This week, the latest tell-all memoir from a former White House staffer hit bookstores. Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House is by Cliff Sims — who was, depending on who you ask, either key player as Director of Message Strategy or, as Trump tweeted this week, “nothing more than a gofer.”
The book, of course, is a landfill of trash and dirt on his former colleagues. And even as Sims toured the morning shows, the late shows and the everything-else shows to hawk his book, Trump Campaign COO Michael Glassner was threatening to sue him for violating the campaign's non disclosure agreement. Sims says he remembers signing some paperwork, but doesn’t remember if there was an NDA in there and, as other lawyers have since chimed in, there is established precedent that would make it very hard for the campaign to silence a former federal employee.
The subject of NDAs comes up a lot for people in Trump’s orbit — which is why the team at Trump, Inc. (produced here at our station, WNYC) did a whole episode on the topic. We present that episode for you as our podcast extra this week. Enjoy!
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
🎧 Wake Up, Sheeple! | On the Media | WNYC Studios
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in London, and now faces prosecution. On this week’s On the Media, a look at what Assange’s arrest may mean for press freedom. Plus, what the new image of a black hole tell us about the power of science in the face of a conspiracy theory minefield. And, a look at a new documentary about former Trump strategist Steve Bannon.
1. Bob [@bobosphere] opines about what Julian Assange's arrest means — and doesn't mean — for the future of press freedom. Listen.
2. Yale astronomy and physics professor Priyamvada Natarajan [@SheerPriya] finally gets a glimpse at what she's spent years theorizing about: a black hole. Listen.
3. New York Magazine's Madison Malone Kircher [@4evrmalone] on how YouTuber Logan Paul stokes the conspiracy flames. Listen.
4. New York Magazine's Max Read [@max_read] on how the Matrix's "red pill" idea has been so foundational for modern-day skeptics. Listen.
5. Alison Klayman [@aliklay], director of "The Brink," a new documentary about Steve Bannon, on what we can learn by looking at Bannon's role in our political and media world. Listen.
👓 Sessions | WordCamp Greenville 2019
WordPress can be used to start a blog, make a site for a club, or power a business, large or small. WordPress can also be used as a way to document your life, and save important things for later. You can bridge WordPress to other parts of the web that you use to store all of your data in one place, without having to worry about an app, hardware maker, or social media site going out of business and taking all of your content with it. I considered myself an interloper into the IndieWeb movement, until I realized that the movement — just like the technology that powers it — is decentralized. My habit of copying data created on other sites, as well as creating a website for my lifelogging, is part of what this community is about. Come learn about how you can use WordPress to power and amplify your voice online, and reclaim the web from the walled gardens for the user!
👓 HTTP Frameworks Must Die | Medium | Eran Hammer
Do us all a favor and stop creating new HTTP 1.x frameworks.
We don’t need more.
We have too many.
…and they are all old news — especially the new ones.
But if you absolutely have to, add some value to the conversation. Value other than one tiny aspect in which your framework is better than all the rest. Offer innovation that moves backend engineering forward in a non-trivial fashion. Write the next chapter, not the next paragraph.
👓 Scoring sites on their commitment to the open web? | Chris Hardie
A month ago in a tweet related to my post about bringing people back to the open web, I casually proposed a resource that would score tools, services and other websites on their commitment to being a part of the open web. I'm back to flesh that idea out a little more. Crude mockup of a score badge
This is an intriguing idea. Tangential to the badge space, it’s something that sites can do to provide an outward facing signal that they’re attempting to be open. This could potentially be used to help promote the idea, but also create some general competition. Parsers could potentially be created to measure these values as well.
We measure the things we value, right? We all certain value openness, why not measure and promote it?
👓 Ilhan Omar Falls Victim to the Outrage Exhibitionists | The Atlantic
In attacking the representative over a small, unintentional slight, Donald Trump and the populist right are displaying bad faith.
👓 2U response to Kevin Carey’s critique of online program management companies (opinion) | Inside Higher Ed
Kevin Carey's critique of the corporate role in inflating the price of online education singled out 2U. In this essay, CEO Chip Paucek answers back.
👓 Jumbo is a powerful privacy assistant for iOS that cleans up your social profiles | The Verge
Make your tweets ephemeral and your Facebook impenetrable.
👓 Ginger ale syrup | BeesBuzz.biz
fluffy (beesbuzz.biz)I just made some ginger ale syrup for making home-made gingerale. It's pretty easy! Just peel some ginger (use a spoon to remove the skin so you don't waste the tasty flesh) and chop it up into thin-ish chunks, and put it into a saucepan with some water, some sugar, and other flavorings as you see fit (I used some pomegranate molasses, some coriander seed, and the peel and juice of a lemon). Then heat the water up and let the ginger steep for a while, then slowly bring it to a low boil.
👓 In which I finally stop using Patreon | fluffy
fluffy (beesbuzz.biz)So, hey, Patreon is a pretty popular site for funding the creative people you follow. A lot of people rely on Patreon as their primary source of income. More power to them if they do; it's where everyone goes to do that sort of thing and it's really enabled a lot of people to do what they love for a living.
👓 Medium tedium | fluffy
fluffy (beesbuzz.biz)👓 Universities should be working for the greater good | Kathleen Fitzpatrick | Times Higher Education
Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Times Higher Education (THE))Friendly competition can push us all to do better. But when the competitiveness that fuels excellence and prestige becomes based in the logic of the market, universities lose sight of their true purpose, writes Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Kudos Kathleen! This! This is the type of university I would want to be a part of.
This article reminds me a lot of the thesis in American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper. There they indicate that America’s economy isn’t one of pure capitalism and competition, but that we’ve gotten here by a healthy dose of having a mixed economy. Higher education needs a lot of that same mixed economy perspective to fix the wrongs of decades of to much direct competition which is having far too many unexpected consequences and emergent behaviors which we didn’t expect, anticipate, and now have trouble attempting to fix.
This article is so important, just this once, I’ll recommend that those who hit the website’s paywall and don’t want to register, use a read it later service like Pocket or Instapaper which should give you the full text or you can use your browser’s functionality for “viewing source” to get a marked up version.
👓 Maxwell House Brings You Midge’s Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Haggadah | Amazon
Midge's limited edition Haggadah is free with any purchase of participating Maxwell House Coffee products.
I’ve seen some old Haggadahs like this in the past from Maxwell House, but this is an awesome crossover promotion with Passover coming up.
👓 New plugin allows the far-right to ‘graffiti’ any website | Columbia Journalism Review
Dissenter acts as a workaround for people wishing to comment on websites, even those without a comment section. One user, Cody Jassman, describe the plugin as “like the graffiti painted in the alley on every web page. You can take a look around and see what passersby are saying.”
The plugin was launched in beta at the end of February by Andrew Torba, who co-founded Gab, a far-right social network. Gab is well known for being the platform where Robert Bowers, the suspected Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, published anti-Semitic comments before he allegedly killed 11 people and wounded many others at the Tree of Life synagogue.