👓 Collecting note takers | Andy Bell

Read Collecting note takers by Andy BellAndy Bell (Andy Bell)
I think I might collect links to sites of folks who are posting notes on their personal sites on GitHub. It’d be great if y’all could send me some links so I can start it off with a nice healthy list!

🔖 Personal sites are awesome

Bookmarked Personal sites are awesome by Andy Bell (personalsit.es)

Personal sites are awesome, so this site was built so we can all discover each others. All the links are by folks that want to share their site with the world.

If you want your site to appear on here, go ahead and submit it on GitHub, or drop me an email.

I just ran across this interesting version of a directory which is being built based on a GitHub repo and deployed to https://personalsit.es/

It’s built by Andy Bell who has been building his own website and is at least IndieWeb aware. I’ve added the example to the IndieWeb wiki page for directories. While interesting and useful, like some of the other directories I’ve seen floating around, there is a small hurdle that one needs to be able to fork a GitHub repo, edit it, and send a PR to be included, though I do like that he has an email option to bring the technical hurdle down. The other benefit is that it allows people to modify or delete their data as well. I do like the decentralized nature of of it, but I wonder about scale and search-ability.

I can’t help but wonder about building a similar directory site that aggregates its data by Webmention and uses the h-cards from websites to automatically update itself. Naturally having an OPML file(s) (think various versions that are sortable using tags/categories) or some other exportable and/or subscribe-able ability for feed readers would be highly useful.

In addition to resources like chat-names, Indie Map‘s list, as well as some planets, OPML resources like my own IndieWeb list, and the IndieWeb web ring, this could be another interesting directory creation method for IndieWeb-specific websites.


👤 Kicks Condor; Brad Enslen;

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👓 Feed page | Andy Bell

Read Feed page by Andy BellAndy Bell (Andy Bell)
I started using this site as the canonical root of all of my “social” content in 2018, but got lured back into the convenience of Twitter and Mastodon and sort of gave up on that idea. With yet more Facebook and Instagram controversies closing out the year, I had a sudden reminder that I should own my content—not irresponsible corporations like them or Twitter.

👓 Politics Perspective ‘Would you like to speak to the president?’ | Washington Post

Read Politics Perspective ‘Would you like to speak to the president?’ by Dan Balz (Washington Post)
PARIS — “Would you like to speak to the president?” That was about the last question I expected from a stranger on a Friday night in Paris. I was at a brasserie in the Latin Quarter, enjoying dinner with James McAuley, The Washington Post’s Paris correspondent. We had finished our meals and were continuing our conversation as we waited for the check to arrive.

👓 4 Reasons @GetClassicPress Should Add Native Microformats Support | Greg McVerry

Read 4 Reasons @GetClassicPress Should Add Native Microformats Support by Greg McVerryGreg McVerry (quickthoughts.jgregorymcverry.com)
Now that phase one of Gutenberg has dropped the interest in #ClassicPress grows by the day. So many WordPress developers fear the loss of control they will face under the new regime of 5.0. Many just don't want to do the work of all that refactoring. #IndieWeb and #ClassicPress should join forces. w...

📑 Thanks for the wayback link Kevin. I … | Jeremy Cherfas

Annotated a post by Jeremy CherfasJeremy Cherfas (Jeremy Cherfas)
Maintaining a website that you regard as your own does require maintenance. Like a garden, you may choose to let a few weeds flourish, for the wildlife, and you may also seek to encourage volunteers, for the aesthetics. A garden without wildlife is dull, a garden without aesthetics is pointless.  

👓 it is an inescapable law of journalism that a simple yes/no question in a headline almost always requires a “No” | Jeremy Cherfas

Read Because it is an inescapable law of ... by Jeremy CherfasJeremy Cherfas (Jeremy Cherfas)
Because it is an inescapable law of journalism that a simple yes/no question in a headline almost always requires a "No". And in this particular case, I do not believe blogging waned in 2018. QED.
An interesting rule of thumb…

👓 Yes, let’s begin impeachment | Fogknife

Read Yes, let’s begin impeachment by Jason McIntoshJason McIntosh (Fogknife)
I hereby add my small voice to the rising chorus of those with their minds changed by Yoni Appelbaum's "Impeach Donald Trump", published in The Atlantic this month.
Amen

👓 Libraries | Manton Reece

Read a post by Manton ReeceManton Reece (manton.org)
For 30 days between March 19th and April 17th, 2016, I visited a different library in Austin and posted to my microblog about each one. The best libraries can be wonderful, quiet places to work. I always brought my iPad Pro with me to do some writing. Here are the libraries, with the date linked to ...
After reading about Snippets from Manton, I thought this was going to be about coding libraries. Yet again, he’s pulled the rug out from underneath me…

I do love this idea of getting out more, going to different places, and even more particularly going to so many different nearby libraries. This is an awesome idea!

