Author: Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.

🎵 Carly Simon – Nobody Does It Better

Listened to Nobody Does It Better by Carly Simon from The Spy Who Loved Me (Electra)
Composed by Marvin Hamlisch with lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager. It was recorded by Carly Simon as the theme song for the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. It was the first Bond theme song to be titled differently from the name of the film since Dr. No, although the phrase "the spy who loved me" is included in the lyrics. The song was released as a single from the film's soundtrack album. "Nobody Does It Better" became a major worldwide hit, spending three weeks at #2 on the US Billboard Hot 100 but was kept out of the top spot by Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" and #1 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart.[1] It also reached #7 on the UK Singles Chart.[2][3] The song was certified Gold by the RIAA, signifying sales of one million copies in the US.
https://open.spotify.com/track/49RUdNvwSiUTC8fBh4KKoC

How Hollywood Remembers Steve Bannon | The New Yorker

Read How Hollywood Remembers Steve Bannon by Connie Bruck (The New Yorker)
He says that, before he became a senior adviser to the President, he was a successful player in the film industry. But what did he actually do?

👓 Butterick’s Practical Typography

Read Typewriter habits by Matthew But­t­er­ick (Butterick’s Practical Typography)

I’ve claimed through­out this book that many bad ty­pog­ra­phy habits have been im­posed upon us by the type­writer. Here, I’ve col­lected them in one list.

  1. Straight quotes rather than curly quotes (see straight and curly quotes).
  2. Two spaces rather than one space be­tween sen­tences.
  3. Mul­ti­ple hy­phens in­stead of dashes (see hy­phens and dashes).
  4. Al­pha­betic ap­prox­i­ma­tions of trade­mark and copy­right sym­bols.
  5. el­lipses made with three pe­ri­ods rather than an el­lip­sis character.
  6. Non-curly apos­tro­phes.
  7. Pre­tend­ing that ac­cented char­ac­ters don’t exist.
  8. Us­ing mul­ti­ple word spaces in a row (for in­stance, to make a first-line in­dent.)
  9. Us­ing tabs and tab stops in­stead of ta­bles.
  10. Us­ing car­riage re­turns to in­sert ver­ti­cal space.
  11. Us­ing al­pha­bet char­ac­ters as sub­sti­tutes for real math sym­bols.
  12. Mak­ing rules and bor­ders out of re­peated characters.
  13. Ig­nor­ing lig­a­tures.
  14. un­der­lin­ing anything.
  15. Be­liev­ing that mono­spaced fonts are nice to read.
  16. Abus­ing all caps.
  17. Think­ing that the best point size for body text is 12.
  18. Ig­nor­ing kern­ing.
  19. Ig­nor­ing let­terspac­ing.
  20. Too much cen­tered text.
  21. Only us­ing sin­gle or dou­ble line spac­ing.
  22. Only us­ing the line length per­mit­ted by one-inch page mar­gins.

👓 Welcome Back! Let’s fight for an Open Web | Michael McCallister

Read Welcome Back! Let’s fight for an Open Web by Michael McCalllisterMichael McCalllister (Notes from the Metaverse)
A few weeks ago, I was preparing a talk on WordPress at a local university. I knew that posting here at Notes from the Metaverse was on the erratic side in recent months. Yet it was something of a shock to discover that more than a year had gone by!

🎧 Seeing White, episode 35 Little War on the Prairie (Seeing White, Part 5) | Scene on Radio

Listened to Episode 35: Little War on the Prairie (Seeing White, Part 5) by John Biewen from Scene on Radio

Growing up in Mankato, Minnesota, John Biewen heard next to nothing about the town’s most important historical event. In 1862, Mankato was the site of the largest mass execution in U.S. history – the hanging of 38 Dakota warriors – following one of the major wars between Plains Indians and settlers. In this documentary, originally produced for This American Life, John goes back to Minnesota to explore what happened, and why Minnesotans didn’t talk about it afterwards.

