👓 Five Things Tech Companies Can Do Better | Susan J. Fowler

Read Five Things Tech Companies Can Do Better by Susan J. Fowler
I believe that tech companies should make a commitment to their employees, a commitment that they will act ethically, legally, responsibly, and transparently with regard to harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and other unlawful behavior. In my opinion, this commitment requires five things: ending forced arbitration, ending the practice of buying employees' silence, ending unnecessarily strict confidentiality agreements, instituting helpful harassment and discrimination training, and enforcing zero-tolerance policies toward unlawful and/or inappropriate behavior. Without further ado, here is a list of those five things, the reasons they're important, and how companies can implement them.
This sounds like for solid advice for all companies, not just those in the tech sector.

👓 We tracked the Trump scandals on right-wing news sites. Here’s how they covered it. | Vox

Read We tracked the Trump scandals on right-wing news sites. Here’s how they covered it. by Alvin Chang (Vox)
We’re experiencing these historical events very differently.

👓 I worked in a video store for 25 years. Here’s what I learned as my industry died. | Vox

Read I worked in a video store for 25 years. Here’s what I learned as my industry died. by Dennis Perkins (Vox)
Some interesting analysis of what we’re loosing with the death of video stores. In particular, we’re losing some of the same type of recommendations and serendipity we’re loosing with the rise of e-books and less use of libraries/librarians. In particular, loosing well-curated collections is a big issue as we replace them with streaming services which don’t seem to have the same curatorial business models.

I particularly enjoyed this quote:

A great video store’s library of films is like a little bubble outside the march of technology or economics, preserving the fringes, the forgotten, the noncommercial, or the straight-up weird. Championed by a store’s small army of film geeks, such movies get more traffic than they did in their first life in the theater, or any time since. Not everything that was on VHS made the transition to DVD, and not every movie on DVD is available to stream. The decision to leave a movie behind on the next technological leap is market-driven, which makes video stores the last safety net for things our corporate overlords discard.

👓 Johns Hopkins’ Shriver Hall auditorium set for interior upgrades | The Hub

Read Johns Hopkins' Shriver Hall auditorium set for interior upgrades by Dennis O'Shea (The Hub)
Homewood campus venue will be closed during fall semester for installation of new lighting, seats

👓 Someone Made A Mashup Of Ozzy Osbourne And Earth, Wind, & Fire.. And We Can’t Stop Laughing! | Society of Rock

Read Someone Made A Mashup Of Ozzy Osbourne And Earth, Wind, & Fire.. And We Can't Stop Laughing! (Society Of Rock)
Probably The Best Mashup We've Ever Seen! If you ask me, mashups of metal singers with other genres of music are some of the greatest things in the world. They're simply down-right hilarious, especially when the two elements of the mash-up couldn't be anymore different. For example, Ozzy Osbourne

👓 Library Offers Largest Release of Digital Catalog Records in History | Library of Congress

Read Library Offers Largest Release of Digital Catalog Records in History (The Library of Congress)
The Library of Congress announced today that it is making 25 million records in its online catalog available for free bulk download at loc.gov/cds/products/marcDist.php. This is the largest release of digital records in the Library’s history.The records also will be easily accessible at data.gov, the open-government website hosted by the General Services Administration (GSA). Until now, these bibliographic records have only been available individually or through a paid subscription.The Library is also joining with George Washington University and George Mason University to host a Hack-to-Learn workshop Wednesday, May 17 through Thursday, May 18, which will bring together librarians, digital researchers and coders to explore how the data (and other interesting data sets) can be used. “The Library of Congress is our nation’s monument to knowledge and we

👓 As ‘Missing Richard Simmons’ podcast wraps, its creator has a theory about what happened to the fitness guru | LA Times

Read As 'Missing Richard Simmons' podcast wraps, its creator has a theory about what happened to the fitness guru (latimes.com)
With the "Missing Richard Simmons" podcast coming to an end, his brother and longtime manager have stepped up to join the chorus of those saying the fitness guru, who hasn't been seen in public for three years, is fine, fine, fine.

👓 Is Richard Simmons missing? Or is he just dearly missed? | Washington Post

Read Is Richard Simmons missing? Or is he just dearly missed? by Dan Zak (Washington Post)

LOS ANGELES — Richard Simmons is gone.

His fitness studio in Beverly Hills is shuttered. On its stoop is a sun-bleached edition of the Beverly Hills Courier from January. Inside is the wreckage of a livelihood: piles of debris, tongues of pink insulation, a dusting of pulverized drywall on the ballet barres. In the middle of it all, a forlorn scale where his students measured pounds sacrificed to the oldies.

“I knew him very well, but I don’t know what happened to him,” says Germen Helleon, the proprietor of a hair salon next door, on Civic Center Drive.

👓 From Witches to Dolphins, These Are the Communities That Make Mastodon Great | Motherboard

Read From Witches to Dolphins, These Are the Communities That Make Mastodon Great (Motherboard)
The top five Mastodon instances as judged by meaningless criteria that we refuse to disclose.

👓 Mastodon Is Like Twitter Without Nazis, So Why Are We Not Using It? | Motherboard

Read Mastodon Is Like Twitter Without Nazis, So Why Are We Not Using It? (Motherboard)
I quit Twitter to join a kinder, nicer, decentralized open source version of Twitter.

Chris Aldrich is reading “I Had Ten Dollars / Greg Leppert – Reading.am”

Read I Had Ten Dollars / Greg Leppert - Reading.am (ihadtendollars.com)
Interview with Greg Leppert. Founder of Reading.am. Co-founder of Svpply. Reads a lot.