I like how the author creates a key to their posts here. Most are obvious based on the emojis, but if they’re not more obvious are they really as broadly useful from a UI perspective? I do wish they all had links to archives of each type however.
Reads
Reading list of books, magazines, newspaper articles, other physical documents, or online posts
👓 The act of drawing something has a “massive” benefit for memory compared with writing it down | Research Digest | British Psychological Society
Emma Young (Research Digest | British Psychological Society)It didn’t matter how good the drawings were for the memory benefits to manifest.
A picture is worth a thousand words…. When it comes to conveying a concept, this sentiment can certainly be true. But it may also be the case for memory. At least that’s the message from Myra Fernandes and colleagues at the University of Waterloo, Canada – writing in Current Directions in Psychological Science, they argue that their research programme shows that drawing has a “surprisingly powerful influence” on memory, and as a mnemonic technique, it could be particularly useful for older adults – and even people with dementia.
👓 From free to paid subscription: a report on the FTTE transition so far | Bryan Alexander
In September I announced that the FTTE report would no longer be a free publication. Instead, it would transition to a paid subscription model. How has that turned out? Here I’ll share the s…
👓 Exploring Mastodon | Bryan Alexander
I decided to explore the Mastodon social network after a great deal of suggestions and gentle prodding from many people. That’s Mastodon the software, not the very fine metal band. In this post I’ll share my experiences of getting to know the thing.
I joined Mastodon about two years ago this week. I’d written a bit about it as well as bookmarked several interesting early articles that help to explain it, what it is, and what it does, which can be found here and scrolling back a few pages: https://boffosocko.com/tag/mastodon/
While Mastodon is working to remedy some of the issues that large corporate and advertising supported social sites like Facebook and Twitter have, one ought to be careful jumping into just any instance as there is little, if any, guarantee that the instance you choose will still be around tomorrow.
indieweb movement. ❧
hooray!
November 28, 2018 at 08:02PM
What was that about crowdfunding instances? How much of an instance’s conversation was visible to the outside? How much of this is Google-spidered? What are those anti-abuse tools? Why can’t governments “completely block” Mastodon (as a whole, or just instances?)? Can one join more than a single instance? ❧
Managing an instance can come with a lot of work and maintenance, so some instances are crowdfunded to help defray the costs of full time management of a particular instance.
Anti-abuse tools give users the ability to better block people as well as instances have the ability to block incoming messages from entire instances. Thus an instance that serves as a haven for Nazis could be completely blocked by one or more other instances which prevent their users from seeing any content from all users on an instance that is a “bad actor.” One of the common anti-abuse tools is the CW or content warning functionality, which some instances mandate, which can be used to hide spoilers or controversial content. (As an example, some instances require content warnings on political related posts.)
Governments could block instances based on their IP addresses, but would have to do some work to block all instances (primarily by knowing where they all are).
One can join as many instances as they’d like, but it would likely become confusing after a while. Ideally one should be able to join just one instance and be able to follow or be followed by anyone from any other instance. Some communities have particular sets of rules they expect their users to abide by. Some may be centered on particular topics of discussion as well. Some instances are individually run and have only one user.
November 28, 2018 at 08:11PM
Is stability a problem in the Fediverse? ❧
Stability is typically an issue based on who is running the instance and what sort of server they’re doing it on. Is it fast or slow? Does it have 3 people or 300,000? Naturally the larger the instance, the more resources it requires. Some instances have popped up and shut themselves down because the maintainer was doing it as a hobby and just got tired of it. Often there isn’t much information about who is running the server and how long it may or may not be around or how well it’s maintained.
November 28, 2018 at 08:16PM
No other options presented themselves on the page ❧
This website has some reasonable set up for helping one determine an appropriate instance:
https://instances.social/
November 28, 2018 at 08:19PM
other routes in. ❧
http://www.unmung.com/mastoview will show content from random instances to give one an idea about the content within a particular instance before joining.
Most instances will have some general information about themselves. Usually the more thought out they are, the more likely they will be around for a while. Here’s an example of the instance maintained by the creator of the original platform, which is also one of the largest and most popular instances out there: https://mastodon.social/about/more
November 28, 2018 at 08:24PM
Any pointers or experiences to share? ❧
There are a couple of WordPress plugins for Mastodon that allow you to syndicate your content from your own website into your instance. You might find that somewhat useful.
The IndieWeb wiki has some generally useful information as well as some criticisms and related articles which might be helpful: https://indieweb.org/Mastodon
Mastodon runs on the Activity Pub specification for sending messages back and forth. As a result some people are looking into having their personal websites support these protocols so that people on Mastodon (or other parts of the Fediverse) can subscribe to one’s primary website. If you can do this then you don’t necessarily need “yet another social platform” for interacting with those online. The two biggest of these efforts within the WordPress community are Fed Bridgy and the Activity Pub plugin
November 28, 2018 at 08:50PM
👓 The Future Trends Forum | Bryan Alexander
Welcome to the Future Trends Forum, an ongoing, participatory, and open video conversation about the future of higher education. Each week a different guest – an inspiring expert, visionary, …
👓 Salt of the earth: Tyndale’s Bible | The Economist
Ask who did the most to shape the English language, and most people will answer Shakespeare. But another writer of much less fame did at least as much: William Tyndale, the first to translate into English the Greek New Testament and most of the Hebrew Old Testament (a follower, Miles Coverdale, finished the work, published in 1526). That work was later a major source of the 1611 King James version. Estimates of his contribution run as high as 90% of the King James New Testament. One of the earliest Tyndale Bibles will be auctioned by Chiswick Auctions today. The estimate of £8,000-10,000 ($10,200-12,700) seems a bargain for the work that immortalised “let my people go”, “the apple of his eye” and “go the extra mile”. Not that it did Tyndale much good: to render God’s word intelligible to ordinary folk was a daring act. He was strangled and burned at the stake for it.
