361 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2022
    1. It's not a question of rearranging your to-do list so as to make space for all your "big rocks", but of accepting that there are simply too many rocks to fit in the jar.

      Or as Mo would say to the owner at my first job out if college, “you have too many potatoes in your sack!”

    1. But it's also true that we're increasingly the kind of people who don't want to rest – who get antsy and anxious if we don't feel we're being productive.

      I need to rest.

    1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

      Testing annotations in Safari ios.

    1. If you’re practicing and you want to scramble a solved cube, you have to keep the cube intact and scramble it up manually. If you break it apart and reassemble the cubies randomly, there’s actually only a 1 in 12 chance that it’s solvable.

      A Rubik's Cube broken apart and randomly assembled has only a 1-in-12 chance that it's solvable.

    1. In the story of the 4,000, the word for basket (spuris) had to do with a much larger container, the very same kind of basket used to lower Paul over the Damascus wall (Acts 9:25).

      Oh wait. The Gentile 4,000 used the Paul basket word. The Jewish 5,000 used a different basket word. Thus, Paul’s basket is not used in both Gentile and Jew stories.

    2. First, check out the locations: the 5,000 were fed on the Jewish side of the lake while the 4,000 were fed on the Gentile side. Jesus had compassion for both crowds; He cares about both Jews and Gentiles!

      Saul on side of Jews, Paul on side of Gentiles.

    1. We now know that at least 10-30% of those who survive any Covid infection (from asymptomatic or “mild”to severe) will go on to live with (and sometimes die from) long Covid – a long-term, lifelong, or even life-threatening or fatal, disabling chronic syndrome, the biological pathways of which are still largely unknown.

      Wow. 10-30% of people who get Covid, now has long Covid.

  2. Dec 2021
    1. All of these, both Midianites and Ephaeans, come out of Sheba, which Strabo (xvi. 4, 10) describes as "the highly blessed land of the Sabaeans, in which myrrh, frankincense, and cinnamon grow."

      The cinnamon again

    2. The promise of Isaiah 60:5 is expanded in two pictures, seen from Jerusalem’s commanding position between the desert and the sea. The first is a procession of camels and flocks representing the tribute of the East.

      People come from over the desert and sea to worship Jesus (Is 60:6 & Is 60:5)

    3. These were the things the Sabaeans abounded with. Strabo (z) says, that frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon, grew with them; and that they have such an abundance of spices, that they use the branches of cinnamon, cassia, and other things, for fuel

      Imagine cinnamon being among the list of gifts given to baby Jesus bytheMagi

    4. The multitude of camels - Lowth renders this, 'An inundation of camels.' The Hebrew word properly denotes an inundation or overflowing of waters, but it is not improperly applied to a numerous caravan or company of animals.

      Huh. So the first original Hebrew for “camels” is actually “waters”?

    5. The verse paints the commerce of the East, as Isaiah 60:5 had described that of the West.

      East and West come to worship Jesus

    1. This visualization depicts United States search metrics on a set of 2018 news events, curated by Axios. Each event was represented by a unique search term (or terms). The Google Trends API was used to obtain the date at which search interest peaked for each event throughout the year.

      Fascinating that their data came from Google Trends API. I didn't even know that Google Trends had an API.

    1. They’re coming as worshipers, and their worship is appropriately being offered to a King as evidenced by the gifts that they bring, which are coronation kind of gifts – and we’ll explain that a little more.

      But if they bring coronation gifts, wouldn’t they be coronating a king?

    2. They’re there to worship Him. They’re not on a political mission, although it has political implications.

      Wouldn’t they want to make Jesus their political king?

    3. Daniel actually became prime minister, and for over 60 years had a prime minister role in the Middle East that transcended several of those empires during the Babylonians, the Medes, and the Persians, he was there.

      Daniel is like a bridge between the empires over time. So interesting that he saw the transition from Babylonian rule to Persian rule.

    4. Daniel became, according to Daniel 5:11, the chief of the magi, having been trained in the law of the Medes and the Persians with his friends when they arrived there.

      Interesting. Daniel learned the rules that the Persian kings must learn. How did the Babylonaians have this persian law. The Babylonians were the empire before the Persian-Medes.

    1. Well, maybe you don’t need that half-season A team. Maybe you don’t need two Rookie teams. Hey, what did the Astros just figure out? Can we do that too? Hey, how can we better unify what we’re doing at all levels of the organization?

      Is there a cost to a major league team to have all these minor league affiliations? I would assume that the major league team is turning a profit with all these teams (not a cost). Thus wouldn't you want to have more minor league teams? More teams, more profits, right?

    2. One such team, the Houston Astros, brought in the consulting firm McKinsey, and actually had consultants go to Europe and try to learn best practices from the top soccer teams there. Among the results of this was a determination that the minor league system was too bloated, and that more attention needed to specialized work with top prospects.

      Oh, so this is why some minor league teams are getting cut?

    3. For easy math, let’s just say that every team had 5 affiliates. That means at any given point in time, for every guy in the majors, there were 5 guys in the minors. How many of those never made it? A lot.

      I'm curious how long the average major league career is, and how long the average minor league career is.

    4. (Since the advent of the MLB draft in 1965, only 23 players have gone to the majors without playing in the minors.)

      Whoa.

    5. I’ve thought the total interested audience would be about six people

      I'm one of those six, I think!

    1. if cross-format identifiers like DOIs are used, annotations made in one format (eg, EPUB) can be seen in the same document published in other formats (eg, HTML, PDF) and in other locations.

      Would it be possible to have a Bible use DOI to make annotations in every verse available?

    2. Annotate any EPUB: Just drag and drop any EPUB file on the target at docdrop.org to open it with Hypothesis enabled.

      I can’t wait to try this.

    3. That’s kind of where I see we could take Hypothesis, where you can almost recognize where a certain message, maybe in an entirely different reply thread or context, could actually be really useful in some other context that’s in another conversation; that’s happening somewhere else.

      I wonder if this would be possible to make all annotations on a particular Bible verse be connected. Whether it’s an annotation in a Bible, or an annotation in a Christian book.

