• for: quote, quote - Prateek Raj, quote - internet regulation, quote - reducing misinformation, fake news, indyweb - support
• quote
  • We lived in a relatively unregulated digital world until now.
  • It was great until the public realized that a few companies wield too much power today in our lives.
  • We will see significant changes in areas like
    • privacy,
    • data protection,
    • algorithm and
    • architecture design guidelines, and
    • platform accountability, etc.
  • which should reduce the pervasiveness of
    • misinformation,
    • hate and visceral content
  • over the internet.
  • These steps will also reduce the power wielded by digital giants.
  • Beyond these immediate effects, it is difficult to say if these social innovations will create a more participative and healthy society.
  • These broader effects are driven by deeper underlying factors, like
    • history,
    • diversity,
    • cohesiveness and
    • social capital, and also
    • political climate and
    • institutions.
  • In other words,
    • just as digital world is shaping the physical world,
    • physical world shapes our digital world as well.
• author: Prateek Raj
  • assistant professor in strategy, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore

Extreme Risiken bei der Wasserversorgung betreffen zur Zeit bereits 4 Milliarden Menschen in wenigstens einem Monat im Jahr. Die Zahl wird sich bis 2050 auf 6 Milliarden erhöhen, selbst wenn die globale Erhitzung gebremst werden kann. Das World Resources Institute publiziert diese Zahlen und sehr viel weitere Informationen zur globalen Wasserkrise in der neuen Version seines Wasserrisiken Atlas. https://www.liberation.fr/environnement/climat/un-quart-de-lhumanite-est-deja-menace-par-les-penuries-deau-20230816_HVQ5ERMYBZDJTD3JJKGOOOH5JY/

Water Risk Atlas: https://www.wri.org/aqueduct

Sommerliche HItzewellen wie in diesem Jahr in Europa, den USA und China sind durch die globale Erhitzung in ihrem Ausmaß wesentlich wahrscheinlicher geworden. Ohne globale Erhitzung wären eine Welle in China so wie in diesem Jahr nur alle 250 Jahre zu erwarten, in Südeuropa und in Mexiko und den südlichen USA wäre sie „virtuell unmöglich“. Die World Weather Attribution publizierte diese Ergebnisse in einer neuen Attributions-Studie. https://www.repubblica.it/economia/rapporti/energitalia/storie/2023/07/28/news/wwa_le_ondate_di_calore_estremo_negli_usa_e_in_europa_sarebbero_virtualmente_impossibili_senza_il_cambiamento_climatico-409305623/

Der Nähe Osten - der frühere "fruchtbare Halbmond" - ist eines der von der globalen Erhitzung am stärksten betroffenen Gebiete. Ausführliche multimediale Reportage über die Wasserkrise im Irak, die einige früher fruchtbare Gebiete bereits unbewohnbar gemacht hat und den IS-Terrorismus erleichtert. Sie wird verschärft durch Staudämme in der Türkei und im Iran, Raubbau und veraltete Bewässerungstechniken, Regierungsversagen und Bevölkerungswachstum. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/29/world/middleeast/iraq-water-crisis-desertification.html

Barzun, Jacques. “The Great Books.” The Atlantic, December 1952. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1952/12/the-great-books/642341/.

Barzun heaps praise on Great Books of the Western World with some criticism of what it is also missing. He finds more than a few superlative words for the majesty of the Syntopicon.

According to Jacques Barzun (and possibly written in the volumes itself), while the Syntopicon has 102 ideas, there are "some three thousand subheadings."

the five-foot shelf reference is to the Harvard Classics competitor

I like their simplicity and cloth texture, but family members seem to think that my 1952 set of The Great Books of the Western World are a bit on the "dreary looking side" compared with the more colorful books in our home library. (It says something that the 12 year old thinks my yellow Springer graduate math texts are more inviting...) Has anyone else had this problem and solved it with custom printed dust jackets?

• Has anyone seen them for sale?
• Made their own?
• Interested in commissioning some as a bigger group?
• Used a third-party company to design and print something?

