👓 Facebook’s Privacy Message Undermined by the Times—Again | WIRED

Read Why Should Anyone Believe Facebook Anymore? (WIRED)
Facebook has spent much of 2018 apologizing to people. A recent New York Times investigation calls all those apologies into question.
Facebook has said “I’m sorry” and leaked data so many times now that I’m honestly not able to keep up with all the major instances. I keep having to look at date/timestamps in articles to see if it’s a new instance or they’re talking about one of the dozens of prior instances. Facebook really needs to redefine it’s business if they’re going to survive.

👓 Become A Facebook-Free Business | Signal v. Noise

Read Become A Facebook-Free Business by DHH DHH (Signal v. Noise)

If Facebook’s endless privacy scandals have shown one thing, it’s that the company has far too much data on its users, and that they can’t be trusted not to sell, barter, or abuse that data whether for profit, growth, or negligence.

While individuals have long been rallying around #DeleteFacebook, there hasn’t been a comparable campaign for business. Enter: The Facebook-Free Business.

Just like when companies began putting Facebook and Twitter bugs on their websites and in advertising, you know it’s getting serious in the other direction when businesses are talking about leaving Facebook.

I wish BandCamp a lot of luck in also leaving Medium to get rid of that last Facebook like bug.

There is a lot to like about companies behaving ethically like this. I’m much more likely to trust a company (especially those talking about my data and privacy) if they can behave this way.

👓 Facebook Stock (FB) Plunges After DC Sues Over Privacy Breach | Bloomberg

Read Facebook Has Biggest Plunge Since July as ‘Another Shoe’ Drops by Ryan Vlastelica (Bloomberg)
Facebook Inc. tumbled on Wednesday, with shares extending their decline throughout the session after the social-media company was sued by the District of Columbia over a privacy breach.

❤️ Simple Location Version 3.5.0 Released | David Shanske

Liked Simple Location Version 3.5.0 Released by David ShanskeDavid Shanske (david.shanske.com)
Version 3.5.0 of my location plugin, Simple Location, is now out(forgot to push a fix and had to release 3.5.1 as well). Simple Location is, as time goes on, anything but Simple. It is all about location, including the weather at your location. It adds this to posts, and offers several simple widget...
Looks like some awesome changes! Congratulations (and Thanks) David!

👓 We Should Replace Facebook With Personal Websites | Motherboard

Read We Should Replace Facebook With Personal Websites (Motherboard)
Personal websites and email can replace most of what people like about Facebook—namely the urge to post about their lives online.
There’s a lot of talk about leaving Facebook again in the last day or two, but very little on where to go other than a few people talking about Twitter or other toxic social media that will just end up starting the same cycle of pain and frustration again. This is at least a start, but it could lean more towards a full IndieWeb approach.

👓 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

👓 the register | Danny O’Brien’s Oblomovka

Read the register by Danny O'BrienDanny O'Brien (oblomovka.com)
It’s about two in the morning on Thursday, I’m scrabbling around for things to put into NTK, and I get an e-mail from the Register’s Andrew Orlowski. He sounds deliriously happy. He’s uncovered an apparently hidden link to a wiki set up for some s00p3r s33krit confab that Tim O’Reilly’s organising. The descriptions and notes fit completely into Orlowski’s view of particular segment of the West Coast tech scene. Mainly, that it looks like some weird Californian cult.
This post has some interesting thoughts about the differences between public, private, and secret and how they’re being carried out online.

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia

The problem here is one (ironically) of register. In the real world, we have conversations in public, in private, and in secret. All three are quite separate. The public is what we say to a crowd; the private is what we chatter amongst ourselves, when free from the demands of the crowd; and the secret is what we keep from everyone but our confidant. Secrecy implies intrigue, implies you have something to hide. Being private doesn’t. You can have a private gathering, but it isn’t necessarily a secret. All these conversations have different implications, different tones.  

December 19, 2018 at 04:53PM

On the net, you have public, or you have secrets. The private intermediate sphere, with its careful buffering. is shattered. E-mails are forwarded verbatim. IRC transcripts, with throwaway comments, are preserved forever. You talk to your friends online, you talk to the world.  

December 19, 2018 at 04:54PM

hat tip: Kevin Marks in IWC chat

👓 The web finally feels new again. | i.webthings

Read The web finally feels new again. by Joe Jenett (i.webthings)
The web was amazing before Web 2.0 and the advent of so-called social networks. Many people had their own sites and blogs from which they shared ideas and interacted with others in the community at large. It seemed to me like meeting others in their own homes back then and there was a widespread enthusiasm for blogging and personal expression. Then came the big social networks. With time, many personal sites and blogs disappeared from the web as people flocked to the big silos where their content became a heavily monitized commodity. To me, the web had lost much of its soul as people gathered in just a few, huge noise chambers.

