Jason Kottke’s weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
If you need a distraction: 368 Chickens. Line up the chickens to rescue them.
The view from Europe, courtesy of Zeit Online: Thanks America, That’ll Be All. “Now that lunacy has installed itself in Washington for the next four years, the time has finally come for Europe to once again try its hand at hosting the spirit of the age.”
A thread from Berkeley political science professor Omar Wasow about how protests are effective actually. Cites research about the Women’s March, BLM protests, the Muslim ban protests, etc.
“The federal government isn’t just pressuring universities over speech — it’s literally disappearing students for their political expression. If you support actual free speech, now is the time to speak up.”
From the Center for Third World Organizing, an Organizing 101 bootcamp, “a multi-day day intro to organizing training designed for organizers, activists and community leaders”.
This excerpt from Conan O’Brien’s acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor is quite good.
Twain was suspicious of populism, jingoism, imperialism, the money-obsessed mania of the Gilded Age, and any expression of mindless American might or self-importance. Above all, Twain was a patriot in the best sense of the word. He loved America but knew it was deeply flawed. Twain wrote, “Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it.”
(thx, andy)
Tags: Conan O’Brien · Mark Twain · video
Apple has added the Lumon Terminal Pro computer to their devices lineup, right alongside the iMac and Macbook Air.
Finally got around to reading Craig Mod’s “rules” for running his membership program. Two that particularly resonated: “The program exists for the goals, not the members” and “Fundamentally, you are building a community”.
Two prominent American scholars on fascism & authoritarianism, Timothy Snyder & Jason Stanley, have recently moved from Yale to the University of Toronto. Stanley: “the primary reason was the deteriorating political situation in the United States”.
For his 8th book, What the Dead Can Say, Philip Graham limited it to a print run of 1000 and distribution was entirely through stashing them in Little Free Libraries around the entire country.
Want to build your own synthesizer? The DIY Synths Database is a “curated collection of 68 DIY-friendly hardware synthesizers and related standalone musical equipment”.
From 2017, Ron Rosenbaum on the newspaper that fought Hitler. “The paper went down fighting a lie, fighting Nazi murderers, refusing to normalize the Hitler regime.”