Jamie Tanna (Jamie Tanna | Software (Quality) Engineer)Announcing the ability to RSVP to Meetup.com events from your website, using Bridgy.
Jamie Tanna (Jamie Tanna | Software (Quality) Engineer)Category: Read
Jamie Tanna (Jamie Tanna | Software (Quality) Engineer)Banksy got into the Valentine’s Day spirit and released an image of his newest piece in Bristol on Friday (Valentine’s Day). He posted about the new wall piece on his Instagram account (via @banksy)The Oscar-winning short animation flick is available on YouTube. Called “Hair Love,” it’s by...
Born in 1814, Mary Ellen Pleasant became one of America's first black female self-made millionaires by using the fact that she was often overlooked by wealthy elites to her advantage. Here's her story.
Margaret Sullivan (The Washington Post)It’s been a particularly rough couple of months for those who care about local journalism — which should be every American citizen.
Warren Buffett sold his 31 newspapers in January, a powerful vote of no confidence in their financial future. A rapacious hedge fund got its claws deeper into the Chicago Tribune chain in December, which includes the New York Daily News and the Baltimore Sun. Gannett and GateHouse, the two biggest newspaper chains, continued merging — a development almost certain to mean more staff cutbacks in already shrunken newsrooms.
And then on Thursday came more devastating news. Weighed down under enormous debt, the McClatchy newspaper chain — one of the nation’s largest newspaper publishers and owner of the Miami Herald among many others — was filing for bankruptcy protection.
Effects of 2010 BP oil spill were 30% larger than calculated as satellite images were unable to detect full extent of pollution in Gulf
Donations to the public broadcaster went up sharply after the president said it was “a very good question” to ask why it still existed.
It’s an approximately 600-year-old mystery that continues to stump scholars, cryptographers, physicists, and computer scientists: a roughly 240-page medieval codex written in an indecipherable language, brimming with bizarre drawings of esoteric plants, naked women, and astrological symbols. Known...
a roughly 240-page medieval codex written in an indecipherable language, brimming with bizarre drawings of esoteric plants, naked women, and astrological symbols. Known as the Voynich manuscript, it defies classification, much less comprehension. ❧
Something I hadn’t thought of before, but which could be highly likely given the contents: What if the manuscript is a personal memory palace? Without supporting materials, it’s entirely likely that what’s left on the page is a substrate to which the author attached the actual content and not having the other half, the entire enterprise is now worthless?
Annotated on February 16, 2020 at 08:51PM
All we know for certain, through forensic testing, is that the manuscript likely dates to the 15th century, when books were handmade and rare. ❧
This may provide some additional proof that it’s a memory aid in the potential form of a notebook or commonplace book. What were the likelihoods of these being more common that other books/texts? What other codes were used at the time? Was the major system or a variant in use at the time?
Annotated on February 16, 2020 at 08:54PM
Disgust may not be a straightforward extension of the immune system’s aversion to harmful substances, but rather “a psychological…
The lack of living dragons has never stopped people from drawing them. The trends for dragon design tend to organize along East-West lines: dragons in Asia are snakelike, wingless and benevolent, while European dragons are menacing winged lizards. When an artist situated right between Asia and Europ...
Bill Bennett (Bill Bennett)"The life of the journalist is poor, nasty, brutish and short. So is his style."
Stella Gibbons,
Cold Comfort Farm
And then there is Blaise Pascal. In 1657 he wrote:
"Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."
I agree wholeheartedly. Though I like the way that the first quote ties the idea more directly into journalism, the pedantic in me wants to attribute the broader original sentiment to Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651). Doing this also allows us to frame all of humanity which seems to be having its own sort of problems–yet again.
“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Gaius Suetonius TranquillusAs private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, the scholar Suetonius had access to the imperial archives and used them (along with eyewitness accounts) to produce one of the most colourful biographical works in history. The Twelve Caesars chronicles the public careers and private lives of the men who wielded absolute power over Rome, from the foundation of the empire under Julius Caesar and Augustus, to the decline into depravity and civil war under Nero and the recovery that came with his successors. A masterpiece of observation, anecdote and detailed physical description, The Twelve Caesars presents us with a gallery of vividly drawn—and all too human—individuals.
Reflection on a Great IndieWeb Camp Online
Aaron Parecki (Aaron Parecki)I've had a fascination with maps for as long as I can remember. During family road trips to San Francisco I remember tracing our route on a map with a highlighter in real-time. Many, many years later, I am able to trace my route automatically with a GPS receiver on my phone. https://aaronparecki.com...
Aaron has really done some awesome map related work with his GPS tracking. Looking at just his personal map data for a year or two will give you an idea about how much other corporations can gain from tracking millions of people this way.
Looking at some of the map pins like for Target on his map will tell you that Google could potentially be using aggregate data about visits to companies as a way of knowing how well or poorly a company is doing and then using that data to make bets for or against companies in the stock market. This could give them the ability to front run investments if they wanted to.
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (a.d. 121 180) embodied in his person that deeply cherished, ideal figure of antiquity, the philosopher-king. His "Meditations "are not only one of the most important expressions of the Stoic philosophy of his time but also an enduringly inspiring guide to living a good and just life. Written in moments snatched from military campaigns and the rigors of politics, these ethical and spiritual reflections reveal a mind of exceptional clarity and originality, and a spirit attuned to both the particulars of human destiny and the vast patterns that underlie it."
David Shanske (david.shanske.com)I’ve been working on a patch for WordPress that involves fixing the incorrectly stored timestamp stored as part of WordPress image metadata. I already do something like this in my Simple Location plugin, but I’ve found a way that works more simply. To summarize the issue, there are multiple date...