👓 Save Barnes & Noble! | New York Times

Read Opinion | Save Barnes & Noble! by David LeonhardtDavid Leonhardt (nytimes.com)
It’s in trouble. And Washington’s flawed antitrust policy is a big reason.
There are some squirrel-ly things that Amazon is managing to get away with, and they’re not all necessarily good.

👓 One space between each sentence, they said. Science just proved them wrong. | Washington Post

Read One space between each sentence, they said. Science just proved them wrong. by Avi Selk (Washington Post)

“Professionals and amateurs in a variety of fields have passionately argued for either one or two spaces following this punctuation mark,” they wrote in a paper published last week in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.

They cite dozens of theories and previous research, arguing for one space or two.  A 2005 study that found two spaces reduced lateral interference in the eye and helped reading.  A 2015 study that found the opposite.  A 1998 experiment that suggested it didn't matter.

“However,” they wrote, “to date, there has been no direct empirical evidence in support of these claims, nor in favor of the one-space convention.”

I love that the permalink for this article has a trailing 2, which indicates to me that it took the editors a second attempt to add the additional space into the headline for their CMS. And if nothing else, this article is interesting for its layout and typesetting.

I’ll circle back to read the full journal article shortly.1

 

References

1.
Johnson RL, Bui B, Schmitt LL. Are two spaces better than one? The effect of spacing following periods and commas during reading. Atten Percept Psychophys. April 2018. doi:10.3758/s13414-018-1527-6

🎧 ‘The Daily’: James Comey Opens Up About Ego, Distrust and More | New York Times

Listened to 'The Daily': James Comey Opens Up About Ego, Distrust and More by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, spoke with me for Friday’s episode of “The Daily,” as he wraps up a publicity tour for his book, “A Higher Loyalty.” Our conversation focused on his decision, before his firing, to document his interactions with President Trump in a series of memos — and to eventually share the contents of one of those memos with a journalist, in the hopes of pressuring the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel in the Russia investigation.

👓 Privacy | David Shanske

Read Privacy by David ShanskeDavid Shanske (David Shanske)
I admit to a certain amount of frustration on the subject of privacy lately. It seems, in all aspects of my life, both personal and professional, the new data privacy regulations that the EU rolls out May 25th are a theme in every discussion.
Some interesting thoughts on personal data and privacy. I can’t wait to talk to David about some of this in greater depth in our next podcast episode.

❤️ darenw tweet A time lapse for every hit of Ichiro’s MLB career

Liked a tweet by Daren WillmanDaren Willman (Twitter)

👓 MailChimp RSS to Email Newsletter – A Complete Guide | WPism

Read MailChimp RSS to Email Newsletter - A Complete Guide (WPism)
A Complete Guide to set up email Newsletter using MailChimp RSS to Email feature. Learn how to use MailChimp RSS Campaign to send an automated Newsletter.
Nothing stupendous here that I couldn’t figure out by just moving my way through Mail Chimp’s online workflow. Of course this probably speaks reasonably well of Mail Chimp’s user interface.

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have a weekly newsletter up and running.

🎧 Season 2 Episode 4 The Foot Soldier of Birmingham | Revisionist History

Listened to Revisionist History Season 2 Episode 4 The Foot Soldier of Birmingham by Malcolm GladwellMalcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History

Birmingham, 1963. The image of a police dog viciously attacking a young black protester shocks the nation. The picture, taken in the midst of one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous marches, might be the most iconic photograph of the civil rights movement. But few have ever bothered to ask the people in the famous photograph what they think happened that day. It’s more complicated than it looks.



S2e4 content
CREDIT - Bill Hudson, AP
S2e4 content 2
“The Foot Soldier” by Ronald S. McDowell
What a stunning and unexpected story. I do so love this podcast.

🎧 Season 2 Episode 5 The Prime Minister and the Prof | Revisionist History

Listened to Season 2 Episode 5 The Prime Minister and the Prof by Malcolm GladwellMalcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History

How does friendship influence political power? The story of Winston Churchill’s close friend and confidant — an eccentric scientist named Frederick Lindemann — whose connection to Churchill altered the course of British policy in World War II. And not in a good way.



S2e5 content
Winston Churchill (second from right) with his scientific advisor Lord Cherwell (extreme left), watching a display of anti-aircraft gunnery in 1941.
Several interesting ideas in this episode:
* What unseen influence do friends and advisors have on political leaders? Should this be better disclosed?
* Did Churchill, while trying to stop the atrocity of the Holocaust, cause one of his own in India through inaction and selfishness?

