Reads, Listens

Reading list of books, magazines, newspaper articles, other physical documents, or online posts
Playlist of posts listened to, or scrobbled

👓 White House Discloses Ethics Waivers For Presidential Aides | NPR

Read White House Discloses Ethics Waivers For Presidential Aides by Peter Overby (NPR)
The White House Wednesday night released 14 ethics waivers — documents that exempt some top presidential aides from important ethics rules. The disclosures came after a quiet but tough battle between Trump administration officials and the Office of Government Ethics. The waivers are considered public documents but for weeks after President Trump took office, they weren't made public.
Whatever happened to “Drain the swamp!”? Not only has it apparently disappeared, but now we’re going against basic ethics rules to boot?!
“So sad. Incompetent.”

Continue reading 👓 White House Discloses Ethics Waivers For Presidential Aides | NPR

👓 New era, new blog | AltPlatform

Read New era, new blog by Emre Sokullu (altplatform.org)

Friends,

Welcome to our new blog here on the Internet. AltPlatform is a co-op nonprofit tech blog infused with the spirit of Open Web. Richard summed up our goals in his manifesto.

We realize that the world has changed a lot since our good old ReadWriteWeb days. Web 2.0 is no longer relevant. Things are changing so quickly in tech that even Marc Andreessen’s “software is eating the world” mantra is no more. As Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang puts it, now AI is eating the software.

We’re in the early stages of a new period of humanity, where bots and robots will take over not only labor-intensive jobs but also artistic ones. Computers have been fixing punctuation and grammar in our writing for some time now. But soon, well-trained networks will be able to consume the latest news articles and generate an opinion article in a snap. A decade from now, Saturday Night Live jokes will be produced not by a factory of writers, but by neural networks. Need proof? Just look at what the Prisma app can do without human intervention.

👓 Introducing AltPlatform & our manifesto for the Open Web | AltPlatform

Read Introducing AltPlatform & our manifesto for the Open Web by Richard MacManus (AltPlatform)
Welcome everyone to AltPlatform, a non-profit tech blog devoted to Open Web technologies. What do we mean by “Open Web”? Firstly, we want to experiment with open source (like this WordPress.org blog) and open standards (like RSS). We’re also using the word open to signify a wider, boundary-le...

👓 New open web social apps to check out | AltPlatform

Read New open web social apps to check out by Brian Hendrickson (AltPlatform)
People love sharing on the internet and the technology is always evolving. Enthusiasts recently flocked to Kickstarter to back a new blogging tool, Micro.blog, RSS and podcasting pioneer Dave Winer released a new open source app, 1999.io, and the old bones of micro-blogging phenom identi.ca are bac...

👓 The Future is Meow! A Bakery in Japan Makes Cat-Shaped Bread | Nerdist

Read The Future is Meow! A Bakery in Japan Makes Cat-Shaped Bread by Blake Rodgers (Nerdist)
There’s just no limit to the wonderfully weird pieces of cuisine that Japan comes up with. They’ve made cream puff desserts into drinks, put Kit Kats on sushi, turned meat into cakes, and even made it possible to bathe in maple syrup! And their latest foray in overtaking internet searches and Twitter trends might be their cutest yet. Yes, we’re talking about cat bread.
Just what the world needs!

🎧 Containers Episode 5: The America-First Ships

Listened to Containers Episode 5: The America-First Ships from Containers
American companies pioneered container shipping, but now the ocean freight business is dominated by foreign firms. Thanks to the Jones Act, a 1920 law, all cargo between American ports must be carried on American-made ships, so we do still have a fleet. But the ships are old and outdated. In episode five, we explore the tragic consequences of this "America-first" trade policy, beginning with the El Faro, which sank in October 2015.
For those who want to learn about poorly done America First policies, this seems to be a great example. Studying what the Jones Act has done to the US shipping business is an excellent case study. There is obviously a gaping hole in the market forces at work here and the Jones Act only seems to be making things worse.

