Micro.Blog

There are 173 posts filed in Micro.Blog (this is page 7 of 18).

There aren’t two sides to facts

Last week, the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Chris Quinn, published a “Letter from the Editor” concerning the paper’s coverage of news concerning Donald Trump (mentioned on PressWatch). He stated that they are receiving a fair amount of mail/email on this topic criticizing the paper. I think these three paragraphs hit the main point of his response:

The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.

The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.

The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it.

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2024/03/our-trump-reporting-upsets-some-readers-but-there-arent-two-sides-to-facts-letter-from-the-editor.html

After publishing this column, the Plain Dealer received over 2700 emails, mostly positive, thanking the editor for “…reporting as fact the threat Donald Trump presents to our democracy” (see new editor column on the response). The Plain Dealer also published a sampling of the responses. Perhaps there is hope for us yet…

What a difference 38 years makes in NCAA women’s basketball

The 2024 NCAA women’s basketball national championship has been decided – South Carolina beat Iowa today 87-75 in Cleveland, Ohio. The game was played at Rocket Mortgage Field House, home arena of the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA team, with capacity of 19,432. From this shot, it looks like it was pretty darn full! I attended one of the regional semifinal games in Portland, Oregon, and was happy that Texas (my team!) beat Gonzaga. The arena (Moda Center, home of the Portland Trail Blazers, capacity 19,393) was pretty full, probably 8000-10000 (media coverage had total Portland attendance at over 40000). Attendance overall has been up (sources: NCAA.com, Front Office Sports overall season attendance, Front Office Sports Iowa-UConn attendance/viewership, Oregon Public Broadcasting).

To contrast, I attended the University of Texas from 1980-1985, and began attending women’s basketball games in 1982. The number of fans at games was so small, and so quiet, that the main sound during much of the game was the squeaking from the player’s shoes. As a member of the Longhorn Band, we had a great impact at games (since almost no one else was making any noise). At the Moda Center, although all teams playing had bands and cheerleaders, the general crowd noise limited the effect of those groups. In the Texas-Gonzaga game, there was a point in the second half where Gonzaga was making a run to get back in the game, and the Gonzaga fans were pretty effective in cheering “Let’s Go Zags” for 1-2 minutes, but when Texas stopped their run, that was pretty much it for the Gonzaga crowd. It was fun being able to make an cheering impact like we did in the 1980s, but I am glad that the sport has progressed through the excellent play of Iowa, South Carolina, Texas, Gonzaga, and many great teams, and has had great increases in attendance. I’m looking forward to next year!

Where is the Resistance? (post + podcast)

I decided to record a podcast about recent posts from Dave Winer and Ken Smith concerning “the Resistance”.

I am including some links to items I mentioned in the podcast:

Dave Winer’s original comment on Scripting News

Same comment on Twitter, with Ken Smith reply

Another Twitter post from Dave Winer, giving an idea for a resistance movement

Expanded post from Dave Winer

Ken Smith summary (part 1) (part 2)

Threads post from Ken Smith, with Dave Winer reply

Atlanta activism podcast post

Lifelong Activist site from Hillary Rettig

Activism links collected by Andy Sylvester collected as an OPML file

Americans of Conscience checklist for April 5, 2024 – concrete things you can do

“Resistance Guide: How to Sustain the Movement to Win” – Written in 2017, the PDF linked to this page gives a short history of resistance movements in the US and provides ideas.

Activism toolkit by Ken Smith

Not just a blogroll – it’s a feedroll

In mid-March 2024, Dave Winer rolled out a new feature on Scripting News – a blogroll with dynamic content. I think it is interesting, but it is more than a “traditional” blogroll, in that it is not just a list of sites, but is presenting content from those sites, and ordering them in terms of the sites most recently updated at the top of the list. Blogrolls of the past were a static list of sites. In his podcast announcing the rollout, Dave Winer comments that future development directions will be up to users (about 8 minutes into the podcast), as it should be.

Until recently, though, it was unclear how other users would be able to access this feature. However, some one at Automattic developed a WordPress plugin to display the Dave Winer blogroll on a WordPress site. Yesterday, the first new user (Doc Searls) announced that he had the blogroll plugin working on his site.

I think it is great when people are adding features to their sites. I also think it is great that Dave Winer is working to migrate his ideas to other platforms like WordPress, which have a large base of users. The base technology of this feature is based on the FeedLand service, so there is still a linkage between Dave Winer’s tool and deployment of this feature – something for users to keep in mind.

My last observation on this is perhaps a subtle one, but still significant. Following comments from Dave Winer over the years about RSS, and that new format creators should use a different name than RSS, I think there should be a different name for this feature, as it is a significant enhancement from traditional blogrolls. When I looked at Doc Searls’ implementation, I saw that the title of his was “Feedroll”. I think this is a great name for this new feature – let’s use it!

Co/Recursive: Beautiful Code – Inside Greg Wilson’s Vision for Software Design –

Greg Wilson has been on a decades-long quest to transform how we teach and talk about software design. From getting rejections for using the term “beautiful code,” to empowering scientists through workshops on Python and Unix, Greg has pushed to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Join us as Greg shares his failures and epiphanies along the way. You’ll hear how he revolutionized research computing by showing physicists the power of profilers. How he taught grad students the elegance of shell scripts. And how he’s crusaded to create a shared language to discuss software architecture with the nuance of true craftsmanship.

Greg’s captivating journey reveals that with perseverance and the right examples, we can elevate software design discussion to an art form. But that we’ve got a long way to go. You’ll come away enlightened and eager to level up your own understanding of software design.

The topic of text boxes

Recently, in another post on the subject of textcasting, Dave Winer made a comment about text boxes:

Every time you see a tiny little textbox that’s a sure clue they’re trying to own you, and hoping you don’t notice.

http://scripting.com/2024/02/01.html#a154043

I think this is a reach. In my opinion, the simplest reason to use a text box for text entry is that users are used to it and it is easy to implement (using Occam’s Razor here). Another explanation is that it is use of prior art, as Dave Winer has written about before (see here, here, and here). No sinister plan to “own” anyone here. Could text editors be better/have more features? Sure they could! Could writing apps cooperate with each other and have APIs? Sure they could! Should people be demanding these things? Sure…maybe….or maybe they could make those things happen…or maybe they could submit a feature request….

If the software is open source (Mastodon et al), someone could make their own changes. If the software is a service provided by a company that does not charge for the service (hmmm…Twitter, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky come to mind), it seems more difficult for users to request features and drive changes. If a group of users REALLLY wanted something and no other app seemed interested, maybe they could create their own product (thinking Kickstarter here). To me, it comes down to this: how bad do you want this?

Finally, another take on this sentence comes from Ken Smith:

Ken Smith comment on Dave Winer’s “text box” statement.

Based on Ken’s comment, I take this as “any antisocial behavior” in the blank – racism, anti-Semitism, discrimination, manipulation…the list can go on and on as Ken points out. This Quora thread has some good points about someone trying to “own” someone.

Buzz Machine/Jeff Jarvis: Is it time to give up on old news? “I am coming to a conclusion I have avoided for my last three decades working on the internet and news: It may finally be time to give up on old journalism and its legacy industry. ” Dave Winer offers EZ-Pass News as an alternative. Doc Searls is also writing about news alternatives.

Charles Hugh Smith: Our Tax System is an Unfair Mess: Here’s How to Fix It – Make the U.S. attractive to labor and capital with low rates and a simple, fair tax system and the populace and economy will benefit.