In doing something like this for fun, I might hope that the younger kids in the house might show more interest in some more lively/colorful custom covers.

I'm partially tempted to use a classical painting as a display across the spines (a la Juniper Books collections) perhaps using:

• The School of Athens by Raphael
• The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David

Other thoughts? suggestions?

Syndication link: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicalEducation/comments/15gv2cz/custom_dust_jackets_for_the_great_books_of_the/

• for: extreme weather, realtime extreme weather analysis, World weather attribution
• description
  • the World Weather Attribution organization is a group of research institutes that provides robust scientific answers to the question:
    • is climate change to blame?
  • when an extreme weather event has occurred
  • This is usually available days to weeks after the event and informs discussions about climate change while the impacts of the events are still fresh in the minds of the public and policymakers.

Erneruerbare Energien wachsen weltweit deutlich schneller als von vielen erwartet. Ein neuer Bericht der Internatiionale Energiebehörde IEA stellt fest, dass die Erzeugungskapazität inzwischen bei 340 Gigawatt liegt. 2022 wurden 1.600Millionen Dollar in Erneuerbare investiert. Der Marktanteil von Elektroautos stieg auf 15%. berichte von anderen Institutionen bestätigen diese Trends. https://taz.de/Klimaneutralitaet-2050-technisch-moeglich/!5948817/

IEA-Bericht: https://www.iea.org/reports/tracking-clean-energy-progress-2023

Bericht des Rocky Montains Institute zur Energiewende: https://rmi.org/insight/x-change-electricity/

Studie des World Resources Institute zu den 8 Ländern mit dem schnellsten Wachstum von Erneuerbaren: https://www.wri.org/insights/countries-scaling-renewable-energy-fastest

Sibirien macht gerade die schlimmste Hitzewelle der aufgezeichneten Geschichte durch. Im Juni wurden Temperaturen von über 40 Grad erreicht. damit droht sich das Abschmelzen des Permafrosts – durch die Freisetzung von Methan ein sich selbst verstärkender Prozess – zu beschleunigen. https://www.liberation.fr/environnement/climat/siberie-avec-40-c-la-region-connait-la-pire-vague-de-chaleur-de-son-histoire-20230611_QONTZ25VFRASJMR6UT44HXDO7A/

• Title
  • Detox Development: Repurposing Environmentally Harmful Subsidies
• Author
  • World Bank

• Title
  • Hiding in plain sight: The missing trillions for climate change
• Author Axel Van Trotsenburg
• Date
  • June 15, 2023
• Publisher
  • World Bank

• Title
  • Big Oil v the World Series 1 03 Delay
• Author
  • BBC

• Title
  • Big Oil v the World Series 1 02 Doubt
• Author BBC

• Title
  • Big Oil v the World Series 1 01 Denial
• Author BBC

There are 443 works by 74 authors in the Great Books of the Western World. All of them are printed in their entirety except for Aquinas, Kepler and Fourier.

Robert Hutchins takes sole responsibility for the final decision on the selection for the books which appear in The Great Books of the Western World series.

One wonders what sort of advice he may have sought out or received with respect to a much broader diversity of topics and writers with respect to his own time. I reminded a bit of the article The 102 Great Ideas (Life, 1948) which highlights a more progressive stance with respect to women and feminism in the examples used.

See: LIFE. “The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog.” January 26, 1948. Https://books.google.com/books?id=p0gEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA92&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false. Google Books.

It feels odd that people wouldn't understand their own traditions, but it obviously happens. Information overload can obviously heavily afflict societies toward forgetting their traditions and the formation of new traditions, particularly in non-oral traditions which focus more on written texts which can more easily be ignored (not read) and then later replaced with seemingly newer traditions.

Take for example the resurgence of note taking ideas circa 2014-2020 which completely disregarded the prior histories, particularly in lieu of new technologies for doing them.

As a means of focusing on Western Culture, the editors here have highlighted some of the most important thoughts for encapsulating and influencing their current and future cultures.

How do oral traditions embrace the idea of the "Great Conversation"?

Two of the driving reasons behind the Great Books project were improvement of both education and democracy.