I find it an odd thing to say about a podcast concerning containerized shipping, but this episode is just heart-breaking on so many levels.

https://soundcloud.com/containersfmg/episode-5-the-america-first-ships

👓 Jared Kushner’s Role Is Tested as Russia Case Grows | New York Times

Read Jared Kushner’s Role Is Tested as Russia Case Grows by Glenn Thrush (nytimes.com)
It is unclear how Jared Kushner’s high-profile woes will affect his hard-won partnership with his father-in-law, perhaps the most stable in an often unstable White House.

👓 Why Do Coptic Christians Keep Getting Attacked? | The Atlantic

Read Why Do Coptic Christians Keep Getting Attacked? by H.A. Helyer (The Atlantic)
Egypt’s preexisting climate of pro-Islamist sectarianism is an important, and sometimes overlooked, reason.
If we replace Egypt with America, ISIS with the KKK or alt-right, and Copt Christians with African Americans are the optics really that much different?

🎧 Containers Episode 4: The Hidden Side of Coffee

Listened to Containers Episode 4: The Hidden Side of Coffee from Containers
The coffee world has changed since Starbucks rose to prominence. Not only has the sourcing of beans acquired wine-like precision, but now there are many small, local roasters. How'd this all happen? Episode 4 brings you into the infrastructure underpinning third-wave coffee from a Kenyan coffee auction to a major coffee importer to a secret coffee warehouse in San Leandro with beans from every coffee-growing nation in the world. We’re guided by Aaron Van der Groen, the green coffee buyer for San Francisco’s legendary roaster Ritual Coffee.
https://soundcloud.com/containersfmg/episode-4-the-hidden-side-of-coffee

Possibly the most interesting episode so far. This one has some specifics which I hadn’t read in The Box or seen in snippets in other places. I was hoping for more specifics like this throughout the series, but have been generally disappointed until now.

🎧 Containers Episode 3: The Ships, The Tugs, and The Port

Listened to Containers Episode 3: The Ships, The Tugs, and The Port from Containers
You know you’ve always wanted to ride in a tugboat as it pushes around a huge cargo ship, right? Well, that’s what we do in Episode 3. We go inside working life on the San Francisco Bay to see how brutal competition among shipping companies threatens the viability of the small businesses that ply the waters. Meet a tugboat dispatcher, a skipper, and the first female captain of an American freighter. It’s a case study in how globalization works and our first look at the challenges the port faces.
https://soundcloud.com/containersfmg/episode-3-the-ships-the-tugs-and-the-port

🎧 Containers Episode 2: Meet the Sailors

Listened to Containers Episode 2: Meet the Sailors by Alexis C. MadrigalAlexis C. Madrigal from Containers
What is life like as a modern sailor, a tiny person on a huge ship in a vast ocean? Here is your answer. Episode 2 brings you a rare look into the lives of two Filipino sailors, fresh off a trip across the Pacific Ocean. These are regular people doing heroic work to support their families. And without them, the global economic order doesn't work.
https://soundcloud.com/containersfmg/episode-2-meet-the-sailors

🎧 Containers Episode 1: Welcome to Global Capitalism

Listened to Containers Episode 1: Welcome to Global Capitalism by Alexis C. Madrigal from Containers
Alexis Madrigal brings you the gripping story of how a new way of shipping stuff across the ocean fed the Vietnam War, destroyed America's great port cities, and created global trade as we know it.
Introducing Containers

https://soundcloud.com/containersfmg/episode-1-welcome-to-global-capitalism-1

👓 Examining Decentralized Social Networks | The Stream Blog

Read Examining Decentralized Social Networks by Ian Douglas (The Stream Blog)
Most companies who create a social network do so with the end goal of collecting information, interests and habits of their users in order to monetize that data (usually through advertising). They guard this data heavily and many of the largest social networks are trusted enough to be Identity Provi...