🎧Episode 539: Frustrated On Your Behalf | Core Intuition

Listened to Episode 539: Frustrated On Your Behalf by Manton Reece and Daniel Jalkut from Core Intuition

Manton and Daniel talk about payments from the Small App Developer settlement against Apple. Why does Manton refuse to accept free money, and are there valid reasons to opt out of the settlement? Then they reflect on the wave of opportunity from Twitter’s drastic downfall, and whether Manton and Daniel can “catch it”. Finally, Manton remembers the IndieWeb principles about plurality and monoculture, and they discuss how that might relate to Mastodon.

Listened to Howard Rheingold on Tools for Thought | Episode 94 • August 14, 2022 by Jorge Arango from The Informed Life
“We’re extremely powerful when it comes to making sense and finding connections, doing it visually instead of with a page.” Howard Rheingold is an eminent author, maker, and educator. His work has explored and defined key aspects of digital culture, including the use of computers as tools for mind augmentation, virtual communities, and social media literacy. In this conversation, we discuss computers as extensions for our minds, Douglas Engelbart’s unfinished revolution, basic literacies for interacting in information environments, and the resurgence of Tools for Thought.

Interesting and some useful base material here on literacies, but one can’t get very deep in 30 minutes with Rheingold on this topic. I would have rather this been 6 hours long and then multiple times that.
Listened to Mark Bernstein on Tinderbox by Jorge ArangoJorge Arango from The Informed Life

Mark Bernstein is chief scientist of Eastgate Systems, Inc. He’s been writing hypertexts and developing hypertext authoring software since the late 1980s. Mark is the creator of Tinderbox and other tools for thinking that “harness the power of the link.” In this conversation, we discuss thinking through connected notes.

Some subtle insights here.

representational talkback; the design of taking notes in the present when you’re not sure how they’ll connect to ideas in the (imagined) future; The Tinderbox Way; by force, all research is bottom up.

Read Thinking about starting an open zettelkasten by Andy Sylvester (andysylvester.com)
In yesterday’s post on Chris Aldrich’s overview of zettelkasten techniques, I asked about seeing the zettelkasten itself. He replied saying most of the content was in his Hypothesis account, and sent me a pointer to an entry. I read through a bunch of pages on zettelkasten stuff yesterday, ...
Building a Zettelkasten on the web with an OPML structure is intriguing. I’ve heard about outliners in the space before, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone using OPML for this specific use case before.

Welcome to Wrexham S1.E2 Reality

Watched "Welcome to Wrexham" Reality from Hulu
With Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney, Jordan Davies, Spencer Harris. Wrexham Football Club attempts to qualify for the playoffs as their new owners try to very quickly learn the ins and outs of a game and an industry they know nothing about.
Listened to Key Takeaways from the Trump's Affidavit Release from The Brian Lehrer Show | WNYC
Katie Benner, Justice Department reporter at The New York Times, joins with takeaways and the latest news from the release of the affidavit in the FBI search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Some interesting and useful depth here beyond a lot of the usual political rhetoric.
Watched We Need to Talk About Cosby, Part I from Netflix
Part 1: Directed by W. Kamau Bell. With Bill Cosby, Gloria Allred, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, Harry Belafonte. In the 1960s Bill Cosby is collecting accolades for his comedy, breaking barriers for Black stunt performers and participating in the nation's sexual liberation and civil rights movement. He also allegedly begins exploiting his power.
Finally popped up on Netflix! 

I hadn’t known about his history of promoting the underrepresented in the stunt space in entertainment. 

I had forgotten about (?) or simply missed (based on my age and exposure) his history with “Spanish Fly”. I don’t recall any of these references during any of the news coverage of his trials or subsequent conviction.

The documentary is very well done and subtle so far, particularly with some snarky/clever images undergirding some of its political position. I appreciate that I’m just a year and change younger than W. Kamau Bell, so I’ve lived in roughly the same time frame he has. I have strong memories of having grown up with Picture Pages, The Electric Company, Fat Albert, et al. I’m curious to see how my experiences are similar and different to Bell’s perspective.

Watched August 29, 2022 - PBS NewsHour full episode from PBS NewsHour
Monday on the NewsHour, the death toll rises and thousands are stranded after monsoons cause catastrophic flooding in Pakistan. Ukrainian forces launch a counteroffensive to retake a strategic southern city from Russian invaders. Plus, Serena Williams competes in what could be her final major tennis tournament. We examine her impact on the sport and her towering legacy.
Read The Quest for a Memex 2022-07-31 by Kevin MarksKevin Marks (kevinmarks.com)
This week John Borthwick put out a call for Tools for Thinking: People want better tools for thinking — ones that take the mass of notes that you have and organize them, that help extend your second brain into a knowledge or interest graph and that enable open sharing and ownership of the “knowl...
I got stuck over the weekend, so I totally missed Kevin Marks’ memex demo at IndieWebCamp’s Create Day, but it is an interesting little UI experiment.

I’ll always maintain that Vannevar Bush really harmed the first few generations of web development by not mentioning the word commonplace book in his conceptualization. Marks heals some of this wound by explicitly tying the idea of memex to that of the zettelkasten however. John Borthwick even mentions the idea of “networked commonplace books”. [I suspect a little birdie may have nudged this perspective as catnip to grab my attention—a ruse which is highly effective.]

Some of Kevin’s conceptualization reminds me a bit of Jerry Michalski’s use of The Brain which provides a specific visual branching of ideas based on the links and their positions on the page: the main idea in the center, parent ideas above it, sibling ideas to the right/left and child ideas below it. I don’t think it’s got the idea of incoming or outgoing links, but having a visual location on the page for incoming links (my own site has incoming ones at the bottom as comments or responses) can be valuable.

I’m also reminded a bit of Kartik Prabhu’s experiments with marginalia and webmention on his website which plays around with these ideas as well as their visual placement on the page in different methods.

MIT MediaLab’s Fold site (details) was also an interesting sort of UI experiment in this space.

It also seems a bit reminiscent of Kevin Mark’s experiments with hovercards in the past as well, which might be an interesting way to do the outgoing links part.

Next up, I’d love to see larger branching visualizations of these sorts of things across multiple sites… Who will show us those “associative trails”?

Another potential framing for what we’re all really doing is building digital versions of Indigenous Australian’s songlines across the web. Perhaps this may help realize Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly’s dream for a “third archive”?

Watched "The Great American Recipe" If I Were a Recipe S1.E1 from PBS
If I Were a Recipe: With Alejandra Ramos, Tiffany Derry, Leah Cohen, Graham Elliot. The ten home cooks from across the US arrive in the communal kitchen in Ruther Glen, VA knowing that one will only have this one opportunity to impress the judges in being sent home at the end of the first two competitions. With only an hour for the cook, they are asked to put themselves forward in the first round called "If I Were a Recipe", namely to cook anything they want that demonstrates who they are as a cook and a person. With the judges' comments provided to them from round one, the cooks go into round two with ninety minutes to prepare not only a dish that represents them, but their home community, they who probably had to adapt whatever family recipes, many not native to the US, to use ingredients they could source where they live.
A total rip off in both style and substance of the Great British Bake Off, but for general cooking in America rather than baking. Interesting, but perhaps a bit too chipper. I like that there’s some broad representation going on here both culturally and regionally.
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.