Watch | Chris Aldrich

📺 Jeremy Keith – Building Blocks of the Indie Web

Bookmarked Building Blocks of the Indie Web by Jeremy Keith (View Source London)

In these times of centralised services like Facebook, Twitter, and Medium, having your own website is downright disruptive. If you care about the longevity of your online presence, independent publishing is the way to go. But how can you get all the benefits of those third-party services while still owning your own data? By using the building blocks of the Indie Web, that's how!

Based solely on what I know from just the title of the talk, this wasn’t quite at all what I was expecting. It was far more interesting and philosophical than I expected, but I suppose that’s the extra magical bit that you get for a something presented by Jeremy.

Approaching the subject from a more architectural standpoint was quite refreshing and a great way to frame the subject for this audience. I found myself wishing he’d had twice the amount of time to expand on his ideas. Often when I’m explaining IndieWeb building blocks, I’ll touch on webmention prior to micropub, but I like the way he turned my usual thinking on it’s head by putting micropub first in his presentation.

Thanks, Jeremy (and Mozilla for the conference). This was great fun! 🎉

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvYK-K0jWng

📺 OK Go and The Muppets – Muppet Show Theme Song | YouTube

Watched OK Go and The Muppets - Muppet Show Theme Song by OK Go from YouTube

📺 Wisdom of the Crowd Season 1, Episodes 2-4

Watched Wisdom of the Crowd Season 1, Episodes 2-4 from CBS

A drama about a visionary tech innovator who creates a cutting-edge crowdsourcing app to solve his daughter's murder, and revolutionize crime solving in the process. Inspired by the notion that a million minds are better than one, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jeffrey Tanner, develops "Sophe," an online platform for publicly shared information he's certain will find his daughter's killer.

I managed to miss the first episode. Episodes 2 and 3 are a bit stilted and feel a bit preachy, but I’m willing to watch a few to see where it goes.
It seems like a relatively timely concept though they could do a better job explaining the science behind what they’re doing. They do manage to do a reasonable job on the drama though.

I haven’t read any of the recent articles on Jeremy Piven, but I’m a bit curious how long this series will last given his recent PR scrape. It seems relatively interesting and has some potential, but I’m not sure if it’s got traction to go more than a season. If allegations pull on it, it may not make it very far. Piven is pretty good in the show, but I actually think he could be better if he removed his stereotypical “geek” glasses. They somehow drag on his performance.

I thought it was pretty funny that the series uses the fictional search engine “Chum Hum” which also appeared as a search engine in the CBS series The Good Wife.

Episode four delves into some interesting moral questions about technology and follows in the footsteps of Law & Order in their “ripped from the headlines” plotting. I’m curious if they’ll follow some of the nebulous moral endings that Law & Order had as well?

📺 Are University Admissions Biased? | Simpson’s Paradox Part 2 | YouTube

Watched Are University Admissions Biased? | Simpson's Paradox Part 2 by Henry Reich from youtube.com

Simpson's Paradox Part 2. This video is about how to tell whether or not university admissions are biased using statistics: aka, it's about Simpson's Paradox again!

REFERENCES:
Original Berkeley Grad Admissions Paper
Interactive Simpson’s Paradox Explainer
No Lawsuit, But Yes, Berkeley Study on Gender Bias

Statistics on college majors by gender:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/2016menu\_tables.asp
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/28/359419934/who-studies-what-men-women-and-college-majors
http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/

Earnings by college major

Wall Street Journal Article on Simpson’s Paradox

📺 The Decentralized Social Web by Keith J. Grant

Bookmarked The Decentralized Social Web by Keith J. Grant (Recall Act)

We tend to have a love/hate relationship with social networks. The ability to interact with friends, colleagues, and even celebrities is wonderful, but the lack of control over privacy or content algorithms is troubling. A better way lies ahead, where you aren't tied to large social networks and where you can own your own data. Recorded at Atlanta Connect.Tech 2017 on 9/21/2017

https://player.vimeo.com/video/237349014

A few weeks back Keith gave a great non-platform specific overview to some of the moving pieces of the IndieWeb at Connect.Tech 2017 in Atlanta. I wish I could have been there in person, but glad that it was archived on video for posterity.

Somehow I managed to get a mention in his talk as did our friend Jeremy Cherfas.

The slides for his talk are archived, naturally, on his own website.

📺 These 3D animations could help you finally understand molecular science | PBS NewsHour

Watched These 3D animations could help you finally understand molecular science from PBS NewsHour

Art and science have in some ways always overlapped, with early scientists using illustrations to depict what they saw under the microscope. Janet Iwasa of the University of Utah is trying to re-establish this link to make thorny scientific data and models approachable to the common eye. Iwasa offers her brief but spectacular take on how 3D animation can make molecular science more accessible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9NDXk7Gs8Y

Visualizations can be tremendously valuable. This story reminds me of an Intersession course that Mary Spiro did at Johns Hopkins to help researchers communicate what their research is about as well as some of the work she did with the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology.