Amen to that, with knobs on.
Two minutes is probably a bit much for an intro. But I do think it is useful to introduce the person, if there is a guest, and at least give a hint of what you will be talking about. At least, that's what I do.
Rachel Cooke on criticism: ‘What is the point of a critic if not to tell the truth?’
Very interesting longish article on the role of the critic today. Artists are increasingly unleashing their fans on critics, and ignorant "critics" are doing a poor job of serving their audience. I don't know, though, how new this phenomenon is. Sure, in the olden days it was hard to get 3 million people issuing death threats, but nor was the relationship between critics and creators always a love-in of mutual respect.
Nicely anachronistic writing tool, too.
You forgot to say how bad it really was.
In the latest episode, the incomparable Darra Goldstein tells me about her search for "the true heart of Russian food" and also about some of the surprising rediscoveries and innovations in the foodways of modern Russia.
Listen at https://eatthispodcast.com/russian-food
Working from home can be magical - BrettTerpstra.com
There have been endless articles on how to work from home. And so many of them are wrong in one way or another, yet each proclaims itself to be true for you and your productivity. The fact is that working from home means a lot of different things, and every individual has to find their own rhythm. And for some of us, it’s downright magical compared to working in an office.
At last, some sense.
I’ve learned to reframe “procrastination” as “marination.”
I'm still learning. Have been for 45 years.
I think it is a splendid idea to revisit indiewebify.me and reorient the expectations around that page. It does suggest that one fiddle with HTML, and that might well be off-putting if one is new to IndieWeb.
Hey, @FAOstatistics! http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home has been unreachable for more than 24 hours. What's up?
@StPaulTim Lots of ways to do that, and we are friendly and welcoming. Here are some suggestions https://indieweb.org/discuss and there are lots of online meetings happening too.
2020-03-25
Hurrah! There will be seed-saved tomatoes, just as I was about to give up hope.
Today, in random pieces of delight shared by people I follow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=108&v=QPKS5ngz01s&feature=emb_logo
Thanks http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/
Last night we watched The Rose Tattoo on iTunes. Strange film, shot on Key West, which was why we watched it, with Anna Magnina and Burt Lancaster. She plays a woman widowed by her cheating husband, who eventually falls for Burt. Dated, histrionic, fun. Tennessee Williams wrote. Now, a competition: who was the worst young Italian? Burt, in this, or Warren Beatty in The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, another Williams classic?
As a gardener myself, albeit without an actual garden, only a terrace full of pots, I could really relate to what Dezz.ie had to say.
But the really cool thing is that pink banner at the top of her site, and how it occupies the full window at any height until you scroll past it. That's intentional.
John Naughton asks: Also: isn’t herd immunity about vaccination, not infection?
Nope, it is about immunity. That may be the result of prior infection, or it may be the result of vaccination. Either way, what matters is the percentage of contacts who are susceptible.
Funny to feel a close affinity with what is happening to a friend half a world away, and interesting that Jason too needs his parks and open spaces. The biggest park here is the remnants of an old established family villa, and so is surrounded by high walls. That is how they manage to close it off. Another big park on the other side of town is much more open, and the rumours are that the city cops are just hanging out around the perimeter, trying to keep people out.
Kudos to @Cockos for offering a temporary Reaper license to anyone who needs one to work from home.
https://cockos.com/reaper/reaper_2020_temporary_license.txt
2020-03-17
1 min read
There's no way I know of to find old spam that came into WithKnown while I was not getting notifications. I had thought that my scheme of jumping on spam as soon as possible after receiving (restarted) notifications had found them all. But no. Today surfaced a bookmark post that had accumulated 10 spams since August 2018.
Lotta continua!
COVID-19 by the Numbers by Anatole Kaletsky - Project Syndicate
On the plus side, maybe more people will stop using "exponential" as a synonym for "very large".
Nah.
I very much share and understand Amani Mena's frustrations, and often feel the same way myself. That's the problem with plurality, and building blocks, and many things, loosely joined. Too much choice. That's why when I started I went for WithKnown out of the box. Today I might recommend micro.blog. Once you're up and running, and have everything on your domain, you can learn and change systems as you do so. The key is to have everything on your domain. #IndieWeb
That's interesting, Chris. I've just checked, and Huffduffer is picking up only my domain, and none of the other links present as rel="me" on my Home page. I wander what the difference is. Might need to ask @adactio.
G-FEED: COVID-19 reduces economic activity, which reduces pollution, which saves lives.
"I calculate that the reductions in air pollution in China caused by this economic disruption likely saved 20-times more lives in China than have currently been lost due to the virus in that country"
Oh boy! Data analysis rocks.
Get political reporters off the coronavirus story because they don't distinguish between right and wrong | Press Watch
[W]hen they’re just talking smack, maybe the best thing to do would be to ignore them – and instead rely on sources who actually know what they’re talking about and reporters who know enough about health and science and reality to discern between what’s true and what’s not.
That would be almost all the time, right?
There's much to applaud in Jason's write-up of a university student's efforts to show people in Japan where positive responses to the coronavirus are. And one thing to abhor, and that's the description of "a foreign virus running rampant". The virus may have had an origin elsewhere, but there is no sense in which a pathogen can be considered foreign. This sort of wording legitimises xenophobia.
Nice idea, but anecdotally, the few people on Twitter whom I’ve asked have said they don’t have a blog of their own.
Wait a minute. Are the campaign to abolish recipe headnotes and the campaign to insist on listening to podcasts at 1x somehow related? I'm not going to tell anyone what to do with their time. Listen at any speed you like; but listen. @kathrynw5 @nwquah
Woke to an unsettling SMS and email from Ryanair telling me the return flight at the end of March had been cancelled. What about the outbound flight? I need to decide what to do.
"My Brexit stash of tins of beans and toilet paper has had a rebrand. It’s now the corona virus emergency stash."
Very clever.
A Text Renaissance
Lots of interesting ideas here from Venkatash Rao, although I still don't get the attraction of tweetstorms, or whetever they are called nowadays. Certainly, though, the focus on text as the thing has always made sense to me. Presentation matters, of course it does, but so does content. Just as it does in audio.
2020-02-29
Far and away the most difficult prompt to date. So I cheated.