4,327 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2021
    1. The First Amendment precludes lawmakers from forcing platforms to take down many kinds of dangerous user speech, including medical and political misinformation.

      Compare social media with the newspaper business from this perspective.

      People joined social media not knowing the end effects, but now don't have a choice of platform after-the-fact. Social platforms accelerate the disinformation using algorithms.

      Because there is choice amongst newspapers, people can easily move and if they'd subscribed to a racist fringe newspaper, they could easily end their subscription and go somewhere else. This is patently not the case for any social media. There's a high hidden personal cost for connectivity that isn't taken into account. The government needs to regulate this and not the speech portion.

      Social media should be considered a common carrier and considered as such. It was an easier and more logical process in the telephone, electricity and other areas to force this as the cost of implementation for them was magnitudes of order higher. The data formats and storage for social should be standardized (potentially even in three or more formats) and that should be the common carrier imposed. Would this properly skirt the First Amendment issues?

    2. Fukuyama's work, which draws on both competition analysis and an assessment of threats to democracy, joins a growing body of proposals that also includes Mike Masnick's "protocols not platforms," Cory Doctorow's "adversarial interoperability," my own "Magic APIs," and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's "algorithmic choice."

      Nice overview of work in the space for fixing monopoly in social media space the at the moment. I hadn't heard about Fukuyama or Daphne Keller's versions before.

      I'm not sure I think Dorsey's is actually a thing. I suspect it is actually vaporware from the word go.

      IndieWeb has been working slowly at the problem as well.

    3. Francis Fukuyama has called "middleware": content-curation services that could give users more control over the material they see on internet platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.
    1. He mentions Amazon wishlists that pile up and never get used. Similar to the way people pile up bookmarks and never use or revisit them.

      One of the benefits of commonplace books (and tools like Obsidian, et al.) is that one is forced to re-see or re-discover these over time. This restumbling upon these things can be incredibly valuable.

  2. Jul 2021
    1. The incontestable principle of inclusion drove the changes, which smuggled in more threatening features that have come to characterize identity politics and social justice: monolithic group thought, hostility to open debate, and a taste for moral coercion.
    2. So these two classes, rising professionals and sinking workers, which a couple of generations ago were close in income and not so far apart in mores, no longer believe they belong to the same country. But they can’t escape each other, and their coexistence breeds condescension, resentment, and shame.

      This rings true to me. How can we reverse this tide?

    3. In our case, a system intended to expand equality has become an enforcer of inequality. Americans are now meritocrats by birth. We know this, but because it violates our fundamental beliefs, we go to a lot of trouble not to know it.

      Class stratification helps to create not only racist policies but policies that enforce the economic stratification and prevent upward (or downward) mobility.

      I believe downward mobility is much simpler for Black Americans (find reference to OTM podcast about Obama to back this up).

      How can we create social valves (similar to those in the circulatory system of our legs) that help to push people up and maintain them at certain levels without disadvantaging those who are still at the bottom and who may neither want to move up nor have the ability?

    4. The winners in Smart America have withdrawn from national life. They spend inordinate amounts of time working (even in bed), researching their children’s schools and planning their activities, shopping for the right kind of food, learning to make sushi or play the mandolin, staying in shape, and following the news. None of this brings them in contact with fellow citizens outside their way of life. School, once the most universal and influential of our democratic institutions, now walls them off. The working class is terra incognita.

      This statement generally rings true to me. The collapse of cultural and local institutions (Lions Club, Elks Club, etc.) hasn't helped to bring different classes together.

      Some of this has been fueled by social media as well.

      Smart America can also afford more expensive tickets, so even mixing classes at baseball games is less frequent on an economic scale as well.

    1. This looks like a bookmarking service that is billing itself as a digital commonplace book. I'm not sure about the digital ownership aspect, but it does have a relatively pretty UI.

      Looks like it works via a Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/commonplaces-your-digital/ckiapimepnnpdnoehhmghgpmiondhbof

    1. Platforms of the Facebook walled-factory type are unsuited to thework of building community, whether globally or locally, becausesuch platforms are unresponsive to their users, and unresponsive bydesign (design that is driven by a desire to be universal in scope). Itis virtually impossible to contact anyone at Google, Facebook,Twitter, or Instagram, and that is so that those platforms can trainus to do what they want us to do, rather than be accountable to ourdesires and needs

      This is one of the biggest underlying problems that centralized platforms often have. It's also a solid reason why EdTech platforms are pernicious as well.

