I have no singular destiny, no one true passion, no goal. I flutter from one thing to the next. I want to be a physicist and a mathematician and a novelist and write a sitcom and write a symphony and design buildings and be a mother. I want to run a magazine and understand the lives of ants and be a philosopher and be a computer scientist and write an epic poem and understand every ancient language. I don't just want one thing. I want it all.
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
👓 Five Things Tech Companies Can Do Better | Susan J. Fowler
I believe that tech companies should make a commitment to their employees, a commitment that they will act ethically, legally, responsibly, and transparently with regard to harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and other unlawful behavior. In my opinion, this commitment requires five things: ending forced arbitration, ending the practice of buying employees' silence, ending unnecessarily strict confidentiality agreements, instituting helpful harassment and discrimination training, and enforcing zero-tolerance policies toward unlawful and/or inappropriate behavior. Without further ado, here is a list of those five things, the reasons they're important, and how companies can implement them.
This sounds like for solid advice for all companies, not just those in the tech sector.
👓 We tracked the Trump scandals on right-wing news sites. Here’s how they covered it. | Vox
We’re experiencing these historical events very differently.
👓 I worked in a video store for 25 years. Here’s what I learned as my industry died. | Vox
Some interesting analysis of what we’re loosing with the death of video stores. In particular, we’re losing some of the same type of recommendations and serendipity we’re loosing with the rise of e-books and less use of libraries/librarians. In particular, loosing well-curated collections is a big issue as we replace them with streaming services which don’t seem to have the same curatorial business models.
I particularly enjoyed this quote:
A great video store’s library of films is like a little bubble outside the march of technology or economics, preserving the fringes, the forgotten, the noncommercial, or the straight-up weird. Championed by a store’s small army of film geeks, such movies get more traffic than they did in their first life in the theater, or any time since. Not everything that was on VHS made the transition to DVD, and not every movie on DVD is available to stream. The decision to leave a movie behind on the next technological leap is market-driven, which makes video stores the last safety net for things our corporate overlords discard.
📺 Watched Madame Secretary, S3 E22: Revelation
During the G20 conference, Elizabeth worries about Henry who was sent to Israel to intercept the VFF's bio-weapon. Blake reveals a secret to former colleagues. Elizabeth goes behind Stevie's back to get her off the Harvard Law waiting list.
Blake’s reveal that he’s bisexual was a nice bit of cultural touchstone to put into the episode.
The wrap up of the ongoing secondary story arc with the religious nuts and the biological weapon was done too quickly and too neatly given how much of the season had been dedicated to it thus far.
Hard to believe the next episode is the season ender already.
📺 Watched Madame Secretary, S3 E21: The Seventh Floor
The Secretary and her team must help save an American journalist held hostage in Sudan.
The opening seemed like it was going to be an out of the ordinary episode that followed a day in the life of one of the secondary characters (Blake), but left off after the first few minutes. I almost wished it had followed on the way it started to provide some variety in this type of show. I remember there were West Wing episodes that did this, but I suppose that was a much more balanced ensemble while this series is a bit more lopsided in its character involvement.
The reveal of Daisy’s pregnancy and peoples’ reactions was relatively interesting.
There was a short, but nice turn in this by Skipp Sudduth who I haven’t been seeing as much as I feel I ought to lately.
