The only way to beat social media algorithms is to get your audience off social media. Put your work on your own site. Retrain them to follow via RSS.
Reads, Listens
Reading list of books, magazines, newspaper articles, other physical documents, or online posts
Playlist of posts listened to, or scrobbled
Playlist of posts listened to, or scrobbled
Another chance at the username you’ve always wanted.
Joe Nocera shares some recent updates on the story with Laura Beil, host of “Dr Death.”
While some people are scrambling to collect log-ins for Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu and, now, Disney Plus, Sarah Jacobsson Purewal is working on a different kind of hustle. She signs up for any public library that will have her to find and reserve available e-books.
I’ve always had a dozen or so library cards at any one time, so I guess I’ve never really bothered to go out of my way to collect more for the digital games people are playing here with books. I have however very naturally checked several library systems for books in this way, however I find that many libraries just don’t have the titles I’m looking for anywhere.
I liked the tip about putting one’s e-reader into airplane mode to keep it from updating and removing overdue books. Of course there are some more technical methods of stripping DRM or even pirating books which I was a bit surprised they didn’t delve into, but which are frequently mentioned with respect to college textbook related articles.
Breaking news in the case of Dr Isaac Herschkopf.
For the first time in nearly 30 years, Marty makes a phone call to an important person.
Phyllis Shapiro was visiting her daughter in Texas when her cell phone rang. It was hard to make out what the person on the other end was saying, she recalls, though it sounded something like “brother Marty.”
After all this time.
Shapiro had been bracing for this call for decades. Her brother, Marty Markowitz, hadn’t talked to her since the early 1980s, when he started seeing a Manhattan psychiatrist and severed ties with his family. Now it was New Year’s Eve 2010. Struggling to hear the caller, she wondered: Does Marty need a kidney? Is he dead?
Soon it became clear. Her brother was on the other end of the line — and he wanted back into her life.
Would she take him?
Detective novels. Personal memoirs. Patient notes. Marty Markowitz spent hundreds of hours typing and retyping them all, until he finally had enough.
Isaac Herschkopf, Manhattan psychiatrist, had a literary alter ego — Jamie Brandeis, a Manhattan psychiatrist who solves crimes using the power of psychiatry.
Brandeis is the brilliant protagonist of seven unpublished murder mysteries written by Herschkopf, with titles including “Some Like It Big” and “Some Like It Modest.” And that was just the beginning of the doctor’s literary output. In addition to lectures and published letters to the editor and columns, there were self-help books about marriage and family and a 1996 memoir describing a difficult childhood in a household of Holocaust survivors — a dozen manuscripts in all written by Herschkopf.
And typed by Marty Markowitz.
There’s a growing movement on the left and right for prison reform. On this week’s On the Media, a deep dive into the strange bedfellows coalition working to close prisons down. Also, in speeches, testimony, and leaked audio, Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to make a case for free expression — and for Facebook. Plus, what the TV show COPS reveals about our fascination with punishment.
1. Kate Klonick [@Klonick], assistant professor at St. John's Law School, on Mark Zuckerberg's pronouncements this month on democracy, free expression, and the future of Facebook. Listen.
2. David Dagan [@DavidDagan], post-doctoral political science scholar at George Washington University; Mark Holden, senior vice president of Koch Industries; and Brittany Williams, activist with No New Jails in New York City, on the closing down of prisons and jails.
3. Dan Taberski [@dtaberski], host of the podcast "Running From Cops," on what he and his team learned from watching hundreds of episodes of "COPS." Listen.
I’ve been thinking through how to leave Facebook’s Instagram service since June, when I finally deleted my central Facebook account. This should be easy, because I don’t post that much on Instagram, but it always seems hard because it’s the best user experience (IMO) on mobile for writing a ...
An interesting method of leaving Instagram. I still read content there, but I had used dsgnwrks-instagram-importer by Justin Sternberg to rescue all of my Instagram posts back into my WordPress site since it gave me a huge amount of control over porting over the metadata as well. I’m noticing that the repository lists it with a warning “This plugin has been closed as of August 10, 2019 and is not available for download. Reason: Licensing/Trademark Violation.” though I can’t imagine what that would have been for unless Instagram is trying to nudge Justin out. (There’s a copy of the plugin on Github for those who may still want it.) Other than a small issue I’d seen with some emoji in Instagram, the plugin always worked like a charm for me.
Prior to that I’d always been a big fan of Aaron Parecki’s OwnYourGram, though I understand that Instagram was limiting his crawler, so the service may not be taking new accounts.
While I know some of the people behind Pixelfed and generally trust them, I don’t think I would use it as a solution unless I was standing up my own instance of the service. Far too many Mastodon instances have gone down for me to trust a particular sites’ admins. Apparently Mastodon has made it easier to move from one instance to another, but I’m not sure how this may or may not apply to Pixelfed.
Presently, my money is on Matthias Pfefferle’s ActivityPub plugin which adds support to a WordPress site to act as a stand-alone member of the Fediverse. While it’s beta software, it works fairly well and is evolving impressively over the past year or so. I suspect that photo support will improve to put it on par with solutions like Pixelfed, particularly when combined with the ease of use of some of the Micropub photo posting applications that are out there.
I’d feel remiss if I didn’t mention that another option for exiting Instagram (or at least backing it up to your own site even if you don’t leave completely) is to try Beau Lebens’ Keyring Social Importers plugin. I know a few who have used and liked it for its Instagram and other social silo support.
I’m sure there are other methods out there as well and many might be found on the IndiwWeb wiki pages for “Instagram” or “photo”.
Everyone who texts with Rudy Giuliani knows the hands of fate control the fingertips. Digital communication with President Trump’s 75-year-old personal attorney is a delicate exercise in optimism and patience. Or, as one longtime Giuliani associate phrased it, “This is a little bit like a baby with a hammer, or a monkey with a typewriter.” This fall, as Giuliani has emerged as a central figure in the impeachment inquiry, his clumsy phone comportment has often become worldwide news, adding extra absurd wrinkles to the already absurd saga of a quid pro quo in Ukraine and raising questions about how a chronic butt-dialer who wears his AirPods upside down could be a White House cybersecurity adviser.
She doesn’t even mention that he walked into the Apple Store to have his iPhone password fixed…
A document obtained by Motherboard shows how DMVs sell people’s names, addresses, and other personal information to generate revenue.
This seems excessive and egregious. I definitely don’t trust them to hold onto my data if they’re selling it to third parties, particularly commercial ones.
American aid has the power to tip the scales in a broader battle between authoritarianism and democracy.
How a loyal Trump donor ended up at the center of the impeachment investigation — and why Republicans now accuse him of betrayal.
Aimee Stephens was fired for disclosing her gender identity to her boss. This year, the Supreme Court may make a surprising ruling in her favor.
President Trump’s top advisers cannot ignore congressional subpoenas, a federal court says, in a case with implications for the impeachment inquiry.