Author: Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, 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.
Read Google now highlights search results directly on webpages (The Verge)
It doesn’t seem to be available everywhere just yet.

SearchEngineLand notes that this could have an impact on the ad market, since a website’s visitors may be automatically scrolled down past its ads to the relevant content. The publication notes that sites may need to change the location of their ads in light of Google’s latest feature. ❧

And of course there will be crazy implications for the adtech space.

Annotated on June 04, 2020 at 09:30AM

Clicking the snippet still takes you to the webpage that it pulled the information from, but now the text from the snippet will be highlighted in yellow, and the browser will automatically scroll down to the section in question. ❧

This is a feature that’s been implemented in most browsers for a while as fragmentions.

Hypothes.is has supported this sort of functionality for a few years now as well.

I’m curious how these different implementations differ?

Annotated on June 04, 2020 at 09:36AM

and started testing the functionality on HTML pages last year ❧

According to Kevin Marks, this is the GitHub Repo they’ve been using for creating this work: https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment#:~:text=the%20worst&text=a%20Google&text=serious%20breakage&text=behavior
Annotated on June 04, 2020 at 12:08PM

Watched "I Love Lucy" The Business Manager from CBS
Directed by William Asher. With Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley. After Lucy gets several months behind in all the bills, Ricky hires a no-nonsense business manager who puts her on a strict budget. Lucy comes up with a scheme to get some extra money that soon has her rolling in cash.
Episode included a reference to Diamond Jim Brady who I’d never heard of. Interesting that he had died in the late teens and was well enough to earn a mention in this episode.
Replied to a thread by Katherine Moss and geonz (Twitter)
These could be good reasons to join a Homebrew Website Club meeting coming up. Help, support, and brainstorming conversation within a group to make it easier? Everyone’s welcome!
Watched PBS NewsHour June 1, 2020 from PBS
Monday on the NewsHour, unrest spreads across the U.S. in response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Plus: What reporters are seeing on the ground, the role of law enforcement during protests, systemic issues of race and privilege in the U.S. and the long roots of racial tension in Minneapolis.

Vox headlines a post on reparations with “Whitelist”

Dear Vox, It’s bad enough that you’re actually using the word “whitelist” but to have it headlining this particular article seems especially egregious. Maybe you could use better framing like “allowlist” or “denylist” instead?

Screencapture of a Vox article about reparations with a pop up ad warning that reads “HERE’S HOW TO WHITELIST VOX”.
Read The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi CoatesTa-Nehisi Coates (The Atlantic)
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
I’m both glad and terribly sad to see this six year old article trending in the top 10 articles in The Atlantic right now.

I’m reading it for the reasons that most may be. I’m also specifically reading it (in the dead dark of night) in commemoration of of the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre today.

We definitely need to start a broader discussion about our social and moral conundrum or we’re doomed to continue the same stupid cycle we’ve been experiencing for centuries now. We’re America. We’re better and smarter than this.

This was definitely a long read, so for those who may not have the time, there’s an audio/podcast version you can listen to:

debt peonage ❧

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peon

Annotated on May 31, 2020 at 11:51PM

In Cold War America, homeownership was seen as a means of instilling patriotism, and as a civilizing and anti-radical force. “No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist,” claimed William Levitt, who pioneered the modern suburb with the development of the various Levittowns, his famous planned communities. “He has too much to do.”But the Levittowns were, with Levitt’s willing acquiescence, segregated throughout their early years. ❧

I’d never heard of the background of these Levittowns, but I’m not super surprised to recall that Bill O’Reilly’s family apparently moved to Levittown, Long Island in 1951. It explains a missing piece I had in his background.

Annotated on June 01, 2020 at 12:53AM

But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as—if not more than—the specific answers that might be produced. An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America’s maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders. ❧

Annotated on June 01, 2020 at 01:46AM

Read Here are four things that you can do to de-colonize your bookshelf this year: by Ally HennyAlly Henny (facebook.com)

• Add books written by black, brown, and indigenous people. Try to add at least one book from an author of color for every book written by a White person that you buy this year.

• Purge books that are racist or written by problematic authors. The goal isn’t to run away from alternative viewpoints or ideas with which we disagree, but these should not be the dominant voices in your library. There are some beloved works that are racist trash and belong in university libraries (where they can be studied for the trash that they are) and not in our personal collections.

• Don’t pigeonhole authors of color. Black, brown, and indigenous people can do more than talk about race...pick books from your favorite genre written by authors of color.

• Don’t hold authors of color to a higher standard. Not every book written by a black, brown, or indigenous author will automatically be great and that’s 100% okay. If you have mediocre or crappy books written by white authors, you can also have some mediocre books from people of color on your shelves, too.

Watched 4 Black Lives Matter Myths Debunked from Decoded | MTV News
Black Lives Matter is a powerful and influential movement for justice and empathy. Because the movement is challenging systems of racial oppression in the United States, there are a lot of negative reactions and social media misinformation about it. This past week, with the deaths of #AltonSterling, #PhilandoCastile and the subsequent Dallas tragedy, people are feeling even more polarized and confused. Franchesca debunks some of these toxic myths and sheds light on the true goals of Black Lives Matter.