👓 Do I Own My Domain If You Grade It? | Andrew Rikard

Read Do I Own My Domain If You Grade It? by Andrew Rikard (EdSurge)

Universities across the country are giving personal web domains to their students. I picked andrewrikard.com. Davidson College, where I’m a junior, pitched it as an opportunity to own my own data. I could create a Wordpress blog from scratch. I could play with HTML, CSS, and Javascript and create experimental projects for courses. I could even keep the domain after graduation. It is a living portfolio, my representation in the digital world.

👓 Tavis Smiley Announces Multiple Deals on Multiple Platforms Including New Online/TV Series

Read Tavis Smiley Announces Multiple Deals on Multiple Platforms Including New Online/TV Series by Tavis Smiley (Facebook)
The Smiley Group, Inc., holding company for award-winning talk show host Tavis Smiley, has announced multiple new deals across an assortment of platforms aimed at reaching a broader, younger and more international audience. “Every crisis presents us an opportunity,” explained Smiley. “I look forward to speaking with a louder, clearer voice to even more people. There is just too much going on that demands our immediate attention.” Following a decision by PBS to end distribution of his long-running nightly talk show, Tavis Smiley, the broadcaster has signed on to host a new online series called “The Upside with Tavis Smiley.” The weekly interview series to commence second quarter 2018, will celebrate the spirit of resilience, the power to overcome that resides in each of us.

👓 PBS Chief Talks Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley, #MeToo | Variety

Read PBS Chief Talks Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley, #MeToo by Daniel Holloway (Variety)
PBS in recent months parted ways with two of its highest-profile on-air personalities, Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley, amid sexual-misconduct allegations. Speaking Tuesday at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour, PBS chief executive Paula Kerger addressed both departures as well as the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault. “When we are aware of issues, we’ll move quickly, as we did with Charlie Rose, as we did [with] Tavis Smiley,” Kerger said.
Oddly, I hadn’t heard much about the Tavis Smiley allegations. Most of the news was just that he was out, but without any direct story. Perhaps I missed it during the holidays??

👓 Learn Archives – Pods Framework | Pods.io

Read Learn Archives - Pods Framework (pods.io)
WordPress Content Types and Fields WordPress is all about creating content. It comes bundled with Posts and Pages, which you can organise using the Categories and Tags taxonomies. It’s also got post meta fields which you can use to append data to your content – author, date, and custom fields, for example.

👓 After review, closure of Johns Hopkins Humanities Center ‘will not be considered’ | Hub

Read After review, closure of Johns Hopkins Humanities Center 'will not be considered' (The Hub)
Committee recommends three possible paths forward for 50-year-old academic center
Glad to hear this may have a happier ending that I had suspected. I remember a conversation several years ago in which Dick Macksey was reticent to retire because it might have adverse effects on the department. I hope to see his legacy and that of the humanities at Hopkins continue unabated.

👓 Here’s to What’s Next | Jonathan LaCour

Read Here's to what's next by Jonathan LaCour (cleverdevil)
Last week, I shared that I have decided to move on from DreamHost, and its been a crazy week tying up loose ends, meeting with colleagues to remember our time together, and reflecting on the past. Now, its time to focus on what's next. On January 16th, I start as Chief Technology Officer at Reliam, a managed cloud service provider based out of Los Angeles, CA. Reliam has just secured up to $75 Million of investment from Great Hill Partners to drive growth. Simon Anderson, former CEO of DreamHost, and my ex-boss, has joined Reliam as CEO. I am thrilled by the possibilities that are ahead of us!
 

👓 Introduce a new way to retain knowledge from Kindle books | Diigo

Read Introduce a new way to retain knowledge from Kindle books by Joel Liu (Diigo)
Diigo provides a 2 step method to help you make the best use of your kindle highlights. Step 1: Import your kindle highlights to your Diigo library. Step 2: Organize highlights from a book in your own knowledge structure.
Another interesting way to potentially cut out data from Amazon Kindle e-books in terms of annotations, marginalia, and notes.

👓 Investor Bill Miller commits $75 million to Johns Hopkins Philosophy Department | JHU Hub

Read Investor Bill Miller commits $75 million to Johns Hopkins Philosophy Department by Dennis O'Shea (The Hub (Johns Hopkins))
Legendary investor William H. "Bill" Miller III has committed a record $75 million to the Johns Hopkins University Department of Philosophy to broaden and intensify faculty research, graduate student support, and undergraduate study of philosophical thought.
Support for the humanities like this is definitely a worthy cause!

