Reads, Listens

Reading list of books, magazines, newspaper articles, other physical documents, or online posts
Playlist of posts listened to, or scrobbled
Read Johns Hopkins, benefactor of namesake hospital and university, was an enslaver by Nick Anderson, Lauren Lumpkin, and Susan Svrluga (Washington Post)
Johns Hopkins, the 19th-century businessman who bequeathed a fortune to found the hospital and university in Baltimore that bear his name, and who on scanty evidence was long heralded as an abolitionist, enslaved at least four Black people before the Civil War, school officials disclosed Wednesday.
Sad and disappointing news to hear given what I was always told as a student. I’m glad that they appear to be addressing it directly and fixing some of the erased history. Hopefully they may be able to uncover more and come up with some reasonable ways to address it in the present.
Read - Want to Read: Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America by Martha S. Jones (Cambridge University Press)
Before the Civil War, colonization schemes and black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in the United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures, conventions, and courthouses. They faced formidable opposition, most notoriously from the US Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott. Still, Martha S. Jones explains, no single case defined their status. Former slaves studied law, secured allies, and conducted themselves like citizens, establishing their status through local, everyday claims. All along they argued that birth guaranteed their rights. With fresh archival sources and an ambitious reframing of constitutional law-making before the Civil War, Jones shows how the Fourteenth Amendment constitutionalized the birthright principle, and black Americans' aspirations were realized. Birthright Citizens tells how African American activists radically transformed the terms of citizenship for all Americans.
Read This used to be our playground (Simon Collison)
There was a time when owning digital space seemed thrilling, and our personal sites motivated us to express ourselves. There are signs of a resurgence, but too few wish to make their digital house a home.
The nice part is that this applies even if you’re not a designer. Reminds me of the most important IndieWeb principle: have fun. 
Read Announcing new ways to read and find writers on Substack (blog.substack.com)
Today, we’re introducing new ways to discover writers on our homepage, as well as the beta version of Substack Reader, a new way to keep up with your newsletters.
Great to see another feed reader enter the fray. While it definitely focuses on Substack newsletters and is incredibly limited in functionality at the moment, it does support RSS feeds in general. 

I’m hoping it might add JSON feed and h-feed support as well, but it’ll need a lot of work to displace feed readers like Monocle, Together, or Indigenous as my daily drivers.

Read thread by @jonnymorris1973 (threadreaderapp.com)
I like the perspective on this as a view on depression.
Read - Finished Reading: Notorious by Gordon Korman (Balzer + Bray )
Keenan has lived all over the world but nowhere quite as strange as Centerlight Island, which is split between the United States and Canada. The only thing weirder than Centerlight itself is his neighbor Zarabeth, aka ZeeBee.
ZeeBee is obsessed with the island's history as a Prohibition-era smuggling route. She's also convinced that her beloved dog, Barney, was murdered--something Keenan finds pretty hard to believe.
Just about everyone on Centerlight is a suspect, because everyone hated Barney, a huge dog--part mastiff, part rottweiler--notorious for terrorizing the community. Accompanied by a mild-mannered new dog who is practically Barney's opposite, ZeeBee enlists Keenan's help to solve the mystery.
As Keenan and ZeeBee start to unravel the clues, they uncover a shocking conspiracy that dates back to Centerlight's gangster past. The good news is that Keenan may have found the best friend he's ever had. The bad news is that the stakes are sky-high.
And now someone is after them. . . .
Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Brief review

Felt like a very slow start, but I was always reading it late and night and dozing off.

Strong, well laid out characters. The plot was slow until about the midpoint, but then picked up and took off. Once I got to the middle I couldn’t put it down.

I guessed the ending roughly at the point all the suspects were being laid out, but it was exactly the nice finish I hoped it would be. Like most of Korman’s book, this was a fun little romp.

While there are others (of Korman’s) out there I’d like to see made before it, I could see optioning the rights to this for a movie or an hour long ABC Saturday morning movie (if they did that anymore) or a Netflix original.

Read - Reading: Notorious by Gordon Korman (Balzer + Bray )
Keenan has lived all over the world but nowhere quite as strange as Centerlight Island, which is split between the United States and Canada. The only thing weirder than Centerlight itself is his neighbor Zarabeth, aka ZeeBee.
ZeeBee is obsessed with the island's history as a Prohibition-era smuggling route. She's also convinced that her beloved dog, Barney, was murdered--something Keenan finds pretty hard to believe.
Just about everyone on Centerlight is a suspect, because everyone hated Barney, a huge dog--part mastiff, part rottweiler--notorious for terrorizing the community. Accompanied by a mild-mannered new dog who is practically Barney's opposite, ZeeBee enlists Keenan's help to solve the mystery.
As Keenan and ZeeBee start to unravel the clues, they uncover a shocking conspiracy that dates back to Centerlight's gangster past. The good news is that Keenan may have found the best friend he's ever had. The bad news is that the stakes are sky-high.
And now someone is after them. . . .
Finished reading Notorious

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Read - Reading: Notorious by Gordon Korman (Balzer + Bray)
Keenan has lived all over the world but nowhere quite as strange as Centerlight Island, which is split between the United States and Canada. The only thing weirder than Centerlight itself is his neighbor Zarabeth, aka ZeeBee.
ZeeBee is obsessed with the island's history as a Prohibition-era smuggling route. She's also convinced that her beloved dog, Barney, was murdered--something Keenan finds pretty hard to believe.
Just about everyone on Centerlight is a suspect, because everyone hated Barney, a huge dog--part mastiff, part rottweiler--notorious for terrorizing the community. Accompanied by a mild-mannered new dog who is practically Barney's opposite, ZeeBee enlists Keenan's help to solve the mystery.
As Keenan and ZeeBee start to unravel the clues, they uncover a shocking conspiracy that dates back to Centerlight's gangster past. The good news is that Keenan may have found the best friend he's ever had. The bad news is that the stakes are sky-high.
And now someone is after them. . . .
I’ve been reading this over the past couple of nights and not keeping up with updates. I finished through location 1778 last night. Things are starting to pick up in the book. I had been thinking about giving up on it for a bit.

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Read Revelations About Johns Hopkins, The Man (wypr.org)
The story passed down for generations was that the wealthy Quaker merchant Johns Hopkins was also an abolitionist. After he died in 1873, his multi-million-dollar bequest for the university and hospital bearing his name seemed an extension of an enlightened vision. So the discovery of census records that Hopkins owned enslaved people—one in 1840, four a decade later … is shocking. Hopkins president asked Professor Martha S. Jones, an authority on African-American history, to lead continuing research about the founder’s links to slavery. We ask why it’s important.
I’ve bookmarked the audio file to listen to shortly. Depressing that after all these years of thinking of him as an abolitionist that he apparently had slaves. Can’t wait to hear Dr. Jones’ research and thoughts.