The democracy portion was likely prompted by the second Red Scare from ~1947-1957 which had profound effects on America. Published in 1952, this series would have considered it closely and it's interesting they included Marx in the thinkers at the end of the series.

A great admission to make upfront in such a massive endeavor which one hopes to shape the future.

What does this mean for ars excerpendi writ large? Particularly when it may apply to hundreds of thousands?

Link to page with information about the paper: https://openreview.net/forum?id=rJeXCo0cYX

Die Weltbank finanziert weiterhin in großem Umfang fossile Projekte, obwohl sie behauptet, nur Investitionen zu unterstützen, die mit dem Pariser Abkommen vereinbar sind. Die Richtlinen dazu lassen aber z.B. Investitionen in die Gasinfrastruktur zu und verlangen keine wissenschaftliche Begutachtung von Projekten anhand objektiver Kriterien. https://www.energymonitor.ai/finance/sustainable-finance/opinion-why-the-world-banks-paris-alignment-process-could-add-fuel-to-the-climate-crisis/?utm_source=cbnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-07-03&utm_campaign=Daily+Briefing+03+07+2023 (via CarbonBrief)

One) Successful men realize that the most important decision in their life is the woman they choose, because outside of work, this is what they'll be spending most time on. The woman must understand the man's grand ambition, and support them with it. (Cf. Flow & The Intellectual Life as well). Women should be chosen on personality, not looks. Looks fade (attraction as well), personality "stays".

Two) Everyone deserves an opinion but not everyone deserves a say. Charlie Munger sums this up right: "I don't ever allow myself to have [express] an opinion about anything that I don't know the opponent side's argument better than they do." Or Marcus Aurelius, who says: "The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject." In short: Only state your opinion when you can back it up!; knowledge and experience. The same goes for judging opinion (and advice) from others.

Three) Successful people buy assets when the money is enough. Assets > Luxury. (See also: Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki). Only buy glamor and other "interests" once your assets are there to secure your financial success.

Four) Be pragmatic. Do what's practical, not what is "sexy". Notice inefficiencies and solve them. The entrepreneurial mindset.

Five) The morning sets the tone for the rest of the days. Time is subjective, waking up early doesn't matter as much as waking up later. It depends on the person. Someone who wakes up at 10am can be as successful as someone who wakes up at 6am. Instead, what defines success, is a highly effective morning routine.

Six) The less you talk, the more you listen. Talking less means less mistakes. In addition, the less you talk, the more people will listen when you do speak. It puts extra weight on your message. Listening means analysis and learning.

Seven) Pick the right opportunity at the right time. Pick the right vehicle. Do the right things in the right order! The advice "don't do what someone says, do what they do" is bullshit, as you can't do what someone is able to do after ten years of experience.

Eight) Discipline > Motivation. Motivation, like Dr. Sung says, fluctuates and is multifactorial dependent... When you are lead by motivation you will not be as productive. Don't rely on chance. Rely on what is stable.

Nine) Once a good career has been made, buy A1 assets and hold on to them to secure a financially successful future.

Ten) Just because you won, you are not a winner. Being a winner is a continuous process, it means always learning and reflecting as well as introspecting. Don't overvalue individual wins but do celebrate them when appropriate.

Eleven) Build good relationships with the banks early on. At times you need loans to fund certain ventures, when having a good relation with them, this will be significantly easier. Understand finance as early as possible. Read finance books.

Twelve) Keep the circle small. Acquintances can be many, but real close relationships should be kept small. Choose your friends wisely. "You become the average of the five people you spend most time with." Privacy is important. Only tell the most deep secrets to the Inner Circle, to avoid overcomplication.

Thirteen) Assume that everything is your fault. Responsibility. It leads to learning. It requires reflection and introspection. It leads to Dr. Benjamin Hardy's statement: "Nothing happens to you, everything happens for you."

Fourteen) Work like new money, but act like your old money. Combine the hunger of the new with the wisdom of the old.

