Reads

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

👓 Unfollowing everyone on Twitter | Ryan Barrett

Read a post by Ryan BarrettRyan Barrett (snarfed.org)

A few days ago, I unfollowed everyone on Twitter, added them all to a list, and I now read that list instead. It’s shockingly better. Only their own tweets and retweets, in order. No ads, no "liked by," no "people you may know," no engagement hacking crap. It’s glorious.

Even better, when I inevitably end up in the home timeline anyway, it only has my own tweets and ads, nothing interesting. No dopamine outrage bullshit cycle to get caught up in.

Shh, don’t tell, I’m afraid some low level product manager at Twitter will discover this and "fix" lists like they "fixed" the home timeline a while back.

There are a couple drawbacks. I lost a few people I followed whose accounts are protected; I need to find and re-follow them. Also this evidently makes it harder for people to DM me, somehow. Not sure how, I don’t use Twitter DM much.

Still. Glorious.

This is pretty inspiring. Thinking about doing it myself, though I’ll have to be careful about private accounts so I don’t unfollow them. I do also wish that feed readers had a better way to display Tweets.
Read Pronouns in the Bio by gRegor MorrillgRegor Morrill (gregorlove.com)
Here is a simple thing you can include as part of your online profiles: list the pronouns people can use when referring to you. This removes any ambiguity and helps normalize the practice of sharing our pronouns. Not everyone uses pronouns that match the gender they present as and some people use no...

👓 The Web’s Arrow of Time | Parallel Transport

Read The Web’s Arrow of Time by Kartik PrabhuKartik Prabhu (kartikprabhu.com)
I was looking into adding some navigation links to my post feed/archive pages, when I ran into an old confusion of mine. The Web has a completely messed up arrow of time!

👓 Using Hypothesis Groups in the Classroom | Hypothesis

Read Using Hypothesis Groups in the Classroom by Jeremy Dean (web.hypothes.is/blog/)
A couple of weeks ago, we quietly released a new feature here at hypothes.is: the ability to annotate websites and PDFs in groups. Previously, all annotations created using hypothes.is were either public or private (“only me”). Now you can create a hypothes.is group and invite others to join you in annotating a text or set of texts amongst yourselves–here’s a tutorial to get you started.

👓 Introducing Groups | Hypothesis

Read Introducing Groups by Jon Udell (web.hypothes.is)

Our mission here at Hypothesis is to enable a conversation over the world’s knowledge. So far that’s been a public conversation. But some conversations need to flourish in private spaces. You’ve always been able to create private annotations that only you can see but, until today, not annotations visible only to a group. That’s what we’re launching today, it’s already transformed our own experience of annotation, and we’re confident it will do the same for you.

It works very simply. At the top of the sidebar you’ll find a new view control set to Public. That’s your default group. The dropdown menu has, initially, one option: New group.

Read IndieWeb Meetup by John Chidgey (techdistortion.com)
Once I knew the conference dates in the States I realised that the IndieWeb meetup in Austin would be happening on the first Wednesday of the month, which was an evening when I would be in Houston. Noting it was a mere 2.5 hour drive (far closer than a 28 hour door to door flight) I decided to drop by.

👓 Have y’all been following what’s happening with Instacart this week?

Read a thread by Sasha PerigoSasha Perigo (Twitter)

Have y’all been following what’s happening with Instacart this week? The company is retaliating against workers, and it’s really, really bad. I’m going to share what I know in a thread.  Instacart is a grocery delivery service. “Shoppers” are the workers who pick up items at the store and deliver them to customers.

Instacart keeps wages really, really low. A Shopper in Menlo Park says she makes a few hundred a week.

Shoppers went on strike this week with two demands:
- The app increase the default tip option from 5% to 10%.
- Instacart stop charging “service fees” and pocketing them. Instacart not only didn’t honor the workers strike demands, but they retaliated and cut pay further!

They cut bonuses which can be up to 40% of the workers’ income.

The workers are contractors so they aren’t as protected from this retaliation.

Instacart Shoppers wrote a Medium post explaining what’s happening to them and asking for software engineers and other employees to speak out against their bosses. @GoogleWalkout shared it today.

Instacart flagged it to Medium, and it’s been TAKEN DOWN!
link.medium.com/VW7Oy3D9r1

What can you do?
- Share this story widely and generate bad press for @Instacart.
- DON’T use Instacart right now.
- Organize with the gig workers at your company. Their struggle is your own!
- Follow @GigWorkersRise for updates and donate to support them.

mentions 

Calling Instacart to give them negative customer feedback could help turn this around too.

If you're a customer who's boycotting, let them know!

👓 In Seeking to Join Suit Over Subpoena Power, Mulvaney Goes Up Against the President | New York Times

Read In Seeking to Join Suit Over Subpoena Power, Mulvaney Goes Up Against the President (New York Times)
In effect, the acting chief of staff hopes the court will tell him whether to listen to his own boss, who wants him to remain silent, or to comply with a subpoena from the House, which wants his testimony.

👓 A Simpler, Account Free, SPLOT | Alan Levine

Read A Simpler, Account Free, SPLOT (CogDogBlog)
This is kind of a big deal for SPLOTs… but then again I thought the plugin version was, and that made nary a ripple. Maybe I need to write an open textbook (SNAP!). A brand new version of the…
Read The daily creativity prompts that help me spend time on myself by Ben WerdmüllerBen Werdmüller (Ben Werdmüller)
Last month, I drew a new picture every day as part of Inktober, responding to daily word prompts. In response to the word Ash, I drew a response to Brexit: In response to the word Mindless, I drew a self-portait of sorts: And in response to Frozen, I drew a heart. I'm not an artist by any means, ...
Read Oh, It’s November? by gRegor MorrillgRegor Morrill (gregorlove.com)
I had not even registered that it was November until I read Jamie’s post about participating in National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). Something about it hit me just right with inspiration and I decided I should try it again. My last attempt was 2013 and 2011 was the last time I met the goal of ...