    1. To easily open YouTube videos for annotation, use the bookmarklet.

      Whut. We can annotate YouTube videos?!

    1. And, as is preached in some cultures, those connections endure even when some humans are gone. Which, of course, means that they are not completely gone. And by living this way, by establishing throughlines from generation to generation, even if we don’t fully grasp it, our existences mean that they, all of them, are never completely gone.

      Ah, so here's what he means by intentional traditions are at the essence of human existence.

    2. I think though that as humans we must feel freer to live more intentional lives.

      I need to think through the meaning of this some more.

    3. A lot of what we like to think of as tradition can spill into the realm of obligation. When that happens the intentionality is lost, and really, the intentionality is what makes something special.

      Yeah, that's what I fear most people do with tradition. IT HAS TO BE DONE THIS WAY EVERY YEAR!! I'm not a big fan of that.

    4. I’m not that big into shopping, but I fondly remember holiday shopping… strangers at the mall seemed jollier

      I do miss shopping in person.

    5. I would thoroughly enjoy having other kinds of small traditions to engage in. I don’t want to contrive something just for the sake of having something else to do but… isn’t what I’m talking about something that a lot of people are missing out on these days?

      I should make a list of all the small traditions that I/we do.

      E.g. • Lay out and print the lectionary for the upcoming year. • Print out the Lutheran Advent devotions. • Every night during Advent, reading the day's tiny book from the calendar. Hang up the day's "ornament" on the Aunt Grace calendar • Daily send out a "video of the day" email.

    6. what I might call the “classic” version of what I remember, the last year of that was probably when I was 10.

      Funny how in the past couple weeks, when it's someone's birthday I send the birthday person the TV listings page in the newspaper from when they turned ten years old. Because ten years old. It's the classic indeed.

    7. I think these smaller traditions - intentional ones, ones which might not be perpetual, might even fade away, but which might nevertheless have a durability - I think these get at the essence of the holidays, and indeed, at the essence of the human experience.

      Intentional traditions are at the essence of human existence?

    1. BuzzFeed is the first major digital-media company ever to go public.

      Really? There must be some very strict definition for what a "digital-media" company is.

    1. He had previously been a scout for the Cubs and signed Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, George Altman and others

      Wow, so Buck O'Neil is responsible for Ernie Banks and Billy Williams being a Cub.

  3. Nov 2021
    1. You will have heard that keeping a “gratitude journal” – in which you regularly count your blessings – can increase your overall wellbeing, for example. Yet research shows that we can overdose on this. In one study, people who counted their blessings once a week showed the expected rise in life satisfaction, but those who counted their blessings three times a week actually became less satisfied with their life. “Doing the activity can itself feel like a chore, rather than something you actually enjoy,”

      Huh. Counting thanksgivings too much might make you less satisfied. Hrmmm. I'm not sure about this. I see the logic that it could feel like a chore. But... hmmm

    2. the more they reported fantasising about their success, the less time they spent studying for their exams

      now this might be happening to me. I fantasize about all the fun creative projects I could be doing. Yet, am I doing them? Nope.

    3. a simple appreciation of the small pleasures amid the stress could help ease us through the day-to-day anxieties, Mahmoodi Kahriz says. That will be much harder for people who are constantly thinking about their happiness, since they’ll always be lamenting the loss of the many more exciting activities that they could have been doing.

      Well, i don't have a problem with this. I think I'm really good at appreciating the small things in life. I don't ever lament the loss of doing more exciting activities.

      But I do lament not being able to do more of my creative activities. I lament that A LOT. And I have to figure out why I lament that.

    4. As well as reducing everyday contentment, the constant desire to feel happier can make people feel more lonely. We become so absorbed in our own wellbeing, we forget the people around us – and may even resent them for inadvertently bringing down our mood or distracting us from more “important” goals.

      I never wanted to chase happiness. But I wonder if somehow I am chasing happiness.

    1. His baseball glove has the reference for the Bible verse Philippians 4:13 on it, and Hughes has the entire verse ("I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.") tattooed on his left arm.

      I haven't seen Phil Hughes inscribe Bible verses with his autograph.

    1. Rivera's pitching glove was inscribed "Phil. 4:13", in reference to the Bible verse Philippians 4:13 ("I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me").

      Mario Rivera has a very nice autograph, but I haven't ever seen it with a Bible verse inscription.

    1. He has the Bible verse Colossians 3:23 inscribed in his baseball glove.

      It appears he does not inscribe Colossians 3:23 with his autograph.

    1. James has many tattoos, including a partial sleeve on his left arm. The bible verse Psalms 119:105 is tattooed on his forearm. The verse reads, "Thy Word Is a Lamp Unto My Feet and Light Unto My Path."

      But it doesn't appear he inscribes Psalm 119:105 on any of his autographs.

    1. On the strap of his left batting glove, Francoeur has the phrase "Joshua 1:9" written, referencing the Bible verse.

      It appears that he doesn't inscribe Joshua 1:9 on his autographs.

    1. Getting the project built in Chicago was a challenge. Wrigleyville is a tight-knit, activist neighborhood that doesn’t look lightly on new mixed-use residential. “Everything about the project in the neighborhood was controversial,” said Keller. Developer Rossi concurred: “It was a really difficult project that had a lot of resident opposition.”

      It seems like if the neighborhood doesn't want it, then don't build it.

    2. “You can’t build anything higher than the eaves of Wrigley Field,”

      That's nice that Wrigley Field won't be surrounded by giant skyscrapers. I could see so many developers wanting to build UP UP UP, because you can fit in more units, thus, more money. Wrigley Field surrounded by skyscrapers would be awful.

    3. “What we’re trying to do is make this from a 6-month venue to a 12-month venue.

      For three years I lived three blocks from Wrigley Field. Indeed, I loved the 81 days where there was a home game. The neighborhood is indeed electric. But do you really need to have that 365 days a year? Is it really special anymore? Those 81 days were special days. Try to replicate that over every single day, and it's no longer special.

