Personal websites and email can replace most of what people like about Facebook—namely the urge to post about their lives online.
Reads
👓 An Interview with John O’Brien | Dalkey Archive Press
The following interview was conducted in-house at two different times, in 2000 and 2004. The purpose of the interview was to provide a very readable documentation of Dalkey Archive Press’s mission and history. It was amended in 2004, and likely will be amended again in the future, to reflect changes in the culture that have an impact on the work we do.
Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia
subversive ❧
December 19, 2018 at 05:10PM
uncomfortable ❧
December 19, 2018 at 05:11PM
There is no sense that this particular novel has its place among-and should be evaluated against-a whole history of other novels. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 05:14PM
As with all of the arts, literature was once upon a time entirely made possible through patrons. This goes at least as far back as Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. They were able to write because their patrons provided them financial support. And this was of course true of all of the other arts. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, however, literature and commerce got mixed. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 05:18PM
While many people say that such and such a book changed their lives, you can be sure that they could not tell you who published the book. The identification is with the book and its author, not the publisher. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 05:25PM
My models were New Directions Press and Grove Press. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 05:32PM
Michael Orthofer at the Complete Review ❧
December 19, 2018 at 05:35PM
Academics will probably bristle at this thought but, at least in relation to literature, all you have to do is look at the courses that are offered featuring the literatures of other countries. Not only don’t they teach these literatures, they don’t read them. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 05:38PM
I think only the philistine mind thinks that art needs a social or moral justification. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 05:46PM
A prerequisite for war, as well as bigotry, is that one sees a people or a country as a stereotype, as something sub-human or non-human; this is why politicians spend so much time trying to create stereotypical images for those countries they want to go to war with. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 05:48PM
Small publishers are oftentimes awful at getting their books out to people, even though of course the marketplace determines many of the limitations. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 05:51PM
👓 the register | Danny O’Brien’s Oblomovka
It’s about two in the morning on Thursday, I’m scrabbling around for things to put into NTK, and I get an e-mail from the Register’s Andrew Orlowski. He sounds deliriously happy. He’s uncovered an apparently hidden link to a wiki set up for some s00p3r s33krit confab that Tim O’Reilly’s organising. The descriptions and notes fit completely into Orlowski’s view of particular segment of the West Coast tech scene. Mainly, that it looks like some weird Californian cult.
Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia
The problem here is one (ironically) of register. In the real world, we have conversations in public, in private, and in secret. All three are quite separate. The public is what we say to a crowd; the private is what we chatter amongst ourselves, when free from the demands of the crowd; and the secret is what we keep from everyone but our confidant. Secrecy implies intrigue, implies you have something to hide. Being private doesn’t. You can have a private gathering, but it isn’t necessarily a secret. All these conversations have different implications, different tones. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 04:53PM
On the net, you have public, or you have secrets. The private intermediate sphere, with its careful buffering. is shattered. E-mails are forwarded verbatim. IRC transcripts, with throwaway comments, are preserved forever. You talk to your friends online, you talk to the world. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 04:54PM
hat tip: Kevin Marks in IWC chat
👓 The web finally feels new again. | i.webthings
The web was amazing before Web 2.0 and the advent of so-called social networks. Many people had their own sites and blogs from which they shared ideas and interacted with others in the community at large. It seemed to me like meeting others in their own homes back then and there was a widespread enthusiasm for blogging and personal expression. Then came the big social networks. With time, many personal sites and blogs disappeared from the web as people flocked to the big silos where their content became a heavily monitized commodity. To me, the web had lost much of its soul as people gathered in just a few, huge noise chambers.
👓 The Web Finally Feels New Again | KicksCondor
(Joe’s full article is here.)
Yes, here we are again—I think what you’re saying is that even a single-line annotation of a link, even just a few words of human curation do wonders when you’re out discovering the world. (Perhaps even more than book recommendations—where we know that at leas...
Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia
it made me feel like we were trying to send some kind of concentrated transmission to the author—linking as a greeting, links as an invitation. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 04:14PM
I do find that Webmentions are really enhancing linking—by offering a type of bidirectional hyperlink. I think if they could see widespread use, we’d see a Renaissance of blogging on the Web. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 04:17PM
I’m really not sure if linking, in general, has changed over the years. I’ve been doing it the same since day one. But that’s just me. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 04:22PM
👓 How to improve Twitter in 2018 | Scripting News
Eliminate the char limit, help news orgs evolve, make an irreversible deal with developers.
👓 I’ve now removed the titles in the RSS feed from posts in the micro category using the_title_rss | John Johnston
I’ve now removed the titles in the RSS feed from posts in the micro category using the_title_rss. So I’ve reenabled adding of titles through wp_insert_post_data. If this works this post will have a title in my dashboard, but all get through to micro.blog
In the end though, it still feels too much like individuals trying to solve problems that should be better handled by feed readers and the platforms.
👓 Let’s Make Twitter Great Again? – A Reflection on a Social Media of One | Read Write Respond
Many argue that something is not right with social media as it currently stands. This post explores what it might mean to make Twitter great again? Responding to Jack Dorsey’s call for suggestions on how to improve Twitter, Dave Winer put forward two suggestions: preventing trolling and making cha...
👓 Overthinking Instagram | Oh Hello Ana
I very rarely share online if something isn’t going well in my life. I’ve always treated my social media the same way most of us do: we only share the good bits. I thought I was doing that but nowadays, I look back at some photos of what looks like an excellent time of my life but now I know ver...
As I think about it, some personal-related posts could potentially be marked to auto-expire (unpost themselves) at some future date and be auto-archived to one’s back end so that they’re no longer public, but so that they exist if one wants to look at them personally, but also so that they’re also hidden from the site owner and need to be actively searched for. As an example, I can imagine something along the lines of a “dating” tag so that when one creates an “engaged” or “married” post that all the old dating history disappears? There is some existing artwork and thought about this on the IndieWeb wiki that I came across a week or so ago in relation to Last.fm’s expiring content, but more work and motivation could be added.
Incidentally, like many, I’ve begun reading her regularly and she’s not only quite the writer, but she’s got a pretty little site as well. I highly recommend folks give her a look and subscribe.
Maybe during this Christmas break I will find the guts to do a purge but I know that it will be a “fake purge”. ❧
December 19, 2018 at 02:57PM
👓 Ousted NPR news chief, ex-Fox News execs team up on new site | Politico
The site's founder says it will remedy the media's trust problems, but two top hires left their previous jobs after allegations of harassment and racism.
This is the second story I’ve seen now about abusive men from the me too movement being given a second chance. How is society taking these “comebacks”? How is the market reacting to them economically? Will advertisers shy away?
👓 Twitter is relaunching the reverse-chronological feed as an option for all users starting today | The Verge
Just hit that sparkle, fam
Of course the article indicates that it seems to be higher engagement (aka clicks for advertising) as the motivator rather than simply making a stronger and more usable product:
Keith Coleman, vice president of product at Twitter, told The Verge that in tests, users who had access to the easy toggle participated in more conversations than average.
👓 Two spikes in my posting history | doubleloop
I’ve been playing around with Metabase to view a few stats about my website. frequency and spikes
It was fun to look at the frequency of my posts over time – you see quite a prominent spike around March and April 2017, and then there’s a slowish decline in frequency until around August/Septemb...
I haven’t really delved into microsub yet, but I suspect it’s going to have an even more profound effect on my reading and posting habits.
👓 Stop Learning Frameworks | sizovs.net
We are developers. We need to stay up to date with technology. Every day, we learn programming languages, frameworks, and libraries. The more modern tools we know — the better.
👓 #LoveBombs for Thimble: Saying Goodbye to Teacher, Mentor, Friend | INTERTEXTrEVOLUTION
An ode to Thimble and a look to the future
👓 Penny Marshall dead at 75, best known as TV’s Laverne and director of ‘Big,’ ‘A League of Their Own’ | NY Daily News
Bronx-born Penny Marshall, who found ‘70s sitcom success on “Laverne and Shirley” before stepping behind the camera for Hollywood hits like “Big” and “A League of Their Own,” died Monday night at her California home. She was 75.