hannah_natanson (Twitter)
 
 
 

Thread Reader and Micropub for PressEdConf

In March I wrote about Participating in PressEdConf20 directly from WordPress.

While using that method for publishing is still my preference for owning the content first and syndicating it to Twitter, there’s another method that many educators might find simpler. ThreadReaderApp now has beta support for the Micropub Spec so you can publish Twitter threads directly to your blog.

This means that participants can write their threads directly on Twitter and reverse syndicate them to their websites if they support the Micropub spec.

For PressEdConf participants who have WordPress.org based sites (or .com sites with a subscription that supports plugins), this should be relatively easy since there’s a Micropub plugin for WordPress.

Download the plugin, activate it, write your Twitter thread, and have Thread Reader unroll it. Then authentic Thread Reader to your website at https://threadreaderapp.com/account/micropub and click the publish button on the thread you want to copy to your site.

This functionality in Thread Reader will also work for any other blogging platform or CMS that has either native or plugin support for Micropub. This includes platforms like Drupal, Grav, WithKnown, and many others including several static site generators.

Once things are set up, it’s pretty straightforward. You can read about my first experience (linked above) for more details.

If you have prior unrolled Twitter threads in your Thread Reader account you can use them as test cases before the next PressEdConf.