★ Liked “The Quietest Place in America Is Becoming a Warzone”
If we don’t defend silence, we sever one of the last ties to life on Earth before humans started raising a ruckus—before the combustion engine, before cities(..) we lose the space to reflect on what makes us who we are.
I have been a lot restless these last few days. My mind wanders a lot, it’s cluttered, full of thoughts. Full of things I need to do. Things that I can, I should do. I start working on one, and then my mind forces me to move on to another. Without completing any.
I do not think that’s really healthy. I think I may have to put my mind at rest.
Meditation is, of course, one of the way. So I started looking out for all the help possible, to figure out how to get started. And guess what? It’s a market full of catchy, link-baity articles from opportunistic freaks. Anyway, I think I may not get much help on the internet; may be there is just no need to go out there, seeking help on getting started. I may as well just get started - so I have started with an app called Oak. I have had a couple of sessions and have been pretty satisfied.
I will continue to have these sessions as beginner and see what happens. I am really hopeful that meditation helps, that it allows me to regain focus. I know few people who have benefitted, I know of a strong proponent in @ablaze. Actually, it is his experiences that have inspired me towards meditation.
If these couple of sessions are any indication, am sure it will be a good experience to go through.
★ Liked “Dear Journalists: The war on what you do is escalating.”
You — and probably free speech — can’t constantly play defense. You can’t win if you rise to Trump’s bait and start calling him an enemy.
So nice and brave of @manton to congratulate third-party dev for an app that sits right against his own. It also shows how much trust and confidence he has in his underline platform. Kudos Manton!
It’s been so long that I wrote a fiction, let the teeny writer in me express himself freely. I think it is time for an early morning rise and socialising with my characters. They must have many tales to tell now 👨🏽💻📝
I have recently observed a lot of anger from people across the world towards social networks of all forms. Especially Twitter. I had also expressed why I can’t quit Twitter completely for now - there are still a few people left there whom I follow, and a few friends.
I recently had a discussion with one such friend whom I was trying to convince to give up on Twitter and move all his posting to his custom domain. I demoed Micro.blog and Blot, hoping that the simplicity of getting started would be enough to abate any friction the change might throw at him.
He listened patiently, he is an active poster on Twitter. He has a distinct voice and perspective towards all varied things. And so my attempt had a selfish tinge too; it would help me if I could follow his posts in feed readers, even better if on Micro.blog.
He looked genuinely curios. “But what’s the big deal with owning the content and the domain?” I thought I had his attention.
I gave him the standard pitch, primarily how it would lend him control of his online identify, allow him not to lose his words when some private silo decides to change the rules of its services and how, if that happens, he can decide to take his content and move to some place better.
All he said in response was “what’s so special with what I write on the web that I would want to maintain it over time? If Twitter dies tomorrow, I will just move to some place else.”
I was left astonished. Here’s a guy who has been posting his opinions on all things, at times even as Tweetstorms, sharing some fascinating stuff for all; here’s a guy who has produced at least a short novel worth of content on Twitter and Facebook, but has the least attachment to his words.
May be it’s a regional trend, may be people in some places are more forward, more open to spending money and effort for the control.
But one thing is for sure. We can never convince people to give up silos and start owning their identities, their content on their own domain or start moving to services like Micro.blog till we make them realise how worthy the words they write are. Even tweet length ones.
Here’s a list of articles I liked throughout the day.
1. I do not think there is any debate on whether Artificial Intelligence will have some unplanned consequences. There would be. It is as good as a new species. And when two new species start communicating with one another, there would be hiccups and miscommunication. I guess the only fear is this time the other species might actually be smarter. Wired has some interesting real life examples covered.
Given a clear goal, an algorithm can master complex tasks, such as beating a world champion at Go. But even with logical parameters, it turns out that mathematical optimization empowers bots to develop shortcuts humans didn’t think to deem off-limits. Teach a learning algorithm to fish, and it might just drain the lake.
2. I had no idea there were multiple theories for the reason behind Dinosaurs’ extinction. I always believed the “a fairy tale: ‘Big rock from sky hits the dinosaurs, and boom they go.’” Well, that may not be the case. Bianca Bosker has a fascinating coverage.