👓 The Web Finally Feels New Again | KicksCondor

Read The Web Finally Feels New Again by Kicks Condor (kickscondor.com)
(Joe’s full article is here.)
Yes, here we are again—I think what you’re saying is that even a single-line annotation of a link, even just a few words of human curation do wonders when you’re out discovering the world. (Perhaps even more than book recommendations—where we know that at leas...

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia

it made me feel like we were trying to send some kind of concentrated transmission to the author—linking as a greeting, links as an invitation.  

I love the idea of this.

December 19, 2018 at 04:14PM

I do find that Webmentions are really enhancing linking—by offering a type of bidirectional hyperlink. I think if they could see widespread use, we’d see a Renaissance of blogging on the Web.  

December 19, 2018 at 04:17PM

I’m really not sure if linking, in general, has changed over the years. I’ve been doing it the same since day one. But that’s just me.  

Only in the last hour I’ve had a thought about a subtle change to one of the ways I link. It’s not a drastic thing, but it is a subtle change to common practices. Also as I think about it, it removes some of the obviousness of links on social platforms like Twitter that add the ugly @ to a username in addition to other visual changes when one mentions someone else.

December 19, 2018 at 04:22PM

👓 I’ve now removed the titles in the RSS feed from posts in the micro category using the_title_rss | John Johnston

Read a post by john john (John's World Wide Wall Display)
I’ve now removed the titles in the RSS feed from posts in the micro category using the_title_rss. So I’ve reenabled adding of titles through wp_insert_post_data. If this works this post will have a title in my dashboard, but all get through to micro.blog
This seems like a cool potential way of doing all sorts of things in the IndieWeb space for WordPress. I’m curious what it looks like from other perspectives. I’ll have to think this through a bit…

In the end though, it still feels too much like individuals trying to solve problems that should be better handled by feed readers and the platforms.

👓 Let’s Make Twitter Great Again? – A Reflection on a Social Media of One | Read Write Respond

Read Let’s Make Twitter Great Again? – A Reflection on a Social Media of One by Aaron DavisAaron Davis (Read Write Respond)
Many argue that something is not right with social media as it currently stands. This post explores what it might mean to make Twitter great again? Responding to Jack Dorsey’s call for suggestions on how to improve Twitter, Dave Winer put forward two suggestions: preventing trolling and making cha...
Now that’s a pull-quote!

👓 Overthinking Instagram | Oh Hello Ana

Read Overthinking Instagram by Ana Ana (Oh Hello Ana - Blog)
I very rarely share online if something isn’t going well in my life. I’ve always treated my social media the same way most of us do: we only share the good bits. I thought I was doing that but nowadays, I look back at some photos of what looks like an excellent time of my life but now I know ver...
This post has a lot of great things to think about for people either designing social media related websites, or even IndieWeb site designers who might want to take advantage of these things for themselves. I don’t see these issues being written or talked about enough in the community, so I’m glad that designers and developers like Ana are starting to consider them.

As I think about it, some personal-related posts could potentially be marked to auto-expire (unpost themselves) at some future date and be auto-archived to one’s back end so that they’re no longer public, but so that they exist if one wants to look at them personally, but also so that they’re also hidden from the site owner and need to be actively searched for. As an example, I can imagine something along the lines of a “dating” tag so that when one creates an “engaged” or “married” post that all the old dating history disappears? There is some existing artwork and thought about this on the IndieWeb wiki that I came across a week or so ago in relation to Last.fm’s expiring content, but more work and motivation could be added.

Incidentally, like many, I’ve begun reading her regularly and she’s not only quite the writer, but she’s got a pretty little site as well. I highly recommend folks give her a look and subscribe.

Maybe during this Christmas break I will find the guts to do a purge but I know that it will be a “fake purge”.  

I’ve been seeing a lot about (Japanese) minimalism this past year in relation to physical goods, but hadn’t considered what a minimal social media presence would look like. This is definitely something that could use some more thought, both in minimalism of code, typography, and even design.

December 19, 2018 at 02:57PM

👓 Ousted NPR news chief, ex-Fox News execs team up on new site | Politico

Read Ousted NPR news chief, ex-Fox News execs team up on new site (POLITICO)
The site's founder says it will remedy the media's trust problems, but two top hires left their previous jobs after allegations of harassment and racism.
There’s a lot of forgiveness built into allowing these two executives to redeem themselves. I would worry about hiring them and not protecting both the company as well as its employees against potential harm. What happens if they continue their abuse. Then the company will have known about their prior problems and tacitly allowed them to continue on.

This is the second story I’ve seen now about abusive men from the me too movement being given a second chance. How is society taking these “comebacks”? How is the market reacting to them economically? Will advertisers shy away?

📖 Read pages 66-74 of In the Footsteps of King David: Revelations from an Ancient Biblical City by Yosef Garfinkel, Saar Ganor, and Michael G. Hasel

📖 Read pages 66-74 of Chapter 3: Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Period of King David in In the Footsteps of King David: Revelations from an Ancient Biblical City by Yosef Garfinkel, Saar Ganor, and Michael G. Hasel (Thames & Hudson, 1st edition; July 24, 2018)