After announcing this initially in November, it comes with great regret that after 4.5 years of operating, Minimal Reader has indeed shut down and closed its doors on December 15, 2017.
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
🎧 Feding people is easy | Eat This Podcast
“Plenty of plants, not much meat and maximum variety.”
The best advice for a good diet I’ve ever heard. It’s a maxim devised by Colin Tudge, long before anything similar you may have heard from more recent writers. Tudge, more than anyone else I know, has consistently championed the idea that meat ought to be seen in a supporting role, rather than as the main attraction, a garnish, if you will.
Tudge has been thinking and writing about agriculture and food systems for a long time, and we’ve been friends for a long time too. In fact, it’s fair to say that knowing Colin has influenced my own thoughts about food and farming quite a bit. As far as Colin is concerned, we’ve been going about farming in completely the wrong way for the past 100 years or so. Instead of asking how can we grow more food, more cheaply, he thinks we should focus on what we need – good, wholesome food that doesn’t destroy the earth – and then ask how we can provide that for everybody.
He’s expanded and built on those ideas in many books since Future Cook (Future Food in the US), which contained that pithy dietary advice and which was published in 1980. And rather than reform or revolution, neither of which will do the job he thinks needs to be done, he advocates for a renaissance in real farming.
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👓 Podcasting models mature and diversify | Nieman Journalism Lab
Catilin Thompson (Nieman Lab)"When podcasting reaches its potential size, looking more like peak radio penetration thanks to these many new and improved sources of discovery, we'll start to see several revenue models arise to support the diversity of content now possible by untethering the form from RSS."
👓 Help Us Build a Third Culture | Quillette
Last year, an anti-vaccination activist was awarded a PhD from an Australian University. She conducted her thesis in the School of Law, Humanities and the Arts. Her thesis was titled “A critical analysis of the Australian government’s rationale for its vaccination policy”. In it, she argued th...
👓 Conservatism Won't Survive Donald Trump | The Atlantic
As reflexive support for the president redefines their movement, most conservative commentators have caved to pressure, following along.
👓 Republican-led Congress passes sweeping tax bill | NBC
Congress approved a sweeping $1.5 trillion tax bill on Wednesday that slashes rates for corporations, provides new breaks for private businesses and reorganizes the individual tax code.
👓 N.Y. jail program forces families to buy from online vendors that overcharge for basic items sent to inmates | NY Daily News
Reuven Balu (NY Daily News)Infuriating inmate advocates, the state Department of Corrections has launched a pilot program that forces visitors to buy supplies for loved ones behind bars from five online vendors that they say overcharge for simple items.
State officials maintain the vendor system — expected to go statewide by fall 2018 — will reduce contraband being smuggled into facilities.
👓 Google Thinks I’m Dead | New York Times
Rachel Abrams (New York Times)(I know otherwise.)
👓 Google Maps’s Moat | Justin O’Beirne
How far ahead of Apple Maps is Google Maps?
👓 Latest on abc | Peter Woit
I’ve seen reports today (see here and here) that indicate that Mochizui’s IUT papers, which are supposed to contain a proof of the abc conjecture, have been accepted by the journal Publications of the RIMS. Some of the sources for this are in Japanese (e.g. this and this) and Google Translate has its limitations, so perhaps Japanese speaking readers can let us know if this is a misunderstanding.
I’ve seen reports today (see here and here) that indicate that Mochizui’s IUT papers, which are supposed to contain a proof of the abc conjecture, have been accepted by the journal Publications of the RIMS. Some of the sources for this are in Japanese (e.g. this and this) and Google Translate has its limitations, so perhaps Japanese speaking readers can let us know if this is a misunderstanding.
👓 The ABC Conjecture has not been proved | Cathy O’Neil, mathbabe
As I’ve blogged about before, proof is a social construct: it does not constitute a proof if I’ve convinced only myself that something is true. It only constitutes a proof if I can read…
👓 The ABC conjecture has (still) not been proved | Persiflage
Five years ago, Cathy O’Neil laid out a perfectly cogent case for why the (at that point recent) claims by Shinichi Mochizuki should not (yet) …
👓 Investing in Skills | Collin Donnell
I’m pretty comfortable on the command line. I can move about, issue commands, edit my profile, pipe things around, all that. However — and I’m probably supposed to admit this with a little shame — I’ve never really learned how to write shell scripts. Usually I’d write a Python script, a small command line app, or hack something together with Automator. It did the same job, but not being able to write a bash script from scratch felt like kind of a blind spot.
👓 A Critical Analysis of Bob Dylan's 2017 Xmas Lights | Vice
For almost a decade, I have had an unhealthy obsession with the Christmas lights on Bob Dylan's Malibu home. Here's what I learned from this year's display.
👓 Spooled Twitter Thread: OK Third-Party WordPress, We Need To Have A Come-to-Jesus Meeting About Your Accessibility Flare | Amanda Rush
This post originally started as a Twitter thread. Since those can be difficult to read in some circumstances, and since this content is I think valuable for more than just WordPress Twitter, I’m spooling it up and re-sharing as a complete post. I’ve also added a link and a video to this. OK thir...