23 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2017
    1. It does not take much to imagine another politician, wiser in the ways of Washington and better schooled in the methodology of governance—and now liberated from the pretense of antiracist civility—doing a much more effective job than Trump.

      Scary, true

    2. It’s worth unpacking what, precisely, falls under this rubric of “diversity”—resistance to the monstrous incarceration of legions of black men, resistance to the destruction of health providers for poor women, resistance to the effort to deport parents, resistance to a policing whose sole legitimacy is rooted in brute force, resistance to a theory of education that preaches “no excuses” to black and brown children, even as excuses are proffered for mendacious corporate executives “too big to jail.” That this suite of concerns, taken together, can be dismissed by both an elite economist like Summers and a brilliant journalist like Packer as “diversity” simply reveals the safe space they enjoy. Because of their identity.

      This is so good

    3. the incumbent Obama lost the primary in 10 counties to Keith Judd, a white felon incarcerated in a federal prison; Judd racked up more than 40 percent of the Democratic-primary vote in the state

      !!

    4. David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, shocked the country in 1990 by almost winning one of Louisiana’s seats in the U.S. Senate

      !!

    5. I say that the lower race of human beings that constitute the substratum of what is termed the slave population of the South, elevates every white man in our community

      Hard to think of a more definitive voice/moment/quote, here.

    6. In the early 17th century, these two classes were remarkably, though not totally, free of racist enmity

      Didn't know that. Would be curious to read more about that.

    7. Ostensibly assaulted by campus protests, battered by arguments about intersectionality, and oppressed by new bathroom rights, a blameless white working class did the only thing any reasonable polity might: elect an orcish reality-television star who insists on taking his intelligence briefings in picture-book form.

      !

    8. He must be called by his rightful honorific—America’s first white president

      Defining Trump as fundamentally, uniquely "white" and "whiteness" as Trump-ness

  2. Aug 2016
    1. Also his name is Fisher and apparently he likes fishing with his son Son Fisher (I'm not googling Jeff Fisher's son's name) because nominative determinism is real

      Nominative determinism is real!

    1. The art direction for modern websites often requires displaying the same image in different places, shapes, and sizes. For example, a site’s home page might show square image thumbnails that link to selected articles. Each of those images might be shown as a large landscape picture on the top of the relevant article page, while a zoomed-in excerpt from the same picture might be shown lower down in the article. Other sizes might be used next to search results or in a collage.

      Art direction across instances of the same image, not within it. Is that still art direction? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

    1. neutered minimalism

      ❤️ love these two phrases, and the juxtaposition

    2. rococo days of the web

      ❤️

    3. as much as I know that transmitting writing via cables and air is a hell of a lot easier and cheaper than transmitting video, I’m not sure I can really stand here and say that the writing is—or should be—primary.

      This argument, that technologists love writing because it’s easier for them, I love. It often gets cast as, writing is the grain of the web, what the media and the network does easily, without effort. A Dao of Textual Supremacy. But! Priority of Constituencies! Users > authors > specs. If the people want images, then images belong and images will win, even if they’re harder to deliver. See also, the GUI.

    4. I worry that the push to keep the web defined to words, while pragmatic and reasonable in many ways, may also be used to decide what stories get told, and what stories are heard.

      Coming off of the last ¶, is this about class? The essay (especially in its enthusiastic quoting and framing of Ze Frank) participates in the assumption that writing is practiced more by people of privilege, than other media. (Dunno how I think about that). At the same time, it says, that association is not causation, privelidge isn't worth, the writing isn't making the people better, and the “sophisticated” people writing aren't intrinsically better than their less textually literate, more gif-y, YouTube-y, (4-chan-y?) counterparts. Feels like there are many separate variables about people here all being lumped together under the categories "text" and "image" in ways that could maybe use a little teasing apart. Many image-based forms of expression on the internet are super elietist/privelidged/“classy”! Vimeo videos of artisanal crafts. The-Big-Picture-style, professional photojournalism. At the same time, a lot of writing is of course low-class and amature. Facebook posts from your aunt. Less so now, but blogs. As she mentions, SMS/Twitter. At the same time, the first time I read this essay, I bought her categorization, the lumping rang somewhat true? That mental image of flashing garish myspace for and of the people is pretty powerful. So I dunno.

    5. You can describe what happens in each of those videos in words, but those words will never equal watching them.

      YES. Images have unique powers!

    6. There’s more than a hint of disparagement and elitism in that saying: everyone should have taken up writing, which is obviously superior to reading or watching or (gasp!) consuming. And I worry that that same sentiment creeps in when we argue the supremacy of text over image on the web.

      Conflating a producer/consumer elitism with type-of-media elitism. The “old saw” seems to be that we should have become active empowered producers but instead we all settled into lazy consumption; not that words > images.

    7. I think that history is telling: in that, given a canvas on which to play, many people opted to express themselves with color and image, often spending much more effort there then on the words, and often in surprising ways.

      The web should be what people make it and the people want colors and images

    8. And yet:

      Counter-argument strengthened by making a strong argument for the other side first

    9. So, okay, as a design constraint, the web sure does look like it’s text all the way down, and all this other stuff is extra. And I’m distinctly sympathetic to that notion: I happen to like text over other mediums, not only as a reader, but as someone who doesn’t particularly like to spend all day waiting for pages to load. I also like text because it’s more accessible than other mediums, and more easily archived. If the web is primarily text, then accessibility and preservation are both easy (if not trivial) problems to solve.

      Arguments for text:

      • acessibility
      • weight
      • easy to archive
      • personal bias
    10. is hypertext constrained to text?

      Central question of the piece

    1. She can’t wait for virtual reality systems that will allow her to interact using her hands and body. The first systems with individual hand controllers should be coming out next year, those will be the real game changers.

      Just as Brett Victor foretold...