Recently Read

A weekly recap of the articles and posts I’ve read that I think are worth your time.

• Re-fueling while cycling made all the difference — After-hours engineering — A good lesson if you are getting into cycling as a hobby-ist. However I do have questions. What’s so bad about gels etc? And why does someone write a post asking for a response and then not have any way to to respond to them? Comments? Reply by email? Nope. So, into the ether this goes…
• Leisure as a Dream Job – by Madison Huizinga — I yearn for more leisure. I am endlessly curious. I need find “the time and mental space that allows curiosity to be ushered forward.”
• Turn Apple Music Playlists into mixtapes with AppleScript, Markdown & JavaScript — The title makes it sound highly complex, but it isn’t. Love seeing people play with simple technology like this.
• The expertise problem – #OMN (Open Media Network) — “The problem isn’t that geeks are bad people. It is that technical culture can become too comfortable with abstraction. People become numbers, communities datasets, politics optimisation. Relationships become networks, trust becomes authentication and participation becomes a user interface. And suddenly, we have designed a technically elegant system that nobody actually wants to live inside.”
• book: the ethical slut by dossie easton and janet hardy – ava’s blog — A book I read a long time ago. Even then, whilst I learned a lot, it was also a little “off”. Trusting my own instincts I took some things from this book and ignored others.
• AI Waste – Ubergeek Kelly’s World- Life, technology, science, rants — The same day I used ChatGPT to save me maybe 30 mins of onerous admin, this popped up.
• The backlash Pride faces from inside and outside the LGBT community – BBC News — I’ve attended Pride festivals in Glasgow twice. Both times were fun. The second time did have a different feel to it though, less frivolity, more drinking. Never a great shift. But, we support and fly the flag and maybe let the people involved decide what they want Pride to be.
• Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” Slowed Down to 33 RPM Sounds Great and Takes on New, Unexpected Meanings (RIP) | Open Culture — RIP. Another beautiful soul has left us. This post is a lovely take on her best known song.
• How Dolly Parton Said No to Elvis Presley — More content about Dolly Parton. What a talent.
• We saw signs of domestic abuse, but we didn’t know how to protect Stacy – BBC News — If you even suspect this is happening to someone you know, do something, anything. Don’t wait. It’ll be too late.
• MOOD – Calvin and Hobbes – The Full Story — My favourites. Not my fav strip but it’s Calvin & Hobbes, always good. I can’t wait to introduce Jack to him (well aware that Jack is rapidly becoming Calvin).
• The Quiet Power of Reflective Games | The MIT Press Reader — “Umberto Eco wrote about the delectatio morosa, or the pleasure of slowing down and focusing on the unimportant.” Slow games, a whimsical idea. We need more whimsy.
• The Digital Watch Is Younger Than You Think · Humane Performance Lab — I had no idea!
• You can now hide posts by keyword 🙈 — Bubbles 🫧 Blog — Bubbles continues to be a well thought out, useful, service. I love the way updates happen too, reacting to user need in a smart way.
• Ways of Treeing – Orion Magazine — “The shape of these branches—of history itself—is a rebellion against the straight line, against its autocracy. It reminds me that nothing can be reversed.”
• I’m leaving Pagecord – moonwriting — The Pagecord debacle gets worse.