The famine caused in India is not too dissimilar to the havoc and death wreaked in Puerto Rico following the hurricane in late 2017 for which the US Government very likely did not do enough to mitigate the aftermath.

🎧 30 and Counting, Episode 5: Leaving Facebook… and replying over email?

Listened to 30 and Counting, Episode 5: Leaving Facebook... and replying over email? by Eddie HinckleEddie Hinckle from 30andcounting.me
In this episode, I talk about my plans to leave Facebook and how I plan to in some ways replace it with a monthly newsletter. Then I brainstorm about how to receive replies and reactions from it.

Eddie shouldn’t have warned so heavily about the technical nature of this microcast. The general ideas are very clear, it’s their implementation which is likely more technical than some would appreciate.

This reminds me that I ought to get back to working on my own newsletter that I’d started to set up ages ago. It’s certainly an interesting way to target friends and family (who are unlikely to use RSS or readers) with updates outside of the traditional silos.

I’m also reminded that David Shanske is using Postmatic as an email newsletter service and it has functionality built in that allows recipients to reply to emailed updates via email which then posts the comments back to the comment section of the particular posts. Might be worth either checking this out or attempting to replicate this type of functionality? The way Postmatic is doing things is on a more post by post basis however, so it might take some additional work to get things to work properly in a newsletter with multiple stories/posts.

Another option is to add “web actions” into posts for replies. Or perhaps even adding other social context UI into newsletters similar to the way I’ve done in prior posts to allow people to respond via Twitter.

Certainly lots of options and ideas to explore.

So, apparently some time in October and unbeknownst to me, my website got (was given?) an SSL certificate so that it would resolve via https. I accidentally discovered this today and spent a few minutes setting up the appropriate redirects so that everyone is forced to use https links to access my site. I may still have a few administrative redirects and some bookmarklets to tweak along the way, but the whole process was far simpler than I would have expected.

A nice side benefit is that now the Simple Location data I’d like to use will now self-populate when I make posts relating to location!

🎧 This Week in the IndieWeb Audio Edition • April 14th – 20th, 2018

Listened to This Week in the IndieWeb Audio Edition • April 14th - 20th, 2018 by Marty McGuireMarty McGuire from martymcgui.re
IndieWeb Leaders Summit planning, escaping social media maniplation, and printing out websites. It’s the audio edition for This Week in the IndieWeb for April 14th - 20th, 2018.

🎧 This Week in the IndieWeb Audio Edition • April 21st-27th, 2018

Listened to This Week in the IndieWeb Audio Edition • April 21st-27th, 2018 by Marty McGuireMarty McGuire from martymcgui.re
Readers on the rise, APIs on the decline, and Reddit regrets. It’s the audio edition for This Week in the IndieWeb for April 21st - 27th, 2018.

👓 Daniel Goldsmith’s reply to Sebastian Greger

Read a post by Daniel Goldsmith (View from ASCRAEUS)

Sebastian, first of all, thank you for your detailed write up on this issue. I think much of your roadmap is worthwhile, and of great interest.

I cannot, however, say that I am convinced by your contentions regarding the effect of GDPR and indieweb sites. In particular, I think your definitions are excessively broad, and you elide much information from both the Regulation itself and the Recitals.

It’s certainly interesting to see some of the replies to Sebastian’s article. It’s definitely stirring up some interesting thought. Daniel’s reply here is primarily to the legal issues at stake more than the design related issues, which have some interesting merit aside from the legal ones.

I think I fall somewhere in the middle of the two and see some of the moral and ethical pieces which are more important from a people perspective. I’m not as concerned about the law portion of it for a large variety of reasons. It’s most interesting to me to see the divide between how those in the EU and particularly Germany view the issue and those in the United States which may be looking at regulations in the coming years, particularly after the recent Facebook debacle.

As I think of these, I’m reminded about some of the cultural differences between Europe and the United States which Jeff Jarvis has expounded upon over the past several years. Europeans are generally more leery of corporations and trust government a bit more while in America it’s the opposite.

👓 The Web We Need to Give Students | BRIGHT Magazine

Read The Web We Need to Give Students by Audrey Watters (BRIGHT Magazine)
“Giving students their own digital domain is a radical act. It gives them the ability to work on the Web and with the Web.”
Not sure how this surfaced into my feeds again today, but interesting to see it pop up. I’m also noticing that Audrey smartly posted a copy to her own site after it appeared in Bright.

In this article, she touches on some reasons why it’s important for students to have their own domain, but many of these ideas and arguments also work well for almost anyone. It’s interesting to see how similar the philosophy she describes here dovetails with that of the IndieWeb.