    2. As Astra Taylor explains in her vital book !e People’sPlatform, this process has often been celebrated by advocates ofnew platforms.

      Worth taking a look at?

    3. It is common to refer to universally popular social media sites likeFacebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest as “walled gardens.”But they are not gardens; they are walled industrial sites, withinwhich users, for no financial compensation, produce data which theowners of the factories sift and then sell. Some of these factories(Twitter, Tumblr, and more recently Instagram) have transparentwalls, by which I mean that you need an account to post anythingbut can view what has been posted on the open Web; others(Facebook, Snapchat) keep their walls mostly or wholly opaque.

      Would it be useful to distinguish and differentiate the silos based on their level of access? Some are transparent silos while others are not?

      Could we define a spectrum from silo to open? Perhaps axes based on audience or access? Privacy to fully open? How many axes might there be?

    1. What motivated my newsletter reading habits normally? In large part, affection and light voyeurism. I subscribed to the newsletters of people I knew, who treated the form the way they had once treated personal blogs. I skimmed the dadlike suggestions of Sam Sifton in the New York Times’ Cooking newsletter (skillet chicken and Lana Del Rey’s “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” — sure, okay). I subscribed briefly to Alison Roman’s recipe newsletter before deciding that the ratio of Alison Roman to recipes was much too high. On a colleague’s recommendation, I subscribed to Emily Atkin’s climate newsletter and soon felt guilty because it was so long and came so often that I let it pile up unread. But in order to write about newsletters, I binged. I went about subscribing in a way no sentient reader was likely to do — omnivorously, promiscuously, heedless of redundancy, completely open to hate-reading. I had not expected to like everything I received. Still, as the flood continued, I experienced a response I did not expect. I was bored.

      The question of motivation about newsletter subscriptions is an important one. Some of the thoughts here mirror some of my feelings about social media in general.

      Why?

    2. Early on, circa 2015, there was a while when every first-person writer who might once have written a Tumblr began writing a TinyLetter. At the time, the writer Lyz Lenz observed that newsletters seemed to create a new kind of safe space. A newsletter’s self-selecting audience was part of its appeal, especially for women writers who had experienced harassment elsewhere online.

      What sort of spaces do newsletters create based upon their modes of delivery? What makes them "safer" for marginalized groups? Is there a mitigation of algorithmic speed and reach that helps? Is it a more tacit building of community and conversation? How can these benefits be built into an IndieWeb space?

      How can a platform provide "reach" while simultaneously creating negative feedback for trolls and bad actors?

    1. Offline we exist by default; online we have to post our way into selfhood.
    2. A platform like Twitter makes our asynchronous posts feel like real-time interaction by delivering them in such rapid succession, and that illusion begets another more powerful one, that we’re all actually present within the feed.

      This same sort of illusion also occurs in email where we're always assumed to be constantly available to others.

    1. While it is the primary duty of governments to protect, respect, fulfil and progressively realize human rights, businesses can, and should, do their part. At a minimum, we expect businesses to undertake due diligence to avoid harming human rights and to address any adverse impacts on human rights that may be related to their activities. As a complement, not as a substitute for respecting rights, businesses can also take additional steps:Contribute in other ways to improve the lives of the people they affect, such as by creating decent jobs, goods and services that help meet basic needs, and more inclusive value chains. Make strategic social investments and promote public policies that support social sustainability. Partner with other businesses, pooling strengths to make a greater positive impact.

      THE SOLUTION

    2. actions to achieve social sustainability may unlock new markets, help retain and attract business partners, or be the source for innovation for new product or service lines. Internal morale and employee engagement may rise, while productivity, risk management and company-community conflict improve.

      Benefits of transition to sustainability

    3. Businesses’ social license to operate depends greatly on their social sustainability efforts. In addition

      A social license to operate (SLO) refers to the perceptions of local stakeholders that a project, a company, or an industry that operates in a given area or region is socially acceptable or legitimate. ... As such, from the perspective of a company, a social license to operate is often evaluated as an intangible asset.

