Mammouth Café
#dreddit
On Tools, Methods, and Workflow
"Amongst my more tedious topics for discussion is the anti-generative nature of today's technological tools. The Web, much computer hardware, document formats, browsers, writing styles, etc., all fail to either elicit or deliver much by way of truly original, informative, or high-quality content...."
Fans of tedium, rejoice!
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/8urwck/on_tools_methods_and_workflow/
@ConnyDuck @inkscape So was the #dreddit avatar and logo.
(The hero is done with those elements in the #GIMP.)
@calvin @natecull @pnathan @brennen If you look at my "Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User" #dreddit piece, you'll see I discuss that specifically.
There is also the distinction between "nodal" utilities and "complexity hubs". The latter do stdin/stdout poorly, if at all (though some do in fact do it). Most complexity hubs have *multiple* inputs and outputs.
Information Security, PEPs, Podesta, 'Who Are You?', Risk, and Scale
There's a term I'd run across in connection with the ICIJ's Paradise Papers reporting: "Appleby, like all legal firms in this field, uses a term for such clients and potential clients --- politically exposed persons, or PEPs. A PEP is someone with a prominent profile --- a celebrity of the political, diplomatic, military or judicial worlds"... This is, it turns out, a term of art...
John Stuart Mill, on Inequality, Opportunity, and Poverty
Stash this one away for the next time you hear, "Well, I raised myself up by my bootstraps, why can't (you|some third part(y|ies))?"...
New year, new Open Thread: January 2018
Bad Hygiene Causes Decentralisation
The First Word: No
Is wealth accumulation bad, and if so, why?
Trees, Dendrites, Brains
Of Protocols and Choice
It's Open December at the Dreddit
Brilliant Failure: Every Frame a Painting
"...The weird thing is: success, failure, doing the same thing, starting something new, they're all terrifying, though each in their own way. Though I think you may actually have to walk part of that journey yourself to fully appreciate it. Tacit knowledge...."
Peninsulas of Babel: The limits of cultural knowledge
"...The net technical capability of a civilisation is limited by its capacity to pass on that knowledge to the next generation. Knowledge acquired by an individual but not transmitted is not social, and knowledge acquired even by a group, but not passed on to the next generation, is not cultural. Among the other constraints on human capability is our teaching (and learning) efficiency...."
The concept comes from an ontology of technological mechanisms, which I'm also working on. This describes not /specific technologies/ (say, metalurgy or computers), but the /mechanisms/ that technology operates through. I've come up with nine of these.
The first 8 are: Fuels, Materials, Technical knowledge (traditional "technologies"), Scientific knowledge, Information, Networks, Systems, and Power transmission/transformation. I'm still working on a full doc, the #dreddit has bits.
/3
Emergencies, Response, Notification, and Bootstrapping
"...Survival can be a matter of feet or inches, or of seconds or minutes. Information is useful to the extent that it is delivered to those who can and will act on it. What also needs to be recognised is that not engaging those who don't need to be mobilised at a particular point in time is also critical. How do you accomplish this given a crudely-targeted and narrow-bandwidth channel?..."
User Hostile Web Design: The Online Etymological Dictionary redesign
"Best I can tell, the Online Etymological Dictionary went live with a new site design today. I miss the old one, badly. Etymonline is one of the Internet's hugely underappreciated gems.... The best element of the old site was that a search turned up full entries for the relevant entries.... t also enabled three key affordances of the site, all of which I tremendously appreciated..."
Seeking Research on Inclusive Measures of Economic Impact by Industrial Sector -- SIC, NAICS, ISIC or similar classifications
"The question I'm pursuing is whether or not it's possible to come up with a general assessment of the net economic good or impact of various economic sectors, perhaps with other metrics of the impact or contribution of a particular firm, institution, organisation, or governmental body..."
September remains Open: City Rising, Chomsky on Sources of Information, Smith on mistaking Wealth for Wisdom
Or, in other words, Problems I Do Not Face ...
Energy Storage: Pumped hydro vs. "gravity train" tracked-rail storage
"...To match the output would require 100 locomotives. If those are moving at 80 MPH, then the full run would be 24,000 locomotive miles, or a gravity-track storage capacity of 240 miles length. If we assume instead each locomotive-train set has a 1 hour (80 mile) run, then we would require 300 hours * 100 locomotives or 30,000 locomotives and full trainsets..."
Do I need a spoiler alert?
The Rise, Decline, and Decapitation of Progress -- A metaphorical journey through the Monkey Ward
"...not only was Progress celebrated, but she was unambiguously linked to the concept of Commerce.
"(Or, perhaps, was a convenient rationalisation for placing the body of a naked woman atop one of the Great Manly Spires of Industry, if you prefer alternative symbology.)..."
Sean Blanda: How online media are reducing trust
...Most outlets chasing reach leverage social media (mostly Facebook) to get content read by as many people as possible. This changes the reward from “quality” and “originality” to getting content to spread virally. This decreases trust.... [L]ots of disposable stuff is written quickly, with little regard to what it adds to discourse. This decreases trust....
Something of a theme.
Banks as feudal lords: how the financial system extracts monopoly rents through network dynamics
...Instead of capitalism based on democratic principles of trade, it’s more of a feudal system: The land is owned by the banking class and anyone using it has to pay the owners. The “land,” in this case, is the entire U.S. financial system of banking and credit....
-- Heidi N. Moore's observation, on which I comment.