    1. Casper goes private / TechCrunch (🔐): This is a worthwhile, premium report by TechCrunch. In an earlier thought comparing Purple and Casper, I explained: "One was run like a company that raised $340 million and one was run like a company that raised $2 million. Venture capital isn't the manufacturing plant for DTC success. Capital constraint can influence extraordinary brand and operational creativity. "Since its early-2020 IPO, Casper has struggled as a public company, seeing the majority of its value evaporate after its operating results failed to excite investors. Casper will sell for $6.90 per share, or around a 94% “premium to the closing share price on November 12, 2021,” per its own mathematics. When it listed, Casper sold its stock for $10 per share, rising above $15 per share in its early life before falling as low as $3.18 per share more recently." Here's the takeaway: Casper has been acquired by PE firm Durational Capital Management for roughly $300 million ($6.90 per share), about a year and a half after it went public in February 2020. In a year of high-profile DTC IPOs that have followed, the bed-in-a-box brand’s fate is now a cautionary tale for companies like Warby Parker and Allbirds.

      Going public is not always a good thing. Maybe more companies will learn from this lesson.

    1. There’s exactly one person alive with my name

      Me too!

    2. they finished in fourth, earning a first round playoff game hosting Gotham

      So bizarre that a 4th place finish earns you a playoff spot.

    3. And the women’s game looks like actual soccer, whereas some of the MLS games we’ve seen have looked kind of like wrestling matches.

      MLS as wrestling?

    4. The Chicago Red Stars are the local NWSL (National Women’s Soccer League) team.

      Second time this week someone I know has mentioned the Red Stars. Previous to this week I never heard of the team or the league.

    5. A few weeks ago, the local weekly newspaper, the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark, ran an article about a guy here in our town who is clearly far more fascinated by Lustrons than I am. Dirk Fletcher has photographed 250 extant Lustron houses.

      Heh. Fun to see this in comparison to my dad who has taken thousands of photos of Walter Burley Griffin houses.

    1. Light and its characteristics remained a through line in Lungren’s career. Concluding his Paris sojourn, the artist returned to the US by September 1884. Working in both oil and pastel in New York and later in London, he rendered views of streets, parks, docks, and interiors amid rain, snow, fog, fireworks, lamplight, and more.

      I need to check out Fernand Lungren's work

    2. Lungren’s keen interest in optical effects was not about translating sunlight into daubs of pigment like Monet or Renoir; rather, it was keyed to the new electric lighting of the late 19th century and how to render in paint that modern experience of seeing, especially at night. (The interest ran in the family. His brother, Charles Marshall Lungren, who stayed the course and became an engineer, developed lighting technologies and worked at Popular Science Monthly.)

      Fascinating how two brothers were both connected to the new electric lighting in the late 19th century. One as an artist depicting, the other as an engineer designing light.

    3. Trying to make sense of the architectural space of the café, whose street-facing doors and windows have been completely opened, is no easy task. The many mirrors and lights, reflections and refractions, confuse spatial relationships and unsettle our footing in the scene.

      many dimensions

  4. minus.social minus.social
    1. Did you ever have the feeling you were missing something vastly more important than your keys?

      If I were missing the lock, that would be vastly more important than the key.

    2. I don’t know where life will bring me. I only hope it will be worth it in the end. I hope i will resist, that i will be strong enough to keep moving forward becoming a better version of me. I love you all!

      What would you say is one of your strongest characteristics?

    3. I would like to use my 100 club post to lament the things I miss about the old Internet:— Suck.com— Altavista— Hotwired— A sense of optimism about the future— a sense that a Gibsonesque cyberpunk future was right around the corner I’ll take this though. A bit of succour to bring me to the other side. See you at number 1, fools.

      I have a print edition book of suck.com articles. Although a few years ago I think I gave it to goodwill. Ahh, the old things that fade away. So too will this service fade for its users as each person nears the 100-post mark.

    4. Will Minus ever die? This is a thought I had since the moment I found out about this project, yesterday. If you analyse how early users of big social media behaved, it feels pretty familiar when looking at the Minus community at the moment. A niche group of people, with *many* interests in common, building a great environment for discussion, finding new stuff, and meeting friends. With the growth of all those platforms, however, as we all have observed, this positive environment crumble. They either died because of lack of engagement (Tumblr, Clubhouse, Fotolog, etc), or have turned really unpleasurable yet addicting to use (Twitter, Facebook, etc). Will Minus follow this path? Will the rules established by this project be capable of being the “David” against the “Goliath” of Big Techs? What do you think?

      Since comments are unlimited on minus, you’d think there would be more comments than posts, thus there would be a high level of engagement.

      So far, most posts are the first from a user, and that’s it. I’m glad to see this is your 7th post.

    5. It’s an interesting idea. After all, what use would I make of words if I knew they were finite? First, I would say that I am a very optimistic person. Optimistic to the point of being selfish, to the point of not caring. Yes I don’t care. Because, for me, everything is fine. This would be my outburst, because how long did I have to be silent about it? What’s wrong with thinking everything is fine when I feel that way? Why should I feel ashamed for considering that life, no matter what, has always been beautiful to me? I don’t really care as in my mind and heart there are only butterflies flying.

      Let the butterflies continue to fly. May your wings be as transparent as the Glasswing. Flying although invisible to the human eye.

    6. I always hate eating the last bite of a delicious meal. It seems somehow cruel that an experience so grand, so…life-giving, can be so limited. Maybe if I delay this final bite, I can somehow cling to the fleeting joy for just one moment longer. Once I swallow that final time, will I ever find such beauty again? My paralyzing fear and inaction doesn’t actually increase my enjoyment of that morsel. To enjoy, I must consume. This is its cycle. Maybe joy isn’t renewable. But can I trust that joy is bountiful? For this same reason, I fear posting. What if I think of something better to use my limited submissions on? What if I’m wasting what little opportunity I have. But fuck it, life must be lived. Eat the damn bite.

      I’ve had this tab open with this post for the past three hours. Not sure how to respond. I’m enjoying it like the last bite.

    7. Who’s minus community ? The curious ? The social bulimic ? The outsider ? Ben Grosser’s friends and family ?

      I am the one who enjoys the more thoughtful posts by community members.

