What happens when a perfectly innocuous phrase takes on a more sinister meaning over time?
Case in point, the expression "to call a spade a spade." For almost half a millennium, the phrase has served as a demand to "tell it like it is." It is only in the past century that the phrase began to acquire a negative, racial overtone.
Historians trace the origins of the expression to the Greek phrase "to call a fig a fig and a trough a trough." Exactly who was the first author of "to call a trough a trough" is lost to history. Some attribute it to Aristophanes, while others attribute it to the playwright Menander. The Greek historian Plutarch (who died in A.D. 120) used it in Moralia.The blogger Matt Colvin, who has a Ph.D. in Greek literature, recently pointed out that the original Greek expression was very likely vulgar in nature and that the "figs" and "troughs" in question were double entendres.
Category: Read
👓 Why Microformats | David Shanske
David Shanske (david.shanske.com)I’ve spent some time on this site commenting on the use of various Indieweb concepts, but I haven’t really touched on Microformats. Microformats just turned 11 years old. Microformats are human-readable markup that are easily human readable as well as machine readable. They appear as classes att...
👓 RicMac, part II | Scripting
Richard MacManus keeps on truckin. There's nothing more powerful than a persistent and curious user who's relatively fearless. #
- In a follow-up post I learned that there is an IndieWeb-approved feed reader called Woodwind. That's good news. RSS and related technolgies, including OPML import and export, are essential components of the open web. #
- BTW, to Richard, I wrote up my rules for standards-makers, based on experience re what (imho) is important and what works and doesn't. Another item for your consideration. #
👓 “How Do I Get a Job at Automattic?” | Ryan Markel
I get about a half-dozen emails a year via my contact form asking me this question or asking related questions, like how to craft a resume, or what it’s like to work at Automattic. I thought I’d jot something down so I can just send a link the next time this happens, as my advice hasn’t chan...
👓 How Twitter, Micro.blog & Mastodon could team up to compete with Facebook | AltPlatform
There’s a good reason for the “@“ character in the middle of your email address. It separates the two parts: your user name and your web site. Someday you might see something similar on social networking sites – Mark Zuckerberg could write on Facebook and mention Jack Dorsey “hey jack@twitter.com” and Jack could write back from Twitter “hi mark@facebook.com!” — that would be the Silicon Valley equivalent of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson’s first telephone call. When small social networks like Twitter and Google Plus start to interoperate with open source networks and blogs, they could eventually form a large enough base of users to “flip the iceberg” and have more usage than the dominant, non-interoperable player: Facebook.
On micro-blogs like Twitter, the @mention (“at-mention”) is the way to link to another micro-blogger by user name. Facebook has a similar mention feature for calling out friends by name. But these versions of mention technology are missing the “web site” aspect, because they only work within one site.
On open source micro-blogs like Mastodon, cross-site mentions are already working – and for blogs it’s easy to install a Webmention plugin. These are the beginnings of what could eventually be a large collection of sites interoperating.
In 2008 the micro-blogging community proposed that Twitter interoperate with the micro-blog networks of the time. Twitter today could allow Mastodon and Micro.blog users to “follow” updates from its micro-bloggers. The Twitter search engine could aggregate updates from many different networks. Micro-blogging at Twitter would be a first-class open web experience, if it interoperated with other micro-blogs.
Open source tools like WordPress, 1999.io and Mastodon.social are creating many small networks of publishers, and popular tools like Twitter and Micro.blog could peer with them. If all of the social networks outside of Facebook interoperated at some level, they might eventually “flip the iceberg” and become the dominant form of social networking.
👓 22/06/2017, 06:20 | Colin Walker
Liked: IndieWeb podcast club, posted June 22, 2017...
Eli suggests that bloggers could come together for an "Indieweb Podcast Club" - like a book club but for Podcasts.
The idea is someone posts about a specific podcast episode, others read that post, listen to the same episode and then a conversation ensues between posts.