👓 I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life | Babe.net

Read I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life by Katie Way (babe)
Exclusive -- A young photographer told the comedian: ‘I want to make sure you're aware so maybe the next girl doesn't have to cry on the ride home’
Reading as follow up to the provocative article I read in The Atlantic yesterday. I’m a bit more interested in the cultural differences brought up by The Atlantic author and the millennial viewpoint in this article.

I’m often struck with people’s seeming lack of ability to communicate verbally, and this seems even more apparent with the millennial generations. Also striking is “Grace’s” even more dramatic reaction to the encounter after she’d had time to discuss it more with friends. It almost reads as if she didn’t know what to think of things by herself without the filter of her friends’ comments and thoughts. I’m curious if this phenomenon is generational and what role the texting/sharing/social media environment of the past decade has or hasn’t done to impact this viewpoint.

Some thoughts about the journalistic perspective

I spent a few minutes looking into babe as a source and I’m even more curious how to take the story given the photo I found at the bottom of their article and the text from their “about page” which is given the permalink path “/manifesto”. Their top menu rail includes the topics: “news, lust, fads, looks, IRL, pop” which makes me even more suspicious.

Given these and their apparent size and exuberant youth and lack of experience, I have to wonder about their journalistic integrity a bit. While they did seemingly go to some lengths to verify Grace’s story with friends and back it up with apparent photos and texts, it almost plays as journalistic theater copying work and stories they’ve likely recently read out of The Washington Post and The New York Times. How does such a small publication get a story and choose to push it right after the Golden Globes in such a way? Are the editors or writer friends with the subject or even the subject herself? If so this should be mentioned for full disclosure in the article. Especially in the case where they may be trying to press such an article into the mainstream and thereby have some significant exposure and financial upside for themselves.

Page header on babe’s “manifesto” and found at the bottom of the story.

We publish our own voices, uncensored and unfiltered
babe started in May 2016 as an experiment by a group of editors in our early twenties. We now reach more than 3 million readers a month, and a million girls follow us on Facebook. And because we aren’t owned by a magazine empire which needs cover stars, we can say what we like.

We know our readers like we know our friends. On babe we put out the kind of media we want to read – stories and videos and memes that are as spontaneous and savage as what goes down our group chats. And then on Fridays we get drunk together.

babe is into good news reporting, trash trends, personal stories, industry-leading analysis of fuckboys and the pettiest celebrity drama.

And we’re cool with admitting that we are full of contradictions, because all girls are. We care about safe sex and access to birth control, but know sometimes you just need to pop some Plan B. Find us in the gap between our image of ourselves and how we actually behave.

Hang with us here, read our top stories here, tell us where we’ve fucked up here.

👓 The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari | The Atlantic

Read The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari by Caitlin Flanagan (The Atlantic)
Allegations against the comedian are proof that women are angry, temporarily powerful—and very, very dangerous.
I love that the author discusses her personal background and cultural viewpoint here. It’s certainly an interesting perspective on the movement in the past six months. I’m quite curious to read the underlying source article. Until now I’ve not heard of babe as a source at all.

👓 Lana Del Rey says Radiohead suing over song’s similarity to Creep | Music | The Guardian

Read Lana Del Rey says Radiohead suing over song's similarity to Creep by Ben Beaumont-Thomas (the Guardian)
The singer-songwriter tweeted ‘it’s true about the lawsuit’, saying Radiohead are asking for 100% of the publishing royalties to her track Get Free

👓 Limits and Colimits, Part 1 (Introduction) | Math3ma

Read Limits and Colimits, Part 1 (Introduction) by Tai-Danae BradleyTai-Danae Bradley (Math3ma)
I'd like to embark on yet another mini-series here on the blog. The topic this time? Limits and colimits in category theory! But even if you're not familiar with category theory, I do hope you'll keep reading. Today's post is just an informal, non-technical introduction. And regardless of your categorical background, you've certainly come across many examples of limits and colimits, perhaps without knowing it! They appear everywhere - in topology, set theory, group theory, ring theory, linear algebra, differential geometry, number theory, algebraic geometry. The list goes on. But before diving in, I'd like to start off by answering a few basic questions.
A great little introduction to category theory! Can’t wait to see what the future installments bring.

Interestingly I came across this on Instagram. It may be one of the first times I’ve seen math at this level explained in pictorial form via Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bdd8vmfBQvG/

👓 Crohn’s disease patient in fact had Heinz sauce sachet perforating intestine | The Guardian

Read Crohn's disease patient in fact had Heinz sauce sachet perforating intestine (the Guardian)
After six years of failing to respond to standard treatment, woman underwent surgery which found cause of symptoms