    1. Rodolfo: I'm a victim of sexual abuse in the United States and there was a police report made and everything. And I've also been a victim of gang violence. I was never, you can check my background and everything. I was never into gangs or anything, but around the area I lived in there was a bunch of gangs and... I was beat up two or three times bad just by walking home. And it was all documented, I had police reports and everything. And because of that I was in therapy for while. My mother sought out a help from a psychiatrist because of the sexual abuse I had as a child in California, as a matter of fact.Rodolfo: I took Risperdal and a Ritalin, Risperdal for the anxiety and the Ritalin and for the ADHD. So, we tried everything. The mental health side, the mental health asylum, everything. But it was just going to take longer and longer and longer and I was tired of it. I didn't want to be locked up anymore. So, finally I just told my mom, “You know what man, that's it, I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore.” She asked me, “Is this what you want to do?” And I told her, “Yeah.”Rodolfo: She told me, “You know what? I'd much rather see you over there and be free then not being able to see you here at all.” Because there was a lot of people that went to go visit their loved ones and they used to get picked up. Sometimes they wouldn't even let you see your loved ones and right away ask you for your identification, your social security card, your nationality and everything and they would get picked up.Rodolfo: And I always told my mom, “Don't ever come visit me. Don't ever come visit me because if you do, chances are they're going to take you too.” And you know, that would always break my heart because I would want to see my mom. I'd want to see my dad and everything, but I wasn't able to. So, that experience was just horrible.Sergio: When you were in the detention center what were the conditions? Did you have access the medicine you needed? Did you have access to food and water?Rodolfo: The company that made the jail was called GEO Corp and they were actually, I'm not going to lie to you, they actually were pretty good, health-wise, not so much security-wise. A lot of things would happen in there that definitely shouldn't have ever happened. But with the food and everything, it was good. In my opinion it was because of the company. I feel as though if it was up to the government... Thank God it was an independent company that was hired by DHS as opposed to if DHS were to make their own jail, I feel they would be completely different.Rodolfo: It was [Pause] a pleasantly... there's no way to describe it, it was bad. It was bad, but for what it was I guess it was okay. I don't see there being an in-between or any pretty way to paint that picture as to how good or bad it was in there. Because at the end of the day you're deprived of your freedom. You can't just pick up the phone whenever you want and call your loved ones because you've got to pay for that too. You got pay for that. And if you want to take a shower, you have to buy your soap, right? You've got to buy it yourself, you've got to buy everything. And now you're becoming a liability for your family, you're becoming another bill.Rodolfo: You're becoming another bill and that's what I didn't want. So, that's why I started working. And now, older, I'm becoming another bill. So, I don't get it. You're taking us away from the jobs that we have and everything. You know? So, take us back to our country. And I'm not sure if it this is a fact or not, but I was reading when I first got in here, there was a time where there wasn't enough field workers for, I think, avocado—or, not avocado, I think it was oranges or something like that.Rodolfo: And I remember me saying, “Well, there goes all the deportees. There goes all the people you guys deported. Where are the people that were so outraged because we took your jobs? Go ahead, there you go. There are a lot of vacancies, making these open for those jobs, go ahead, man. All yours buddy, knock yourself out.”Rodolfo: But nobody wants to work those jobs, right? You see what I'm saying though, right?

      Leaving the US, Reason for Return, Deportation, Voluntary departure, Family decision, No hope for a future in the US, Detention, Treatment by; Time in the US, Violence, Sexual Abuse, Gangs, Bullying, Fear of, Jobs/employment/work

