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

🎧 A cheese place | Eat This Podcast

Listened to A cheese place: One of the pioneers who made West Cork a centre of fine cheeses by Jeremy Cherfas from Eat This Podcast
Durrus is a village at the head of Dunmanus bay, south of the Sheep’s Head peninsula in the southwest of Ireland. Durrus is also the name of an award-winning, semi-soft cheese, while Dunmanus is a harder cheese, aged a lot longer. Both were created by Jeffa Gill and are hand made by Jeffa and her small team up above the village and the bay.

Jeffa is one of the pioneers who turned West Cork into a heaven and a haven for cheese-lovers. One of the special characteristics of Durrus and many West Cork farmhouse cheeses is that they are washed rind cheeses. The young cheese is inoculated with specific bacteria (some cheeses pick their surface moulds up from the atmosphere) and is then frequently washed or moistened with a brine solution, which gives those bacteria a boost and keeps other micro-organisms at bay. The result is what many people call a stinky cheese, although the actual flavour of these cheeses is often mild, sweet and creamy.

The really remarkable thing about West Cork is how an entire food ecosystem has grown up there in the past 50 years or so, each part depending on and encouraging the others. The fact that there are so many outstanding farmhouse cheesemakers is no accident; they all gathered originally and shared their ups and downs, from which each developed their own unique cheeses. They were supported by local shops and restaurants, who created demand not just for fine cheeses but for so many other foods too. Surely someone must have documented it; so where is it?

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I could go on listening to this for ages… though I wish I could have done it with some of the cheeses discussed.

I often wish I could subscribe to this Eat This Podcast along with a delivery service that would include samples of the food items discussed. Hmmm….

🎧 Rethinking the folk history of American agriculture: Earl Butz is not the central villain of the piece | Eat This Podcast

Listened to Rethinking the folk history of American agriculture: Earl Butz is not the central villain of the piece by Jeremy Cherfas from Eat This Podcast
Remember Farm Aid, which launched in 1985? A lot of people do, and they tend to date the farm crisis in America to the 1980s, triggered by Earl Butz and his crazy love for fencerow to fencerow, get big or get out, industrial agriculture. And of course, land consolidation is inevitable, because if you’re going to invest in all that capital equipment to make your farm more efficient, you’re bound to buy up the smaller farmers who weren’t so savvy. Those “facts,” however, are anything but. They’re myths, on which much of the current criticism of American farm policy is built. There are others, too, and they’re all skillfully eviscerated by Nate Rosenberg and Bryce Wilson Stucki in a recent paper.


One villain or two?

And here’s another thing. That first Farm Aid concert apparently raised $9 million. You could presumably help a lot of poor old dirt farmers with that kind of cash. But Farm Aid wasn’t actually about poor old dirt farmers, it was about people like Willie Nelson. He lost $800,000 the year before Farm Aid. Nine million dollars doesn’t go too far when individual people are losing that kind of money.

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An interesting often untold story of agriculture, race, and economics in the United States.

👓 I’m on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality | LA Times

Read I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality (Los Angeles Times)
The FCC's plan to gut net neutrality deserves a heated response from the millions of Americans who work and create online every day.
Other than the simple “it will spur investment”, what exactly is Ajit Pai’s argument for getting rid of net neutrality? Where is it? I suspect that the only reason there’s no coverage of it anywhere amidst all the turmoil is that it doesn’t exist.

Most communities, even in major cities, only have one provider at best, so there’s absolutely no competition to begin with. Why not start with fixing that first?! In fact, that necessarily needs to be dealt with first before a bone-headed idea like killing net-neutrality.

👓 WordPress is a Typewriter by Jack Baty

Read WordPress is a Typewriter by Jack Baty (baty.net)
Using WordPress makes me feel like that boy at the Type-In. I feel like the words are going right onto the paper. Sure, the metaphor is a little thin, but the point is that when writing with WordPress (or any CMS, really), the distance between what I’m typing and what I’m publishing is very short. The only thing closer is editing HTML directly on a live page, but that’s something only crazy people do. On the other hand, publishing a static site is like sending a document to a printer. I have to make sure everything is connected, that there’s paper in the machine, and then wait for the job to finish before seeing the output. If something needs editing, and something always needs editing, the whole process starts over.
I’ve never thought of it in these terms, but there is a nice immediacy and satisfaction to WordPress for this reason. (Though naturally one shouldn’t compose in their CMS in any case.)

I might submit that his issue is a deeper one about on which platform and where to publish though given that he’s got almost as many personal websites as I do social silos. The tougher part for him is making a decision where to publish and why in addition to all the overhead of maintaining so many sites. However, I’m not one to point fingers here since I’ve got enough sites of my own, so I know his affliction.