Fifteen) Assume that you can't change the world, but slightly influence it. It prevents disappointments and gives a right mindset. Do everything (that has your ambition) with an insane drive. Aim to hit the stars. To become the best of the best.

Sixteen) Private victories lead to public victories. The solid maxim is the following: "The bigger the public victory, the more private victories went into it." Work in private. Social media doesn't need to known the struggle. Let your results talk for you. This is also why you should never compare yourself to others, but rather to your own past self.

Seventeen) After extreme experience, the most complicated task will look elegant and effortless. Unconscious competence.

Fossile Brennstoffe, umweltschädliche Landwirtschaft und Fischfang werden jährlich mit mindestens 7,25 Billionen Dollar subventioniert. Insgesamt fließen pro Minute 23 Millionen Dollar umweltschädliche Subventionen – 8% des Bruttosozialprodukts. Mit 577 Milliarden USD waren fossile Subventionen 2021 doppelt so hoch wie die für Erneuerbare und fast sechsmal so hoch wie die zugesagte Klimafinanzierung für den globalen Süden. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/15/vast-fossil-fuel-and-farming-subsidies-causing-environmental-havoc-world-bank

Bericht der Weltbank: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climatechange/publication/detox-development

so this passage explicitly mentions "external beauty", BUT if we're to consider beauty in its truest essence, then i wonder if this statement is a bad thing. after all, beauty is essentially harmony and balance (which explains why individuals with symmetrical features are considered attractive). all of us strive for beauty, but in doing so, we may lose what makes us unique because beauty favors uniformity.

this is fascinating to me because uniformity adheres to a standard, which is important for regulating randomness (opposite of this is pattern and we LOVE patterns because it is discernible which means it is safer), and fostering a shared understanding of the world. and this shared understanding of our world is really important to us as humanity. this is how we evolve together. this collective perception only happens through that concept of beauty (or form and structure, harmony and balance).

nowadays, we shifted and value individualism more. this excessive individualism has promoted different perspectives on the world which contributes to conflicts. ultimately, extremes on both ends of the spectrum (uniformity or individualism) are detrimental, so striking this balance between them is crucial for progress and unity among people.

Article: Surendran Reddy Recital 2005-08-28

https://taz.de/Klimawandel-im-Mittelmeerraum/!5929928/

Die April-Hitzewelle in Spanien, Portugal und Nordafrika lässt sich auf die globale Erhitzung zurückführen. Sie folgte auf eine mehrjährige Dürre. Die World Weather Attribution Group hat errechnet, dass ein solches Ereignis in der vorindustriellen Zeit so unwahrscheinlich war, dass es praktisch nicht zu ihm kommen konnte. Die Steigerung der Extremtemperaturen ist dabei schneller, als es die Klimamodelle voraussagen. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/05/april-mediterranean-heatwave-almost-impossible-without-climate-crisis

PA zur Studie: https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/extreme-april-heat-in-spain-portugal-morocco-algeria-almost-impossible-without-climate-change/

Die World Weather Attribution Group hat in einer Studie nachgewiesen, dass die große Dürre an Horn von Afrika ein Ergebnis der Erhitzung der Erde durch Treibhausgase ist. Von der Dürre sind 50 Millionen Menschen direkt und weitere 100 Millionen indirekt betroffen. Ohne die Erhöhung der Temperaturen hätten dieselben Regenverhältnisse nicht zu einer Dürre geführt. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/27/human-driven-climate-crisis-fuelling-horn-of-africa-drought-study

Hutchins, Robert M., Mortimer J. Adler, and William Gorman, eds. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World, Volume II, Man to World. 1st ed. Vol. 3. 54 vols. The Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

Hutchins, Robert M., Mortimer J. Adler, and William Gorman, eds. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World, Volume I, Angel to Love. 1st ed. Vol. 2. 54 vols. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

This is sad, a child has a fear to lose her mother because all women on the street are wearing the same cloth

LIFE. “The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog.” January 26, 1948. https://books.google.com/books?id=p0gEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA92&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false. Google Books.

Provides an small example of "the great conversation" on the equality of men and women.

