Reads

Reading list of books, magazines, newspaper articles, other physical documents, or online posts

📖 The Thank You Book by Mo Willems

Read The Thank You Book by Mo Willems (Disney-Hyperion)
Gerald is careful. Piggie is not. Piggie cannot help smiling. Gerald can. Gerald worries so that Piggie does not have to. Gerald and Piggie are best friends. In The Thank You Book!, Piggie wants to thank EVERYONE. But Gerald is worried Piggie will forget someone . . . someone important.
They’re were some interesting misdirections here with a few cute reveals. Only the sharpest reader will anticipate the last one.

How are there already 25 of these books?! It was nice to have some crossover with Willems’ other books.

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

👓 Coming Soon: Reclaim Video | bavatuesdays

Read Coming Soon: Reclaim Video by Jim Groom (bavatuesdays)
The idea of running a video rental store has been bouncing around at Reclaim Hosting for over a year now. When we started renovating the CoWork space/Reclaim Headquarters over a year ago we realized we would soon have a vacant strip mall storefront at our disposal. I started floating the idea of a video rental store to Tim, but given he was knee-deep in actually designing and building CoWork with Lauren, those discussions were postponed. At this point it was not clear how it related to anything else we already do, namely run Reclaim Hosting and CoWork—it was just a fun idea.
This is an awesome sounding idea. I’d love to hear more about it. I know that folks like Kevin Smokler and David Dylan Thomas are going to flip over it.

Despite the fact that it seems like a lot of fun, I’m curious how they’re going to make sure it doesn’t bring down the bottom line and put anything else in jeopardy. I certainly get the fun part, but the minimal break even portion doesn’t sound like it’s quite there to me.

The tough part of the physical media game is that these are magnetic tapes. While many of my 90’s VHS tapes are relatively fine, my VHS from the early 80’s are in worse shape. Tougher is having machines to play these successfully on. This post reminds me a lot of the difficulties I’ve heard from UCLA Film & Television archivists doing work on tapes themselves.

👓 We Want Your VHS! | bavatuesdays

Read We Want Your VHS! by Jim Groom (bavatuesdays)
If you have some old VHS hanging around the house, yet have gotten rid of your VCR long ago—it might be high time to let Reclaim Video take them off your hands. Rather than letting them sit around collecting dust...
Interesting…

👓 Trump spends 100th day at golf club as president | CNN

Read Trump spends 100th day at golf club as president by Dan Merica (CNN)
President Donald Trump reached a presidential milestone at his Palm Beach County, Florida, golf club on Saturday: One hundred days in office at a golf club that bears his name.

👓 Trump was angry and ‘unglued’ when he started a trade war, officials say | NBC News

Read Trump was angry and 'unglued' when he started a trade war, officials say by Stephanie Ruhle and Peter Alexander (NBC News)
Frustration on several fronts aided the president's tariff decision
A bit of a click-bait headline, but the general coverage of the lack of planning around this is astoundingly inept. Stories like this shouldn’t exist in the opening days of an administration much less a year in. His one primary campaign platform was that he was such a great leader and it seems to be his worst possible attribute.

👓 ‘I Live Paycheck to Paycheck’: A West Virginia Teacher Explains Why She’s on Strike | New York Times

Read ‘I Live Paycheck to Paycheck’: A West Virginia Teacher Explains Why She’s on Strike by Jess Bidgood (New York Times)
We spoke to Katie Endicott, a high school English teacher, about why teachers are not returning to the classroom, despite a deal that offered them a 5 percent raise.
This is just painful to hear. We really need to double teachers’ salaries and create some competition in the market to improve schools. We really can’t afford any more uneducated people in this country.

📖 Read Murilla Gorilla, Jungle Detective by Jennifer Lloyd

Read Murilla Gorilla, Jungle Detective by Jennifer Lloyd (Simply Read Books)
Murilla Gorilla, the jungle detective, is woken up by a new case: Ms. Chimpanzee’s muffins were stolen. But who did it? It’s up to Murilla to find out... as long as she can find her badge first! Murilla may seem like a hopeless detective—disorganized, messy and always thinking about her next snack—but out of her mess come some pretty good ideas, and some pretty funny moments too.
Simple but entertaining. Great illustrations with a lovely pallette. I’d read others in the series.
It’s a pseudo chapter book with incredibly short chapters for kids on the border of moving from short story books to chapter books.
Rating: 3 of 5 stars

👓 The Academy Awards Scandal That First Got PwC Its Job Counting Oscars Votes | Time

Read The Academy Awards Scandal That First Got PwC Its Job Counting Oscars Votes by Olivia B. Waxman (Time)
Years before PricewaterhouseCoopers caused a scandal for mixing up Oscars envelopes, another controversy got the firm that gig.
 

👓 Hope Hicks to Leave Post as White House Communications Director | New York Times

Read Hope Hicks to Leave Post as White House Communications Director by Maggie Haberman (New York Times)
Ms. Hicks, who had been considering a departure for several months, did not indicate what her next job would be, but she said that she plans to leave the White House in the next few weeks.
Clickbait headline: No more Hope in the White House

Great article here with some reasonable background and history.

👓 US housing department to spend $165,000 on own furniture as it faces $6.8bn budget cut | The Guardian

Read US housing department to spend $165,000 on own furniture as it faces $6.8bn budget cut by Jon Swaine (the Guardian)
Spending is in addition to $31,000 dining set for Ben Carson’s office, even asproposed budget cuts would affect poor and homeless Americans
How are there not better checks on this kind of waste before they even happen?

👓 Teacher Fired Gun in Classroom, Barricaded Himself: Police | Time

Read Teacher Fired Gun in Classroom and Barricaded Himself at Georgia High School, Police Say by Associated Press (Time)
Police in Georgia say officers have responded to reports of shots fired at a Dalton high school and a teacher is now in custody
Saddened to hear about this school shooting incident at the neighboring high school just 23 miles from Calhoun High School, which I attended in Georgia. I remember driving to Dalton High School to take my S.A.T.s and frequently attend football and soccer games.

It’s potentially proof that arming teachers isn’t the great idea many thought it might have been just a week ago.

This now makes three school shootings in communities that I’ve either been directly touched by or been in close proximity to following two others: a shooting at Johns Hopkins in April 1996 involving a friend who was staying in my apartment at the time and the Heath High School Shooting in Paducah, KY in 1997 in the town where I’d lived briefly in 1996.

This has long since ceased to be a political issue and is a pressing public health issue that needs to be addressed on multiple levels.

👓 Three ways we can improve Drupal’s evaluator experience | Dries Buytaert

Read Three ways we can improve Drupal's evaluator experience by Dries Buytaert (dri.es)
It’s time to improve Drupal's download process and end-user documentation. I believe we can improve Drupal's evaluator experience with these three steps.

👓 Kushner loses access to top-secret intelligence | Politico

Read Kushner loses access to top-secret intelligence (POLITICO)
A memo sent Friday downgraded the presidential son-in-law and adviser and other White House aides who had been working on interim clearances, barring them from top-secret information.