👓 Webrings are Dead | Kicks Condor

Read Webrings are Dead by Kicks CondorKicks Condor (kickscondor.com)
This reminds me of these “useless web” sites—this being the primary one—that have managed to stay very popular. (A lot of YouTubers make videos of themselves clicking through this site and I often see kids at school using the site.) And it’s basically a webring. But it’s not a code-based...

👓 Coroner’s Report: Webrings are Dead, Part II | Brad Enslen

Read Coroner’s Report: Webrings are Dead, Part II by Brad EnslenBrad Enslen (Brad Enslen)
This is Part II of my series on the Death of Webrings.  Part I is here. For this article I am going to use two examples.  I want to make it clear that I am not picking on the example rings, their creators or their intended uses.  I do want to point out what I see as flaws in their model that unle...

👓 Why is Heidi Heitkamp voting against Kavanaugh? | Washington Post

Read Why is Heidi Heitkamp voting against Kavanaugh? by Amber Phillips (Washington Post)
She is the most vulnerable Senate Democrat running for reelection in November, if not the most vulnerable senator on the ballot in 2018. Her race, in a state President Trump won by 36 points, is ground zero for the argument that the drama surrounding Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court may actually help Republicans keep control of the Senate. And yet, Sen. Heitkamp (D-N.D.) is voting against Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, a decision that thins the margin of error Republicans have to confirm Kavanaugh. That’s despite one local poll taken after Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault showing 60 percent North Dakota voters want Kavanaugh confirmed.

👓 Dishing up lies while proclaiming the love of facts, Trump and Sarah Sanders gaslight America | Washington Post

Read Dishing up lies while proclaiming the love of facts, Trump and Sarah Sanders gaslight America by Margaret Sullivan (Washington Post)
President Trump’s assault on truth — and would-be truthtellers — has hit a new low. It may not seem possible, considering that this is a president who has misled or lied to the public thousands of times.

👓 Trump’s attorney suggests he may sue the New York Times. Don’t bet on it. | Washington Post

Read Trump’s attorney suggests he may sue the New York Times. Don’t bet on it. by Paul Farhi (Washington Post)
Donald Trump has threatened to sue all of them for something they wrote or said about him. In each case, the threat proved hollow, sound and fury signifying nothing more than Trump’s peeve at a critic. Trump has sued on occasion, though far less often than he says he will.

👓 11 Warning Signs of Gaslighting | Psychology Today

Read 11 Warning Signs of Gaslighting by Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D.Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D. (Psychology Today)

Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. It is done slowly, so the victim doesn't realize how much they've been brainwashed. For example, in the movie Gaslight (1944), a man manipulates his wife to the point where she thinks she is losing her mind.

People who gaslight typically use the following techniques:
1. They tell blatant lies.
2. They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof. 
3. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition. 
4. They wear you down over time.
5. Their actions do not match their words.
6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you. 
7. They know confusion weakens people. 
8. They project.
9. They try to align people against you.
10. They tell you or others that you are crazy.
11. They tell you everyone else is a liar.

Interesting to see that this was published on January 22, 2017, immediately after the inaugural of Donald J. Trump.

👓 Pasadena’s “Darth Vader” Building to Be Demolished | ColoradoBoulevard.net

Read Pasadena’s “Darth Vader” Building to Be Demolished by Garrett Rowlan (ColoradoBoulevard.net)
Last Saturday, a 1936 film called The Shapes of Things to Come played at the Pasadena Main Library, and a block south, two days later on Monday evening, the City Council and attendees got a glimpse of those shapes, in predevelopment plans presented for two significant real estate projects.

👓 Prep, Poly, Westridge Ranked Among Top County High Schools | Outlook Newspapers

Read Prep, Poly, Westridge Ranked Among Top County High Schools by Camila Castellanos (Outlook Newspapers)
A trio of Pasadena-area high schools scored in the top five among private schools in Los Angeles County, while eight San Gabriel Valley campuses were ranked among the top 20 Catholic scho...

👓 Motels to House Pasadena Homeless? | ColoradoBoulevard.net

Read Motels to House Pasadena Homeless? by Garrett Rowlan (ColoradoBoulevard.net)
If the body politic were a real body, the body of Pasadena would be one plagued by itches and bruises that continue to irritate.