    2. Sergio: After your mom told you couldn't go on that trip, how did that affect the way you were involved in school, the things you wanted to do, did that change? Is there anything that you...?Rodolfo: I didn't put as much effort as I did anymore. I knew, at the end of the day, I'm not eligible for scholarships. I don't get any aid, I don't get anything. In my mind I thought, “Man, what's the point of really working hard in school if at the end of the day, I'm not gonna get any help?” My mom is having to work to put me through college. No, I don't want this, so I just thought, you know what, I'm just gonna give her what she wants, my diploma, my high school diploma. From then on, if I want to do something, it'll be by my own hand, out of my own pocket. I didn't want her to... Not that I was a burden or anything, my objective was for her not to work that much. That's it.Rodolfo: After she told me that, I'm like, "Well, okay, what's the point of really working hard and putting your best effort into school if, in my position, I won't be able to surpass US citizens." Then the aspect of financial aid, or any aid at all, I'm not gonna have any of that. I tried it with the fake social, but obviously it didn't go through. Nothing happened. Yeah, it changed a lot. It changed the way I viewed everything around me. Like, spring break all my friends would go certain places out of the country, and I used to get invited and, "No, I can't go man, my family doesn't think..." It would always have to be lie after lie after lie. I didn't want to... for one, I always had that idea of like my mom and my family always told me, "Don't ever tell anybody you're an immigrant. If somebody has that knowledge they can do you harm. They can take you away from here, they can take us away from each other."Rodolfo: I'm seeing it now, with the families going across the border, and them being separated. I didn't understand it at the time, and man, now I do understand it. I didn't know how it really was until I finally got put in handcuffs and got shipped to an immigration facility.Sergio: What do you think you would have wanted or end up being before you found out? What kind of things... Like you were on debate team that was—Rodolfo: I wanted to be a lawyer, man, that's what I wanted to be. That's what I wanted to be, a lawyer. It's funny, because when I was younger I wanted to be a lawyer. Then after that I'm like, "I want to be an immigration lawyer, that's what I want to be now. I want to be an immigration lawyer.” I was already on the right track to being a lawyer, but then when that happened, it really opened my eyes more to, "Okay, let's help my people." I didn't realize... I know individuals over there who are citizens, and they're panhandling because they want to. They're on their own addiction or for whatever reason right? Or people who are just living off the government, but then I see some of my family members, or my friends’ family members and they're not citizens but they have businesses.Rodolfo: They have a business, they have trucks, they have houses, they're great. They're not living off the Government, they're not asking for a handout. They're living better than what a citizen is living. It's all about how much work you put in, right? If you hang around people who don't want to do anything, then you're not gonna do anything. I remember Gerald Ford always told me that. He was like, "If you want to be a millionaire, hang around millionaires. If you want to be successful, hang around people who do successful things, but if you want to keep doing what you're doing, and just be a little caddie or whatever, stay here. Stay here and maybe one day you'll do something else."Rodolfo: He was very blunt in that aspect like, "Always do a good job. I don't care if you're a shit-shoveler, you're gonna be the best shit shoveler there is.” That always stuck to me, that's why whatever I do, it's always been 100%.Sergio: That's good.Anita: Can I speak? I'm Anita, I'm the director of this project.Rodolfo: Okay.Anita: I'm really pleased to meet you—Sergio: Likewise.Anita: I'm amazed at your incredible story. When you talked about the trip to DC, the debate club, and you got very sad—Rodolfo: Yeah.Anita: ... what made you sad, and did it make you feeling... Do you remember what your feelings were as you sort of found that all these options were gone to you?Rodolfo: Well, it was just mixed emotions. I felt sad because I contributed to the team a lot. I wasn't just there, and it made me sad because I wasn't going to be able be with my friends, my teammates. It also made me mad because all my life, all my short period, my whole time here in Chicago or whatever, I don't think I've done anything bad. Why shouldn't I have the privilege to go if I put in the same work as they did? Only because I don't have a social security number or a document that lets me buy a plane ticket and go over there? I think about it in a different—at the same time, I was a little kid too—I just cried a lot. That night I just cried a lot because I knew I wasn't gonna go. My mom spoke to the, I'm not sure what my mom told her, but see, I don't think she told her that we're undocumented, and I can't fly.Rodolfo: Yeah, I just remember that night feeling very sad, very sad, but then it turned into anger. It was like, "Man, why can't I?" It was always just that, "Why can't I? I put in the same work, and just because I wasn't born here, I can't fly?" I even looked into bus routes and everything to DC and stuff like that, but my mom was like, "No, you're crazy, you can't go alone." She worked and everything, I just felt sad, mostly sad.

      Time in the US, Immigration Status, Being secretive, Hiding/lying, In the shadows, lost opportunities; Reflections, The United States, Worst parts of the US, US government and immigration, Growing up undocumented, Dreams; Feelings, Choicelessness, Despair, Legal Status, Disappointment, Discouragement, Frustration, Sadness, Jaded

