meh… nothing new here for me, but a good example of a small part of active reading being demonstrated
Reads, Listens, Watches
Reading list of books, magazines, newspaper articles, other physical documents, or online posts
Playlist of posts listened to, or scrobbled
Playlist of watched movies, television shows, online videos, and other visual-based events
Playlist of posts listened to, or scrobbled
Playlist of watched movies, television shows, online videos, and other visual-based events
On Thursday Matt Mullenweg responded to an inquiry on Twitter from Jeff Matson, a Pagely employee, about whether Automattic’s Newspack platform had all open open source components or some pro…
WordPress open source or WordPress.com? Recall that Automattic is a VC backed company now and Matt has a big dog in the hunt.
Working over many years with several Indigenous Elders, Duane has published The First Astronomers, a complete overview of traditional First Nations star knowledge.
A great introduction to the book The First Astronomers.
In her new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, Anderson traces racial distinctions in Americans’ treatment of gun ownership back to the founding of the country and the Second Amendment, which states:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The language of the amendment, Anderson says, was crafted to ensure that slave owners could quickly crush any rebellion or resistance from those whom they’d enslaved. And she says the right to bear arms, presumably guaranteed to all citizens, has been repeatedly denied to Black people.
This is the sort of history that should be more commonplace in our schools. Why was I not taught this? What an excellent little interview. Going to buy Carol Anderson’s book in triplicate.
Cereals provide their offspring with a long-lived supply of energy to power the first growth spurt of the seed. Thousands of years ago, people discovered that they could steal some of the seeds to power their own growth, taking advantage of the storability of seeds to move the food from where it grew to where it might be eaten. Wheat, the pre-eminent cereal, moved along routes that were ancient before the Greek empire, carried, probably, by ox-drawn carts and guided along these black paths by people remembered in Ukraine today as chumaki.
In this episode, Scott Nelson, author of Oceans of Grain, tells me about the various ways in which the ability to move wheat more efficiently changed world history, geography and economics, for starters.
Notes
- Scott Reynolds Nelson’s book Oceans of Grain is published by Basic Books.
- Listen to Persephone’s Secret, if you haven’t already, and I promise no vengeful gods will render you dumb.
- Banner photo of a grain elevator and train in Wichita Falls, Texas by Carol M. Highsmith. Image of a 19th century Chumak by Jan Nepomucen Lewicki; Public Domain.
- Transcript coming soon.
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In the trailer for this short series, I presumed some context about the relationship of the topic to the Ukraine, but missed the true mark with the additional context provided here.
Even better, I suspect that some of the history here is right up my alley in relation to work I’ve been doing on oral cultures. Some of it “sounds” like early oral Ukrainian culture is eerily reminiscent to Milman Parry’s work on orality among the guslars of Yugoslavia and reading I’ve been doing on Indigenous astronomy! What a great find. I’ve immediately ordered a copy of the book.
I wouldn’t expect these sorts of information and insight in a typical podcast about food, but Jeremy Cherfas always delivers the goods.
Many people take the myth of Demeter — Ceres in Latin — and her daughter Persephone to be just a metaphor for the annual cycle of planting and harvesting. It is, but there may be more to it than that. Why else would it be worth scaring participants in the Eleusinian Mysteries into saying absolutely nothing about what went on during these initiation rites into the cult of Demeter and Persephone?
Maybe the story hides a secret so valuable that it was worth protecting.
Elucidating the Eleusinian Mysteries is one small element in Scott Reynolds Nelson’s new book, Oceans of Grain. It looks at the many, many ways in which wheat and human history intertwine, which he’s been working on for years. It was finally published on 22 February this year.
Two days later, Russia invaded Ukraine.
Today, what the story of Persephone is really about. And over the next three weeks, Scott Nelson and I will be talking about how wheat has influenced human affairs, as it is still doing today.
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I’ve fallen way behind on making my listen posts public and hope to remedy the issue, particularly for the better podcasts I listen to. What better way to start than a new short series in Jeremy Cherfas’ excellent Eat This Podcast?
Directed by Leigh Janiak. With Colin Firth, Toni Collette, Michael Stuhlbarg, Dane DeHaan. In the aftermath of the verdict, the Petersons struggle with the court's decision, and Michael finds solace in an unlikely friendship from thousands of miles away.
Announcing our next Obsidian Book Club, beginning next week, in which we will synoptically read two books: Too Much to Know and The Extended Mind. Everybody is welcome, whether or not you have been in a book club before. It's a really good group and I think these books will spark some very interesting conversations. If you're interested, drop me a line at the email in the video and I'll send you the details.
