An example of semaphore using email

Earlier this week, I commented on Ken Smith’s inquiry into the use of semaphore for communication, noting that I felt his interest in the use of semaphore was to inform people in case of a crisis. This morning, I received an email alert from the Americans of Conscience Checklist. This group sends email on a regular basis with selected actions to promote progressive issues (I am a subscriber). In this email alert, (called a “time-sensitive” action), subscribers were asked to call US senators to ask them to vote “No” on the FISA reauthorization bill. I think this fits the “use case” of semaphore that Ken Smith was discussing. The people subscribed to this list have been “trained” to take action on suggested items on a periodic basis, so they would have the necessary reflexes to take action for a time-sensitive request.

But, you may say, “I get emails asking me to do things (“buy stuff”) all the time – what is the difference?”. I think the difference is those emails mostly go unanswered, and the user has been trained to ignore most, if not all of them. If a group has been trained to take action in a certain way, and there is trust in the communication path, then emails like this can have an effect.

I was reading through a set of articles on CNN.com, and got the following message: “You have reached your daily article limit. Continue reading with a free CNN account or come back tomorrow.”. I have NEVER seen this before – has this happened to anyone else?

Some examples of resistance

On April 6, I published a post on “The Resistance” commenting on someone asking where “The Resistance” was. Shortly after after that post, there was a protest in Oregon over plans to log 14,000 acres of forest. This past Monday, my wife told me that there were protesters in Eugene, Oregon blocking the I-5 freeway to protest the Israel-Hamas war. There were also protesters in Hillsboro, Oregon, and later that evening I saw news coverage of multiple protests across the US and the world (see also Truthout coverage (via Denny Henke). The April 15 protests appear to have been a coordinated economic blockade by multiple groups. Looks like there is some resistance going on out there!

PS – see this Instagram post for additional pics

The language of music

This past year, my wife and I resumed singing in our church choir. It was fun to get together with old friends and making music. As we started, I realized how much of a language written music represents. All of the people in the choir are comfortable in reading music, so the duration and pitch of the notes, the rests, all come together in a common, joyful sound. We are all “reading from the same page”, so to speak. Now there can be variation in musical language, just as in computer languages. However, they represent a common grammar, a common ground, where people can come together to create music or software. We are all richer for the experience.

Can the use of semaphore be useful today?

Ken Smith recently wrote about the use of semaphore and RSS in transmitting information. He relates an experience where he organized students to send a message across a university campus. The historic use of semaphore flags was to communicate between ships. In the 18th century, the “optical telegraph” was developed, and messages could be sent from Amsterdam to Venice in an hour. With the development of the electric telegraph, the use of the optical telegraph fell to the wayside.

Today, people can use RSS readers to monitor posts on websites, and use other social media systems (Twitter, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky) to do the same. The rssCloud protocol also provides almost instant notification. I think that the question Ken Smith is asking is “can a group of individuals use this to be able to respond to a crisis“. The answer is “Yes”, but people “would have to be trained to do more than just send or receive a message on the system”.

So – do we choose to do something here? What crisis should we work to avoid?

Knowledge management and organizing information for use

A short podcast on some of my recent experiences on knowledge management and organizing information for use:

Some references from the podcast:

Organizing information for use – A Github repo summarizing writings from Ken Smith on organizing information for use

Link Zettlekasten – My experiment in organizing bookmarks using OPML

Writings on Organizing Information – Frank McPherson list of essays on this topic, this is one on the value of indexes

Op-Ed Links – Source of information on writing op-eds/letters to the editor from Ken Smith

Knowledge management – My collection of knowledge management posts on my weblog

Commonplace book – Wikipedia

Chris Aldrich – Differentiating online variations of the Commonplace Book: Digital Gardens, Wikis, Zettlekasten, Waste Books, Florilegia, and Second Brains

Waste book – think of a “Field Notes” notebook that you capture ideas/info and transfer to something else

Chris Aldrich – Reframing and simplifying the idea of how to keep a Zettelkasten

The end of podcasting, chapter 63

More recent news items this month about layoffs at Chicago Public Media (WBEZ) and Colorado Public Radio, both affecting their podcast units. Key quotes:

The move to terminate nearly 15% of the 62 unionized content creators at Chicago’s National Public Radio affiliate comes amid a worsening financial crisis for the news organization marked by declining fundraising, listenership and philanthropic support.
https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-public-media-lays-off-14-staffers/451b3f28-338c-45bc-98c2-742a7106ecf2

In recent years revenue has grown but has not kept pace with expenses. CPR lists on its website that expenses had exceeded revenue by $1.3 million in fiscal year 2022 and $2.3 million in fiscal year 2023. Member giving has remained strong, but corporate sponsorship was down. Meanwhile, programming and fundraising expenses – driven in part by employee costs – have risen by millions of dollars.
https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/06/cpr-institutes-layoffs-in-audio-production-podcast-units/

Looks like my analysis from chapter 60 is still accurate:

If an organization is spending more money than it brings in income, they either figure out ways to increase revenue or cut expenses, or say goodbye! The technical term, I believe, is called “business”.
https://andysylvester.com/2023/11/24/the-end-of-podcasting-chapter-60/

On the flip side, an informally produced podcast by Nick Hilton featuring people sharing their experience with Parkinson’s disease has won an award at the Broadcasting Press Guild in London, UK. A nice pull-quote from Nick’s post:

Podcasting has proved the perfect home for Movers and Shakers. It’s allowed us to access an audience of many, many thousands of people who either live with the condition, have loved ones living with the condition, or are fascinated by the banter between some broadcasting legends. It has allowed us to dive into a level of detail that makes people feel seen and heard. These are people who often feel let down by the health service, by their doctors and nurses, employers or benefits assessors. It is an entertainment product, first and foremost, but it’s also a support group. That’s why, despite the fact it’s a technical nightmare, we still record the show down at the pub: so that people feel like they’re having a pint with the gang, joining in with a laugh and a moan, and the sharing in the experiences of living with Parkinson’s.
https://nickfthilton.medium.com/what-an-award-winning-podcast-taught-me-about-podcasting-f83544fd34a7

Perhaps this is a better model for many podcasts that are trying to be money-makers – just sayin….

Postscript: NiemanLab says ” more people are listening to podcasts than ever before” – I guess the advertisers aren’t listening….

Democracy is not a spectator sport

Several weeks ago, I read a Substack post with this same title, as well as a Vox article titled “The courts were never going to save America from Donald Trump”. The bottom line of both articles were that the only way to defeat Donald Trump was going to be at the ballot box. But what else should we do? In my post/podcast earlier this week on “The Resistance”, I also pointed out that “doing something else” meant doing more than writing a blog post or a social media post or a podcast. I did review one of the resources I linked to in my resistance post, and it offered 3 concrete recommendations for taking action:

Once a month, show up to either a trigger event protest with game change potential or a small, group-led action.
Once a week, put pressure on decision makers with phone calls or at town halls.
Vote for and do get out the vote work for movement candidates in local, state, and federal elections.

In addition, the resource gives some good guidance about finding or forming a group to take action. Let’s get out there and win this thing!

While looking for some testing resources, I found a nice introduction to test-driven development by James Shore. His Github repo contains a test environment for Node.js and Javascript, but I think the key feature are the five videos linked from the repo. Also, they are part of a larger video site that used to be a subscription site, but is now free to all. Awesome!