These episodes and the brutal history they contain and suggest have been pretty gut-wrenching so far. This by far delves more deeply into the history and as a result is much more hear-rending than the others. It really makes me sick what our “nationalistic” tendencies have wrought thus far, and by all intents continues to continue to do.

If you haven’t been listening to this excellent series, I hope you’ll stop what you’re doing right now and listen to them all. I highly recommend it as required listening for everyone–even if you think you know what the message is.

Though this particular episode wasn’t specifically created for this series, it fits in incredibly well. I almost wish that some of the others in the series delved this deeply into some of the history as this one does. It really brings the problem into high relief and puts a more human face on the problems we may not see around us by looking back at a particular incident.

Read Ownership and control: how much do we really have? by Colin WalkerColin Walker (colinwalker.blog)
The ideals behind the #indieweb and, to an extent, Micro.blog are about ownership and control: you own your content, not the network, not the platform, not a silo. But let me play devil's advocate for a moment. I wrote ...

🎧 Seeing White, episodes 31-34 | Scene on Radio

Listened to Seeing White (Parts 1-4) by John Biewen with special guest Chenjerai Kumanyika from Scene on Radio

A podcast series from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University explores what it means to be White.

Part 1: Turning the Lens (February 15, 2017)
Events of the past few years have turned a challenging spotlight on White people, and Whiteness, in the United States. An introduction to our series exploring what it means to be White. By John Biewen, with special guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.

Part 2: How Race Was Made (March 1, 2017)
For much of human history, people viewed themselves as members of tribes or nations but had no notion of “race.” Today, science deems race biologically meaningless. Who invented race as we know it, and why? By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.

Part 3: Made in America (March 16, 2017)
Chattel slavery in the United States, with its distinctive – and strikingly cruel – laws and structures, took shape over many decades in colonial America. The innovations that built American slavery are inseparable from the construction of Whiteness as we know it today. By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.

Part 4: On Crazy We Built a Nation (March 30, 2017)
“All men are created equal.” Those words, from the Declaration of Independence, are central to the story that Americans tell about ourselves and our history. But what did those words mean to the man who actually wrote them? By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.

Photo: Meeting of the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1619. Library of Congress.

Part 1:
Seemingly almost too short, but lays some good groundwork (in retrospect) for what is to come.

Part 2:
Here’s where the story begins to heat up and lay some groundwork.

Part 3:
I’d never thought about the subtle changes in early American law that institutionalized the idea of slavery, race, and racism, which is very well laid out in the third installment, though I suspect is just a short sketch of a more horrifying past. In particular: laws that indicated that slaves who became Christian didn’t need to be freed, laws which indicated that the slave status of children was derived from the mother (and not the father), and laws which prevented white women from marrying African Americans.

I’d sadly never heard the history of the case of John Punch or any of the other examples in episode 3.

Having been born in South Carolina and then living in Georgia on a mountain at which John C. Calhoun apparently pointed at and uttered the phrase, “Thar’s gold in them thar’ hills.” I’m all too entrenched in his version of history. I’m also viewing this from a larger big history perspective and see a few other things going on as well, but sadly I’m woefully undereducated in these areas. I’m going to have to get some new reading materials.

Part 4:
There’s a lot of history concerning Thomas Jefferson and even Ralph Waldo Emerson which I’m going to have to go back and brush up on as there are large pieces missing from my general education. The discussion certainly reframes the way one could see America and it’s history from a vastly different perspective that just isn’t discussed enough.

I’ll have to go back and relisten to this for some great quotes as well as one from T. Veblen.

Overall:

There are at least two more episodes in the series that I can’t wait to listen to before I surely circle back around and listen to them all a second time. This series is truly great. I’m subscribing to their prior episodes and can’t wait to see what they come up with in the future. I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Jeremy Cherfas who suggested it to me indirectly via his feed.

Resources I’m bookmarking for later reading:

👓 The duality of microblogging | Colin Walker

Read The Duality of Microblogging by Colin Walker (colinwalker.blog)
Further to the points I made in "Self-hosted microblogging - where does it fit?" I've been having more thoughts on how best to use Micro.blog and fit it into my own online ecosystem.