A family buys a house they can’t afford. They can’t make their monthly mortgage payments, so they borrow money from the Mob. Now they’re in debt to the bank and the Mob, live in fear of losing their home, and must do whatever their creditors tell them to do. Article Continues Below Share this:...
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
👓 #LetsFixThis | inessential
Jeffrey Zeldman, Nothing Fails Like Success:
On an individual and small collective basis, the IndieWeb already works. But does an IndieWeb approach scale to the general public? If it doesn’t scale yet, can we, who envision and design and build, create a new generation of tools that will help give birth to a flourishing, independent web? One that is as accessible to ordinary internet users as Twitter and Facebook and Instagram?
I think so. I hope so. My part is to write a free RSS reader — and make it open source so that other people can easily use RSS in their apps.
RSS isn’t the only part of the solution, but writing an RSS reader is in my wheelhouse. So this is what I choose.
Do I claim it’s as accessible to ordinary internet users as Twitter (for instance)? I do not. But it’s the step forward that I know how to take.
My point is: don’t give in to despair. Take a step, even if it’s not the step that will solve everything. Maybe your step is just to start a blog or open a Micro.blog account. Whatever it is — do it! :) #LetsFixThis
👓 The First Federated #Indieweb Comment Thread | Tantek
Tantek Çelik (tantek.com)2013-04-19: the day the indieweb successfully federated a comment post. The Test Note It started with Laurent Eschenauer using Storytlr to post a simple note on his site that sent mention pingbacks to Barnaby Walters and Aaron Parecki: Testing #indieweb federation with @waterpigs.co.uk, @aaronpareck...
🎧 The Daily: The Brief, Controversial Tenure of Kirstjen Nielsen | New York Times
As homeland security secretary, she enacted and publicly defended the family separation policy. In President Trump’s eyes, she didn’t go far enough.
🎧 The Daily: A Russian Assassin Tells His Story | New York Times
He was given a list of six people, each with the code name of a flower. One day, he got a text message: “The rose has to be picked today.”
🎧 The Daily: New Insights Into the Mueller Report | New York Times
The attorney general turned a report of nearly 400 pages into a four-page summary. Members of the special counsel’s team say something was lost.
🎧 The Daily: Trump Wanted to Scrap Obamacare. His Party Didn’t. | New York Times
The latest scuffle over health care shows a sea change in the Republican stance heading into the 2020 elections.
👓 Five Newsroom Tips for Better Website Content | Andrea Zoellner
This post is adapted from a talk given at WordCamp US 2016 in Philadelphia.
To say journalists have a bad reputation is an understatement. In a recent poll of least trusted professions in Canada, journalists had an 18% trust rating, ranking them somewhere between Financial advisors and lawyers. So w...
Originally bookmarked on April 10, 2019 at 12:27AM
🎧 How President Trump’s Angry Tweets Can Ripple Across Social Media | NPR
Tim Mak from NPRWhen Trump posts a mean tweet, how does it make its way across social media into the American consciousness? Researchers crunched the numbers to see if his negative tweets were shared more often.
This news segment references some interesting sounding research groups who are working in social media, emotional contagion, and sentiment analysis.
👓 Julian Assange Arrested, Faces U.S. Charges Related To 2010 WikiLeaks Releases | NPR
The WikiLeaks founder had been holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London since 2012. He was arrested on a warrant from 2012 for failing to surrender to the court and also on behalf of the United States.
🎧 LifeWay Christian Closing Brick-And-Mortar Bookstores | NPR
LifeWay Christian Stores plans to close all of its locations by end of the year and move all of the company's retailing online. Its bricks-and-mortar division has been losing money since 2013, and the company says it has tried just about everything to keep the business going, including overhauling several stores last summer and experimenting with features like coffee bars.
👓 Amazon Workers Are Listening to What You Tell Alexa | Bloomberg
A global team reviews audio clips in an effort to help the voice-activated assistant respond to commands.
👓 Split | Jeremy Keith
When I talk about evaluating technology for front-end development, I like to draw a distinction between two categories of technology.
On the one hand, you’ve got the raw materials of the web: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This is what users will ultimately interact with.
On the other hand, you’ve got all the tools and technologies that help you produce the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: pre-processors, post-processors, transpilers, bundlers, and other build tools.
Personally, I’m much more interested and excited by the materials than I am by the tools. But I think it’s right and proper that other developers are excited by the tools. A good balance of both is probably the healthiest mix.
As someone who does some web development on the borderline of professionally and as an advanced hobbyist, this distinction is tremendously important for how and why I can afford to hang onto and practice at a reasonable level.
🎧 The Daily: The Agony of Being Theresa May | New York Times
In a last-ditch effort to fulfill her promise of delivering Brexit, Britain’s prime minister dangled a final sacrifice.
👓 About Music for Deckchairs | Kate Bowles
There’s two kinds of scholarship today: there’s Titanic studies and there’s deckchair studies.
— McKenzie Wark
And as the smart ship grewIn stature, grace, and hue,In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too— Thomas HardyI’m an academic at an Australian university. I’ve led an educational design team through an institutional LMS transition, and I’m currently Associate Dean International in our Law, Humanities and Creative Arts Faculty.
I’m interested in the assumptions that regulate work, innovation, profit and risk in higher education, and in the way that the system shaped by these assumptions affects those of us working in universities.
As someone once put it in the search that led them here, this is a blog about:
“shared governance consensus bullshit.”
It’s only fitting to be reading this on the anniversary of the first sailing of the RMS Titanic. If you’re not following Kate Bowles, I highly recommend it.