A new session of Dan Allosso’s synoptic Obsidian-based book club is starting April 2 for five weeks with some fascinating selections:
- The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul
- Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age by Ann M. Blair
The last two clubs were incredibly scintillating, so I can’t wait to see what this incarnation holds. Everyone interested in the topics and/or the process is welcome to join us. Details in the video.
In addition to the fun of the two particular texts, those interested in note taking, information management, personal knowledge management, zettelkasten and using tools like Obsidian and Hypothes.is in group settings will appreciate the experience. If you’re an educator interested in using these tools in a classroom-like setting for active reading and academic writing, I think there’s something to be learned in the process of what we’re all doing here.
Obsidian Book Club
Tentative Schedule beginning on Saturday, March 26, 2022 Saturday, April 2, 2022
Week 1
Paul: Introduction and Part 1
Blair: Chapter 1
Week 2
Paul: Part 2
Blair: Chapter 2
Week 3
Paul: Part 3
Blair: Chapter 3
Week 4
Paul: Conclusion
Blair: Chapter 4
Week 5
Paul: Any overflow from before??
Blair: Chapter 5
A trained astrophysicist, Dr Duane Hamacher is a lecturer in the Nura Gili Indigenous Centre at the University of New South Wales. After studying planets orbiting other stars for two years, his interest in the crossroads of science and culture was too great and he decided to complete a PhD in Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University. He researches in how navigating the boundaries between Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science can show how these ways of understanding the natural world are beneficial to both.
For those who appreciated Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and want to delve further into Indigenous science, I’m recommending Duane Hamacher and co-authors’ book The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders Read the Stars (Allen & Unwin, 2022). This video seems to be a pretty solid, short primer of what to expect.
I’m personally interested in reading/learning about these areas above and beyond the primary education levels which are presented here.
Sam's Mom: Directed by Katie Locke O'Brien. With Rose McIver, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Brandon Scott Jones, Danielle Pinnock. Sam and Jay travel to where Sam's mother, Sheryl (Rachael Harris), died to see if she's now a ghost. Also, Sasappis divulges a secret to his fellow ghosts that he overheard Sam and Jay discussing.
Nice to see an episode move out and away from the main setting of the house, but it’s not really bringing the funny.
Who Do You Think You Are?: Directed by Tom Kingsley. With Lolly Adefope, Mathew Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas. Cash-strapped Alison and Mike think their dreams have come true when they inherit a grand country house, unaware that it's falling apart and teeming with the ghosts of former inhabitants.
Watching the credits of the American remake, I noticed the British roots and had to go back to see the source material. Perhaps not too shockingly, it’s an almost exact remake. The chamber maid has turned into a flower child and the caveman(?) has turned into a Viking, but almost everything in the original has been moved directly into the remake.
Poorly reflecting on the remake, I think the original is actually funnier, though I do like the Viking character in the remake more.
I was a bit surprised to find the original airing on HBO Max instead of BritBox.
Alberta's Fan: Directed by Nick Wong. With Rose McIver, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Brandon Scott Jones, Danielle Pinnock. Alberta is thrilled when a super-fan visits the mansion; Thorfinn convinces Hetty to go on a walk that would hopefully spark a special memory.
I was waiting for the hammer to fall on this one and it went the other direction.
D&D: Directed by Nick Wong. With Rose McIver, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Brandon Scott Jones, Danielle Pinnock. After Jay is kicked out of a Dungeons and Dragons game with his city friends, Sam agrees to facilitate a new one between him and the ghosts; Isaac confronts his feelings for Nigel, a ghost from whom he's been keeping a gigantic secret.
This show isn’t good at handling the vast amounts of context that Jay is missing in the conversations with the ghosts. He just sits there not showing how uncomfortable things really must be for himself and it makes him seem so much less human.
Economics and evolution are basically in the same business: Both are all about productivity selection, though one has been at it for billions of years longer than the other. Both involve “invisible hand” magic — intricate, unplanned, “self-or...
Folks who have been reading David Wengrow and David Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything are sure to appreciate the sentiment here which pulls in the ideas of biology and evolution to expand on their account and makes it a much more big history sort of thesis.
I’m reminded of Kate Raworth’s excellent Donut Economics as a potential remedy.
Raw capitalism mimics the logic of cancer within our body politic.
markpilgrim (Dive Into Mark)So what happened was, I was talking with Joe about the fact that Dive Into Python appeared on the
Users of some aggregation sites collectively forget prior articles and news and resubmit them at intervals. This may give rise to the colloquialism “goldfish effect”.