    3. Anita: Did Gerald Ford know you were undocumented?Rodolfo: No, Gerald Ford didn't know I was undocumented, no. I was still very young at that point. My mother and my family always told me, "Don't let anybody know you're undocumented.” If somebody finds out, for whatever reason, there's some people who just are plain out racist or don't want people like me in the States. Sometimes they just do things to... I don't know. That's what I understood and that's what I took in and that's what I applied to my life. It's like living a secret, it was like living a second life or whatever. It’s like, "Oh shit, why do I have to lie, why?" I guess it's neither here nor there now, right? I'm here in Mexico.Anita: That must have been incredibly difficult. I know personally, because I've had to keep secrets.Rodolfo: Yeah, I guess it's one of those things where you think it's never really gonna affect you, until you're in the back of the DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, van. You're next to a whole bunch of people you never met, and they're also in the same position. Some don't even speak English. You don't really understand how immediately it can affect you until it affects you. I never thought it would affect me. Okay, well I mean, I'm working, I'm going to school—I'm in high school—I'm doing this, this and that. Some of my friends who are students already dropped out. Did everything, they’ve already gone to prison and back and everything, and they haven't even hit their 21st birthday.Rodolfo: And I'm still good, I'm still good. I may not be a straight A student or anything, but hey man, I'm still here! Why can't I have the same privilege as you all do? Why can't I get my license? You know how happy I was when I got my license here, damn. I love to drive, that's one of my passions. Always, always, always I love to drive. I couldn't get my license over there. I remember even in high school in drivers ed, I knew what the answer was, but I asked my mom, “Hey mom, can I apply for drivers ed, so I can get my license? “She was like, "You know you can't get your license." Again, one of the primary things, I’m like damn, I'm just not gonna be able to drive all my life? Or if I do drive and I get pulled over—as a matter of fact, that's the reason why I got deported, driving without a valid drivers license.Rodolfo: I never got why the paper said, "Driving on a suspended license." I would always ask them, "If I don't have a license, why is it suspended?" They just told me, "Because you have a drivers license number, but you don't have a drivers license? I'm like, "Okay, so if I have a drivers license number, why can't I get my drivers license?" "You don't have the proper documentation." I'm like, "But I have my..."Rodolfo: One day I thought, “Well why don't I just grab the driver license number and have somebody make me a fake drivers license, and put the drivers license on there?” But see, if I get caught with it, now I'm in more trouble, and now I'm seen as a real criminal, because now I'm going around the system once again. That's why we don't want you here, because you're gonna do things like that. [Exhale] I haven't talked about this in a while. It just makes me want to…I don’t know.

      Time in the US, Immigration Status, Being secretive, Hiding/lying, In the shadows, Living undocumented; Reflections, The United States, US government and immigration; Feelings, Frustration; Time in the US, Jobs/employment/work, Documents, Driver's license, Social security card/ID

    4. Sergio: Did you ever work in the US?Rodolfo: Yeah, I worked all the time, I never stopped. One of the first jobs I had…My uncle worked at a restaurant called, Baker's Square in Chicago. It was on the corner of Tui and Pratt. I really, really, really wanted—I think I was in fifth or sixth grade—a phone. I wanted a phone, it’s called the Psychic Slide. Phones used to flip, but this one slides. I wasn't gonna ask my mom for it, so I asked my uncle. "Hey man, I know you work at Baker's Square and I know around the holiday season it gets really busy. Can I help you? Can I go?" He's like, "Well, yeah, if you want." I used to wake up like 3:00 in the morning, and I used to go and help him out. After that, I really liked making money and I really liked dressing nice, I liked having my nice haircut or whatever. My very, very first job was in Wilmette, Illinois. I was a caddie. Yeah, and then—Sergio: On the golf course?Rodolfo: On the golf course, yeah. Wilmette Golf Course actually. I remember I was always the first one there. They used to choose us, when everybody got there, "Okay, you come with me, you come with me." I used to always go there and there was a gentleman by the name of... Man, I forgot his name. Like the President, Gerald Ford, that was his name Gerald Ford! The only reason I remembered was because of the President. He used to always get there around the same time I got there. He finally asked me, "Do you want to be my personal caddie? I don't want you working anymore with all these other kids, because nobody wants to work. Do you want to be my personal caddie?" I'm like, "Yeah, absolutely." It was going really, really well and everything.Rodolfo: I got to high school, I had a number of jobs. I worked at Subway, I worked at Chili's, I worked at... What was it? Outback Steak House, but then I finally just got to the Cheesecake Factory, and that's where I stayed the remainder of my time. The remainder of my time I stayed there, and I started from the busboy and I finally ended up being a bartender. One of the head bartenders, one of the head servers, they used to pay-out people and everything. Obviously, I didn't have my social or anything, but I was a little bit older than what I really was. When I first got there, when I first, first started working I think I was like 14. Obviously you can't work that young, I think actually, I was 18, at 14.Rodolfo: I didn't see it as anything bad. I knew that if I got caught with my fake ID and my fake social security card I'd get in trouble, but that's why we're there, that's why we worked. I didn't get a fake ID to go party or go get into clubs or bars or anything. The main purpose of it was for me to be able to get a job, and so my mom wouldn't have to work all those hours that she used to work. She used to work at a Burger King, overnight. I used to barely see her, and I didn't want that anymore. I told her, "You don't have to work that much if I start working. We can help each other out, we can, we're a team.” It was only my mother and I until I turned 14, when she met my stepdad. All throughout that, it was just my mother and I.