Amidst a number of very gendered advertisements in issue 4 of volume 24 of LIFE magazine from 1948 is a short piece on the pending release of The Encyclopædia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World.

The piece starts out talking about the 432 classical works written by 71 men and highlights the fact that "Woman, not a main idea, is included [with] in [the topical category] Family Man and Love." The piece goes on by way of example of the work to excerpt portions on Idea number 51: "Man". To show the flexibility of the included Syntopicon categorization they elaborate with 15 excerpted passages from authors from Plato to Freud on Idea 51, subdivision 6b: "Men and Women: their equality or inequality".

It provides a fantastic mini-study on the emerging conversation on gender studies as seen in a mainstream magazine in 1948.

Were there any follow up letters to the editor on this topic in subsequent issues? How was this broader piece received with respect to the idea of gender at the time?

A staff of at least 26 created the underlying index that would lay at the heart of the Great Books of the Western World which was prepared in a rented old fraternity house on the University of Chicago campus. (p. 93)

How did Michael Oakeshott's philosophy overlap with the idea of the 'Great Conversation' or 20th century movement of Adler's Great Books of the Western World.

How does it influence the idea of "having conversations with the text" in the annotation space?

Key observation - Quantity is all modernity values - Quality is thrown out the window - Later, the author connects - quantity to the Cartesian world view, - that seeks to measure everything - and quality to the Idealist worldview - that elevates consciousness over physicalism and materialism - (Destructive) growth - is an outcome of the cartesian worldview

Annotate this report

The AdlerNet Guide, Part III<br /> by Amy Hunt

https://archive.org/details/encyclopaediabritannicagreatbooksofthewesternworld/Encyclop%C3%A6dia%20Britannica%20-%20Great%20Books%20of%20the%20Western%20World%2C%20Volume%201%20-%20The%20Great%20Conversation/

Lubbock's List: http://www.greaterbooks.com/lubbock.html

http://www.greaterbooks.com/

Center for the Study of the Great Ideas

https://web.archive.org/web/20190806154724/https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/literature/gbww/index.html

University of Adelaide digital collection of the Great Books of the Western World using public domain sources within their collection.

https://www.logos.com/product/55052/great-books-of-the-western-world

A digital (app?) version of The Great Books of the Western World with cross references.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ebooks/comments/eao9c8/great_books_of_the_western_world_ebook_collection/

Someone's collected digital copies of most of the Great Books of the Western World collection here.

https://standardebooks.org/collections/encyclopaedia-britannicas-great-books-of-the-western-world

the phrase "intellectual furniture" is sort of painful here...

1952, 1970s, 1980s editions and their differences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Fag8ZQcz4

Pretty powerful video here.

Reminiscent of Michael Sheen's World Cup inspiration speech: <br /> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fpV0OFC0vc

Recreating a world of wonder - What does it mean to be human?

The = World Inequality Lab - is co-directed by Thomas Piketty,

!- world bank : leader is a climate denier

https://press.princeton.edu/series/ancient-wisdom-for-modern-readers

This appears like Princeton University Press is publishing sections of someone's commonplace books as stand alone issues per heading where each chapter has a one or more selections (in the original language with new translations).

This almost feels like a version of The Great Books of the Western World watered down for a modern audience?

Well, you could write standards-compliant JS... Then people could run it on the runtime everyone already has installed, instead of needing to download Node.

https://diggingthedigital.com/hoe-werkt-het-maken-van-een-idee-notitie/

Frank calls out what he considers a good example of actual note taking practice rather than the more often seen talk about note taking theory. The example in question is Forrest Perry's YouTube video #9 Zettelkasten: from source card to idea card.

Example of Brian Eno using combinatorial creativity using cards to generate music.

This sounds similar to a process used by Austin Kleon which I've noted before.

https://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-nonfiction/

What a solid looking list of non-fiction books.