      I initially joined because of the unique hook that minus had with the limited number of posts. It was curious. I love new social networks, and seeing how they grow and develop. This one in particular has grown into quite a contemplative place.

    1. One of the goals in my life is to encourage people live a more reflective life.

      .

    2. I love communicating via sticky notes. The sticky note is my canvas. I’d love for the sticky note to be the canvas of others, so I encourage people to do the same.

      .

    3. What are the questions that strangers on the train think about?

      .

    1. Chinese outlets’ focus on Covid-19 was much more domestic, perhaps because they were focused on trying to contain the outbreak, while the U.S. view was much more focused on politics and the conflict between various levels of government when it came to combatting the crisis.

      I suppose this highlights the differences between our governments as well.

    1. Jacob opened up about being “unintentionally complicit” in helping undermine democracy by following journalism traditions and treating Republicans and Democrats equally.  “When I edited political stories, I went so far as to count the quotes from Republicans and Democrats, thinking an equal number would make us fairer. I didn’t think I was helping either party. I thought I was helping the readers. I was wrong,” Jacob wrote. “If you look back three or four decades, you see many corrupt pols in both parties. Scandals like Abscam and Keating Five were mostly Democratic. But in recent decades, it’s obvious the GOP is more unethical and anti-democratic. Which means treating the parties equally helps Republicans.” So, what’s the solution? According to Jacob, the framing of political stories needs to change from being party-oriented to democracy-oriented.

      Huh. I need to wrap my brain around this.

      I agree with Mark Jacob here. I agree that that the Republican party here is being more corrupt. (the Democrats aren't complete saints either, but Republicans are going way far out there). I agree with Mark on that.

      I also agree with Mark that we want to give out the truth.

      But when we view that through the lens of journalism—and fairness. How can we judge what is fair? Mark brings it back to democracy is the real lens of fairness.

      I guess my mind is too wrapped up in the concrete methods of journalism. And not enough in the result of journalism.

  5. Sep 2021
    1. Incidentally, I’d be quite fine living on Red Pistachio Nut Lane.

      That sounds like a fun place to live. What street name would I like to live on? Hmmm....

    2. Marmora is one of the M streets. They start when you cross Central. Not immediately, mind you. The first north-south street west of Central is actually Parkside. But then you get to Major. Depending on where you are in the city and how the grid square is laid out, it goes Major, Mango, Menard, Monitor, Marmora, Mason. Then it’s Austin, one of the big thoroughfares, and then it starts up again with… McVicker. McVicker is everyone’s favorite.

      I lived on the other side of Milwaukee on Lawrence, I always enjoyed riding the bus westbound to the Jefferson Park blue line stop. Passing by all the K-streets between Pulaski and I-94. In the short area of eight blocks or so, all those K-Streets must be really confusing. But now I realize that after the K-streets are the L-Streets. Then come the M-Streets. How I never realized this, I don't know. But arranging the streets by letter is another way to help someone know how far east-west you are. "Oh, you are over in the M-street range". It's a bit like how on the south side, all the east-west streets are numbered, so you know how far north/south you are.

    3. Tonight as I walked the short distance home from a meeting, and I mulled over those old walks, I thought about how back in Chicago, if we’d wanted, we could have just kept on walking. One small neighborhood would roll into another. I could have taken dozens of pictures of different street sign combinations. Out here in the suburbs, you go three blocks, and it’s like everything ends. I go one way, I’m in a different town. I go a different way, there’s weird industrial buildings and a quarry. I go yet a different way, and there’s a federal highway. The compactness is visceral.

      I love this observation of the suburbs as compact. It completely flips the view of the suburbs I've held has being expanse. But the sprawl is the overall view.

      The user experience of suburbs is indeed compactness. You have these tiny little pockets. Little islands of activity. These islands are separated by large swaths of land.

    4. Of all the odd coincidences, my sister lived on Giddings St. until just a few months ago. She was the pastor at the Jefferson Park UCC church and lived in the parsonage.

      Building off the Giddings fun, I lived close Giddings Plaza in Lincoln Square. The plaza used to be named Kempf Plaza. At some point, it became known as Giddings Plaza.

      With Chicago's grid, we get these wonderful things where street holds the same name miles and miles away. Reading Phil's account of Giddings Street made me immediately look up to see where on Giddings he was referring to. And wow, it's 4.6 miles west of Giddings Plaza. I love Chicago grid.

      Here's something I think about occasionally: when a plaza or park is named after a street. Are all parks and plazas prohibited from using that name?

      In doing a brief lookup of the history of Giddings Plaza (to see when it got that name), I came across a 2014 Streetsblog post, "Kempf Plaza has all the right ingredients for a great public space". This made me realize I've been very lucky to have lived and worked by two great public spaces. Giddings Plaza (for 13 years), and 18 years of working Tribune Tower next to Pioneer Court.

      Now if the suburb lands only had more frequent great public spaces like these. Maybe they do. I'll have to keep my eyes open to seeing great public spaces in the burbs.

      Doing a quick Google search for: "Glen Ellyn" plaza yields non-public plazas like Crowne Plaza, Trader Joe's Plaza, Market Plaza (the Jewel parking lot). All these plaza results are for parking lots.

    5. For example there’s a weekly challenge thing on Words With Friends where you have to beat the computer a certain number of times. I was actually getting to the point where I was trying to knock it off as soon as I could each week so I wouldn’t have to think about it when the weekend rolled around. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I said, screw this, and just stopped doing it. You know you’ve got something like this. It might even be the same damn thing!

      I've done the same thing with the digital trading card app, "Topps Bunt." Collect a certain card every day so I could get the "bonus" card at the end of the 10-day series. Log into that app and break open as many digital packs until I hit the daily needed card. It got stressful instead of enjoyable.

    6. I imagine that sense of peacefulness feels distant for most of us. We’re not back to normal, we’ve got little appreciable sense of when that will happen, we maybe don’t even know what we mean by that anymore. Oh, we reach out for facsimiles of normal, sure. But is normal even the point? Or instead is normal just a crib for something else we’re really trying to get to, which is peacefulness?Of course normal and peacefulness aren’t the same thing. Sometimes what we mean by normal is a certain state of busyness. Maybe even freneticness, if that can at least feel comfortable. Call it rhythm, say. But I submit that part of any good rhythm is reaching that peaceful space.

