Queens man indicted for third time

Again, it seems like the Queens Eagle (which covered Trump’s first indictment) is passing again on this topic, so I am covering it here.

CNN: Donald Trump has been indicted in second time in two months for attempts to overturn the 2020 election

CNN: Live news coverage on August 1, 2023, the date the indictment was made public

CNN: Read the indictment

CNN: Annotated version of indictment with links to other material

CNN: Live coverage of Trump’s arraignment on August 3, 2023

CNN: Latest coverage on August 4, 2023

CNN: Who are the co-conspirators mentioned in the Trump indictment?

CNN: Trump’s surreal arraignment day in Washington augurs ominous days ahead

CNN: Hub for info/reporting on all criminal indictments for Trump

Court Listener: Follow the filings on the January 6 indictment

Slate: Jack Smith case is prosecutorial masterpiece

Slate: US v. Trump will be the most important case in our nation’s history (Richard Hasen)

TPM: John Eastman reiterates support for full insurrection

Election Law Blog: Lawyers for Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss: Rudy Giuliani Has Not Contested Civil Conspiracy Charge with Donald Trump and Others to Defame Them Regarding False Claims of 2020 Election Fraud in Georgia (link to filing)

Amazing! The website for the Oregonian (the main newspaper for Portland, Oregon) now has a RSS feed! There has not been any feeds for this site in years – glad to see there is at least one feed now…

DIY Television: A handbook

Community Media: A handbook for revolutions in DIY TV (via Frank Meeuwsen) – I read through this site today, it has a nice history of alternative television (my words) and suggestions on tools/methods on creating your own television (notice I am not using the word “videos”). The impression this handbook gives is that distribution is as important as production (if no one is watching, is it TV?). In today’s splintered landscape of news/information/entertainment in video form, I don’t know if this will take hold to any significant degree. However, it did make me want to make a video…

There was also some discussion of podcasting as a democratic new medium. As a podcast producer myself (Convocast, Thinking About Tools for Thought, In The Car Podcast), to me this might be the way to go to get your message out (and can still be done cheaply on WordPress.com or using my notes on self-hosted WordPress).

MyStatusTool Update – 7/14/2023

I recently added a feature to use the medium-editor toolbar when creating new posts, and wrote a post about how I integrated that into MyStatusTool. I added it to my site, and will be rolling it out to my beta users this weekend. I also did a little manual tweaking to remove some posts for one of the beta users that had some errors. Based on feedback from the beta users, I have created a number of feature request issues on my Github repo.

If anyone is interested in trying MyStatusTool, reach out to me via my About page and let me know, I will set up a test instance for you!

Owning your content

With all the hoopla about the Threads app from Instagram/Facebook, I was reminded of a post from Tantek Celik (Own Your Notes), bringing out these points (see this comic for context):

I am once again asking you to own your notes, rather than tweeting them into Big Chad’s garage.

Maybe you left the big garage and now toot in your neighborhood Chad’s garage. It’s still someone else’s garage.

I have also written about owning your content (here, here and here). Of course, posting this on my Old School blog goes against this (although I have an OPML backup that I could render somehow), which is why I am also posting this on my main blog (WordPress self-hosted). People may feel that what they post on services like Threads, Twitter, Mastodon, et al, is more like conversations that do not need to be “owned”. However, if there is a way to pipe your conversation into a flow where you still own the content (like MyStatusTool), why not do it?

Why I won’t be on Bluesky, Threads et al any time soon

I already have accounts on Twitter, Mastodon, and Micro.blog – that’s enough social networks for me. I have a Drummer Old School blog, my main WordPress blog, and now my minimal blogging tool MyStatusTool (here is my instance) – that’s enough blogging tools for me. Someday I will get my Federated Wiki instance working again (hopefully soon), meanwhile I have my OPML Zettlekasten file to file things. I think that’s enough!

Dave Winer talks about bootstrapping a federated 140-character loosely coupled network. I think MyStatusTool fits the bill! You don’t have to get an account on Threads or wait for a Bluesky invite – just download, install, and get started making some news of your own! PS – I already wrote about this bootstrap.

IEEE Spectrum: How the Computer Graphics Industry Got Started at the University of Utah – Adobe and Pixar founders created tech that shaped modern animation – I used image generators from Evans and Sutherland earlier in my career, then they were purchased by Rockwell Collins (now Collins Aerospace) to be part of their simulation business. Exciting times back then!

Zettlekaste.de: Building a Second Brain and the Zettelkasten Method – This post goes into great detail contrasting the “Building a Second Brain” ideas of Tiago Forte and the Zettelkasten Method as practiced by Niklas Luhmann. The author states that both methods can be used simultaneously with little to no overlap (BASB is project focused, ZKM is knowledge-focused). It’s worth the time to read!