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/results-wales-now-need-reach-25602153

https://nation.cymru/culture/watch-flash-mob-welsh-choir-sings-national-anthem-on-train-for-world-cup/

http://view.connect.americanpublicmedia.org/?qs=09e7fadd01613142a11433a7f816f6ecbc7f76531e8b1856ef9b356238dd2a1e442f272247c30e29bf4df44333738f90879e49f6c111b3f6c470736f139391e866481634d99616311f2690640471480f

Alternate thesis for why countries and cities vie to host money-losing events like the World Cup and the Olympics: grift.

With the necessary need for building infrastructure, there's easy and ample opportunity for cooking the books and pushing cash flow into the pockets of contractors and political figures as well as into the pockets of the governing bodies and their officials.

Cross reference FIFA bribery

Some of the money may go into the local economy and workers which is good, but who's really benefitting here? Where is the money going? Who is footing the loss? It can't all be written off to goodwill.

http://www.greyroom.org/issues/60/20/the-dialectic-of-the-university-his-masters-voice/

“The Indexers pose with the file of Great Ideas. At sides stand editors [Mortimer] Adler (left) and [William] Gorman (right). Each file drawer contains index references to a Great Idea. In center are the works of the 71 authors which constitute the Great Books.” From “The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog,” Life 24, no. 4 (26 January 1948). Photo: George Skadding.

Photos from

"The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog," Life, 26 January 1948, 92–3.

!- In other words : stuck in a groove - stuck in a conceptual groove -

That is, the advantage of folk- lore is that it conveys what people think in their own words and actions, and what they

say or sing in folklore expresses what they might not be able to in everyday conversation.

https://www.npr.org/2010/07/02/128245468/a-true-champion-vs-the-great-white-hope

origin of the phrase "Great White Hope"

https://occidental.substack.com/p/the-adlernet-guide-part-ii?sd=pf

Description of a note taking method for reading the Great Books: part commonplace, part zettelkasten.

I'm curious where she's ultimately placing the cards to know if the color coding means anything in the end other than simply differentiating the card "types" up front? (i.e. does it help to distinguish cards once potentially mixed up?)

Ambrose, T., Campbell, L., Belam, M., & Lock, S. (2021, November 11). Covid live: Brazil reports 12,273 new cases with daily deaths down to 240; Russia’s death toll passes 250,000. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/nov/10/coronavirus-news-live-france-orders-those-aged-over-65-to-show-proof-of-covid-booster-shot-china-reports-drop-in-cases

Hamblin, J. (2021, December 9). Perspective | Omicron won’t keep us from ending the pandemic. We’re doing that ourselves. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/12/09/omicron-coronavirus-individual-threat/

We have that. It's the Web platform. The hard part is getting people to admit this, and then getting them to actually stop acting counter to these interests. Sometimes that involves getting them to admit that their preferred software stack (and their devotion to it) is the problem, and it's not going to just fix itself.

See also: Lorie and the UVC

http://www.nationalgreatbooks.com/cirriculum/background.html

Louis Menand had an interesting article on great books courses recently: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/20/whats-so-great-about-great-books-courses-roosevelt-montas-rescuing-socrates.

If you look closely at those photos of Adler, you'll notice that one is in context and the other is the same image of him cut and pasted onto a set of books.

Those who are into this broader topic may also appreciate Alex Beam's book "A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books". A while back I remember going though Lawrence Principe's Great Courses lecture series on the History of Science to 1700 which I suspect might help contextualize a tour through the great courses.

I'm curious if you're adding any other books that Adler et al left off their list?

https://github.com/sajjad2881/NewSyntopicon

Someone's creating a new digitally linked version of the Syntopicon as text files for Obsidian (and potentially other platforms). Looks like it's partial at best and will need a lot of editing work to become whole.

found by way of

Has anyone made a hypermedia rendition of the Syntopicon, i.e. with transcluded windows or "parallel pages" into the indexed texts?<br><br>Many of Adler's Great Books are public domain, so it wouldn't require *so* titanic a copyright issue… pic.twitter.com/UmWiyn5aBC

— Andy Matuschak (@andy_matuschak) August 17, 2022

https://occidental.substack.com/p/my-adler-antinet

Cross posted at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wromeb/the_antinet_as_an_aid_to_analytical_reading_a_la/<br /> with additional commentary.