      Do we strive for normal? Or do we strive for peace? Is normal a state of busyness? Is normal a rhythm of busyness?

    7. What I feel though is that even if there’s a certain quantifiable good that might more than offset a certain quantifiable bad, we may nevertheless be scuttling our advantage simply by drowning in worry.

      Yes, indeed. Worry takes anything good, and transforms into bad.

  6. May 2021
    1. kosmeo from kosmos = adorning or order, ornament, decoration, adornment -- this root word gives us our English cosmetic something women use to "adorn" their face and make themselves more physically attractive

      "cosmetic" comes from the same word as "kosmos"... mind-blown.

    1. The Greek verb bears is stego which is derived from stege (a thatch or roof or covering of a building) and conveys the idea of covering closely, of protecting by covering and of concealing by covering.

      Stego, like stegosaurus!

    1. Personal newsletters should have no rules. They are where you find your audience, voice, topics, cadence, products, etc.

      Yes! Thank you!

  7. Apr 2021
    1. He served as Braves third base coach in 2014 and was pegged to become the Cubs first base coach in 2015, but with the hire of Joe Maddon he was bumped in favor of Dave Martinez and instead accepted the role of Cubs outfield & baserunning coordinator.

      Another source said Dascenzo coached third base for the Cubs in 2014, but I trust this source more.

    1. So, if you’ve ever felt bad about copying code from our site instead of writing it from scratch, forgive yourself! Why recreate the wheel when someone else has done the hard work? We call this knowledge reuse – you’re reusing what others have already learned, created, and proven. Knowledge reuse isn’t a bad thing – it helps you learn, get working code faster, and reduces your frustration.

      That makes me feel better.

    1. While many of his hard-drinking counterparts played day games hung over after a rough night out, Cobb kept his distance. That made him more palatable to the public, but less palatable to his fellow ballplayers. "It was a source of tension," Leershen said. "In Washington, he'd go to the Library of Congress in his off hours to read, and that annoyed the hell out of them."

      Ty Cobb loved reading

    1. In the real world, the most common middle-class jobs in America in 2019 include primary school teachers, construction workers, nurses, and sales reps. What’s the commonality of all these professions? They all have non-zero marginal costs: To treat one more patient or make one more sale entails more time and effort. This dynamic creates a ceiling for customers, resulting in an equalizing effect on earnings. This stands in contrast to the digital content world, wherein creators have zero marginal costs for additional viewers.

      Good example of non-passive income professions. Being a teacher takes constant work.

    2. On YouTube, creators earn just $3 to $5 per 1,000 video views.

      Is my math right? If a Youtuber gets $4 CPM, to make $70,000 per year, you'd have to get 17,500,000 views per year.

    3. “Sometimes you may come across a video in your feed that doesn’t appear to be relevant to your expressed interests or have amassed a huge number of likes. This is an important and intentional component of our approach to recommendation: bringing a diversity of videos into your For You feed gives you additional opportunities to stumble upon new content categories, discover new creators, and experience new perspectives and ideas as you scroll through your feed.”

      This is great.

    4. How many times can a person listen to the same podcast episode? Probably not many before the content becomes repetitive and boring. In contrast, one can listen to a favorite song on repeat ad infinitum. In video games, there’s not only value in replaying a game, but increasing marginal utility because players gain mastery and can enjoy a game even more after sinking hundreds of hours into it. This suggests that categories with high replay value — like music and game platforms — are most susceptible to concentration among a few mega-hits.

      Oh wow. music and game platforms are more susceptible to concentration among a few mega-hits. I'm glad I'm not in music or video games.

    5. it’s vital for creator platforms to provide paths for upward mobility and democratize opportunities to succeed. How can platforms do this?

      Good question!

    6. Vine serves as a cautionary tale: Despite inventing the short-form comedy video format and reaching 200 million monthly active users in November 2015, the company gradually lost its creators to platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Snap, where they could potentially earn more, build bigger audiences, and have a wider range of creative tools. Opportunities for audience growth and financial success were more readily available on other platforms, contributing to the platform’s decline.

      Oh, so this is why Vine died. Y'know, this explanation is so simple, but I never knew why they killed Vine. Makes sense now.

    7. Rosen argued that in markets with heterogeneous providers, like most creator economies, success accrues disproportionately to those on top: “lesser talent often is a poor substitute for greater talent … hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.”

      Fascinating. This could also apply to how I blog. I make a lot of short quick posts. I think I need to keep producing to keep Google interested in my posts. But what really happens for my readers is that they get a bunch of mediocre posts. A bunch of mediocre posts do not add up to a single outstanding post. (although I would like to argue that some of my short posts are actually outstanding on their own).

    8. The rest of its 3 million creators, or 98.6% of its artists, made just $36 per artist per quarter.

      Now this stat really hits home hard. Man. 98.6 of Spotify's artists (3 million people) are making just $144 per year. Although.... again.... If you take the bottom 10% people. They are making zero dollars. What if you are in the 98.5% range? Like if you are the #44,000th most played artist. You are not making $144 a year. You are making somewhere between $89,580 and $144 per year. What is that number? I'd love to see what the 50% person is making. If we are talking about middle class then this author needs to stop mixing in numbers from the lower class. Use pure middle class numbers.

    9. On Spotify, for instance, the top 43,000 artists — roughly 1.4% of those on the platform — pull in 90% of royalties and make, on average, $22,395 per artist per quarter.

      This is totally skewed. It makes it seem like the top ten artists are making just $89,580 per year from Spotify. So misleading. The author is taking the AVERAGE of the top 1.4%. So those people at the 42,999 ranking are making much less, bringing down the average.

    10. Google has revealed that on a daily basis, 15% of all queries have never been searched before, a figure that has remained stable since 2013.

