IndieWebCamp Brighton 2024
Very interesting write-up, echoing many of my own feelings from IndieWeb camps. Sorry to have missed discussion of the evolutionary history of camels.
Accessibility notes from your headache-prone friend
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.
Putin's genocidal myth, by Timothy Snyder
Not that it will make any difference ...
How green are Europe's railways? - Jon Worth
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.
Forget Technocrats – Let’s Get Some Realitycrats – Terence Eden’s Blog
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
Lukas Rosenstock's Blog
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.
Ten Gallon Tank · Jan De Wilde
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
Smoother sailing: Studying audio imperfections in Steamboat Willie
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.
Running your own site is painful. Hosting Nazis is worse
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.
Language Log: The plagiarism circus
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?
2023 (Phil Gyford’s website)
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!
Fogknife : My colonoscopy strategies (8 minute read)
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.
Just a moment...
History is not destiny, and yet a little understand of history can help to make sense of things. I am grateful to Alan Jacobs for surfacing this enlightening account of the history of an area called Palestine. And if I remember correctly, in 1948 Jordan could have accepted Arabs from Western Palestine who wanted to resettle, but feared that their presence would upset the Hashemite kingdom.
The wholeness of the word: 'Regenesis' as myth, Part II | Chris Smaje
”Plants are energised by zero-carbon, zero-cost sunlight, whereas factory-produced microbial biomass is energised by generated electricity at an energetic cost amounting to at least an order of magnitude more.”
Not going to quibble about that order of magnitude greater than zero. The point is very well made: Proposed ecomodernist solutions to future food supply are not solutions at all.
Stop Hitting Yourself – Bike Snob NYC
"the very nature of social media discourse requires you to stand your ground like Jeremy Vine behind that truck and die with your metaphorical Brompton of Righteousness rather than acknowledge that someone with an opposing view may very well have a valid point."
I couldn't stand him on the radio either.
The wholeness of the world | Chris Smaje
Please give me what Monbiot calls ‘bucolic fairytales’ or ‘neo-peasant bullshit’ and what I call agrarian localism, agrarian populism or a small farm future over this sad dualism.
Glad to see that Chris Smaje has embarked on a series of articles about his new book: Saying NO to a Farm Free Future.
Demise of The Wirecutter, and Trusted Reviews in General – The Brooks Review
What's a person to do?
Gordon's Notes: Mass disability - dysfunctional web sites, apps for everything
I'm sure there is something to this.
against apps, for wander lines – The Homebound Symphony
Long, and fascinating, preamble to the essential point.
When Naomi Klein Realized People Regularly Confused Her With Naomi Wolf, She Went Down a Rabbit Hole | Vanity Fair
My treating Wolf like a branding problem would be about as off-brand as I could get.
Fascinating read, and now I am trying to think whether I have ever mistaken the Naomis.