👓 An open letter | Social.Coop

Read An open letter by Michele Kipiel (loomio.org)
Dear fellow members, the events that unfolded over the past few days have put our cooperative to the test, and we failed miserably. Many voices calling for change were silenced in the past, be it by negligence or by sheer lack of commitment by those, whose position of privilege allowed to disregard such calls. By failing to listen, we became the people MLK warned us about: the white moderates who are more devoted to order than to justice. We wasted precious time and energy in endless debates about trivial details, calling for the creation of ever new committees and processes, and we eventually lost sight of the only true reason our cooperative came to existence: to wrestle control of our social media out of the hands of the rich, white, capitalist elite.
Nice to hear that this Mastodon instance seems to be doing the right thing, but the idea of temporarily shutting down an instance makes me glad I didn’t join and that I have my own personal website instead. It’s nice not to be beholden to outsiders in cases like this or other corporate interests.

👓 New World NetNewsWire | inessential

Read New World NetNewsWire (inessential.com)
So much has changed since I last worked on NetNewsWire, and my thinking about it has changed too. The big things remain the same — NetNewsWire is at the intersection of my passions: reading and writing, the open web, and Mac apps. I want to make NetNewsWire a great app with lots of users. No change there. But so much else has changed. In 2002, when I started NetNewsWire, there was no Facebook and no Twitter, no iPhones, and most people hadn’t heard of RSS. People got their news by visiting a few sites a few times a day. People subscribed to email newsletters. That was about it.

👓 The Ax-Wielding Futurist Swinging for a Higher Ed Tech Revolution | OZY

Read The Ax-Wielding Futurist Swinging for a Higher Ed Tech Revolution (OZY)
Bryan Alexander advocates on-demand tutors and online learning from his backwoods home base.

👓 GoFundMe raises thousands to place billboard of Trump’s anti-Cruz tweet in Texas | The Hill

Read GoFundMe raises thousands to place billboard of Trump's anti-Cruz tweet in Texas (TheHill)
Activists in Texas have raised thousands of dollars to place an anti-Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) billboard in the state.

👓 Another scenario for higher education’s future: the triumph of open | Bryan Alexander

Read Another scenario for higher education’s future: the triumph of open by Bryan Alexander (Bryan Alexander)

Let me offer another scenario for academia’s future. As is usual with the scenario forecasting methodology, this is based on extrapolating from several present-day trends – here, several trends around open.

In the past I’ve called this “The Fall of the Silos.” It’s a sign of our urban- and suburban-centric era that this rural metaphor doesn’t get a lot of traction. It’s also possible that contemporary American politics leads many to embrace silos. So I’ve renamed the scenario “The Triumph of Open.”

tl;dr version – In this future the open paradigm has succeeded in shaping the way we use and access most digital information, with powerful implications for higher education.

👓 Lego Wants to Completely Remake Its Toy Bricks (Without Anyone Noticing) | New York Times

Read Lego Wants to Completely Remake Its Toy Bricks (Without Anyone Noticing) (nytimes.com)
The Danish toymaker has relied on oil-based plastics for over 50 years. It wants to give them up by 2030. Finding alternatives is a vast project.

👓 The Narrow Passage of Gortahig | Dan Cohen

Read The Narrow Passage of Gortahig by Dan Cohen (Dan Cohen)

You don’t see it until you’re right there, and even then, you remain confused. Did you miss a turn in the road, or misread the map? You are now driving through someone’s yard, or maybe even their house. You slow to a stop.

On rural road R575, also known as the Ring of Beara and more recently rebranded as part of the Wild Atlantic Way, you are making your way along the northern coast of the Beara Peninsula in far southwestern Ireland. You are in the hamlet of Gortahig, between Eyeries, a multicolored strip of connected houses on the bay, and Allihies, where the copper mines once flourished. The road, like the landscape, is raw, and it is disconcertingly narrow, often too narrow for two cars to pass one another.

An interesting example of how small local decisions can have complex and interesting ramifications in the future.

👓 About | UnboundEQ

Read About (unboundeq.creativitycourse.org)
Equity Unbound is an emergent, collaborative curriculum which aims to create equity-focused, open, connected, intercultural learning experiences across classes, countries and contexts.  Equity Unbound was initiated by Maha Bali @bali_maha (American University in Cairo, Egypt), Catherine Cronin @cat...
This looks intriguing.

👓 When the Social Silos Fall | Kicks Condor

Read When the Social Silos Fall by Kicks CondorKicks Condor (kickscondor.com)
The silos did help mainstream users form communities. This is still useful—carriers of rare diseases can organize on Facebook, stuff like the ‘TomNod’ group that coordinates to scan satellite photos. On Twitter, humor and art (pixel art, for instance) communities formed that can be casually ob...

👓 When the Social Silos Fall | Brad Enslen

Read When the Social Silos Fall by Brad EnslenBrad Enslen (Brad Enslen)
I hear a lot of people wanting the social network silos (mainly Facebook and Twitter) to go away.  I too want them to go. Eventually.  But before they do, I want to examine some things in this little essay. Some Good Things that the Silos Did Searc...

👓 Logged off: meet the teens who refuse to use social media | The Guardian

Read Logged off: meet the teens who refuse to use social media by Sirin Kale (the Guardian)
Generation Z has grown up online – so why are a surprising number suddenly turning their backs on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat?

👓 Burying Cool | thefirstand15th.substack.com

Read Burying Cool (thefirstand15th.substack.com)
Generations and The Inevitable Death of Soul I imagined our time on the First and 15th as a geek out session. We do not have a lot of space anymore for earnest appreciation. We have to protect our backstages on social media and actively shape our front stages for all of life. It is difficult to drop the affect of cool when there are so many attendant rewards for being cool. But, I would like to drop it anyway, for a bit.

What is smark?

Wrestling fans use “smark” to mean one who can enjoy professional U.S. wrestling while also knowing that it is fake. First of all, wrestling is not fake. So there.

I use smark to mean: smart+snark. We can take serious things seriously without losing our appreciation for the absurd.

 

👓 Teachers Are Moonlighting As Instagram Influencers To Make Ends Meet | BuzzFeed

Read Meet The “Teacher Instagrammers” Who Moonlight As Influencers To Make Ends Meet (BuzzFeed News)
One teacher in Texas told BuzzFeed News she makes a $50,000 a year, but made over $200,000 in a year through Instagram.