👓 My book, Twitter and Tear Gas, is out! News and Details! | Zeynep Tufekci
Dear Friends, My book, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest, is officially out today, as of May 16th! It is published by Yale University Press, and it weaves stories w…
Some news: there will be a free creative commons copy of my book. It will be available as a free PDF download in addition to being sold as a bound book. This is with the hopes that anyone who wants to read it can do so without worrying about the cost. However, this also means that I need to ask that a few people who can afford to do so to please consider purchasing a copy. This is not just so that Yale University Press can do this for more authors, but also because if it is not sold (at least a little bit!) in the initial few weeks, bookstores will not stock it and online algorithms will show it to fewer people. No sales will mean less visibility, and less incentive for publishers to allow other authors creative commons copies. ❧
I negotiated the creative commons copy with my (wonderful!) publisher Yale University Press because I really wanted to do what I could to share my insights as broadly as I could about social movements and the networked public sphere. If I make a penny more from this book because it sells well by some miracle, I will donate every extra penny to groups supporting refugees, and if I ever meet you in person and you purchased a copy of the book in support, please let me know and I’ll buy the coffee or beer. 😀 This isn’t at all about money for me.
An excellent example of academic samizdat
November 28, 2018 at 11:24AM
👓 Think Melania’s red forest is kooky? Consider the Christmas tree once hidden in a White House closet. | Washington Post
President Benjamin Harrison is credited with starting the tradition of having a Christmas tree inside the White House in 1889 when he set up a tree for his grandchildren. The tree glowed with wax candles, and Harrison even dressed up as Santa Claus. “Let me hope,” the president said, “that my example will be followed by every family in the land.”
👓 'Sneaky Pete' Producers Adjusting Season 3 After Ricky Jay's Death | Hollywood Reporter
The magician and actor, who died Saturday, had his final acting role on the Amazon series.
👓 The Biggest Scam in Publishing? | Good e-reader
The digital publishing revolution is so old that a great many reading consumers might not be able to envision a time when they couldn’t simply pop online to order a book, download a new title from their favorite author, or use an app or PDF for supplemental book material. eBooks and digital publishing have simply become a part of everyday life for many people.
Nothing worthwhile here, but it’s a great click-bait headline isn’t it?
👓 Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith Wins Miss. Senate Runoff After Racially Charged Campaign | NPR
Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith won the Senate runoff in Mississippi by a margin of 54-to-46 percent, according to the Associated Press, overcoming a series of missteps that brought the state's dark history of racism and violence to the forefront. Hyde-Smith, who was appointed to the Senate earlier this year after Republican Thad Cochran stepped down because of health reasons, defeated former congressman and agriculture secretary Mike Espy. Neither candidate had won the requisite 50 percent in the first round of the special election on Election Day. She is the first woman elected to the Senate from Mississippi.
Even if she weren’t a virulent racist, she’s a horrible pick because she simply doesn’t seem to be able to think or operate for herself without being propped up by a staff behind her.
Too often I’m just saddened at what America is producing.
👓 Why suicide is falling around the world, and how to bring it down more | The Economist
Urbanisation, fewer forced marriages and more curbs on the means of self-destruction
👓 Special measures: well-being | Economist Espresso
How should society’s progress be measured? GDP tends to be used as a proxy. But its imperfections are widely known: it focuses on market-oriented production, for instance, and ignores how the gains from that output are distributed. Today experts gather in Seoul to discuss work on alternative measures led by Joseph Stiglitz and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, two eminent economists, and commissioned by the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries. Their report recommends adding a number of indicators to policymakers’ dashboards, including measures of inequality, environmental sustainability, happiness and trust. Economic insecurity—such as income buffers available to people when trouble strikes—also matters. If governments had considered insecurity during the 2007-08 financial crisis, they would have provided their economies with more support, and continued to do so even after GDP started to recover. But, as the report says, “what you measure affects what you do.”
👓 MSNBC declines to allow Sarah Sanders to dictate its programming | Washington Post
It had been nearly a month since Sarah Sanders had held what was once known as a “daily” briefing. So when the White House press secretary — along with White House officials Larry Kudlow and John Bolton — took the podium on Tuesday afternoon, cable-news channels jumped right on the proceedings. Well, most of them, anyway. While CNN and Fox News carried the tripartite briefing from the very beginning, MSNBC stayed away — until it had blown off the entire session.
This may be some of the best news I’ve heard in a year. I hope that there’s something to be learned from the experience.
👓 Opinion | Maybe They’re Just Bad People | New York Times
Not all Trump support is ideological.