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

📺 "Queer Eye" A Decent Proposal | Netflix

Watched "Queer Eye" A Decent Proposal from Netflix
With Bobby Berk, Karamo Brown, Tan France, William Mahnken. A scraggly film buff reboots his life - and his non-existent grooming habits - to give his girlfriend an award-worthy marriage proposal.
Right out of the gate you’ve got to love that they’re featuring Dahlonega, GA, my hometown! Oddly very little seems to feature anything in the town as most of the setting is in the Atlanta area or near South West Atlanta. The only exterior shots are out in the countryside on the couple’s dirt drive.

This guy would have been a couple of years behind me in school, but I didn’t recognize him or his name.

From a story perspective this one was pretty good and the makeover was phenomenal!

👓 Where Boys Outperform Girls in Math: Rich, White and Suburban Districts | New York Times

Read Where Boys Outperform Girls in Math: Rich, White and Suburban Districts by Claire Cain Miller (nytimes.com)
A study of 10,000 school districts shows how local norms help grow or shrink gender achievement gaps.

👓 The Terrible Arguments Against the Constitutionality of the Mueller Investigation | LawFare Blog

Read The Terrible Arguments Against the Constitutionality of the Mueller Investigation (Lawfare)
There is no serious argument that Robert Mueller’s appointment violates the Constitution.

👓 McGill music student awarded $350,000 after girlfriend stalls career | Montreal Gazette

Read McGill music student awarded $350,000 after girlfriend stalls career (Montreal Gazette)
She wrote an email posing as him, turning down a $50,000-a-year scholarship so that he wouldn’t leave
An insane little story of love and music…

👓 A Marketing Site Deleted Over 7,000 Articles After It Was Caught Stealing Fact-Checks And Plagiarizing | BuzzFeed

Read A Marketing Site Deleted Over 7,000 Articles After It Was Caught Stealing Fact-Checks And Plagiarizing by Craig Silverman (BuzzFeed)
They messed with the wrong fact checker.
Who knew that clicks really meant so much…

👓 After decades of triumph, democracy is losing ground | The Economist

Read After decades of triumph, democracy is losing ground (The Economist)
What is behind the reversal?
I’m just hoping our institutions aren’t so heavily weakened that there’s no turning back for us.

👓 Node.JS comes to Reclaim Hosting | Tim Owens

Read Node.JS comes to Reclaim Hosting by Tim Owens (Throw Out The Manual)
I'm very excited to announce that starting today it is now possible to build and run Node.JS applications on Reclaim Hosting. Similar to the Python and Ruby features that make running Django and Jekyll possible, Node.JS is a third party plugin integrated into the Software area of cPanel.

👓 Francis Su’s Favorite Theorem | Scientific American Blog Network | Roots of Unity

Read Francis Su's Favorite Theorem by Evelyn Lamb (Scientific American Blog Network | Roots of Unity)
The Harvey Mudd College mathematician tells us why he loves playing with Brouwer's fixed-point theorem
I need to remember to subscribe to this podcast…

👓 Trump Appointee Compiles Loyalty List of U.S. Employees at U.N., State | Foreign Policy

Read Trump Appointee Compiles Loyalty List of U.S. Employees at U.N., State (Foreign Policy)
Mari Stull’s arrival at the State Department’s International Organization Bureau is triggering an exodus of top career staffers.
It’s just this type of insidious institution destruction that is heavily eroding our government and our society. Regardless of which administration takes over next, it just means a whole lot more work and effort to rebuild.

👓 Instagram’s Wannabe-Stars Are Driving Luxury Hotels Crazy | The Atlantic

Read Instagram’s Wannabe-Stars Are Driving Luxury Hotels Crazy (The Atlantic)
Hotels are being forced to figure out how to work with a new class of brand-peddling marketers.
Just because you’ve got the desire to be a social media influencer doesn’t mean you don’t need to treat it like a serious business.

Social platforms have such huge scale now, I’m surprised they don’t crack down on bots and fake accounts so that it’s more transparent what kind of true value accounts actually bring to the table. They could even leave them in the system so they can show to investors that they’re getting the traffic and “engagement”, but they’re throwing away a lot of actual value by not disclosing actual accounts and real engagement by real people (aka potential customers). Bots are second class citizens because other than the veneer of value, they’re really not adding much to the conversation other than a weak form of tummeling.

This makes me wonder if anyone in the social networking space is doing research on bots as tummelers?

👓 How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook | The Verge

Read How Firefox is using Pocket to try to build a better news feed than Facebook by Casey Newton (The Verge)
Pocket CEO Nate Weiner on how local data processing is the future of personalized recommendations.
Nice to see people and companies iterating on new feed reader functionality–particularly ethical ones.

👓 The Artwork Was Rejected. Then Banksy Put His Name to It. | The New York Times

Read The Artwork Was Rejected. Then Banksy Put His Name to It. by Alex Marshall (nytimes.com)
The Royal Academy in London turned down a work by “Bryan S. Gaakman” for an exhibition, then asked Banksy — who had made it — if he had a submission.
This reminds me a bit of episode one of Revisionist History, though the way it is presented is much more cutsey with a soupcon of aw-shucks. They really should do more blind screening of artwork the way that orchestras in the US are typically doing blind auditions these days.

👓 Dear Marketing by Email “Experts” I’m Serious About Messing With You | CogDogBlog

Read Dear Marketing by Email “Experts” I’m Serious About Messing With You by Alan Levine (CogDogBlog)
Hi, Hello. I was wondering whether you’d be interested in selling advertising space on Does the phrase “No, not even after hell freezes over” mean anything to you? The advertiseme…
This is pretty hilarious. I definitely need something like this for my site.