      This is mindblowing. There are THAT many unique searches? 15%? There has to be some sort of parameter that is making these searches unique. Like, your location. Oh wait. This is DAILY basis. yeah. There you go. Ok, how many people EVERY day search for the world's tallest trophy? Maybe one a day? Boom. There is your unique search. Yeah. that's it. So it's not like my search for "world's tallest trophy" is the FIRST time that has been searched. It's just that "world's tallest trophy" might be searched only once a week or so. I'd love see what this percentage is for over one year. OR ALL-TIME.

    11. On Patreon, only 2% of creators made the federal minimum wage of $1,160 per month in 2017.

      Why are these stats so old? This is a December 2020 article. Use stats from 2020, or at least 2019.

    12. a recent study of kids ages eight to 12 found that nearly 30% aspire to become YouTubers

      oh my. 30% of kids want to be a YouTuber?!

    13. Launching a new platform, he said, was like starting a new country: Getting users to move from an established network that had an ossified economy and social classes to a new network requires the possibility of success — the lure of the American Dream.

      How to lure people to a new platform—the possibility of success.

    1. But Puppetman, which can be seen here in full, didn’t make it past the pilot stage, so it was dumped into the CBS rotation as part of its anthology series CBS Summer Playhouse. It’s where pilots go to die. The idea behind Puppetman was slightly ahead of its time—essentially a comedy about a puppet show, breaking the fourth wall in a way slightly closer to NewsRadio than The Muppet Show—but it wasn’t picked up, and CBS Summer Playhouse was something of a last ditch effort to see if audiences would really care. (Alas, audiences weren’t won over by puppeteer Richard Hunt’s considerable charms as a human actor.)

      this show is fascinating to watch

    1. They start off fairly inexpensive for those smaller than 7 inches, but start to climb in price for every inch of screen real-estate above that. They have both ESP32 and ESP8266 WiFi modules that allow you to take your displays wireless

      ESP32 is $15. 6.42 x 3.85 inch screen is $50

    1. you better have one hell of a point of view

      I do need to focus what my point of view is. I generally know what is it, but I need to express it better.

    2. Have killer voice. How do you develop killer voice? Be confident.

      Being confident online is not a problem for me. :)

    3. Who are you? Answer this question in every newsletter, preferably in the first paragraph. Unless you send a daily newsletter, readers will forget.

      Good point. I need to have a "who are you" in my newsletters.

    1. We’re not going to squish the text to save money.

      Amen, caring about the page, the words, the reader. Not the money saved from paying less for paper. Will the reader ever realize how much money a publisher saved?

    2. A book with proper margins says a number of things. It says, we care about the page. It says, we care about the words.

      Caring is the differentiator in our society. Most people don't care.

    3. Giving a shit does not require capital, simply attention and humility and diligence. Giving a shit is the best feeling you can imbue craft with.

      I like to think of this as caring.

    1. trichloroethylene or TCE

      Plants that remove trichloroethylene • Bamboo palm (Chamaedorea seifrizii) • Dracaena “Janet Craig” (Dracaena deremensis) • Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum "Mauna Loa")

    1. Comments at the end of the page feel stale and web 1.0.

      Indeed. Comments at the end is like someone giving a lecture, and then asking "any questions?" then people look around the room. Whereas comments in the margins is more like a conversation. I can feel free to interject at any time!

    1. There’s a rumor that the blue light from smartphones (or other screens) can ruin your vision, perhaps even leading to blindness, but it’s not backed up by evidence.

      Blue light from screens doesn't hurt your eyes

    2. you probably remember being told that sitting too close would ruin your eyes. Scientific American traces that myth to a 1967 recall of early color TVs that emitted radiation (like, actual radiation) that were probably harmful to health, as well as to a misunderstanding about nearsighted kids who sat close to the TV. Most likely, they sat close so they could see better; the TV didn’t cause their nearsightedness.

      Sitting close to a TV does not hurt your eyes

    1. The Internet Archive has a budget—soup to nuts—of around $20 million or less per year,

      Wow, that seems so cheap considering how much the Internet Archive has.

    1. Thatch builds up over time, so it’s not necessary to dethatch every year. Plan on doing it every five years or so if your lawn needs it. You might want to give your lawn a quick check every year just to see how much thatch has accumulated.

      Dethatch only every five years! But check every year.

    2. Over watering and over fertilization contribute to thatch build-up. It’s too much of a good thing. Although infrequent mowing may be good for you, it’s not good for your lawn.

      OH wow, if you overwater your lawn, you can get too much thatch. And if you let the grass grow too long.

    3. You can tell if your lawn has a thatch problem when water runs off the lawn instead of soaking and you’ll begin to notice grayish-brown matts. To determine how much thatch has accumulated, cut out a wedge of lawn about two-inch deep. It should be fairly easy to identify the thatch layer between the soil and grass.

      Good tip on how to identify if you have a thatch problem.

    4. Thatch can harm lawns. It’s difficult for water to penetrate a thick thatch layer, causing water to run off instead of soaking in.

      Here, I thought deep roots were good. Roots with thick thatch are bad.

    1. The goal of these pages is not to be a model of concision, maximizing entertainment value per word, or to preach to a choir by elegantly repeating a conclusion. Rather, I am attempting to explain things to my future self, who is intelligent and interested, but has forgotten. What I am doing is explaining why I decided what I did to myself and noting down everything I found interesting about it for future reference. I hope my other readers, whomever they may be, might find the topic as interesting as I found it, and the essay useful or at least entertaining–but the intended audience is my future self.

      An interesting explanation for writing for yourself, and not for others.

    2. I believe that someone who has been well-educated will think of something worth writing at least once a week; to a surprising extent, this has been true. (I added ~130 documents to this repository over the first 3 years.)

      interesting point on why everyone should have a blog/website

    1. only 30 percent of moisture converts into clouds, and then a very efficient cloud on its own will convert 10-20 percent of its moisture to precipitation

      Whoa, a cloud releases only some of its moisture. Where does the rest go?

    1. It's not a fucking blog.Seriously. The idea of a "blog" needs to get over itself. Everybody is treating writing as a "content marketing strategy" and using it to "build a personal brand" which leads to the fundamental flawed idea that everything you post has to be polished to perfection and ready to be consumed.Bullshit.This idea is toxic and led me to publish less and less over time.