      Time in the US, Jobs/employment/work, Documents, Careers, Food services, Athletics

    1. The easy way to manage scientific publications and bookmarks

      BibSonomy helps you to manage your publications and bookmarks, to collaborate with your colleagues and to find new interesting material for your research.

    1. Da Vinci Theme for Art

      My own use of "widget" began with notes speculating on the use of one particular object.

    1. If you are interested in developing an integration

      Evernote's UI/UX is top shelf; slick, elegant; but, is it extensible? Does it bring the X in XMPP?

      For example: An empty button could be added to the pop-up. A module that can be customized to inject approved widgets...such as chat/IM, or just a Home button keyed to the school's website.

      I once bought a game add-on ($2-3) that came with an extensible button by default. That was a million dollar seller, if memory serves. (See mystical cookie).

    1. It’s also most effective when the instructor is alongside students, participating in the annotations and conversations.

      Agreed!

      Adding messaging and chat to Hypothesis could go a long way toward helping with this.

      David Bokan proposes WebAnnotation in the Browser

    1. Is there a bottom-line where the horizon meets these challenges, or…

      Yes! At the local level.

      Who in your local school district is using tools that work well with students?

      What tools work best for which learners, and perform most efficiently for their mentors?

    1. <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Alan Jacobs</span> in re-setting my mental clock – Snakes and Ladders (<time class='dt-published'>07/01/2021 14:58:05</time>)</cite></small>

  3. Jun 2021
    1. They are artifacts of a very particular circumstance, and it’s unlikely that in an alternate timeline they would have been designed the same way.

      I've mentioned before that the era we're currently living in is incredibly different from the era of just 10–15 years ago. I've called the era of yesterdecade (where the author of this piece appeared on Colbert a ~week or so after Firefox 3 was released and implored the audience to go download it and start using it) the "Shirky era", since Shirky's Here Comes Everybody really captures the spirit of the times.

      The current era of Twitter-and-GitHub has a distinct feel. At least, I can certainly feel it, as someone who's opted to remain an outsider to the T and G spheres. There's some evidence that those who haven't aren't really able to see the distinction, being too close to the problem. Young people, of course, who don't really have any memories of the era to draw upon, probably aren't able to perceive the distinction as a rule.

      I've also been listening to a lot of "old" podcasts—those of the Shirky era. If ever there were a question of whether the perceived distinction is real or imagined these podcasts—particularly shows Jon Udell was involved with, which I have been enjoying immensely—eliminate any doubts about its existence. There's an identifiable feel when I go back and listen to these shows or watch technical talks from the same time period. We're definitely experiencing a lowpoint in technical visions. As I alluded to earlier, I think this has to do with a technofetishistic focus on certain development practices and software stacks that are popular right now—"the way" that you do things. Wikis have largely fallen by the wayside, bugtrackers are disused, and people are pursuing busywork on GitHub and self-promoting on social media to the detriment of the things envisioned in the Shirky era.

    1. "I am also concerned that despite the best of intentions many of us have not considered adequately what social justice means and entails. I worry that social justice may become simply a “topic du jour” in music education, a phrase easily cited and repeated without careful examination of the assumptions and actions it implicates. That can lead to serious misunderstandings."

    1. Social: It’s Not All About Productivity; Relationships Matter, Too
      • relationships matter
      • prefer physical over digital
    1. Meritocracy harms the elite as well. Life for the meritocratic elite is dominated by work. Substantial numbers of elites report that their work interferes with their health, prevents them from forming strong relationships with their children, gets in the way of good relationships with their spouses, and even makes it harder to have a satisfying sex life.
    2. The impact of this exclusion itself is impossible to measure, but increasing meritocratic inequality has coincided with the opioid epidemic, a sharp increase in “deaths of despair,” and an unprecedented fall in life expectancy concentrated in poor and middle-class communities.