I dunno. I think the common argument that the Web was not intended to be an application delivery platform is both (a) ignorant of basic facts in subtle ways that are materially relevant to the particular use case described here and (b) poorly applied to this use case, given those particulars.

I don't like most traditional Web apps or what passes for best practices in the contemporary culture. I don't write them, and I'm not defending them.

But we're talking about scientific literature here. I'll dispute the general argument as it applies to the specific use case under discussion by pointing out that a document-centric platform is in fact exactly the correct tool for the job in this case. The only thing that could be better is if you were able to write your paper more or less as you ordinarily do for journal publication and then feed the journal article into a machine able to comprehend the methods at a deep level and then simulate what it describes. We don't have that, though. But we can to author documents that are a little more explicit instead. This is not a terrible consolation prize. So we really should start seizing the benefits of the current circumstances, lest the Web platform actually turn into something unsuited for this. (Which, perversely, is most likely to happen as a result of pursuing the vision of making it more suited for traditional software development.)

Again—by all means, don't compile to asm.js (or WASM, or from TypeScript, etc.). Put it to use on its strengths and in the spirit of its original vision.

I agree. And this very reason (along with the complexity, mentioned in the following paragraph) is what should disqualify VirtualBox.

The virtual machine manager you should use is the one you assumed would be available when you published this post (and that you were correct about, and that I am using right now to read it): the Web browser.

There's some sleight of hand here, which treats "when no one uses it in daily life anymore" as a given. That (folks continuing to use it) is the stability of the Web platform.

Besides, even if we suppose that people have stopped using it (dubious), the entirety of what constitutes "the 2013 Web platform" is not necessary—only the parts that are actually used for computation and I/O. That's much smaller.

Not true. The standardized Web platform is not just more stable than Python, it's probably one of the most stable platforms in existence. It just moves (read: improves) slowly.*

Most people don't recognize this, because they pack the stable, standardized parts all in the same mental bag as the shiny, non-standardized parts (like Flash, for an example of decades past, or experimental vendor-specific stuff for a more evergreen problem), then end up getting bit in a similar way and blaming the environment rather than communal tendencies towards recklessness.

It also turns out that the Web's original academic underpinnings are deeply aligned with the goals of researchers looking for a way to work together—even if the final puzzle piece (ECMA-262) didn't come into existence until later in the decade when the Web first appeared. It's still old enough that it passes the litmus test proposed here.

* for good reason; after all, look at the evidence

Are these the groans of a movement from a clockwork world perspective to a complexity based one?

real world assets for collateral diversification?

Devirisifaction can mitigate future attacks of this nature

Suppose that instead of shell commands, the snippets were JS, and the README, rather than being named README.markdown or README.txt, were actually named e.g. README.txt.htm. it wouldn't be basically like an executable README—it would actually be executable. You could double click it to open, and then read through it and use it to actually do the stuff that the README is documenting (like build the project in question).

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-ancient-soldiers-enemies.html

This is similar to the IndieWeb and web standards ideas of looking back at history to see the actual patterns of work that were beneficial.

Link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/HhAj3r1bEeyw9h_Pa4QNrA

Once the government has control of the economy, will they ever let go?

!- claim : examples of a good enough world * Universal Basic Income (UBI) * Blockchain * Offer network

!- question : good enough world * This term seems a bit counter-intuitive as a "good enough world" is actually advocated as one of the better solutions for the future of our civilization.

!- for : Indyweb * A "good enough" world is contingent on a global virtual commons * Indyweb can play a major role

Until those things go away.

A case study: DuckDuckHack used Codio, which "worked" until DDG decided to call it a wrap on accepting outside contributions. DDG stopped paying for Codio, and because of that, there was no longer an easy way to replicate the development environment—the DuckDuckHack repos remained available (still do), but you can't pop over into Codio and play around with it. Furthermore, because Codio had been functioning as a sort of crutch to paper over the shortcomings in the onboarding/startup process for DuckDuckHack, there was never any pressure to make sure that contributors could easily get up and running without access to a Codio-based development environment.

It's interesting that, no matter how many times cloud-based Web IDEs have been attempted and failed to displace traditional, local development, people keep getting suckered into it, despite the history of observable downsides.

What's also interesting is the conflation of two things:

1. software that works by treating the Web browser as a ubiquitous, reliable interpreter (in a way that neither /usr/local/bin/node nor /usr/bin/python3 are reliably ubiquitous)—NB: and running locally, just like Node or Python (or go build or make run or...)—and

2. the idea that development toolchains aiming for "zero configuration and setup" should defer to and depend upon the continued operation of third-party servers

That is, even though the Web browser is an attractive target for its consistency (in behavior and availability), most Web IDE advocates aren't actually leveraging its benefits—they still end up targeting (e.g.) /usr/local/bin/node and /usr/local/python3—except the executables in question are expected to run on some server(s) instead of the contributor's own machine. These browser-based IDEs aren't so browser-based after all, since they're just shelling out to some non-browser process (over RPC over HTTP). The "World Wide Wruntime" is relegated to merely interpreting the code for a thin client that handles its half of the transactions to/from said remote processes, which end up handling the bulk of the computing (even if that computing isn't heavyweight and/or the client code on its own is full of bloat, owing to the modern trends in Web design).

It's sort of crazy how common it is to encounter this "mental slippery slope": "We can lean on the Web browser, since it's available everywhere!" → "That involves offloading it to the cloud (because that's how you 'do' stuff for the browser, right?)".

So: want to see an actual boom in collaborative development spurred by zero-configuration dev environments? The prescription is straightforward: make all these tools truly run in the browser. The experience we should all be shooting for resemble something like this: Step 1: clone the repo Step 2: double click README.html Step 3: you're off to the races—because project upstream has given you all the tools you need to nurture your desire to contribute

You can also watch this space for more examples of the need for an alternative take on working to actually manage to achieve the promise of increased collaboration through friction-free (or at least friction-reduced) development: * https://hypothes.is/search?q=%22the+repo+is+the+IDE%22 * https://hypothes.is/search?q=%22builds+and+burdens%22

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2022/07/07/the-fallout-continues-us-news-pulls-columbia-university-from-its-2022-rankings/

Dogen contradicts himself because he tries to show "all sides of the story". His teaching is a "pointing out" instruction that ANY viewpoint is simply that, perspectival knowing.

An important question then, is this, if Dogen (and Nagarjuna) are claiming that there is no objective reality in our constructed world of concepts and language, is science being denied? Is fake news ok? Is this a position that basically accepts post modernism? No, I would say no to all of these. It's pointing out the LIMITATIONS of concepts and language. They are incomplete and always leave with a sense of wanting more. And since Post Modernism is also one point of view, it is also thrown out by Dogen and Nagarjuna. Remember, ALL points of views are points of view. Fake news is also a point of view so those who practice it can also not justify it.

What Dogen and Nagarjuna are saying is that as soon as one enters the world of concepts and language, any concept and anything side is inherently one sided. It is inherently perspectival and situated in an inherently incomplete conceptual space.

As Tibetan doctor/monk Barry Kerzin points out in this conversation with physicist Carlo Rovelli, there is a critical difference between "existence" and "intrinsic existence". The first is not being denied by Nagarjuna, but the second, intrinsic existence, the existence of concepts and the words that represent them, is. If these two are confused, it can lead straight to nihilism.

https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FsPSMTNjwHZw%2F&group=world

This also aligns with John Vervaeke's perspectival and propositional knowing in his 4 P ways of knowing about reality: Propositional, Perspectival, Participatory and Procedural. A good explanation of Vervaeke's 4Ps is here: https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FGyx5tyFttfA%2F&group=world

Inequalities in income and wealth decreased markedly in the West from 1914 to 1980 due to a number of factors including:<br /> - Two World Wars and the Great Depression dramatically overturned the power relationships between labor and capital<br /> - A progressive tax on income and inheritance reduced the concentration of wealth and helped increase mobility<br /> - Liquidation of foreign and colonial assets as well as dissolution of public debt