👓 8 First Things That Happened During 1966 Rose Queen Reign | ColoradoBoulevard.net

Read 8 First Things That Happened During the 1966 Rose Queen Reign by Carole Cota Gelfuso (ColoradoBoulevard.net)
A 19-year-old student at Pasadena City College, who almost did not make the tryouts because she lost her mom couple of months prior to the event, was named Rose Queen in 1966. Her name was Carole Cota Gelfuso, and that year turned out to be a year of many “firsts”.

👓 Microblogging | Benjamin Esham

Read Microblogging by Benjamin Esham (esham.io)

The idea of microblogging on my own website is something I’ve been kicking around for years. Instead of posting short pieces of text to Twitter, longer pieces of text to this blog, and photos to Instagram, why not just post all of that stuff here? I could still cross-post to other sites if I wanted to, but my intention has always been that this website should represent me on the web and so it only makes sense to put all of my work here.

My microblog is a new part of this site where I’m posting the kinds of things that I posted on Twitter and Instagram. I’ll still post things on those sites for the foreseeable future, but only a subset of the things I’m posting here. You can follow my microblog using a feed reader (well, more on that later) using the links on my new feeds page.

👓 Just a Thought: Searching vs. Browsing | Powazek

Read Just a Thought: Searching vs. Browsing by Derek Powazek (powazek.com)

Think about these two words for a moment: "Search" and "Browse." They're words that are used frequently to describe things we do on computers. But consider their traditional associations:

Browsing is shopping, strolling, flipping through a magazine. Browsing is fun, casual, entertaining.

Searching is mechanical, trial and error, frustrating. Searching is work.

There's a powerful emotional difference between the two. Now let's talk about tags.

👓 Just a Thought: How Tags Happened at Technorati | Powazek

Read Just a Thought: How Tags Happened at Technorati by Derek Powazek (powazek.com)
It's been six months since we added Tags to Technorati (where I'm Senior Designer), and as it turns out, it was a pretty big deal. So before we get too far away from it, here's the story of how it came about. From my perspective, anyway.

The page was set up to show any post that contained a link to it – in other words, if you linked to that page, then your post appeared on that page.  

Just a rehash of Refbacks? or an early implementation of Webmention?!
October 04, 2018 at 09:19AM

👓 Just a Thought: Design for Selfishness | Powazek

Read Just a Thought: Design for Selfishness by Derek Powazek (powazek.com )
In 1996, Paulina Borsook wrote a story that, frankly, really pissed me off. In "Cyberselfish," published in Mother Jones and eventually turned into a book, she wrote about how new have-it-your-way technology was creating a generation of spoiled brats with computers. I took umbrage. Not only was I a proud member of the generation she was lambasting (a generation that is now oldschool on the internet, for whatever that's worth), but I had personally observed just the opposite. I witnessed people using new digital tools to collaborate. I saw more selflessness and altruism online than off.

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia

I think the internet’s core message can be summed up in one word: Share.  

An early reference to the sharing economy?
October 04, 2018 at 09:08AM

The last thing most people need is another microphone. They need something to say. (And time to say it.)  

Interesting to hear this from 2006 and looking back now…
October 04, 2018 at 09:12AM

Designing for selfishness does not mean abandoning the group good.  

October 04, 2018 at 09:14AM

Except that the aggregate selfish behavior of millions of people tagging billions of photos means that the public tag pages make entertaining surfing for everyone.  

Reading this reminds me of some of Brad Enslen and Kicks Condor‘s conversations about discovery on the net.

How can one leverage selfish behaviour to the benefit of all?
October 04, 2018 at 09:15AM

👓 Technorati Tags: What Are They Really? | Bokardo

Read Technorati Tags: What Are They Really? (bokardo.com)
Round and round we go, where we’ll stop, nobody knows! The crazy game of tags gets crazier. What are Technorati tags really? And should we use them now that categories are being indexed in the same way? Jeff Jarvis has started another good conversation about tagging over at Buzzmachine. (He started another good conversation about tagging recently). He recently implementated his interpretation of “tags”, and that got him thinking about their value and purpose.