      Are these all actually related to meritocratic inequality? What other drivers might there be?

    3. Diminishing social mobility excludes the middle class from the hope of achieving the American Dream.

      Do we actually need social mobility?

      Social mobility and the goods it can purchase can be a useful social motivation.

      However, social mobility for the poorest amoungst us would be good, but how much additional marginal good does society derive from continued social mobility of the middle and upper classes continuing to gain wealth and moving up?

      Perhaps there's a myth of social mobility confounding the issue with the myth of meritocracy as well.

      Certainly the idea of raw capitalism without caps is at play as well. Could providing better governmental oversight of this be a helpful factor for society? (At least American society at the moment? As international competition may drive other broader problems vis-a-vis other pieces of global domination...)

    4. At its core, The Meritocracy Trap is a comprehensive — and rather scathing — critique of the aspirational view. Markovits argues that meritocracy itself is the problem: It produces radical inequality, stifles social mobility, and makes everyone — including the apparent winners — miserable. These are not symptoms of systemic malfunction; they are the products of a system that is working exactly as it is supposed to.
    1. Professor, interested in plagues, and politics. Re-locking my twitter acct when is 70% fully vaccinated.

      Example of a professor/research who has apparently made his Tweets public, but intends to re-lock them majority of threat is over.

    1. Yet books are curious objects: their strength is to be both intensely private and intensely social — and marginalia is a natural bridge between these two states.

      Books represent a dichotomy in being both intensely private and intensely social at the same time.

      Are there other objects that have this property?

      Books also have the quality of providing people with identities.

    2. The practice, back then, was surprisingly social — people would mark up books for one another as gifts, or give pointedly annotated novels to potential lovers.

      This could be an interesting gift idea. Definitely shows someone that you were actively thinking about them for extended lengths of time while they were away.

    1. socialconstructivist views of learning

      While I agree, I also sometimes think about where on the social constructivist spectrum different kinds of Hypothesis/social annotation activities fall.

  4. May 2021
    1. Books and OER distributed by RSS. OPML lists creating collections for specific purposes - courses, discussion lists, whatever. RSS readers like gRSShopper using these OPML files to aggregate the contents and present them inside the student's own integrated learning environment. And then these - chapters, resources, comments, etc. - shared through the network among people taking the same course, working in the same community, or associated in any other way.

      This is roughly what I'd been thinking when reading Tonz' work on OPML recently as well. OPML could be used for quite a lot more and when paired with dumping things into a reader environment could be incredibly powerful.

    1. Wellenius, G. A., Vispute, S., Espinosa, V., Fabrikant, A., Tsai, T. C., Hennessy, J., Dai, A., Williams, B., Gadepalli, K., Boulanger, A., Pearce, A., Kamath, C., Schlosberg, A., Bendebury, C., Mandayam, C., Stanton, C., Bavadekar, S., Pluntke, C., Desfontaines, D., … Gabrilovich, E. (2021). Impacts of social distancing policies on mobility and COVID-19 case growth in the US. Nature Communications, 12(1), 3118. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23404-5

    1. Derek Thompson. (2021, May 17). Weeks ago, Gov. Abbott made Texas the first state to abolish its mask mandate and lift capacity constraints for all businesses. So, what changed? Nothing. There was ~no effect on COVID cases, employment, mobility, or retail foot traffic, in either liberal or conservative areas. Https://t.co/M8aeKOKJuP [Tweet]. @DKThomp. https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1394294260787261447

    1. Charlotte Jee recently wrote a lovely fictional intro to a piece on a “feminist Internet” that crystallized something I can’t quite believe I never saw before; if girls, women and non-binary people really got to choose where they spent their time online, we would never choose to be corralled into the hostile, dangerous spaces that endanger us and make us feel so, so bad. It’s obvious when you think about it. The current platforms are perfectly designed for misogyny and drive literally countless women from public life, or dissuade them from entering it. Online abuse, doxing, blue-tick dogpiling, pro-stalking and rape-enabling ‘features’ (like Strava broadcasting runners’ names and routes, or Slack’s recent direct-messaging fiasco) only happen because we are herded into a quasi-public sphere where we don’t make the rules and have literally nowhere else to go.

