Newport Sunset
Gimlet
This is the 2nd Podcast Saturday and I might as well jump straight to my desert island choices. I have been a fan of PJ and Alex since they were an offshoot of On the Media called TLDR back in the aught-fourteens. They report about Internet culture and it's the one podcast I look forward to the most. If you're reading this you've probably heard Reply All and I'm preaching to the choir. But if not, go ahead and dig into their catalog. I have a few favorites: #109 Is Facebook Spying on You?, #78 Very Quickly to the Drill, #102 Long Distance, #96 The Secret Life of Alex Goldman, and #44 Shine On You Crazy Goldman. And the Best Episode (once you're a hardcore fan): #36 Today's the Day. I still remember when & where I was driving when I heard this episode. Is that weird?
YouTube | Louie Zong
I really enjoyed this 60 second music lesson about the way chords color a melody. It made me think of Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style. So if you like this thing you might like that thing too. [via mefi]
Mirror
Towards Data Science
“The data we are shown is not the only data there is.” A good description of a statistical analysis problem and a reminder to think about causes of data not just data you see in front of you. This reminds me of that old zen saying don’t confuse the moon with the finger that points at it.
Never Sleeping
austinkleon.comIn focus on this Newsletter Wednesday is Austin Kleon's newsletter. You may remember Austin from his books about creative work like Steal Like an Artist or his latest Keep Going. Each week he shares 'ten things worth sharing' and I always find interesting fuel for thought. I'm also inspired by the personal tone of his writing and it's something I'd like this blog to get closer to as it grows up.
Medium
Dave Pell asks us to vote against hate. Bonus link: Vote for Democrats Everywhere by Brent Simmons. Bonus link 2: Your vote determines the future of others by Sarah Kendzior. Bonus link 3: Why I, a young person, probably won’t vote by Alexandra Petri. Bonus link 4: Nancy. Voters get ice cream.
Freedom to TinkerWith elections on our minds (vote Tuesday!) here's Ed Felton describing a new voting system called E2E-V. I'm not sure I get the nuances of the coin-flip challenge voters but it sounds like a much better system than our current black-box, insecure, privately owned machines. And of course my favorite system is Oregon's statewide mail-in system. I'm sure it's not as secure as end-to-end verifiable cryptography but I think the convenience and ease of understanding how it works means more people participate.
Flickr of Destruction
Last April, photo sharing service SmugMug purchased photo sharing service Flickr and I was optimistic: Flickr of Hope. I still am, but Flickr's tension between being a public good and a private company is hitting the fan (so to speak) after they announced that they will delete photos from free accounts that have more than 1,000 photos: Why we’re changing Flickr free accounts.
I have 1,433 photos at Flickr and I'm not paying for a pro account so 433 photos will disappear in January. I'm not a pro member for many of the same reasons Brian Sawyer writes about here: So Long, Flickr, and Thanks for All the Photos. (Brian edited the Flickr Hacks book I co-wrote in 2006.) At one time I shared all of my photos online at Flickr but I don't use the service today. I downloaded those photos long ago, but I still think it's valuable to leave them in their original context. They're not important historic documents that need to be preserved but maybe the Flickr archives as a whole do count as an important historic document?
Alt copyright framework Creative Commons thinks so: CC Working with Flickr to Protect the Commons. They say, "Flickr is one of the most important platforms to host and share CC licensed works on the web, and over 400 million of the photos there are CC licensed – representing over a quarter of all CC licensed works on the web." Flickr's new policy could remove a good number of those but I haven't seen any estimates.
Flickr is in a difficult position. As a private company they can't store an infinite number of photos for free indefinitely. That's traditionally the role of institutions like The Library of Congress but does the LOC care about millions of personal snapshots? Maybe the Internet Archive could take them on, but I can imagine it would strain their resources as well.
I hope Creative Commons can help Flickr find a home for those photos. If not a new home, maybe a grant of some kind to help with the costs to preserve our collective history.
I have 1,433 photos at Flickr and I'm not paying for a pro account so 433 photos will disappear in January. I'm not a pro member for many of the same reasons Brian Sawyer writes about here: So Long, Flickr, and Thanks for All the Photos. (Brian edited the Flickr Hacks book I co-wrote in 2006.) At one time I shared all of my photos online at Flickr but I don't use the service today. I downloaded those photos long ago, but I still think it's valuable to leave them in their original context. They're not important historic documents that need to be preserved but maybe the Flickr archives as a whole do count as an important historic document?
Alt copyright framework Creative Commons thinks so: CC Working with Flickr to Protect the Commons. They say, "Flickr is one of the most important platforms to host and share CC licensed works on the web, and over 400 million of the photos there are CC licensed – representing over a quarter of all CC licensed works on the web." Flickr's new policy could remove a good number of those but I haven't seen any estimates.
Flickr is in a difficult position. As a private company they can't store an infinite number of photos for free indefinitely. That's traditionally the role of institutions like The Library of Congress but does the LOC care about millions of personal snapshots? Maybe the Internet Archive could take them on, but I can imagine it would strain their resources as well.
I hope Creative Commons can help Flickr find a home for those photos. If not a new home, maybe a grant of some kind to help with the costs to preserve our collective history.
CBC.ca
Welcome to podcast Saturday! (Also a thing.) NXIVM is (was?) a multi-level marketing self-help system (cult?) that recently imploded. Its senior officers are now waiting for their trials. This podcast tells the story of one senior member who left (escaped?) before the end. I hesitate to recommend this podcast because it requires some serious psychic energy to stay involved. There are descriptions of physical and mental abuse and it gets to be too much at times. Plus it's one of those crime podcasts where you're not sure the protagonist is a protagonist. It is seven episodes of a riveting, difficult story.
Medium
Here's another great article by linguist George Lakoff about our current media environment. It's frustrating to see the same dynamics play out over and over again. It's like seeing legacy code in action while lives depend on refactoring. Two other folks I tune into for analysis of the media are Ezra Klein and Jay Rosen and they recently had a conversation about what's happening now. Also also, don't miss Klein's article about Enemy of the People. And after you digest all of that important garbage, a reminder from Warren Ellis: You can tune your Internet connection until it is useful and fun.