Before the asteroid hypothesis took hold, researchers had proposed other, similarly bizarre explanations for the dinosaurs’ demise: gluttony, protracted food poisoning, terminal chastity, acute stupidity, even Paleo-weltschmerz—death by boredom. These theories fell by the wayside when, in 1980, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Luis Alvarez and three colleagues from UC Berkeley announced a discovery in the journal Science
3. Being ethical is not black and white. It is almost impossible to lead a life which you claim has been ethical and to make everyone agree. However, “figuring out how to live the good life is fun” - a great essay by Ephrat Livni.
By virtue of accidents of birth, we find ourselves unfairly profiting from all kinds of inequalities, depending on where we are born, who our parents are, our racial or ethnic backgrounds, and more. Your passport determines more than just access—it means you are the beneficiary, albeit abstractly, of actions you may not approve. Most of us, wherever we live, are funding wars or policies we disagree with. We can’t help but do wrong.
4. A much-needed account from a non-profit group “that reunites refugees around the world with families”. Another reminder that we humans have heart beating incessantly within. Some may have painted it black, but as a species, we will keep fighting back.
“While hundreds of families separated at the US–Mexico border under the Trump administration’s”zero tolerance” policy remain apart, a Michigan woman has inspired people to help reunite loved ones by donating their frequent flyer miles.”
I read some fanwars and associated diatribes after a long time today.
I read some cringeworthy posts, and some spiteful responses.
I read some inhuman sentiments flung around as words.
I logged onto Twitter after a long time today.
I think all of these might be related.
Nature and family get-togethers go along pretty nicely
I am kind of bummed that no one here had any interest in Yahoo! Pipes. I really wish there was an alternative to that wonderful service. It would be so useful to deliver single feed from multiple sources. Also allows us to capture all mentions to single place.
Remember Yahoo! Pipes? I had built so many custom feeds combining different feeds using that service. With my recent pull back to RSS, I really feel a need for some such similar service. I wonder though if anyone else shares this need too.
I wish micro.blog becomes bigger, more diverse with more voices spread across the world, the timezones, narrate their stories. It becomes difficult for a user from a non-American timezone to benefit from the timeline. It is either crawling or swings past as you stay asleep. I have to consume posts via feeds and depend on Micro.threads to pull out posts that lead to discussion overnight.
I fear though if the place becomes bigger before there are tools in place to handle the scale, we may inundate it with too many voices and interactions. Making it extremely difficult and unpleasant to follow along for any person. We need to tread carefully.
It is important the service attracts both established and diverse voices. I am sure the awesome people behind Micro.blog are already planning for this.
Date 2018-08-11 01:15
It’s amusing to see the weekly reports from Screen Time. I knew I have been spending far less time in Productivity/Reading categories (as compared to Social Networking). I didn’t know it was this bad.
And, no surprises, Micro.blog becomes first app to hit App Limit.
Throughout the day, I read so many article which I would like to share to others. It also is an exercise so that I keep track of all the articles I havr read and liked over the years. However, sharing them instantly was polluting the feed. I wouldn’t want to see that from others in my timeline. So it was only fair for me to not do the same.
Hence, going ahead I plan to share a list of articles I liked through the day as a list. This is the first edition of the post.
“Their unwillingness to follow the herd is a sign of hope that we may continue to use the net to speak freely, even if the majority wants us silenced. And what does it say about journalism that there are few if any dissenters? You see this regularly, they’re too scared for some reason to present all sides of a discussion.”
And any media executive who can’t see the harm in protecting the publishing power of a person who denies what’s real with such utter cruelty and disregard for the pain of his fellow citizens should be asked to explain himself. And then to explain again. What do you really believe in?
Musk amusingly named his promotional flamethrowers “Not a Flamethrower” to get around shipping rules banning flamethrowers, and he seems to have learned the wrong lesson from that stunt. I suspect that naming his public company “Not a Public Company” won’t actually work to get around securities laws.
I have been reading a lot of views from people who are leaving Twitter. But it is different from the Facebook exodus. They aren’t quitting. And I wondered why?
I still am on Twitter - accessed from website only. It’s work to sidestep the noise. But the community there has worth.
I read this post first in my feed reader. I wonder how these reads will get translated into BAT. Not sure if consumption in feed readers is a sizable chunk of regular web. But I guess it should be amongst intended Brave users.
