Category: Read

Read James Clyburn wasn't responsible for the Biden surge. So what was? by Kevin DrumKevin Drum (Mother Jones)
The green dot is February 29, the date of the South Carolina primary. Biden had gained a point or two before that, but he only really started to skyrocket shortly after the primary. So it’s safe to say that his big victory in South Carolina was the proximate cause of his early March takeoff. But what was responsible for Biden’s South Carolina win in the first place?

Biden went up a lot more, but he was taking votes away from Steyer, Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar.
For now, the debate still seems the most likely cause. That’s a little unusual, since conventional wisdom says that debates don’t move public opinion much, but maybe this was an exception. ❧

Perhaps it was more the fact that the electorate just didn’t know or trust the Steyer, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar centrist crowd enough to vote for them with time running out. As a result the old tried-and-true guy you know pulls in all the people. He didn’t really need an inciting incident other than the looming election. Following the debate without anything else to use to make a decision on, the choice was *fait accompli*.
Annotated on March 07, 2020 at 08:57PM

Read A Harvard sociologist explains why we confide in strangers by Jenny AndersonJenny Anderson (Quartz)
Who did you last trust with some really personal information? 

Small says there are three reasons we might avoid those closest to us when we are grappling with problems about our health, relationships, work, or kids. ❧

Annotated on March 07, 2020 at 08:39PM

The first is that our closest relationships are our most complex ones. ❧

Annotated on March 07, 2020 at 08:39PM

The second reason is that when we are dealing with something difficult, we commonly prefer to confide in people who have been through what we are going through rather than those who know us, seeking “cognitive empathy” over guaranteed warmth or closeness. ❧

Annotated on March 07, 2020 at 08:40PM

The third reason is that in our moment of vulnerability, our need to talk is greater than our need to self-protect. ❧

Annotated on March 07, 2020 at 08:41PM

Adam Smith, writing in 1790, said we can only expect real sympathy from real friends, not from mere acquaintances. More recently, in 1973, Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter established as a bedrock of social network analysis the idea that we rely on “strong” ties (our inner circle) for support and weak ties (our acquaintances) for information. ❧

Annotated on March 07, 2020 at 08:43PM

Read Organic farming is on the rise in the U.S. by Kristen Bialik (Pew Research Center)
There were more than 14,000 certified organic farms in the United States in 2016, a 56% increase from 2011.

Still, organic farming makes up a small share of U.S. farmland overall. There were 5 million certified organic acres of farmland in 2016, representing less than 1% of the 911 million acres of total farmland nationwide. Some states, however, had relatively large shares of organic farmland. Vermont’s 134,000 certified organic acres accounted for 11% of its total 1.25 million farm acres. California, Maine and New York followed in largest shares of organic acreage – in each, certified organic acres made up 4% of total farmland. ❧

Annotated on March 07, 2020 at 12:09PM

Certified organic food, according to the Agriculture Department’s definition, must be produced without the use of conventional pesticides, petroleum- or sewage-based fertilizers, herbicides, genetic engineering, antibiotics, growth hormones or irradiation. Certified organic farms must also adhere to certain animal health and welfare standards, not treat land with any prohibited substances for at least three years prior to harvest, and reach a certain threshold for gross annual organic sales. U.S. organic farms that are not certified organic are not included in this analysis. ❧

Annotated on March 07, 2020 at 12:15PM

Read The fight to preserve a 44,000-year-old painting by Krithika Varagur (1843)
One of the world’s oldest artworks has been discovered inside a working Indonesian mine. It survived this long – Krithika Varagur ventures to Sulawesi to find out if it has a future

This painting was discovered in the Bulu Sipong cave on Sulawesi in 2016 and recent analysis has shown that it is the “oldest pictorial record of storytelling” and the “earliest figurative artwork in the world”, and is at least 43,900 years old. (The oldest known drawing in the world, a 73,000-year-old abstract scribble, was found in South Africa in 2018.) ❧

Annotated on March 06, 2020 at 10:25PM

Read My Repo, My House, My Rules by Eran HammerEran Hammer (hueniverse.com)
GitHub provides an invaluable hosting service. Like all hosting platforms, any interaction between the content owner — the maintainer — and their community— the users — is owned exclusively by the owner. If you visit my repositories on GitHub, you are visiting my property, hosted generously by GitHub. It is not public space.
I wonder if the reframing by the IndieWeb community of hosting things on their own sites will prevent this sort of rudeness in the future, or will the social construct fall down with the influence of spammers and trolls?
Read The Truth about the Post Kinds Plugin by David ShanskeDavid Shanske (david.shanske.com)
WordPress has the concept of post types, which are custom content types. The post type, which is the default type in WordPress, is a post of type post. Custom post types are also used to store attachments, menus, revisions, etc…all sorts of things that aren’t traditional posts. Post Kinds as imp...
Read The Fifty Principles of Sogetsu by Sofu Teshigahara by Katherine Frazer (ikebana.website)
The Fifty Principles of Sogetsu is a list of fifty most essential and fundamental points in learning Sogetsu Ikebana. You do not have to learn all of them by heart, but refer to them now and again. For Beginners Beautiful flowers do not always make...

We definitely need more websites like this around.

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Read Meet Leo, Your AI Research Assistant (blog.feedly.com)

Goodbye Information Overload

Keeping up with topics and trends you care about within a sea of articles can be overwhelming and time-consuming.

Filtering out the noise so you can focus on what really matters is a challenge we are deeply passionate about.

Today, we are delighted to announce Leo, your AI research assistant.

This is kind of cool, but I think I’d want more manual control over what I’m reading and seeing and perhaps a separate discovery mode to do this sort of functionality at times.

Read Move Over Influencers, Here Come Curators by Ana AndjelicAna Andjelic (andjelicaaa.substack.com)
Curation is the fuel of the modern aspiration economy
There’s a bookstore in Ginza that sells only one book. “A single room with a single book” is its tagline. Every week, the owner chooses the book, presents it in the center of the shop, and curates an exhibition with artworks, photographs, or related items around its subject matter

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Bookmarked on March 03, 2020 at 05:04PM

Read A black, female-owned company was flooded with hate speech and 1-star reviews after it was featured in a Target commercial (CNN)
A black female-owned feminine hygiene company was bombarded with negative reviews and online abuse after it was featured in a Target commercial, but its founder says the experience has "turned out to be a really beautiful thing."
The story really never got into what the controversy was about. I suspect it’s missing some necessary context?
Read The Wuhan Virus: How to Stay Safe by Laurie Garrett (Foreign Policy)
As China’s epidemic continues to spread, things may seem scary. Here are 10 simple precautions that can protect you from contracting the coronavirus.

Some simple and easy to carry out precautions for the coming months.

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