Category: Social Stream

I want a more medieval decorated web experience and aesthetic

Thinking about rubrication and manuscripts. I feel like I ought to build a Tampermonkey or Greasemonkey script that takes initial capitals online and makes them large, red, even historiated /illuminated.

Or perhaps something that converts the CSS of @hypothes_is highlights and makes the letters red instead of having a yellow background? #EdTech
A bit reminiscent, but of a different historical period than the index card idea.

What if we had a collection of illuminated initials and some code that would allow for replacing capitals at the start of paragraphs we were reading?

Maybe a repository like @GIPHY or some of the meme and photo collections for reuse? Maybe this could be something done in the vein of the bookmarklet on the “Taft Test”?
tafttest.com

Maybe it could pull images from #MarginalMonday or #ManuscriptMonday to randomly decorate web pages and make them look more like #medieval manuscripts? (While also stripping/replacing advertising? 😁) #medievaltwitter
I wonder at changing fonts as well… So many choices…

I want a more #medieval decorated web experience and aesthetic. How about you?
(Implementations of these or related ideas highly encouraged. What can you make?)

Read CAA Closes $750M Deal for ICM Partners, Consolidating Major Agency Landscape by Alex Weprin (The Hollywood Reporter)
Some 425 ICM employees will join CAA, with 105 expected to be laid off as the Department of Justice allows the acquisition after an antitrust review.
Annotated Mrs. Custer’s Tennyson by William Logan (newcriterion.com)
Those who read with pen in hand form a species nearly extinct. Those who read the marginal notes of readers past form a group even smaller. Yet when we write in antiphonal chorus to what we’re reading, we engage in that conversation time and distance otherwise make impossible. ❧

Lois Weber’s film Where are My Children? (1916) and the history of Abortion in America

When we discuss the topic of the history of abortion and birth control in the United States, where are the mentions of Where are My Children? (Universal Studios, 1916)? 

The movie was Universal’s top grossing film of 1916. It’s estimated to have grossed over $3 million at a time when ticket prices were less than 50¢ each.

Where are My Children? was written, produced, and directed by Lois Weber. The film was ultimately added to the National Film Registry in 1993.

Weber came from a devout middle class Christian family of Pennsylvania German ancestry. She left home & lived in poverty while working as a street-corner evangelist for two years with the evangelical Church Army Workers.

Her work with the Church Army Workers included preaching and singing hymns on street corners and singing and playing the organ in rescue missions in red-light districts in Pittsburgh and New York.

Meyer made the film at the height of her career when she was Universal’s top director. Her work and career was at (or perhaps above) the level of Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith, though it has largely been minimized subsequently because she was a woman.

Lois Weber was
– 1st woman accepted to Motion Picture Director’s Association, precursor of Director’s Guild
– on 1st directors committee of @TheAcademy
– Mayor of Universal City

Lois Weber was also one of highest paid and most influential directors of her time. She was also amongst the first directors to form her own production company.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Weber

The Lost L.A. episode of Dream Factory (@KCET, 2017) covers portions of Weber’s career and provides clips from Where are My Children?
(@nathanmasters‘ entire series here is the real “California’s Gold”)
kcet.org/shows/lost-la/…

In addition to the site above, one can watch the @KCET episode of Lost LA: Dream Factory on YouTube:

I can’t wait to delve further in to the history and work of Weber by reading @StampShelley‘s book Lois Weber in Early Hollywood. University of California Press, May 2015. ISBN 9780520284463
amzn.to/3u7qzrO

Replied to a thread by Scott P. Scheper and Alexandra Graßler (Twitter)
I’ll go you one better with the likely historical precedent for Niklas Luhmann’s zettelkasten numbering system: conscription numbers on Viennese houses in 1770s! https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=austria+tag%3A%22Niklas+Luhmann%22

Alberto Cevolini & Markus Krajewski have relevant research. There are still a few missing puzzle pieces however.

Read Matt Mullenweg Identifies GoDaddy as a “Parasitic Company” and an “Existential Threat to WordPress’ Future” by Sarah Gooding (WP Tavern)
On Thursday Matt Mullenweg responded to an inquiry on Twitter from Jeff Matson, a Pagely employee, about whether Automattic’s Newspack platform had all open open source components or some pro…
WordPress open source or WordPress.com? Recall that Automattic is a VC backed company now and Matt has a big dog in the hunt.
Listened to How Indigenous elders read the stars by Sarah Kanowski from Conversations (ABC)
Working over many years with several Indigenous Elders, Duane has published The First Astronomers, a complete overview of traditional First Nations star knowledge.

A great introduction to the book The First Astronomers.

Lifestyles of the Note Takers & Intellectuals: Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov famously wrote most of his works including Lolita using index cards in a slip box.

The slipbox and index cards on which Vladimir Nabokov wrote his novel Lolita.
The slipbox and index cards on which Vladimir Nabokov wrote his novel Lolita.

He ultimately died in 1977 leaving an unfinished manuscript in note card form for the novel The Original of Laura. Penguin later published the incomplete novel with in 2012 with the subtitle A Novel in Fragments. Unlike most manuscripts written or typewritten on larger paper, this one came in the form of 138 index cards. Penguin’s published version recreated these cards in full-color reproductions including the smudges, scribbles, scrawlings, strikeouts, and annotations in English, French, and Russian. Perforated, one could tear the cards out of the book and reorganize in any way they saw fit or even potentially add their own cards to finish the novel that Nabokov couldn’t.

Index card with hand drawn table of ages and measurements
Index card on which Nabokov collated notes on ages, heights, and measurements for school aged girls as research for his title character Lolita. (via Library of Congress

More details at: https://www.openculture.com/2014/02/the-notecards-on-which-vladimir-nabokov-wrote-lolita.html

Listened to Historian Uncovers The Racist Roots Of The 2nd Amendment by Dave Davies from Fresh Air | NPR

In her new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, Anderson traces racial distinctions in Americans’ treatment of gun ownership back to the founding of the country and the Second Amendment, which states:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The language of the amendment, Anderson says, was crafted to ensure that slave owners could quickly crush any rebellion or resistance from those whom they’d enslaved. And she says the right to bear arms, presumably guaranteed to all citizens, has been repeatedly denied to Black people.

This is the sort of history that should be more commonplace in our schools. Why was I not taught this? What an excellent little interview. Going to buy Carol Anderson’s book in triplicate.