      A strong list of toxic behaviors that are meant to keep people from having a voice in the online commons. We definitely need to design these features out of our social software.

    1. Draft notes, E-mail, plans, source code, to-do lists, what have you

      The personal nature of this information means that users need control of their information. Tim Berners-Lee's Solid (Social Linked Data) project) looks like it could do some of this stuff.

    1. In 1962, a book called Silent Spring by Rachel Carson documenting the widespread ecological harms caused by synthetic pesticides went off like a metaphorical bomb in the nascent environmental movement.

      Where is the Silent Spring in the data, privacy, and social media space?

    2. Amidst the global pandemic, this might sound not dissimilar to public health. When I decide whether to wear a mask in public, that’s partially about how much the mask will protect me from airborne droplets. But it’s also—perhaps more significantly—about protecting everyone else from me. People who refuse to wear a mask because they’re willing to risk getting Covid are often only thinking about their bodies as a thing to defend, whose sanctity depends on the strength of their individual immune system. They’re not thinking about their bodies as a thing that can also attack, that can be the conduit that kills someone else. People who are careless about their own data because they think they’ve done nothing wrong are only thinking of the harms that they might experience, not the harms that they can cause.

      What lessons might we draw from public health and epidemiology to improve our privacy lives in an online world? How might we wear social media "masks" to protect our friends and loved ones from our own posts?

    1. “For one of the most heavily guarded individuals in the world, a publicly available Venmo account and friend list is a massive security hole. Even a small friend list is still enough to paint a pretty reliable picture of someone's habits, routines, and social circles,” Gebhart said.

      Massive how? He's such a public figure that most of these connections are already widely reported in the media or easily guessable by an private invistigator. The bigger issue is the related data of transactions which might open them up for other abuses or potential leverage as in the other examples.

    1. This is a solidly comprehensive overview of much of what I'd want in my own personal reader. I'll have to revisit it as I'm reading and using other readers to see if there are any other pieces missing.

      Being able to sort by social distance, by community/tags, and by posting frequency and/or post type (ie separating articles from notes from bookmarks, etc) would be some of the bigger must haves.

    1. social telephones — primarily emails and Twitter mentions

      There's something lovely about the way he defines email and social media as "social telephones"

    1. Social media platforms work on a sort of flywheel of engagement. View->Engage->Comment->Create->View. Paywalls inhibit that flywheel, and so I think any hope for a return to the glory days of the blogosphere will result in disappointment.

      The analogy of social media being a flywheel of engagement is an apt one and it also plays into the idea of "flow" because if you're bored with one post, the next might be better.

    1. Yet apart from a few megastar “influencers”, most creators receive no reward beyond the thrill of notching up “likes”.

      But what are these people really making? Besides one or two of the highest paid, what is a fair-to-middling influencer really making?

    1. Dr. Tom Frieden. (2021, April 30). Globally, the end of the pandemic isn’t near. More than a million lives depend on improving our response quickly. Don’t be blinded by the light at the end of the tunnel. There isn’t enough vaccine and the virus is gathering strength & speed. Global cooperation is crucial. 1/ [Tweet]. @DrTomFrieden. https://twitter.com/DrTomFrieden/status/1388172436999376899

    1. A strong and cogent argument for why we should not be listening to the overly loud cries from Tristan Harris and the Center for Human Technology. The boundary of criticism they're setting is not extreme enough to make the situation significantly better.

      It's also a strong argument for who to allow at the table or not when making decisions and evaluating criticism.

    2. These companies do not mean well, and we should stop pretending that they do.
    3. But “humane technology” is precisely the sort of pleasant sounding but ultimately meaningless idea that we must be watchful for at all times. To be clear, Harris is hardly the first critic to argue for some alternative type of technology, past critics have argued for: “democratic technics,” “appropriate technology,” “convivial tools,” “liberatory technology,” “holistic technology,” and the list could go on.

      A reasonable summary list of alternatives. Note how dreadful and unmemorable most of these names are. Most noticeable in this list is that I don't think that anyone actually built any actual tools that accomplish any of these theoretical things.

      It also makes more noticeable that the Center for Humane Technology seems to be theoretically arguing against something instead of "for" something.

    4. Big tech can patiently sit through some zingers about their business model, as long as the person delivering those one-liners comes around to repeating big tech’s latest Sinophobic talking point while repeating the “they meant well” myth.