I think that's a great idea!
A number of folks have previously listed what podcasts they are listening to so I think I'll start with that and see if this goes anywhere.
👓 I really like the idea of an IndieWeb podcast club (or any o | John Johnston
John Johnston (John's World Wide Wall Display)I really like the idea of an IndieWeb podcast club (or any other kind of podcast club). I’ve been listening to more podcasts lately. A club would aid discussion & discovery.
👓 IndieWeb podcast club | eli.li
Eli Mellen (eli.li)…like a book club, but for podcasts, and distributed over the indieweb. Anyone interested? Here is how I imagine it would work. You listen to a podcast, you enjoy the podcast or have thoughts otherwise about it. You blog about said podcast on your indieweb compatible or at least indieweb-friendly ...
👓 Gutenberg: First Impressions | Matt Cromwell
Matt Cromwell (Matt Cromwell)Gutenberg is the future of content in WordPress. It will deliver the elegance of Medium but with far more power and flexibility of layouts and content types
The most powerful aspect of the Internet is the open web. From the very beginning, there has been a conflict with on one side walled gardens and closed networks with open standards and interoperability on the other.
👓 Richard MacManus | Dave Winer
Richard is one of the old school bloggers. He started ReadWriteWeb in 2003. It started as a Radio UserLand project and grew into a leading tech publication, something which I'm personally proud of. # He has a new blog up and running. I've added it to my personal river here on Scripting News. He asks about where the blogrolls have gone, a topic I wrote about a couple of days ago. Richard would certainly be in my blogroll.#
👓 Developers Who Use Spaces Make More Money Than Those Who Use Tabs | Stack Overflow Blog
Do you use tabs or spaces for code indentation?
📖 Read pages 16-55 of A Mind at Play by Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman
📖 Read pages 16-55 of A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman
Knowing that I’ve read a lot about Shannon and even Vannevar Bush over the years, I’m pleasantly surprised to read some interesting tidbits about them that I’ve not previously come across. I was a bit worried that this text wouldn’t provide me with much or anything new on the subjects at hand.
I’m really appreciating some of the prose and writing structure, particularly given that it’s a collaborative work between two authors. At times there are some really nonstandard sentence structures, but they’re wonderful in their rule breaking.
They’re doing an excellent job so far of explaining the more difficult pieces of science relating to information theory. In fact, some of the intro was as good as I think I’ve ever seen simple explanations of what is going on within the topic. I’m also pleased that they’ve made some interesting forays into topics like eugenics and the background role it played in the story for Shannon.
They had a chance to do a broader view of the history of computing, but opted against it, or at least must have made a conscious choice to leave out Babbage/Lovelace within the greater pantheon. I can see narratively why they may have done this knowing what is to come later in the text, but a few sentences as a nod would have been welcome.
The book does, however, get on my nerves with one of my personal pet peeves in popular science and biographical works like this: while there are reasonable notes at the end, absolutely no proper footnotes appear at the bottoms of pages or even indicators within the text other than pieces of text with quotation marks. I’m glad the notes even exist in the back, but it just drives me crazy that publishers blatantly hide them this way. The text could at least have had markers indicating where to find the notes. What are we? Animals?
Nota bene: I’m currently reading an advanced reader copy of this; the book won’t be out until mid-July 2017.
👓 IndieWebifying my website: part 1, the why & how | AltPlatform
I’ve decided to re-design my personal website, richardmacmanus.com. My primary reason is to become a full-fledged member of the IndieWeb community. If I’m writing about Open Web technologies here on AltPlatform, then I ought to be eating my own dog food. Another reason is to discover – likely ...
👓 Why May’s “Bloody Difficult” approach to Brexit Negotiations is so wrong | The Great British Moronathon
This was originally posted on Twitter here: A re-written version is available here: UK in a Changing Europe and here: The New Statesman A rambling, disorganised thread on negotiations with the EU a…