Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia from American Nations by Colin Woodard

I should have posted these almost a year ago when I read Woodard's awesome book, but here they are now. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It is guaranteed to reframe how you look at the country and help you to better understand what is going on with our current political situation.…

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia from Linked: The New Science Of Network by Albert-László Barabási

Annotated Linked: The New Science Of Networks by Albert-László Barabási (Perseus Books Group)
Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia Guide to highlight colors Yellow--general highlights and highlights which don't fit under another category below Orange--Vocabulary word; interesting and/or rare word Green--Reference to read Blue--Interesting Quote Gray--Typography Problem Red--Example to work through The First Link: Introduction ...the high barriers to becoming a Christian had to be abolished. Circumcision and the…

👓 The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic | Issue 21: Information – Nautilus

Read The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic (Nautilus)
Walter Pitts was used to being bullied. He’d been born into a tough family in Prohibition-era Detroit, where his father, a boiler-maker,…
Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia McCulloch was a confident, gray-eyed, wild-bearded, chain-smoking philosopher-poet who lived on whiskey and ice cream and never went to bed before 4 a.m.  ❧ Now that is a business card title! March 03, 2019 at 06:01PM McCulloch and Pitts were destined to live, work, and die together. Along the way, they…

👓 How to decentralize social media—a brief sketch | Larry Sanger

Read How to decentralize social media—a brief sketch by Larry SangerLarry Sanger (larrysanger.org)
The problem about social media is that it is centralized. Centralization empowers massive corporations and governments to steal our privacy and restrict our speech and autonomy.
Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia The social media browser plugins. Here’s the killer feature. Create at least one (could be many competing) browser plugins that enable you to (a) select feeds and then (b) display them alongside a user’s Twitter, Facebook, etc., feeds. (This could be an adaptation of Greasemonkey.) In other words, once this…

👓 Impeach Donald Trump | The Atlantic

Read Impeach Donald Trump by Yoni ApplebaumYoni Applebaum (The Atlantic)
Starting the process will rein in a president who is undermining American ideals—and bring the debate about his fitness for office into Congress, where it belongs.
Just the sort of great, historic writing that The Atlantic is well known for creating. Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia As a House Judiciary Committee staff report put it in 1974, in the midst of the Watergate investigation: “The purpose of impeachment is not personal punishment; its function is primarily to maintain constitutional government.” Impeachable…

👓 The year we step back from the platform | Nieman Journalism Lab | Ernie Smith

Read The year we step back from the platform by Ernie SmithErnie Smith (Nieman Lab)
"Let's replace the shadows that Twitter and Facebook and Google have been on the media with some business-model fundamentals. As 2018 has shown, they've offered us a lot more heartache than it feels like they're actually worth."
This is a very staid and sober statement about the ills of social media platforms (aka silos) and a proposed way forward for 2019. His argument is tremendously bolstered by the fact that he's actually got his own website where he's hosting and distributing his own content. Ernie, should you see this, I'd welcome you…

📖 Read pages i-8 of Category Theory for the Sciences by David I. Spivak

📖 Read pages i-8, front matter and Chapter 1: Introduction of Category Theory for the Sciences by David I. Spivak.​ Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia But it is easy to think we are in agreement, when we really are not. Modeling our thoughts on heuristics and graphics may be convenient for quick travel down the…

📖 Read pages 75-102 of In the Footsteps of King David: Revelations from an Ancient Biblical City by Yosef Garfinkel, Saar Ganor, and Michael G. Hasel

📖 Read pages 75-102 of Chapter 3: Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Period of King David in In the Footsteps of King David: Revelations from an Ancient Biblical City by Yosef Garfinkel, Saar Ganor, and Michael G. Hasel (Thames & Hudson, 1st edition; July 24, 2018) Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia Chapter 3: Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Period…

📖 Read Chapter 1: A Networked Public pages 3-27 of Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci

📖 Read Chapter 1: A Networked Public pages 3-27 of Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci Chapter 1 was pretty solid. This almost seems to me like it would make a good book for an IndieWeb book club. Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia A national public sphere…

👓 The power to publish as an individual | DaveNet

Read The power to publish as an individual by Dave Winer (scripting.com via DaveNet)
Weblogs: A new source of News
An awesome "old" and prescient post about blogging and journalism. It's interesting to look at this through the modern lens of social media and IndieWeb. Of course this article was written at a time when IndieWeb was the only thing that existed. Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia media organizations would do well to incorporate them…

👓 The year you actually start to like your CMS | Nieman Journalism Lab | Eric Ulken

Read The year you actually start to like your CMS by Eric UlkenEric Ulken (Nieman Lab)
"If we do it right, users benefit from a feedback loop that helps make our work more valuable and relevant to them. And no journalist ever again has to wear their clunky CMS as a badge of honor."
Without saying it directly, there's a very IndieWeb flavor to this piece. I'd love to see more journalists and technologists who are working in journalism contributing to improving the web.  The Nieman Lab’s collection of Predictions for Journalism in 2019 also has some other IndieWeb-centric articles for those who might be interested. Eric Ulken, product director…

👓 Newsonomics: 18 lessons for the news business from 2018 | Nieman Journalism Lab

Read Newsonomics: 18 lessons for the news business from 2018 by Ken DoctorKen Doctor (Nieman Lab)
From paywalls to politics, pipes companies to public radio, the Post to The Post, podcasting to partnerships, and the press to a president.
A nice little recap of some of the big changes in US journalism this year and some ideas about where it may be going.  Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia The lesson, again, and again: Unique voices supported by subscribers point a way forward.  ❧ December 21, 2018 at 06:47PM Check out the Times or the Post…

👓 The perils of mixing open source and money | DHH

Read The perils of mixing open source and money by David Heinemeier HanssonDavid Heinemeier Hansson (dhh.dk)

Fundraising for open source has become trivial through venues like Kickstarter, so it's natural more projects are asking for money. "Imagine all the good I could do if I was able to work on this full time for the benefit of the community". Yes, let's imagine indeed.

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia You're solving the problems for you and your mates, likely in the simplest way you could, so you can get back to whatever you originally intended to do before starting to shave the yak. But once there is money involved, work will expand to fill the amount raised (to paraphrase…

🎧 Episode 025 System Theories, Racism & Human Relationships: Interview with TK Coleman | Human Current

Listened to Episode 025 System Theories, Racism & Human Relationships by Haley Campbell-GrossHaley Campbell-Gross from Human Current

In this episode, Haley interviews TK Coleman to discuss how humans allow their conflicting mental models to influence the way they handle controversial topics like racism. TK also shares how understanding context and patterns within human systems ultimately empowers us to actively contribute to human progress.

I generally prefer the harder sciences among Human Current's episodes, but even episodes on the applications in other areas are really solid. I'm glad to hear about TK Coleman's overarching philosophy and the idea of "human beings" versus "human doings." Also glad to have the recommendation of General Systems Theory: Beginning With Wholes by Barbara…

👓 An Interview with John O’Brien | Dalkey Archive Press

Read An Interview with John O’Brien (dalkeyarchive.com)
The following interview was conducted in-house at two different times, in 2000 and 2004. The purpose of the interview was to provide a very readable documentation of Dalkey Archive Press’s mission and history. It was amended in 2004, and likely will be amended again in the future, to reflect changes in the culture that have an impact on the work we do.
After reading this interview, how could one not want to devote their life to supporting such an institution? Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia subversive  ❧ maybe also the word uncomfortable? December 19, 2018 at 05:10PM uncomfortable  ❧ ha! December 19, 2018 at 05:11PM There is no sense that this particular novel has its place among-and should be…