📺 “Goliath” Fresh Flowers | Amazon

Watched "Goliath" Fresh Flowers from Amazon
Directed by Dennie Gordon. With Billy Bob Thornton, Nina Arianda, Ana de la Reguera, Tania Raymonde. When Billy learns the name of the real shooter, he has to turn to the FBI to help him bring his elusive suspect in for questioning.
What a perverse group of wackos… A truly bizarre ending with H.R. Pufnstuf…

📺 “Goliath” Politics | Amazon

Watched "Goliath" Politics from Amazon
Directed by Lawrence Trilling. With Billy Bob Thornton, Nina Arianda, Ana de la Reguera, Tania Raymonde. After a brutal loss, Billy decides to formally take on Julio Suarez's defense, but before he can go back to court, he has to get his team back together first.
Somewhat muddier plot than season one. This episode wasn’t as compelling…

📺 "Goliath" La Mano | Amazon

Watched "Goliath" La Mano from Amazon
Directed by Lawrence Trilling. With Billy Bob Thornton, Ana de la Reguera, Tania Raymonde, Diana Hopper. Billy McBride is reluctantly pulled back into criminal defense when his friend's 16- year-old son is arrested for a double murder.
A seemingly slow start, but wow they sure do know how to close an episode and kill off stars.

👓 Stonehenge builders used Pythagoras' theorem 2,000 years before Greek philosopher was born, say experts | The Telegraph

Read Stonehenge builders used Pythagoras' theorem 2,000 years before Greek philosopher was born, say experts  by Sarah Knapton (The Telegraph)
The builders of Britain’s ancient stone circles like Stonehenge were using Pythagoras' theorem 2,000 years before the Greek philosopher was born, experts have claimed.
I’ll be bookmarking the book described in this piece for later. The author doesn’t get into the specifics of the claim in the title enough for my taste. What is the actual evidence? Is there some other geometrical construct they’re using to come up with these figures that doesn’t involve Pythagoras?

👓 The role of information theory in chemistry | Chemistry World

Read The role of information theory in chemistry by Philip Ball (Chemistry World)
Is chemistry an information science after all?
Discussion of some potential interesting directions for application of information theory to chemistry (and biology).

In the 1990s, Nobel laureate Jean-Marie Lehn argued that the principles of spontaneous self-assembly and self-organisation, which he had helped to elucidate in supramolecular chemistry, could give rise to a science of ‘informed matter’ beyond the molecule.

👓 Koko The Gorilla Dies; Redrew The Lines Of Animal-Human Communication | NPR

Read Koko The Gorilla Dies; Redrew The Lines Of Animal-Human Communication (NPR.org)
Koko fascinated and elated millions of people with her facility for language and her ability to interact with humans. She also gave people a glimpse of her emotions.

👓 An Invisible Rating System At Your Favorite Chain Restaurant Is Costing Your Server | BuzzFeed

Read An Invisible Rating System At Your Favorite Chain Restaurant Is Costing Your Server by Caroline O'DonovanCaroline O'Donovan (BuzzFeed)
In data-hungry, tech-happy chain restaurants, customers are rating their servers using tabletop tablets, not realizing those ratings can put jobs at risk.
The lack of thought on behalf of these large restaurant chains is simply deplorable. If presented with a tablet or app like this at a restaurant, I’m simply going to get up and leave. I’ll actively boycott the use of such aggressive nonsense.

And Ziosk could be a roundabout way for employers to discriminate against employees. Employers are legally restricted from evaluating employees based gender, age, race, or appearance, according to Karen Levy, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University — but nothing is stopping Ziosk users from doing that, even though those ratings can affect a worker’s pay or employment. “If you outsource that job to a consumer, you may be able to escape that,” she said.

“Customers who might discriminate against a certain class or group of workers can use the system to leave negative comments that would affect the workers,” said Cornell’s Ajunwa. She compared the restaurant system to student evaluations of professors, which determine the trajectory of their careers, and tend to be biased against women.


Having low scores posted for all coworkers to see was “very embarrassing,” said Steph Buja, who recently left her job as a server at a Chili’s in Massachusetts. But that’s not the only way customers — perhaps inadvertently — use the tablets to humiliate waitstaff. One diner at Buja’s Chili’s used Ziosk to comment, “our waitress has small boobs.”According to other servers working in Ziosk environments, this isn’t a rare occurrence.

