A post on The Writing Collective about how it’s fruitless to search for the perfect note-taking app because it doesn’t exist caught my eye and got me thinking about my own preferences and habits for taking notes.
Sebastian Gorka is resigning his post as Deputy Assistant to President Trump, multiple sources familiar with the situation have told The Federalist. In a blunt resignation letter, the national security and counterterrorism expert expressed dissatisfaction with the current state of the Trump administration. “[G]iven recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House,” Gorka wrote. “As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House.”
If you write clearly, then your readers may understand your mathematics and conclude that it isn't profound. Worse, a referee may find your errors. Here are some tips for avoiding these awful possibilities.
Manton Reece (manton.micro.blog)As I mentioned in this morning’s post about Medium, it’s important that Micro.blog-hosted sites can have their own domain name. Some people use their microblog to supplement an existing web site. Others use Micro.blog itself for hosting their full web site, because the focus on short posts makes...
Reading.am is a silo with bookmark functionality for read posts about content on the web, primarily geared toward indicating "what you are reading right now."
Post or posts may refer to individual pieces of content published on an indieweb site such as notes, articles, & responses, or the act of creating the aforementioned content (present tense), or Posts about the IndieWeb.
Rolling out to Medium users over the coming week will be a new, more satisfying way for readers to give feedback to writers. We call it “Claps.” It’s no longer simply whether you like, or don’t like, something. Now you can give variable levels of applause to a story. Maybe clap once, or maybe 10 or 20 times. You’re in control and can clap to your heart’s desire.
This reminds me a lot of Path’s pivot to stickers. We all know how relevant it has made them since.
And all this just after Netflix, the company that has probably done more research on ranking than any other, has gone from a multi-star intent to a thumbs up/thumbs down in the past month.
Most of the measurements social media and other companies are really trying to make are signal to noise ratios as well as creating some semblance of dynamic range. A simple thumbs up creates almost no dynamic range compared to thumbs up/nothing/thumbs-down. Major platforms drive enough traffic that the SNR all comes out in the wash. Without the negative intent (dis-like, thumbs down, etc.) we’re missing out on some important data. It’s almost reminiscent to the science community only publishing their positive results and not the negative results. As a result scientific research is losing a tremendous amount of value.
We need to be more careful what we’re doing and why…
Colin Walker (colinwalker.blog)Blogging is a particularly singular and personal act despite your posts being publicly available - the unedited voice of a person and all that. Reading and commenting on blog posts, however, is an inherently social act carried out on a range of scales. Unfortunately, over the years, we have slipped ...
Manton Reece (manton.micro.blog)Dave Winer isn’t optimistic about the recent Medium changes: We're in the long tail of the demise of Medium. They'll try this, and something else, and then another thing, each with a smaller probability of making a difference, until they turn it off. This has been the concern with Medium since the...
What's high school football mean to this Texas town? Absolutely everything when the stakes are as high off the field as they are on.
Episode 16 is a great standout episode for it’s coverage of race, but still feels a bit on-the-nose to me.
Episode 17 covers the obligatory virginity question, but managed to stay away from the Afterschool Special coverage of the topic. It was almost relatively sophisticated for network television without being too preachy. I wonder how this would have played in the 80’s?
Episode 18 is the beginning of the Buddy trainwreck we saw coming. I’m not sure I buy Buddy moving into the Coach’s house here. I’m a Dana Nicholson-Wheeler fan, but she just isn’t given much to work with here and her character is so one dimensional from a writing perspective.
Publishing is a tough industry. Building an audience can be hard, competition is tight, profit margins even tighter, and most authors have annual wages below the poverty line. Making your way to the still-coveted New York Times best-seller list remains one of the biggest markers of success as well as a reliable way to sell more books. If everyone else is buying the book, surely you have to too, right? Nowadays, you can make the bestseller list with about 5,000 sales. That’s not the heights of publishing’s heyday but it’s still harder to get than you’d think. Some publishers spend thousands of dollars on advertising and blogger outreach to get that number. Everyone’s looking for the next big thing and that costs a lot of cash. For the past 25 weeks, that big book in the YA world has been The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, a searing politically charged drama about a young black girl who sees a police officer kill her friend, and the fallout it causes in her community. Through publisher buzz and exceedingly strong word of mouth, the novel has stormed to the forefront of the YA world and found thousands of fans, with a film on the way. Knocking that from the top of the NYT YA list would be a major deal, and this week it’s going to happen. But something’s not right.
Instagram filter used: Clarendon
Photo taken at: Glendale, California
Paul Ford