Dave Winer wrote few of his thoughts on how the search engines need to improve with time. He was focused a bit on how it can make blogging valuable. However he also had a underlying criticism for current search engines, mainly Google.
Sorry Google, your search engine is showing serious signs of age and boredom. We can do so much better. (…) It’s (Google) been stagnant for too long. They clearly need some competition.
I think it’s high time the way search results are presented to the user had some rethinking and redesigning exercise done. Search for anything and it is still a list of links (or an AMP carousel when it fits your business needs) even after more than 15 years since it was introduced. I do not think there is anyone who ever paginates to the third page of search results. I would bet more than 90% don’t even go to the second page.
I believe when people search for something they have a fair idea of what they are looking for. Search engines need to be smart in understanding if the user is searching for a place on the web or a general query around concepts. If it is the former, it should present every data it has about that place, in a manner that easy to grasp. Dave’s list already has some good ideas. Give as much context as there is out there.
For later, it is important to focus on credibility and transparency. For example when a query is on some technical concept, it is good to show the discussions on Stack Overflow. In addition, it would be good to also show the articles that were referenced from those discussions separately. Don’t go along sweeping the web for all the key words. Without credible shares, it hardly matters and just gets exploited. Someone sharing it while discussions attaches a credibility factor to it.
Google’s attempt with Knowledge panel is good. But I believe it needs to be more transparent in communicating why it is displaying what it is displaying there.
I am reading a lot of views these days from people I respect deciding to leave Twitter. And this is after a similar exodus from Facebook pretty recently.
But this time it looks to be different; for one they are putting too much effort with their Twitter profiles. They are deleting their tweets, resetting their profile information to convey that they are not “here” and resolving to not posting on Twitter again. Well, some are even ready to pay some shady1 services to get the tweets deleted.
Brent Simmons did it. Matt Haughey followed a similar approach. And there are many more people doing the same.
I, on the other hand, was just reading through the articles and sitting there wondering what’s different this time. I was looking for that one argument to not simply delete the account. Quit Twitter completely. Best I could get was from Matt.
I’ll continue to read twitter occasionally, and I might keep on liking tweets, but I’m not going to send another tweet until the service changes or the management changes in very drastic ways.
Well, if you are still not exiting Twitter, how’s it helping? I am afraid the place will only become messier with all the respectable voices leaving the platform.
It’s like being part of a coffee club that used to meet often in a coffee house of the group’s choice. Each one of the group would talk and discuss on varied topics. It was a fun place where you could learn so much. And get to know of so many new things and news all around the world.
But slowly the coffee house became louder, with some hateful voices propagating their distasteful views. You look to the owner of the place and hope that he doesn’t be a jack and acts; you hope he asks these people to leave. And block them from coming to this place ever and ruining the experience of many such clubs as yours. But when you realise that the owner isn’t going to do so, you decide you need to act. So you decide to take your group and discussion to a better, saner place.
The question to ponder at then is would you still visit the old coffee house daily and see what’s being discussed and voiced and promulgated?
Why shady? Well you need to give them tweets and access to your profile. And some apparently post to your profile saying you use their service. Sigh!↩
Here’s a snapshot with all the “new” Android smartphones being sold online, placed right next to one another. Yeah, there is so much of innovation, so much of “choice” in this space. 🙃
When you have “magic” in your name, you tend to suffer later. I was always sceptical of the promises Magic Leap was making. Demos looked too good to be true. Finally, their marketing team have realised they’ve overstayed their welcome. Back to reality.
Another day, another AMP horror story. AMP has to be the ideal use-case on how an incumbent on web muscles its advantage to make others embrace its proprietary non-standard technology. Will anyone even consider AMP without its prominence in search?
This is a running list of things I need to implement in Blotpub. I intend to pour my thoughts and prioritise. This may also go to github on things to come once finalised.
I would like that world. However, I think we tend to ignore the social aspect that Twitter has enabled. Yes, people need to own their content. But there will always be space for that one place where they can share their content and trigger discussions.
It would be important, and is incumbent on all players involved to not let that place become a mess like Twitter. Engaging community guidelines and stringent checks & policies for bots would need to be ingrained in the design.
It is important, but extremely difficult, to hit that right balance between being productive and being healthy. I often tend to hit the zones when I ignore my health, the sleep primarily, just because I do not know when to stop. I need to learn to say “no” to myself.