Two bits of post-Thanksgiving news: First, the hardcover edition of GENEROUS THINKING is on super duper sale today at @HopkinsPress: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12108/generous-thinking
Links
s p a r k l e s
Hannah Arendt papers, 1898-2006
It’s a very autumnal IndieWebCamp in Nuremberg this weekend. Red, orange and yellow leaves cut out to resemble the IndieWebCamp logo.
Many things have been urged upon the beleaguered public schools: install computers, reduce class size, pay teachers better and respect them more and give them bodyguards, reform teacher training, restore the principal's authority, purge the bureaucracy and reduce paperwork, lengthen the school year, increase homework, stick to the basics, stop ''social promotion,'' kill social studies and bring back history, and (the latest plan) pay kids not to drop out or play truant.
Why information is the unifying principle that allows us to understand the evolution of complexity in nature
At least the press is saying Jan 16, 2024 now. Tough luck for those doing their holiday shopping for me.
Happy to announce that @PrincetonUPress will be publishing “Evolution of Biological Information”. Look for it in 2022. @AlisonKalett pic.twitter.com/EkEpMyMROs
— Chris Adami (@ChristophAdami) November 12, 2021
Topics to be discussed include the isomorphism theorems; ascending and descending chain conditions; prime and maximal ideals; free, simple, and semi-simple modules; the Jacobson radical; and the Wedderburn-Artin Theorem.
Ring theory is a branch of abstract algebra that deals with sets—for example, the collection of all integers—that admit both additive and multiplicative operations. Modules generalize the notion of vector spaces, but with scalars drawn from a ring rather than a field. Beginning with a survey of the basic notions of rings and ideals, the course explores some of the elegant algebraic structuring that defines the behavior of rings—both commutative and non-commutative—and their associated modules. Topics to be discussed include the isomorphism theorems; ascending and descending chain conditions; prime and maximal ideals; free, simple, and semi-simple modules; the Jacobson radical; and the Wedderburn-Artin Theorem. Theory will be motivated by numerous examples drawn from familiar realms of number theory, linear algebra, and real analysis.
As Prince of Wales, Charles was always ready with an opinion. Now, with his coronation at hand, his job is to have none. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/05/08/can-charles-keep-quiet-as-king-coronation

I’m quite excited at the prospect of an impromptu, Kimberly Hirsch-is-in-the-Netherlands-inspired IndieWeb meet-up.
A new year brings new calls for a return to personal blogging as an antidote to the toxic and extractive systems of social media.
From language and writing to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, computers and Adobe Photoshop, our species has a history of inventing tools for augmenting our own intelligence. But what comes next? Andy Matuschak is a developer and designer. He helped build iOS at Apple, founded and led Khan Academy's...

It's gonna be a while before AI takes all our jobs though. Or maybe not, since it speaks with the confidence of a mediocre white man while gaslighting me throughout this whole reply.
All the recent Twitter drama has obviously sparked renewed interest in Mastodon and the fediverse, and that’s even included Bridgy Fed, my little IndieWeb side project that turns personal web sites into full-fledged fe...