👓 Johns Hopkins’ Shriver Hall auditorium set for interior upgrades | The Hub
Homewood campus venue will be closed during fall semester for installation of new lighting, seats
👓 Someone Made A Mashup Of Ozzy Osbourne And Earth, Wind, & Fire.. And We Can’t Stop Laughing! | Society of Rock
Probably The Best Mashup We've Ever Seen! If you ask me, mashups of metal singers with other genres of music are some of the greatest things in the world. They're simply down-right hilarious, especially when the two elements of the mash-up couldn't be anymore different. For example, Ozzy Osbourne
👓 Library Offers Largest Release of Digital Catalog Records in History | Library of Congress
The Library of Congress announced today that it is making 25 million records in its online catalog available for free bulk download at loc.gov/cds/products/marcDist.php. This is the largest release of digital records in the Library’s history.The records also will be easily accessible at data.gov, the open-government website hosted by the General Services Administration (GSA). Until now, these bibliographic records have only been available individually or through a paid subscription.The Library is also joining with George Washington University and George Mason University to host a Hack-to-Learn workshop Wednesday, May 17 through Thursday, May 18, which will bring together librarians, digital researchers and coders to explore how the data (and other interesting data sets) can be used. “The Library of Congress is our nation’s monument to knowledge and we
🎧 What a Cool New Podcast About Shipping Can Teach You About Coffee | Bite (Mother Jones)
That cuppa joe you just sipped? Its long journey to your cup was made possible by shipping containers—those rectangular metal boxes that carry everything from TVs to clothes to frozen shrimp. And there’s a whole host of characters whose lives revolve around this precious cargo: gruff captains, hearty cooks, perceptive coffee tasters, and competitive tugboat pilots. This is the world journalist Alexis Madrigal illuminates in his new podcast Containers. Alexis tells us how the fancy coffee revolution is shaking up the shipping industry, and reveals his favorite sailor snack. Bite celebrates its first birthday, and Kiera gets up-close-and-personal with a kitchen contraption that’s sweeping the nation: the InstantPot.
This is a cool new podcast I hadn’t come across before. This particular episode is a bit similar to my favorite podcast Eat This Podcast, though as a broader series it appears to focus more on culture and society rather than the more scientific areas that ETP tends to focus on, and which I prefer.
The bulk of this episode, which discusses shipping and containers (really more than food or coffee which is only a sub-topic here), reminds me of the book The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson which I’d read in July/August 2014. (The book is now in its second addition with an additional chapter.) I suspect it was some of the motivating underlying material for Alexis Madrigal’s Containers podcast series.[1] The book had a lot more history and technical detail while I suspect Madrigal’s series has more of the human aspect and culture thrown in to highlight the effect of containerization. I’m subscribing to it and hope to catch it in the next few weeks. The discussion here is a quick overview of one of his episodes and it goes a long way towards humanizing the ever increasing linkages that makes the modern world possible. In particular it also attempts to put a somewhat more human face on the effects of increasing industrialization and internationalization of not only food production, but all types of manufacturing which are specifically impacting the U.S. (and other) economy and culture right now.
The InstantPot segment was interesting, particularly for cooking Indian food. I’m always intrigued by cooking methods which allow a modern home cook to better recreate the conditions of regional cuisines without the same investment in methods necessitated by the local cultures. Also following Alton Brown’s mantra, it sounds like it could be a useful multi-tasker.
h/t to Jeremy Cherfas and his excellent Huffduffer feed for uncovering this particular episode (and podcast series) for me.
References
[1]
A. Madrigal, “Containers,” Medium, 07-Mar-2017. [Online]. Available: https://medium.com/containers. [Accessed: 18-May-2017]
👓 Taking on the networks | Colin Walker
Colin Walker (colinwalker.blog)While listening to the audio from a presentation by Tantek Çelik in 2014 (video on YouTube) I was struck by his contrasting the experiences offered by social networks and blogs/RSS readers.
He argues the most pivotal reason that social networks took over the web was they had "an integrated posting and reading interface" where you could see what everyone else was doing and instantly reply or add your own updates in situ.
👓 JSON Feed | inessential
I was hesitant, even up to this morning, to publish the JSON Feed spec.
👓 Must-have apps 2016 | blog.bellebcooper.com
Belle B. Cooper (blog.bellebcooper.com)At the end of each year (or three months into the following one) I like to reflect on my favourite apps from the past twelve months. I recently switched from an iPhone to a Google Pixel, so the mobile section of this post will be about Android apps instead of iOS for a change.
👓 What’s Happening with Me | Biz Stone – Medium
I worked at Twitter for about six years. In that time, the service grew from zero people to hundreds of millions of people. Jack was the…
👓 May 17, 2017 | Scripting News
Occam's Report for May 17: They all work for Russia, dummy.