onfocus

I want to share a book I read recently that I absolutely loved: The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth.



My introduction to this book was this tweet:

Things native English speakers know, but don't know we know: pic.twitter.com/Ex0Ui9oBSL

— Matthew Anderson (@MattAndersonBBC) September 3, 2016

I felt like I was getting a glimpse at the source code that runs English. Not at the syntax and grammar level (though there is a bit of that), but the presentation layer. I got the preview from Amazon and stumbled on this passage:

A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else.

That passage felt like demystifying a mystical process and from there I was hooked. I ordered the book and read it cover to cover.

Forsyth devotes one chapter to each figure of rhetoric identified by the Ancient Greeks. He describes them as, "...techniques for making a single phrase striking and memorable just by altering the wording." Some figures are familiar friends like alliteration. Some figures like hendiadys evade ease and detection. Some figures work across sentences like these three that start with the same words: anaphora. Of course you don't need to know the figures of rhetoric to use or appreciate them, but knowing how they work can help you employ them strategically.

The most fun aspect for me was the way Forsyth uses each figure to describe that figure throughout each chapter. Identifying each use became something of a puzzle to solve while learning about how puzzles work. Forsyth also frequently gives a prime example of each figure that everyone knows. Then he draws on everything from Shakespeare to poetry to music lyrics to illustrate each one. He demonstrates that rhetorical figures aren't a dusty relic, they're a part of the natural way we use language that we can tune into and appreciate.

It was a joy to read and joy is in need. And like all correct-thinking people, Mark Forsyth has a blog. It's The Inky Fool.

Another mid-week link dump. I'm trying to link beyond our new national nightmare a bit. If you only have time for one, make it The Great Silence. And then make time for Vicki Boykis' post about blogging. (Maybe I need to prioritize instead of categorize, hmm.)

The State of Things

• John Scalzi: Three Weeks In
• @quinnnorton: Let me say something to my friends about the political emotion of the moment.... (breathe, strategize, use reason)
• Kottke: Is liberal democracy in trouble? "Warning signs are flashing red."
• George Lakoff interview: A Brain Scientist Explains How To Turn Trump Into A 'Loser' (eg. FiveThirtyEight runs the numbers)

Media

• Atlantic: A Reflexive Liar in Command: Guidelines for the Media
• Politico: The New Rules for Covering Trump
• AP: Writing about the 'alt-right' (new internal style guideline for accurately labeling racists)
• The News (music industry veteran on handling disruption)

Designing Things

• Maciej Cegłowski: Who Will Command The Robot Armies? ("What we need to do is grow up, and quickly.")
• 7 web design dos and don'ts (Monteiro: "It's time to grow up.")
• Gina Trapani: We’re All Frauds ("...get really comfortable being uncomfortable...")
• Om Malik: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum
• Leigh Alexander: It’s Time For a New Kind of Power Fantasy

Online Community

• Vicki Boykis: Fix the internet by writing good stuff and being nice to people (via @mathowie)
• Gizmodo: Reddit Is Tearing Itself Apart

Security

• The Guardian has moved to https
• More Than 1 Million Google Accounts Breached by Gooligan
• Ars Technica: Firefox 0-day in the wild is being used to attack Tor users
• Motherboard: The Entire Internet Will Be Archived In Canada...

Supplemental

• The Great Silence (beautiful short story via @fraying)
• Lin-Manuel Miranda to Produce 'Kingkiller Chronicle' (whoa, LMM and Patrick Rothfuss working together!? )
• Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS ($5/month)

The Amazon Feed Generator is still humming away on my server. Now with categories!

Say you want to stay up with the latest cat calendars that Amazon offers. It was kind of a pain before. Now you can select Books then the Calendar category within books and that specificity makes all the difference! You'll find things like the Cats in Art 2018 Wall Calendar before anyone else.



I'm not sure who these people are buying 2018 cat calendars already but I guess it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

Related, node.js is still neat.

This just keeps going. If you only read one article from these links, make it the NY Times article about conflicts around the globe.

Corruption

• NY Times: Potential Conflicts Around the Globe for Trump
• Vox: Donald Trump is now questioning the legitimacy of the election he won
• Atlantic: An Erosion of Democratic Norms in America
• Washington Post: Trump Foundation admits to violating ban on 'self-dealing'
• @amjoyshow: how kleptocracy could happen here...