👓 New example code: Snippets | Manton Reece

Read New example code: Snippets by Manton ReeceManton Reece (manton.org)
It might surprise some developers to learn that the 4 official apps for Micro.blog — the iOS and macOS apps, Sunlit, and our microcasting app Wavelength — don’t actually share very much Objective-C or Swift code. To minimize dependencies and so that we could more easily develop each app quick...
I saw Snippets and thought about micro.blog’s predecessor. This post turned out to be about something related but much different.

Great to see pieces of micro.blog opening up like this.

👓 Donald Trump: Why US Law Makes It Easy to Stiff Contractors. | Fortune

Read Why U.S. Law Makes It Easy for Donald Trump To Stiff Contractors (Fortune)
Fortunately, the practice is not common in business.
I came across this article while thinking about how Trump’s stiffing workers and contractors seemed similar to his handling of the government shutdown.

After reading this, it almost seems to me that with the government shutdown Trump is “selling out his goodwill” in a political sense the same way he’s sold out the goodwill of his own businesses.

Seeing both of these things juxtaposed is another very stark reminder that he seems to have no empathy for anyone at all. This article seems to have called out the same thing long ago.

In practice this [selling out goodwill] rarely happens, for two reasons.
First, most business people, despite what some people think, have integrity, a heart, and a conscience.
[…]
Fortunately, you don’t see that too often. That’s because most business people, like most other Americans, are fundamentally decent people. They believe in, and practice, the Golden Rule.

👓 The Vulnerability of Learning | Desert of My Real Life

Read The Vulnerability of Learning by Cathie LeBlancCathie LeBlanc (Desert of My Real Life)
Listening to the students talk about feeling unsure and vulnerable when they first encountered open educational practices made me think about my own learning. As a mid-career academic who has changed jobs and even disciplines, I am a confident learner. I have received lots of praise and other kinds of positive reinforcement for my ability to learn new things. If you have read previous posts on my blog, you might know that I am really interested in developments in the IndieWeb movement and am trying to write about some of my experiences with using IndieWeb tools to build my own web site. I’ve been building my own sites for years and so I have a lot of confidence in my ability there as well. Working on the IndieWeb stuff has been challenging because there’s a lot of new language and new concepts as well as some aspects of web development that I have not engaged with before. I often feel vulnerable when I write my posts about the IndieWeb because my understanding of how everything works is emerging. In other words, I don’t get it all yet but I’m still writing publicly about my work.

👓 Twins get some 'mystifying' results when they put 5 DNA ancestry kits to the test | CBC

Read Twins get some 'mystifying' results when they put 5 DNA ancestry kits to the test (CBC)
Last spring, Marketplace host Charlsie Agro and her identical twin sister, Carly, bought DNA ancestry kits from five of the most popular companies in the industry. Find out why some of the results they received left a team of computational biologists at Yale University baffled.
I would expect some reasonable variation between companies, but far, far less within a particular company. In all though, the article does a good job of explaining some of the basics of what is going on here.

👓 City names with articles | English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Read City names with articles (English Language & Usage Stack Exchange)
Typically we don't use articles with city names, e.g. "Seattle" and not "the Seattle." I know at least one exception though which is The Hague. Are there any other city names which we use with the

👓 The “The” | Gothamist

Read The "The" by Doug Gordon (Gothamist)

Why does "Bronx" have to be prefaced with "The?" Why not "A Bronx" or, most reasonably, just plain old "Bronx?"

Thanks, Blaney

The Vatican. The Hague. The Netherlands. The O.C. The Bronx. Unless you are a cartoon character, you can probably name on one hand the number of locations worldwide that are prefaced with the definite article "the." How the Bronx found itself in such esteemed company as the Holy See and the only county big enough for Peter Gallagher's eyebrows is an interesting bit of New York City trivia.

According to The Encyclopedia of New York City, the borough's name can be traced back to Jonas Bronck, a Swedish sea captain from the Netherlands, who settled in the area in 1639 and "eventually built a farmstead at what became 132nd Street and Lincoln Avenue." (Interestingly enough, if the home was still standing today it would only rent for about 25 shillings per month, due to Colonial rent-control laws.)

Bronck's name - Bronck, Bronck's, Bronx...note the pattern - would be given to the river that flows through the middle of the borough. Like the Mississippi, the Thames, and the Nile, most rivers have the function word "the" linked to their names. While no source gives an official date on when the "the" truly took hold, a visit to The Straight Dope tells us when people started referring to the general area surrounding the river's east and west in a more official capacity:

In 1874 about 20 square miles of mainland Westchester county was annexed to New York City. This region was known thereafter as the Annexed District of the Bronx, in apparent reference to the Bronx River, then the district's eastern border. In 1898 the Annexed District became part of the Borough of the Bronx - presumably still referring to the river. After a while, however, people forgot about the river and began casually referring to the entire borough as "the Bronx."

Some other cocktail chatter about the Bronx: not only is it the the only new York City borough connected to the mainland United States but it is also the only one to have a river run right through it. Despite its gritty reputation, about 24% of its land area is parkland, more than any other borough. It's also one of our favorite worlds ending in "x," along with "Jimi Hendrix," "Redd Foxx," and "Xbox."