      I can so relate to this.

    1. They didn’t believe in Original Sin so they didn’t protect their customers. They didn’t believe in Original Sin so they didn’t protect themselves. They didn’t believe in Original Sin so they didn’t see this catastrophe coming. They suffered the fate of everyone who ignores nature from Marxists to hippies: nature always wins. Humans do not change.

      Humans are bad. Tech (generally) ignores this fact.

    2. They began with the fact of sin – a fact as practical as potatoes.

      Potato reference

    1. Another pattern I’m noticing in reading some other blogs is the need for community to propel learning experiences. Sharing what we learn elicits benefits of all kinds: giving voice to ideas, gathering feedback, and building an accountability/support network to name a few.

      Yeah! reading other blogs is a fantastic way get new ideas and get inspired!

  8. Mar 2021
    1. For Kandinsky, if that objective element of a painting were taken away, the building blocks of the composition would reveal themselves to cause a feeling of repose and tranquil repetition, of well-balanced parts.

      He's basically saying that paintings with subject matter are good if you have a composition structure. Surprisingly simple.

    2. "These new compositional structures led him toward free chromaticism, which emphasized nonharmonic tones and "emancipation of dissonance" (i.e., unresolved dissonance), one of the principal features of atonal music.

      atonal music is how I most relate to understanding this.

    3. in Wagner there is also an affinity with the philosophy of Schopenhauer, who considered music to be of central importance in man's emotional life

      Look up Schopenhauer on brainpickings

    4. e felt special attraction to Wagner, whose music was greatly admired by the Symbolists for its idea of Gesamtkunstwerk that embraced word, music, and the visual arts and was best embodied in Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung, with its climax of global cataclysm.

      I need to look up 'Gesamtkunstwerk'

    1. MISCELLANEOUS FACTS – Alexandra has one fake tooth. – She has a metal plate screwed onto her fibula. – Before becoming a writer, she trained to become a helicopter pilot. – Her top heroes are: Mister Rogers, RuPaul, and Michelle Obama. – She does not have any social media accounts. – She has taught classes on writing, creativity, goal-setting, and other topics in 18 cities around the world. – She has lived in New Zealand, California, Minnesota, Oregon, and currently, Hawaii. – Sagittarius Sun, Cancer Moon, Cancer Rising. – Favorite treat: Stroopwafel. – Fantasy career: magician or hair stylist.

      These fun facts are neat. For new visitors, this makes Alexandra to be more human. (we'll we are all human, but y'know, like a real person)

    1. It is a calm place. – I have 8 apps installed on my phone which I use occasionally: banking app, ride-sharing app, and a few others. – I keep these apps hidden on a secondary page. Out of sight. They’re not the first thing I see.

      Interesting idea. Keep the homescreen of your phone completely empty.

    1. The various products associated with the site earn over $10,000 a month, almost entirely passively. Last month they made over $60,000.

      Whuuuuut.

    1. This site’s products make no sense when looked at in aggregate. There’s an app for men’s kegels, a course on SEO, a course on programming for marketers, I do SEO/content consulting, there’s a medley of affiliate deals sprinkled throughout…You have to get creative with your monetization, and you can’t follow the traditional models for “making money from blogging.” My approach is to keep writing articles about what I’m interested in, and then create products around the topics that do well. Sex was a big one for a while, which inspired those products. My marketing articles do extremely well so I offer SEO and content consulting to startups (email me if you’re interested).I prefer to create products that can sell themselves through the blog consistently and stay relevant for at least a few years. I don’t like doing the big launches you typically see bloggers do, since it burns out your email list and forces you to focus on list building. I’d rather create evergreen content that can naturally transition to being the top stage of the sales funnel.

      this is probably the best advice i've heard on monetizing non-niche sites. Everyone talks so much about niching. Here he's being honest on how to do it, and how to build products in a non-niche.

    2. For this site I’d have to say “hey you’ll learn about learning, college, sex, philosophy, marketing, travel, money, photography…” it’s all over the place.

      haha. truth! I can so relate!

    3. If you’re starting a blog to sell a product, then certainly, you should niche down. It wouldn’t make sense if Teachable published an article about brewing kombucha. But if you’re starting a blog for yourself, like this one, then not niching yourself can be a smart move.

      This is very reassuring for me, since I've had a personal blog for 19 years.

    1. It’s a matter of time before we see this dynamic applied to other areas. I don’t want to create a podcast on my own but it’d be fun to record a season with a few friends.

      I thought the same thing about starting a baseball podast!

    2. Substack, for example, is designed for individual writers. Every, a writer collective that is somewhere between writing for the New York Times and writing on Substack recently announced their move away from Substack as the toolset was not serving their needs. In a Founder’s Letter worth reading, Nathan Baschez and Dan Shipper write: When you write together, you don’t have to publish so often that you risk burning out. Instead, the group can share the load. 

      Man, that would be nice to not burn out with a publishing schedule.

    1. In short, the architecture of digital platforms has made us obsessive documenters and consumers of the present, yet largely indifferent to the archives we create.

      Yes! I've been saying this for years! She frames it so much better.

    1. Williams also said that Medium’s “subscriber base has continued to grow, while our publication’s audiences haven’t,” citing this as another reason for the new pivot.

      So, people are subscribing to Medium, but they aren't following the publications on Medium?

    1. It works exceptionally well for both web pages and when reading .pdf texts within a browser window.

      I didn't know Hypothes.is works with PDFs too!

    1. By the time most of us get through a day we’ve read emails, clicked links on the internet, and received a half a dozen text messages. Our minds become quite scattered after all that.

      Interesting idea that throughout the day, our minds get more scattered. I need to consider this more. I've always thought the more I consumed, the better--as long as I create from what I consume. But here it's saying that all these influences could distract you.

  9. Feb 2021
    1. grab handles are mainly there so people can climb in and out of cars with ease

      I don't think I ever used a car's grab handle to get in and out of a car. But then again, i'm not elderly or pregnant.

    1. We’ve chosen to keep highlights private to avoid pages being cluttered by highlights that have no surrounding discussion. We understand that people may want to share highlights with others, and we think there are effective ways we can address that in the future.

      Ahh, so now I see why all my highlights are private. You have to make an annotation for your highlight to be public. I suppose this makes sense for articles that get a lot of highlights.

      But I use hypothes.is on articles that never ever have any comments. I'd love for my highlights to be public by default.

    1. The nature of data science is a hybrid of many disciplines. Where it composed of different subject areas like math (i.e., statistics, calculus, etc.), database management, data visualization, programming/software engineering, domain knowledge, etc. In my opinion, this may be the primary reason why people interested in jumping into the entry-level data science career often feel completely lost.

      This hybrid of disciplines is what attracts me to it.

  10. Jan 2021
    1. He doesn’t like thinking of himself as a software developer, which feels like an oversimplification for him. He refers to himself as a “media hacker.”

      I like that. Thinking of yourself not as a software developer, but as a media hacker. That's how I think of myself. Yeah. Totally.

    1. You can script your presentations, but I don’t recommend that. One of the reasons to avoid scripting is it makes you think word to word rather than idea to idea.

      Oh wow, this is one of the reasons why I can't stand scripted presentations. The presenter is thinking word to word, rather than idea to idea. I want someone to talk about their ideas. I don't want to hear some robotic script.

  11. Aug 2020
    1. Here’s the formula: Add about a half cup of baking soda to the drum of the washing machine and then add distilled white vinegar to the fabric softener dispenser.

      The two ingredients, and how to use them.

  12. Jul 2020
    1. So why does Qui-Gon keep letting Jar Jar tag along? It’s the same reason he butts heads with the Jedi council: his connection to the living Force. His compassion is greater than the rigid and, frankly, arrogant views of the Jedi.

      Great positive viewpoint about Jar Jar Binks

  13. Jun 2020
    1. Congratulations to Glenbard West English teacher Kimberly Gwizdala on earning a $1,000 grant from Book Love Foundation to purchase books for her classroom library.

      If you got $1,000 to buy books for a high school English library, what books would you get?

    1. To understand this, imagine that you have picked out a pair of pants to wear later in the evening. Your partner comes in and criticizes your choice, saying you should have picked the blue ones rather than the red ones. You will likely become defensive about your choice and defend it—maybe even becoming more entrenched in your choice of hot red pants.

      I wish this article gave a specific example of how a political opinion actually changed. The article gives examples of switching a photo. Switching pants. But not an example of how they got the political position to change.

    1. Highly will shut down its iOS and Slack app on April 26th, though it promises that “No highlights will be harmed.”

      It's too bad that Twitter shut down the highly.co website. Now all the highly.co links in tweets are dead. Great job, Twitter. You just killed a ton of links that people saved.

  14. Apr 2018
    1. The Instagram API Platform will be deprecated beginning in July 2018. For full details please see developer blog link

      Booo! Instagram is killing their API. The very API that helped their platform to grow Instagram to the size it is today. Instagram, boooo!

  15. Mar 2018
    1. Today I made my 25,000th annotation

      I'm seeing "650 Matching Annotations" on your profile. I'm assuming the majority of your annotations are private. Correct?

  16. Aug 2017
    1. Just to be clear, the mission of Medium has always been the same: What we’ve been trying to figure out is how to create an ecosystem that supports the creation and distribution of great ideas and important content.

      I love this mission. It's largely why I enjoy working at my current job.

  17. May 2017
  18. Mar 2017
    1. Hypothesis currently supports annotation of HTML and PDF. For PDF we use Mozilla’s PDF.js, which has enabled PDFs to be rendered into the browser as HTML since 2012.

      If Hypothesis works with an iOS app to annotate PDFs, I would totally drop the Goodreader app.

  19. Sep 2016
    1. The Hypothes.is platform is designed to allow publishers to highlight and curate the notes and conversations that they want to promote as part of their content, while giving users the freedom to bring other conversations to the same content.

      I hope Hypothes.is is also able to go mainstream as the place for anyone to comment on online content.

    2. Open web annotations will be an essential ingredient of the future scholarly experience.

      Indeed!

  20. Aug 2016
    1. In the abeginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

      Trying annotation on the esvbible.org website.

    1. Play is not only in nature. He extends his examples to “the play of gears or parts of machinery, the play of limbs, the play of forces.” He then adds, “The movement backwards and forwards is obviously so central to the definition of play that it makes no difference who or what performs this movement” (104), as if to say the players are played by the game.

      A somewhat side note: As a graphic designer, we often respond to outside suggestions with, "let me play with your idea, and we'll see how it goes." Some graphic designers have an aversion to the coupling "play" with design, for fear of people thinking that we aren't doing serious work (like finance or sales), instead we play with crayons all day.

      However, I welcome play as a large component of design. Designwork is a dance between the design, the project needs, and creativity of visual communication. A designer can try to wrangle total control over this dance, but that often ends up too forced. Instead the designer oftentimes have to let the other parts of the design guide us--which includes letting the client requests to guide us. This form of play can often lead us into great results. Or sometimes it's just play for the sake of play, and no real results are generated by the suggestions. It's all something we have to submit to.

    1. it’s common enough for technologies, games, and artworks to invite adjustments to our view of the world even when those things are absent. Ardent skateboarders see city spaces as ramps and hazards, carpenters see a world full of offcuts to be salvaged for the next job, gardeners see flowers and trees before they notice buildings, geo-gamers think everyone else, like them, is on a scavenger hunt, and Pokemon Go players see cats and sparrows as ready to be captured, scored and inventoried.

      It is my constant goal as a Public Spaces Artist to inspire people to view their everyday environment differently.

    1. Strip out all the hoopla about shopping habits and such and Pinterest is, at its core, a link-saving app

      A-ha moment while reading your summaries. You call Pinterest a ‘link-sharing app’. A couple days ago I blogged about if Pinterest was making a move to take over some of Evernote’s territory of being an archive. But now I realize that Pinterest is a link-sharing app, not an article-saving app, thus it won’t really encroach on Evernote.