This is outright sexual harrassment and appears to be actively creating a hostile work environment. I could easily see a class action against large chains and/or against the app maker themselves. Aggregating the data and using it in a smart way is fine, but I suspect no one in the chain is actively thinking about what they’re doing, they’re just selling an idea down the line. The maker of the app should be doing a far better job of filtering this kind of crap out and aggregating the data in a smarter way and providing a better output since the major chains they’re selling it to don’t seem to be capable of processing and disseminating what they’re collecting.


👓 B&N Posted Loss of $125 Million on 6% Sales Drop in FY ’18 | Publishers Weekly

Read B&N Posted Loss of $125 Million on 6% Sales Drop in FY '18 (PublishersWeekly.com)
Total sales at Barnes & Noble fell 6.0% in the fiscal year ended April 28, 2018, compared to fiscal 2017, and the retailer posted a net loss of $125.5 million last year, compared to net income of $22.0 million in fiscal 2017.

👓 How To Spy On Other WordPress Websites | WP Superstars

Read How To Spy On Other WordPress Websites by KeriLynn EngelKeriLynn Engel
Have you ever fallen in love with the look or features of another website – but couldn’t figure out just how they did it? As Picasso said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” If you want your website to be great, it doesn’t hurt to steal ideas and inspiration from others! Of course that doesn’t mean blatantly copying someone else’s work. But using the same themes and plugins and putting your own spin on them? That’s how it’s done. Why reinvent the wheel when what you need is already out there?
In this post you’ll learn how to spy on other websites to find out:
Whether they’re using WordPress
Which web hosting company they use
What theme is powering their site
What plugins they’re using

👓 Interviewing my digital domains | W. Ian O’Byrne

Read Interviewing my digital domains by W. Ian O'ByrneW. Ian O'Byrne (W. Ian O'Bryne)

Alan Levine recently posted a series of questions to help others think through some of thoughts and motivations as we develop and maintain a domain of our own.

I’ve written a lot about this in the past, and I’ll try to include some links to content/posts as I respond to the prompts. This is a bit long as I get into the weeds, so consider yourself warned.

And now…let’s get to it…

Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia

Having a domain is important to me as I research, develop, and teach.

example of a domain as thinking out loud or thought spaces
blogging as thinking


This should be a space where you can create the identity that you want to have. You can write yourself into existence.

I like this sentiment. Had René Descartes been born a bit later might he have said “Blogeō, ergo sum”?


Most of this work is focused on collaboration, transparency, and working/thinking in the open.


The plan is to use the site to share surveys, interviews, and researcher notes.

Note to self: I need to keep documenting examples of these open labs, open notebooks, etc. in the open science area.


teachers hid their Facebook accounts for fear of being fired.

The sound of this to me know reminds me of the type of suppression of thought that might have occurred in the middle ages. Of course open thought and discussion is important for teachers the same way it is for every other person. However there are a few potential counterexamples where open discussion of truly abhorrent ideas can run afoul of community mores. Case in point:


PLN

personal learning network perhaps marking it up with <abbr> tags would be useful here?


luck

lucky


.A

space


I feel like this culture in academia may be changing.


academia is built on the premise (IMHO) of getting a good idea, parlaying that into a job and tenure, and waiting for death. I’ve had a lot of colleagues and acquaintances ask why I would bother blogging. Ask why I share all of this content online. Ask why I’m not afraid that someone is going to steal my ideas.

Though all too true, this is just a painful statement for me. The entirety of our modern world is contingent upon the creation of ideas, their improvement and evolution, and their spreading. In an academic world where attribution of ideas is paramount, why wouldn’t one publish quickly and immediately on one’s own site (or anywhere else they might for that matter keeping in mind that it’s almost trivially easy to self-publish it on one’s own website nearly instantaneously)?
Early areas of science were held back by the need to communicate by handwriting letters as the primary means of communication. Books eventually came, but the research involved and even the printing process could take decades. Now the primary means of science communication is via large (often corporate owned) journals, but even this process may take a year or more of research and then a year or more to publish and get the idea out. Why not write the ideas up and put them out on your own website and collect more immediate collaborators? Funding is already in such a sorry state that generally, even an idea alone, will not get the ball rolling.
I’m reminded of the gospel song “This little light of mine” whose popular lyrics include:
“Hide it under a bushel? No! / I’m gonna let it shine” and
“Don’t let Satan blow it out, / I’m gonna let it shine”
I’m starting to worry that academia in conjunction with large corporate publishing interests are acting the role of Satan in the song which could easily be applied to ideas as well as to my little light.


