This week we celebrate the life of the most published mathematician in history, Paul Erdős (AIR-dosh), who was born 100 years ago on March 26. Dr. Erdős, who has been called the world’s greatest problem poser and solver, collaborated with over 500 mathematicians before his death in 1996.“There are still a lot of Erdős’s vibrations going around,” says Ronald L. Graham, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and longtime Erdős friend and collaborator. “His impact will be felt for a long time.”
Reads, Listens
Playlist of posts listened to, or scrobbled
Donald, This I Will Tell You | New York Times
Donald, you said you could shake up Washington and make it work again. Instead, you’re the one who got worked over.
👓 Recent Social Importer Updates | Beau Lebens
I’ve been trying to make small improvements to the Keyring Social Importers package (and People & Places) that I maintain, and have made a number of them over the last few weeks. Here are some details of recent updates which you may have missed: People & Places Improved the labels being used for e...
🎧 This Week in the Indieweb Audio Edition • March 18th – 24th, 2017
Audio edition for This Week in the IndieWeb
Thinking about how nice it would be to have stronger text-to-speech transcriptions for podcasts. I was mentioned briefly in this podcast for having bookmarked an article earlier in the week. Webmentions for audio don’t (can’t?) exist, but a transcription would have included my name (and in this case even my URL) which potentially could have sent me a webmention of the fact.
Why You Should Never Accept The First Hotel Room You’re Offered | Huffington Post
Be courteous, but firm.
👓 A President’s Credibility | Wall Street Journal
Trump’s falsehoods are eroding public trust, at home and abroad.
👓 How To Score A Hotel Room Upgrade Every Time | Huffington Post
Be courteous, but firm.
What killed the romcom? It was Love, Actually
Richard Curtis’s sexist, saccharine turkey is being recooked at a time when TV romance is far superior. May it teach filmmakers to aim higher.
Leftover Rice Could Make You Very Sick | Lifehacker Skillet
On a scale from “1” to “listeria” the amount of stomach trouble I would expect a bowl of rice to give me falls around a “2,” but apparently the seemingly innocuous grain can inflict a lot of pain if it’s not stored properly.
👓 Indie checkin flow | Ryan Barrett
Update: I’ve automated this. Here’s my 2015 IndieWeb launch commitment: I’d like to be able to post indie checkins easily, both here and on Facebook. I’d like to use Faceboo…
👓 Feeling underpowered | Jeremy Cherfas
Where to begin?
This is by way of a whinge, and the solution is at least straightforward. Learn how to do what you want to be able to do, dummy.
For a good long while, I've been feeling seriously underpowered when it comes to being able to do what I want to do online. I can't really date the start of it, I just know that I am no longer able to scratch my itches as once I was. That irks me. I know there are professionals and, even more valuably, amateurs who will scratch itches very similar to mine. But they're not my itches, and I'm not scratching them.
👓 But there were people starving in China … | EatThisPodcast
… and the Romans did knead Bread Matters magazine recently linked to an interview with Jim Lahey, “inventor” of no-knead bread. I eventually tracked it down1 and gave it a listen, and on the whole it is very interesting. Two things, however, irked me. One, relatively trivial, is an idiot comme...
👓 Why Microformats? Owning My Reviews | Aaron Parecki
Back in October, I wrote a bunch of short mini-reviews on products and services that I use regularly. I published them all on a single page called "Favorite Things". In the past, I've written a couple of reviews on Amazon and then copied them to my website as a blog post. I decided it was time to be...
👓 Guest Post: In Praise of Globes | MathBabe
The decision by the Boston school system to replace maps of the world using the Mercator projection with maps using the Gall-Peters projection has garnered a lot of favorable press from outlets such as NPR, The Guardian, Newsweek, and many others.
👓 Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware | Motherboard
A dive into the thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking.