A sold-out housing complex for senior citizens on Arizona State University’s Tempe campus sparks a conversation about whether universities are doing enough to engage with older people.
Reads
Reading list of books, magazines, newspaper articles, other physical documents, or online posts
👓 Used Clothing Floods Beacon’s Closet, Courtesy of Netflix’s “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo” | The New Yorker
👓 I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman | Time
At every step of a fairly typical pregnancy for a black woman in the U.S., I was rendered an incompetent subject with exceptional needs.
I just don’t have words.
If you’re feeling depressed and angry though, I invite you to continue on with some stories I can’t help but collect:
👓 2018: a year in gratitude | Mark A. Matienzo
Mark A. Matienzo (Mark A. Matienzo)This year was largely complicated and often felt like a massive garbage fire to myself and my crew. I didn’t accomplish a number of my goals and was inconsistent about others, so recapping awesome things I did doesn’t feel appropriate and also happens to be a soft reminder of either failure or things not going as planned. I also tend to hate “best of the year” lists but I find them helpful to remember about where I found joy or the ability to connect to something outside of myself. I suppose this is an attempt to reconcile those things, or perhaps more in line with the end of year spirit, a way to articulate gratitude to the people and things around me that impacted me.
Interesting, but I’m not sure how this rates for cross-posting to IndieWeb News…
👓 Consuming Instagram differently | Jonas Voss
Jonas Voss (Left handed typing since 2017)I've been looking for a different way of consuming Instagram. Facebook has introduced more and more features in their neverending quest to wrestle users from Snapchat and onto Instagram, and I don't care for those. I like Instagram, the photo sharing part, not so much the TV and Stories part. The ot...
👓 There’s One Encouraging Thought Buried In Zuckerberg’s 2019 Challenge | Techdirt
Every year Mark Zuckerberg sets a "challenge" for himself for that year, which as many people have noted, Facebook has turned into a big PR vehicle for the company. We usually don't even bother to write about it, because why bother?...
Do we want technology to keep giving more people a voice, or will traditional gatekeepers control what ideas can be expressed? ❧
Part of the unstated problem here is that Facebook has supplanted the “traditional gatekeepers” and their black box feed algorithm is now the gatekeeper which decides what people in the network either see or don’t see. Things that crazy people used to decry to a non-listening crowd in the town commons are now blasted from the rooftops, spread far and wide by Facebook’s algorithm, and can potentially sway major elections.
I hope they talk about this.
👓 Publishers build a common tech platform together | Nieman Journalism Lab
Jonathan Gill (Nieman Lab)"From a business standpoint, publishers aren't competing with each other so much as they are with the big technology platforms — Google, Facebook, Apple, and so on. Yet publishers expend huge amounts of energy optimizing competitively against one another."
👓 The platform tide is turning | Nieman Journalism Lab
Ben Werdmüller (Nieman Lab)“Instead of becoming more like technology companies or remaining beholden to platforms, publishers could help to build the internet they need.”
There are an impressive number of IndieWeb-related articles in this year’s list of Nieman Journalism Lab 2019 Predictions. Somehow I had missed the one written by our own Ben Werdmüller, or perhaps they continued publishing them after I’d seen the first batch?
👓 Why You Should Start A Blog In 2019 | Tedium
Ernie Smith (Tedium)The independent blog has been in decline for years. It doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s why you should start a blog in 2019—and host it yourself.
A great argument here for the IndieWeb, and his second in probably as many weeks. Even better, it sounds like he doesn’t yet know some of the cool new things that blogs are capable of doing now that they couldn’t do in 2006.
👓 Dear Journalists, Stop Being Loudspeakers for Liars | Dan Gillmor
An open letter to newsrooms everywhere
👓 Rod Rosenstein Expected to Leave Justice Dept. Once Attorney General Is Confirmed | The New York Times
The deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, has been a central figure in the Russia investigation by appointing the special counsel and overseeing the inquiry.
As long as he’s leaving of his own accord…
👓 The year we step back from the platform | Nieman Journalism Lab | Ernie Smith
Ernie Smith (Nieman Lab)"Let's replace the shadows that Twitter and Facebook and Google have been on the media with some business-model fundamentals. As 2018 has shown, they've offered us a lot more heartache than it feels like they're actually worth."
This is a very staid and sober statement about the ills of social media platforms (aka silos) and a proposed way forward for 2019. His argument is tremendously bolstered by the fact that he’s actually got his own website where he’s hosting and distributing his own content.
Ernie, should you see this, I’d welcome you to come join a rapidly growing group of creators who have been doing almost exactly what you’ve prescribed. We’re amassing a wealth of knowledge, tools, code, and examples at Indieweb.org to help you and others on their journey to better owning and controlling their online identities in almost the exact way in which you’re talking about in your article. Both individually and together we’re trying to build web websites that allow all the functionality of the platforms, but in a way that is both easy and beautiful for everyone to manage and use. Given the outlet for your piece, I’ll also mention that there’s a specific page for IndieWeb and Journalism.
I’d invite you to join the online chat and add yourself as an example to any of the appropriate pages, including perhaps for Craft. Also feel free to discuss your future plans and ask for any help or support you’d like to see for improving your own website. Together I hope we can all make your prediction for 2019 a reality.
Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia
But what if, in 2019, we take a step back and decide not to let the platform decide how to run the show? ❧
The IndieWeb has already made some solid strides.
January 09, 2019 at 07:55AM
I’ve been working on a redesign of my site recently, using a more robust CMS, and the advantages of controlling the structure of the platform soup-to-nuts are obvious, even if it requires more upfront work. ❧
January 09, 2019 at 07:57AM
2019 is the year when publishers — whether big ones like Axios or the Los Angeles Times or tiny ones like mine or Judd Legum’s Popular Information — move away from letting someone else call all the shots. Or, at least, they should. ❧
There’s already some work and movement in the IndieWeb with respect to journalism.
January 09, 2019 at 08:01AM
👓 Deplatforming the platforms | Richard MacManus
Richard MacManus (social.ricmac.org)Platforms are the key to influence in the modern era. We’ve spent years being burned by them and complaining about them for either doing too much or not enough. But what if, in 2019, we take a step back and decide not to let the platform decide how to run the show? Great points by Ernie Smith in a...
👓 The grand sweep of Literature and History | Indie Digital Media
One of my favorite podcasts is Literature and History, launched nearly three years ago by a literature PhD from California named Doug Metzger. As the name suggests, the show is a history of literature - starting from the Tower of Babel origin myth and continuing on through Ancient Greece and…
Did someone say literature? history? I’m there! And best of all it looks like there are over 60+ hours of content to consume here!
👓 5 CMS tools for indie bloggers | Indie Digital Media
This is a golden age for indie digital media creators, who have more content creation options than ever in 2019. In fact, there are arguably too many tools to chose from. That’s why I’m going to regularly examine the tools of digital media creation here on IDM - for everything…