Media

• Intercept: Some Fake News Publishers Just Happen to Be Donald Trump’s Cronies
• NPR: We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs
• Huffington Post: Media Helps Boost False Claim That 'Millions' Voted Illegally
• How the Trump Campaign Built an Identity Database and Used Facebook Ads
• @jayrosen_nyu: Evidence-based vs. accusation-driven reporting
• BBC Radio: Cambridge Analytica CEO interviewed by John Humphrys

Hail Mary

• Daily Beast: The People Chose Hillary Clinton

Extra

• Coping with Chaos in the White House (living with narcissistic personality disorder)
• Dave Pell: America’s Achilles Heel (celebrity)
• What you can do to save America from tyranny
• TPM: This Is Not the Natural State of Things (July 2016)

The soundtrack for these links is the Butterfield Blues Band, Born Under a Bad Sign:

I took a little break from compiling links but the web did not take a break from creating them. So I bring you a new consternation of think pieces. (Pretty sure that's the collective.) No algorithms were knowingly used in collecting these links.

Corruption

• Donald Trump: Corrupt AF
• @JoltedToad: Trump Foundation admits to violating federal law by using funds to support campaign...
• NY Times: Donald Trump's Caldron of Conflicts
• LA Times: How Trump could use the presidency to help his own business interests

Media

• Fascism and The Historical Irony of Facebook’s “Fake News” Problem
• Pando: Why has Facebook changed its mind on fake news? Thank the Germans
• ProPublica: How Journalists Need to Begin Imagining the Unimaginable
• I can’t just stand by and watch Mark Zuckerberg destroy the internet.

Hail Mary

• Jill Stein: Election Integrity depends on YOU!
• The Guardian: Jill Stein requests Wisconsin recount, alleging hackers filed bogus absentee ballots
• CBS Philly: An Audit Of Pennsylvania Election Results? Already Underway
• Bruce Schneier: Hacking and the 2016 Presidential Election
• Washington Post: Electoral College must reject Trump unless he sells his business...

Practicing Cryptography

• A practical guide to securing macOS
• Decent Security on router configuration

Tech

• flarum: Delightfully simple forum software.
• trigger-happy (open source IFTTT clone in progress)
• Paul Ford: Get Me Central! (A quick explainer)
• Everything you ever wanted to know about building a secure password reset feature

Extra

• @jbushnell: I took a look at the Professor Watchlist so you don't have to...
• Washington Post: Americans keep looking away from the election’s most alarming story
• On Bullshit and the Oath of Office: The "LOL Nothing Matters" Presidency
• Kottke: Five Steps to Tyranny
• Inspirational Images: 1, 2, 3, 4

Once again, LOL. (Lots of links.) If you only read one link from this pile, make it Alex Steffen's The Politics of Optimism. It's easy for me to get bogged down in the news of the world and withdraw. This helped. It reminded me of my favorite Chomsky quote that I should just have tacked up on my monitor:

If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.

And now, this:

Action

• We're His Problem Now (weekly call to action spreadsheet)
• @hels on action focus
• @mulegirl on repetition
• Comic: How to Call Your Reps When You Have Social Anxiety
• Artblock (when you're blocked... via @scottandrew)

Corruption

• US Law: Bribery, Graft, and Conflicts of Interest (via @mathowie)
• ThinkProgress: Trump poised to violate Constitution his first day in office...
• Washington Post: For foreign diplomats, Trump hotel is place to be
• Wall Street Journal to PEOTUS: Liquidate

Media

• Dan Gillmor: Facebook, Google, Twitter et al need to be champions for media literacy (@dangillmor is an essential daily read)
• EFF: Tech Companies, Fix These Technical Issues Before It’s Too Late
• Vox: Don’t let Donald Trump’s antics distract you from what’s really important
• Rough Type: Meet the new gatekeeper, worse than the old gatekeeper

Hail Mary

• USA Today: Still time for an election audit
• Time: The Electoral College Was Created to Stop Demagogues Like Trump

History

• Richard Florida reading list (via @timoreilly)
• The President and the bomb (via @jdhamblin)
• Waxy: Teaching good manners to soldiers in the 1940s
• Jacobin: Vengeance Is Mine (I hate reading election post-mortems, but this has some good looking-forward in it too)

Extra Extra

• To get it done, write it down (mathowie talks with the original lifehackers)
• You Are Not Paid to Write Code ("...code is a nasty byproduct of being a software engineer.")