Entertainment Industry | Chris Aldrich

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

From Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem (1923)

I’ve been thinking lately about writing some poetry and putting it here on my site. Since the muses aren’t visiting today, I thought I would republish Frost’s poem today to to celebrate its entering the public domain. Perhaps I’ll think of a way to remix it too…

Featured photo credit: P1020911 flickr photo by pekka.jarvelainen shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

👓 #MeToo law restricts use of nondisclosure agreements in sexual misconduct cases | LA Times

Read #MeToo law restricts use of nondisclosure agreements in sexual misconduct cases (latimes.com)

Among victims and advocates, an important step in dismantling the pervasive problem of harassment and the system that has kept it under wraps for so long is to void or curb the use of NDAs to settle sexual abuse cases.

The tough part is recreating a better system and predicting the potential future abuses that may continue in such a system. How do we enforce fairness fairly? What unintended consequences might there be?

👓 Pausing Twitter | Read Write Collect

Read Pausing Twitter by

Aaron Davis (Read Write Collect)

This is another insightful reflection from Pernille Ripp. It continues on from her apology earlier this year for stepping back. It makes me wonder what happens to the ‘edu-influencer‘ when they step back? As much agree with Joe Sanfileppo about the power and potential of being connected, what happens when those people stop answering?

Some of this reminds me a bit of CAA’s mantra to have their agents try to occupy all the buying executives’ time within their coverage areas with CAA clients calls and meetings as a means of not only controlling the conversation, but preventing the competition from having a chance.

I’m also reminded of Kathleen Fitzgerald’s recent post Engage. Disengage. Repeat.

👓 Why Books Matter for the Long Run | Knowledge@Wharton

Read Why Books Matter for the Long Run (Knowledge@Wharton)

Book publishing is a business and increasingly a technical one, but at its heart it is an art, writes Peter J. Dougherty in this opinion piece. He is the editor-at-large at Princeton University Press,

A nice little essay here.

👓 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 evaluated against-a whole history of other novels. ❧

December 19, 2018 at 05:14PM

As with all of the arts, literature was once upon a time entirely made possible through patrons. This goes at least as far back as Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. They were able to write because their patrons provided them financial support. And this was of course true of all of the other arts. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, however, literature and commerce got mixed. ❧

In some sense, there is a link between these areas of art/writing and funding and what we see in social media influencers who in some sense are trying to create an “art” for which they get paid. Sadly, most are not making art and worse, most of them are being paid even worse.

December 19, 2018 at 05:18PM

While many people say that such and such a book changed their lives, you can be sure that they could not tell you who published the book. The identification is with the book and its author, not the publisher. ❧

December 19, 2018 at 05:25PM

My models were New Directions Press and Grove Press. ❧

December 19, 2018 at 05:32PM

Michael Orthofer at the Complete Review ❧

December 19, 2018 at 05:35PM

Academics will probably bristle at this thought but, at least in relation to literature, all you have to do is look at the courses that are offered featuring the literatures of other countries. Not only don’t they teach these literatures, they don’t read them. ❧

We certainly could use an Anthony Bourdain of literature to help peel back the curtain on other countries and cultures.

December 19, 2018 at 05:38PM

I think only the philistine mind thinks that art needs a social or moral justification. ❧

Quote of the year.

December 19, 2018 at 05:46PM

A prerequisite for war, as well as bigotry, is that one sees a people or a country as a stereotype, as something sub-human or non-human; this is why politicians spend so much time trying to create stereotypical images for those countries they want to go to war with. ❧

December 19, 2018 at 05:48PM

Small publishers are oftentimes awful at getting their books out to people, even though of course the marketplace determines many of the limitations. ❧

December 19, 2018 at 05:51PM

🔖 JSON-LD And You – Google Slides | Aram Zucker-Scharff

Bookmarked JSON-LD And You: A Guide to Structured Metadata for Journalism by

Aram Zucker-Scharff (docs.google.com)

A presentation on Google Docs.

Hi, I’m Aram Zucker-Scharff and now that we’re settled in, I’ll take a minute to introduce myself. I’m the Director of Ad Tech Engineering at The Washington Post, where I work with teams across the organization to help the Post make money and, through our Arc platform, help other publications make money as well. But I’ve taken a long road to this point, I started off as a journalist, then an editor, a social media manager, a product manager, a freelance strategy consultant and developer and last a full stack developer. I even spent some time being very bad at selling ads.

Aram Zucker-Scharff is about as sharp as it gets when it comes to journalism, adtech, and technology. I do wish he’d spent some additional time on Microformats (or even the v2 implementation) as they’re still broadly supported and much less likely to be treated as the flavor-of-the-month that JSON-LD and schema.org are currently.

I dug around a bit and didn’t see any video from this session.

🎧 This Week in Google 481 Stoned on Cheese | TWIG.tv

Listened to This Week in Google 481 Stoned on Cheese by Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Stacey Higginbotham from TWiT.tv

Foldable Phone, Online Civility

The Samsung Developers Conference Keynote features a foldable phone, SmartThings IoT, and Bixby innovations.

Android will support foldable phones.

Google employees stage a walkout over sexual harassment

Tim Berners-Lee's Contract for the Web

How to encourage civility online

YouTube Content ID

Facebook and "White Genocide"

Young people are deleting Facebook in droves

Facebook's holiday pop-up store

Everybody gets free Amazon shipping

Amazon's new HQ2(s)

8 new Chromebook features

Google Home Hub teams up with Sephora

Ajit Pai's FCC is hopping mad about robocalls

Picks of the Week

Jeff's Number: Black Friday home tech deals

Stacey's Thing: Extinct cables, Alexa Christmas Lights

Leo Laporte doesn’t talk about it directly within an IndieWeb specific framework, but he’s got an interesting discussion about YouTube Content ID that touches on the ideas of Journalism and IndieWeb and particularly as they relate to video, streaming video, and YouTube Live.

While most people are forced to rely on Google as their silo of choice for video and specifically live streaming video, he points out a painful single point of failure in their system with regard to copyright rules and Google’s automatic filters that could get a user/content creator permanently banned. Worse, as Leo indicates, this ban could also extend to related Google accounts (YouTube, Gmail, etc.) One is thus open to potential chilling effects of intimidation, censorship, and deplatforming.

Leo discusses the fact that he’s not as beholden to YouTube because he streams and hosts all of his content on his own website and only utilizes silos like YouTube as ancillary distribution. In IndieWeb parlance what he does is known as POSSE or Post to your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere and this prevents his journalism, commentary, and even his business from being ravaged by the whims of corporate entities whose rules he can’t control directly.

The discussion starts at 1:05:11 into the episode and goes for about 10 minutes for those who are interested in this particular sub-topic.

This idea also impinges on Cal Newport’s recent article Is YouTube Fundamental or Trivial? which I read the other day.

👓 The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine critical of Trump, to shutter after 23 years | CNN

Read The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine critical of Trump, to shutter after 23 years (CNN)

The Weekly Standard, the magazine that espouses traditional conservatism and which has remained deeply critical of President Donald Trump, will shutter after 23 years, its owner Clarity Media Group announced Friday morning. The magazine will publish its final issue on December 17.

Alas there goes the last bit of logic to the center of the old party. Trump’s transformation of the Republican Party is almost complete.