Interesting take on the roots of Dan Dennett’s ideas, which did indeed clarify some of them for me.

I can easily see why people would choose Substack in preference to what I do here — and indeed, if I had to make my living solely from writing I would almost certainly be using Substack myself. (Also, I would almost certainly be living below the poverty line.) But every Substack user needs to realize that (a) Substack writers are not truly independent, (b) Substack will almost certainly undergo enshittification, and, therefore, (c) anyone using the platform needs an unenshittifiable backup. 

All you really need to know

Nuggets galore.

I don't know why they call it a potato. Tuber would be just as alliterative, and instructive to boot. Still, an interesting read.

Fun and instructive.

"There are also tools to show me where my online images have been used so I can invoice people who use them without permission. But it’s a pain and I wish Flickr could do that with a click of a button. It might happen."

That would be a game changer, and maybe even profitable for Flickr on a small percentage. 

[M]ake it easier to book international tickets, and that will mean more customers – and that should improve rail firms’ bottom lines. It is just that defensive, national monopolist thinking, and a conservative mindset, is rather too prevalent in the rail sector just now.

Bring it on!

The cold reality is that Brexit has merely shown that the United Kingdom has no one to blame for its problems but itself.

Unmissable analysis from Fintan O’Toole in Foregin Affairs. The UK has a chance at reinvention, and it will not be easy, but it has to try.

Just the facts ...

... not that the facts will change those whose minds care nothing for truth of any kind.

Really great to see this little comic from Lucy Bellwood. A couple of panels to update some of the information would be the cherry on the cake.Is Ceiba operational yet? The website doesn't say, but I don't think so.

Such a great talk and slides from Maggie Appleton. And from my own experience, barefoot developing for myself alone, I think she is absolutely right in her forecast and in the things the future she imagines will need.

Google ... is essentially telling people who used their service for decades that they may have believed that the goal of its service was to “find websites,” but Google thinks the actual goal of its website is to “find answers.” Those are two different things, and one ignores the deeply extractive nature of the other.

Who, currently, is still working on the problem of micropayments? Because, optimistic fool that I am, I still believe that whoever succeeds will not only make money, they will enjoy the undying adulation of many millions of people forever and a day.

Well, why not?

The five chosen books are one thing, the interview with Dieter Helm something else again.

That’s what I would engrave on the front page of every manifesto for a political party for the coming election: ‘It’s the capital maintenance, stupid!’ As opposed to: ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ That would be a good starter.

Caveat emptor has never been more necessary.

Incentives are (almost) everything.

Very interesting write-up, echoing many of my own feelings from IndieWeb camps. Sorry to have missed discussion of the evolutionary history of camels.

TIL that ”the curb cut effect,” which I was familiar with, is “also known as the « i want subtitles on my favourite show because even though my ears are just fine, i like to eat crisps while watching » rule”.

My ears, by the way, are not fine.

Not that it will make any difference ...

I am always impressed when people with really deep knowledge make it easy for me to understand what they are saying, and Jon Worth's railway analyses are a recent discovery in that realm.

A railway trip is green. But the railway sector as a whole in Europe – due to a combination of factors within the industry and political problems – is incapable of making a step change in terms of modal share. In the middle of a climate crisis that is not good enough.

He offers reasons why this is so and ways to fix it, but little hope.

Pretend, just for a moment, that you are anti-abortion. You believe that the ideal number of abortions in a country should be zero. Forget your ideological reasons - which countries have the lowest abortion rates? Well, it turns out to be the ones with high levels of sex education, easy access to contraceptives, excellent pre-natal care, and strong parental leave policies. And they all have legal access to abortion services.

If you truly want to reduce the number of abortions, there are a wide range of policies which actually work and don't involve demonising women and doctors.

Some clear thinking from Terence Eden, on many different things that have something in common: evidence-based policy

About a party Lukas hosted, using an idea from a book by Nick Gray. A two-hour party geared so that people can meet and get to know one another, with a clear end time and deliberate ice-breakers. Sounds like fun.

Fish Overkill!

Cats on the internet are so passé. This site is Web 1.0 compatible.

Sums it up for me, really. And thanks to https://anhvn.com/posts/2024/weeknotes-10/ for the link

It has been a nerdy late afternoon, spelunking into quite a few rabbit holes that I would never normally have discovered. Like this post about correcting the fluttering audio on the soundtrack of Steamboat Willie, thanks to ooh.directory. I even understood some of it.

Ben Werdmuller has some excellent, coherent thoughts about what writers need to thrive independently and as part of a network. I particularly like the idea of a newsletter-based blogroll, so that if you decide to follow me, you can also sign up to follow people I follow. This could indeed foster increased readership. No idea how hard it would be to build. Mind you, I'm still too scared of losing readers to even offer paid subscriptions.

Very interesting post showing just how blunt an instrument iThenticate is for uncovering actual plagiarism. 

[N]ot one single match that iThenticate had found amounted to illegitimate copying. In the end, my dissertation’s fraud factor had dropped from 74 percent to zero.

Will anyone else do the work to ensure that, for example, copied words are from publications before the target document, or are not part of the bibliography, or are not properly attributed quotations?

It’s more than paying my costs and – while it shouldn’t take cash to show gratitude – it is pleasing that people get enough pleasure and interest from the site to pay a few $/£/€.

Ain’t that the truth!

It is always good to be reminded that some things that you might dread are not, in fact, dreadful. I wrote about my own first colonoscopy back in 2009 and luckily, unlike Jason, there was no need to refine my technique.The next time, there was less liquid to chug but the routine was essentially the same. Conclusion: just do it.