Category: Random

1) “My daughter didn’t ask to have a writer for a mother, but that’s who I am.”

Promising not to write about her anymore would mean shutting down a vital part of myself, which isn’t necessarily good for me or her. So my plan is to chart a middle course, where together we negotiate the boundaries of the stories I write and the images I include. This will entail hard conversations and compromises. But I prefer the hard work of charting the middle course to giving up altogether — an impulse that comes, in part, from the cultural pressure for mothers to be endlessly self-sacrificing on behalf of their children. As a mother, I’m not supposed to do anything that upsets my children or that makes them uncomfortable, certainly not for something as culturally devalued as my own creative labor.

*bites tongue*

I’d written nearly 700 words on this before I reminded myself of one of my New Year resolutions of worrying less about stuff I can’t change and more focusing on the things I can. I also don’t think there’s anything I can add to this conversation that the internet hasn’t already.

2) The term “sharenting” is new to me and it’s perfect.

Are generations of children now growing up without privacy? “I don’t think so,” she says. “The conditions of their privacy are changing, partly because of their own actions, partly others’. What will matter to children is to feel they have agency, respect and dignity – that’s at the heart of privacy. So anyone sharing or using their images should prioritise this.”

I try to be careful about how I share the lives of my family online. Nothing too personal or embarrassing, certainly not the warts. I hope I’m doing a good job of it.

3) “Jerry was thinking about none of this at his kitchen table. He was thinking about how he would hide his lottery playing from Marge.”

Marge would have questions, Jerry knew, and he might not have bulletproof answers. He didn’t quite believe the numbers himself. How likely was it that the hundreds of employees at the state lottery had overlooked a math loophole obvious enough that Jerry could find it within minutes? Could it be that easy? He decided to test his theory in secret, simulating the game with a pencil and yellow pad first. He picked numbers during a roll-down week, waited for the drawing, and counted his theoretical winnings. On paper, he made money.

Fascinating longread about how a couple in Michigan hacked the lottery.

The 20 Best Movie Posters of 2018

National Geographic’s Best Photos of 2018

TIME Magazine’s Top 100 Photos of 2018

Barack Obama’s Favorite Books/Movies/Songs of 2018

Longreads Best of 2018

The Species That Went Extinct In 2018

52 Things Kent Hendricks Learned in 2018

5. You ascend spiral stairs in a clockwise direction. This design dates back to medieval times. It’s a defense against attackers. A right-handed attacker would be holding their sword in their right hand, making him less mobile and agile than the defender facing down the stairs. (Wikipedia)

Reuters Pictures of the year 2018

Pitchfork’s 50 Best Albums of 2018

52 Things Tom Whitwell Learned in 2018

15. No known machine learning system can reliably tell a bird from a bicycle when a human is trying to trick the system. [Tom B Brown]

1. “I don’t recall exactly when my phone became such a festival of stress and psychological trauma, but here we are.”

We are reaching a point of no return, when it comes to information collection, if we have not already gone beyond it. Cameras and screens, microphones and speakers. Capture your face and your voice and your friends’ faces and voices and where you are and what’s in your email and where you were when you sent it and… What did you say? Click, here’s an ad. And where did you go? Click, here’s an ad. Who were you with? Here’s an ad. What did you read here’s an ad how do you feel here’s an ad are you lonely here’s an ad are you lonely here’s an ad are you lonely?

But Mat Honan says the Google Pixel 3 is still a very good phone.

2. Can how you use your phone determine your state of mind? There’s an app for that.

Once a patient installs Mindstrong’s app, it monitors things like the way the person types, taps, and scrolls while using other apps. This data is encrypted and analyzed remotely using machine learning, and the results are shared with the patient and the patient’s medical provider.

The seemingly mundane minutiae of how you interact with your phone offers surprisingly important clues to your mental health, according to Mindstrong’s research—revealing, for example, a relapse of depression.

3. As Sears files for bankruptcy there are a lot of reflections on the company’s impact on American life. One that’s stood out is Louis Hyman’s Twitter thread on how radical the Sears catalog was in the era of Jim Crow:

Every time a black southerner went to the local store they were confronted with forced deference to white customers who would be served first…

The stores were not self-service, so the black customers would have to wait. And then would have to ask the proprietor to give them goods (often on credit because…sharecropping). The landlord often owned the store. In every way shopping reinforced hierarchy. Until #Sears…

The catalog undid the power of the storekeeper, and by extension the landlord. Black families could buy without asking permission. Without waiting. Without being watched. With national (cheap) prices!

4. “Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it” – Hannah Arendt

chocolateinthelibrary:

teachingliteracy:

(via letterstodeadpeople)

KA-CHING!: Why You Got a “C”

kaching:

Dear Grade-grubber who earned a C:

You have asked me why this happened. I offer the following explanatory theories:

1) You are so dull that you couldn’t find East with the rising sun, a compass, and a praying Arab as visual aids. To call you a lunkhead insults lunks everywhere. If dumb were…

screen-name:

The fourth race at Laurel Park today, 30 years after John Lennon was shot to death in New York City: Yoko wins the race but is disqualified and placed, where else… fifth. 

seanbonner:

If life doesn’t break you today, don’t worry, it will try agin tomorrow

(via papertissue)

Twitter and the Dunbar Number

The Future of Social Media and Politics

While social media has yet to win any elections, it is having a greater impact on how elected officials communicate. To date, most have tried to make the medium fit their message as opposed to make the message fit the medium. But as social media evolves and staff and officials are more hands on that may change.

“Democrats Sweep Country” One Hundred Years Ago

1910 was a big year for the other party. Democrats gained 57 seats in the House and 10 in the Senate.

Vintage Star Wars Posters

Nanowhonow? Nanowrimo “Dos” and “Don’ts”

It’s that time of year again where thousands around the world challenge themselves to write a 50,000 word “novel” in 30 days. I’ve tried this a couple times, completed it once. Probably not going to be able to give it a go this year, but good luck to those that put forth the effort.

Herman Melville cf. [T]rap streets, or deliberate cartographic errors introduced into a map so as to catch acts of copyright infringement by rival firms. In other words, if a competitor’s map includes your “trap street” — a geographic feature that you’ve simply invented — then you (and your lawyers) will know they nicked your data, gave it a quick redesign and tried to pass it off as their own. But this strategy of willful cartographic deception is not always limited to streets: there can be trap parks, trap ponds, trap buildings. And trap rooms. …. These and other subtle geographies — trap architectures — awaiting detection all around us.

—Geoff Manaugh (via bobulate)