👓 A GoFundMe Campaign Is Not Health Insurance | The Nib

Read A GoFundMe Campaign Is Not Health Insurance (The Nib)
My friend died $50 short. It doesn’t have to be that way.
This is just a heartbreaking cartoon. I hope everyone will read it in full.

This is one of the most subtly poigniant panels:

“We eulogize [the fact that Americans help each other] in literature and art instead of political theory.”

👓 Diplomats Sound the Alarm as They Are Pushed Out in Droves | New York Times

Read Diplomats Sound the Alarm as They Are Pushed Out in Droves by Gardiner Harris (New York Times)
A State Department exodus marks a new stage in the broken and increasingly contentious relationship between Rex W. Tillerson and much of his work force.

🎞 Watched Snowden (2016)

Watched Snowden (2016) from Open Road Films
Directed by Oliver Stone. With Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto. The NSA's illegal surveillance techniques are leaked to the public by one of the agency's employees, Edward Snowden, in the form of thousands of classified documents distributed to the press.
This was far more interesting than I had expected. It certainly humanized Snowden far better than any of the stories I’ve seen thus far.

Rating:

👓 Talk: “Designing away the cookie disclaimer” by Sebastian Greger

Read Talk: “Designing away the cookie disclaimer” (sebastiangreger.net)
This is the transcript of my lightning talk from the beyond tellerrand Berlin pre-conference warm-up on 6 November 2017. It was a condensed version of my longer, work-in-progress and upcoming talk on privacy as a core pillar of ethical UX design. If you are interested in the final talk or know about a conference or event that might be, I’d be thrilled to hear from you.
It’s sad the amount of not caring that both laws and apathy on the internet can make your life just dreadful in ways that it shouldn’t.

I love the fact that people are working on solving these seemingly mundane issues. This is a great little presentation Sebastian!

👓 To Save Net Neutrality, We Must Build Our Own Internet | Motherboard

Read To Save Net Neutrality, We Must Build Our Own Internet (Motherboard)
We must end our reliance​ on big telecom monopolies and build decentralized, affordable, locally owned internet infrastructure.
This could make an interesting small project. Reminds me of stories about Claude Shannon making his own telephone set up by electrifying barbed wire fences in his youth.

🎧 This Week in Google: #431 Mordor, She Wrote | TWiT.TV

Listened to This Week in Google: #431 Mordor, She Wrote from TWiT.TV
Pixel Buds are getting bad reviews. Blasting Facebook and Google. Amazon pays $250 Million for Lord of the Rings TV rights. Alibaba's $25 billion Singles' Day. Self-driving trucks and flying cars. Hacking the Boeing 757. Xerox Alto turns 40.

https://youtu.be/cq4QqGy1sGE

🎧 The Story Of Fats Domino’s ‘Ain’t That A Shame’ | NPR

Listened to The Story Of Fats Domino's 'Ain't That A Shame' from NPR.org | All Things Considered
This enduring hit showcases Domino's individual talents, and the early power of New Orleans music.

Somehow I was expecting a lot more from this series. Just as it seemed to be getting going, it was cut short. Half of the episode is the song itself, so prepare yourself when it kicks in.

I did appreciate the tidbit about how A&R executives sped up the track to make it difficult for white singers to imitate and appropriate the content which was very common at the time.

h/t to Kevin Smokler and Jeremy Cherfas for uncovering this for me on Huffduffer.com

🎧 This Week in Tech: #640 Stand Clear of the Closing Doors | TWiT.TV

Listened to This Week in Tech: #640 Stand Clear of the Closing Doors from TWiT.tv
DOJ suggests that phone encryption kills people. Facebook wants to see you naked. Apple gets ready for its best holiday ever. Twitter gets 50 character names to go with its 280 character tweets. XBox One X is the best game system out there. Bill Gates will build his own city. Car ownership will be a thing of the past in 5 years. Intel and AMD team up. Alibaba sells $25 billion worth of stuff in one day while America's retail sector is tanking.

https://youtu.be/vhktZ8zh3hg

👓 21st Century Fox in $90 million settlement tied to sexual harassment scandal | Reuters

Read 21st Century Fox in $90 million settlement tied to sexual harassment scandal (Reuters)
Twenty-First Century Fox Inc has reached a $90 million settlement of shareholder claims arising from the sexual harassment scandal at its Fox News Channel, which cost the jobs of longtime news chief Roger Ailes and anchor Bill O'Reilly.

👓 Eight women say Charlie Rose sexually harassed them — with nudity, groping and lewd calls | Washington Post

Read Eight women say Charlie Rose sexually harassed them — with nudity, groping and lewd calls by Irin Carmon and Amy Brittain (Washington Post)
The alleged incidents took place with employees, interns and job applicants at the “Charlie Rose” show.
This is just painfully sad because his interviews (and particularly the policy ones) were wonderfully enriching. I hope someone can pick up the mantle because this is sure to decimate his career post haste.