Senior colleagues indicate that I should not have to balance out publishing in “traditional, peer-reviewed publications” as well as open, online spaces.

Do your colleagues who read your work, annotate it, and comment on it not count as peer-review? Am I wasting my time by annotating all of this? 🙂 (I don’t think so…)


or at least they pretend

I don’t think we’re pretending. I know I’m not!


PDF form

Let me know when you’re done and we’ll see about helping you distribute it in .epub and .mobi formats as e-books as well.


This is due to a natural human reaction to “Google” someone before we meet them for the first time. Before we show up to teach a class, take a class, interview for a job, go on a date…we’ve been reviewed online. Other people use the trail of breadcrumbs that we’ve left behind to make judgements about us. The question/challenge is that this trail of breadcrumbs is usually incomplete, and locked up in various silos. You may have bits of your identity in Facebook or Twitter, while you have other parts locked up in Instagram, Snapchat, or LinkedIn. What do these incomplete pieces say about you? Furthermore, are they getting the entire picture of you when they uncover certain details? Can they look back to see what else you’re interested in? Can they see how you think all of these interests fit together…or they seeing the tail end of a feverish bout of sharing cat pics?

I can’t help but think that doing this is a form of cultural anthropology being practiced contemporaneously. Which is more likely: someone a 100 years from now delving into my life via my personal website that aggregated everything or scholars attempting to piece it all back together from hundreds of other sites? Even with advanced AI techniques, I think the former is far more likely.
Of course I also think about what @Undine is posting about cats on Twitter or perhaps following #marginaliamonday and cats, and they’re at least taking things to a whole new level of scholarship.


Guide to highlight colors

Yellow–general highlights and highlights which don’t fit under another category below
Orange–Vocabulary word; interesting and/or rare word
Green–Reference to read
Blue–Interesting Quote
Gray–Typography Problem
Red–Example to work through

👓 Why praise Micro.blog? | Andy Sylvester

Read Why praise Micro.blog? by Andy Sylvester (andysylvester.com)
My friend, John Philpin, responded (https://beyondbridges.net/2018/06/in-praise-of-micro-blog/) to my question about using Micro.blog (what makes it more than just another blogging service), and to me his response in a nutshell is “community”. One of the features of Micro.blog is the ability to ...

📺 "Goliath" Beauty and the Beast | Amazon

Watched "Goliath" Beauty and the Beast from Amazon
Directed by Lawrence Trilling. With Billy Bob Thornton, William Hurt, Maria Bello, Olivia Thirlby. With danger mounting around every corner, Billy has to decide whether to head directly to trial or take his chances with a continuance.

📺 "Goliath" Cover Your Ass | Amazon

Watched "Goliath" Cover Your Ass from Amazon
Directed by Anthony Hemingway. With Billy Bob Thornton, William Hurt, Maria Bello, Olivia Thirlby. As both sides begin their depositions, more secrets start to come to the surface, threatening to destroy everyone involved.

👓 Yarns v. Microsub | Jack Jamieson

Read Yarns v. Microsub? (Thinking out loud) by Jack JamiesonJack Jamieson (jackjamieson.net)
I’ve been slowly making some improvements to my Yarns Indie Reader for WordPress, and also seeing very impressive development of other IndieWeb readers such as Together, Indigenous, and Monocle.  These three readers all rely on Microsub, which splits the work of building a reader into two parts: ...
Just the fact that someone is contemplating building a microsub server for WordPress warms the cockles of my heart. This is definitely going to be the year of some fantastic new technology on the feed reader scene!

Having just run into Jan Cavan Boulas at WordCamp Orange County and talking with her about her relatively recent redesign of WordPress.com’s reader, I’d be curious to see what she and others might be able to do for a WordPress reader built on top of a solid microsub server.