As defenders of the supernatural will be quick to point out, many arthropods have six limbs; squids, skunks, bombardier beetles, and plenty of other real creatures spew strange things; nature sometimes contrives to recombine old animals in new ways (see the half-striped zedonk—part zebra, part donkey—or the recent emergence of the coywolf: part coyote, part wolf); and, considering the many kinds of metamorphoses exhibited by animals—tadpole to frog, caterpillar to butterfly, baby-faced to bearded—how far-fetched is it, really, for a bat to turn into a man?And then down the rabbithole of reality it goes:
Most of us understand that our perceptual systems, far from passively reflecting the world around us, actively sort, select, distort, ignore, and alter a huge amount of information in order to construct reality as we experience it. But reality as we experience it also departs from actual reality in deeper ways. In actual reality, space and time are inseparable, and neither one behaves anything like the waywe perceive it; nor does light, and nor does gravity, and, in all likelihood, nor does consciousness. Yet all the while we go on experiencing space like a map we can walk on, time like a conveyor belt we travel on, ourselves as brimming with agency, our lives as mattering urgently.
Categories in deli meats
See this - "Back in 2006, a Massachusetts court heard a case that determined the legal definition of a wrap. Panera Bread, which had been granted exclusivity over all things sandwich at a suburban mall, charged that an encroaching Qdoba — with its signature burritos — was, in fact, serving sandwiches. A quick look at Webster’s Dictionary and a few expert witnesses later, and the judge ruled in favor of Qdoba."
Definition of milk
The soy milks versus the cow milks, the definition of milk is being fought over.
Bird taxonomy
The world of bird taxonomy can get a little crazy, apparently.
“We’re just trying to make the best of a bad situation. That’s all taxonomy is,” says James “Van” Remsen, the SACC’s chairman.
blog lives on
Since I moved the blog to blog.petervandijck, it's living on (hosted Wordpress). I was reading through older posts today, this is starting to feel like a long-term solution. I also set this up to share to Twitter.
Birth Certificates
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-the-birth-certificate-became-a-ticket-to-society
When pumpkin could be any squash
What it says on the label and standards.
http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/ComplianceManuals/CompliancePolicyGuidanceManual/ucm074635.htm
Timezone standards
Timezones are fascinating when you get into them, and this is a good place to start: http://time.is/time_zone_news
Unicode Emoji standards
How Unicode decides which emojis to support.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/technology/how-emojis-find-their-way-to-phones.html?_r=0
Changing definition of extreme poverty
World Bank changed the definition of extreme poverty - interesting discussion of the challenges.
Funky CSS color names - history
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/10/tomato-versus-ff6347-the-tragicomic-history-of-css-color-names/The “Named Colors” section of the CSS Color Module Level 4—the latest specification for color values and properties within the Cascading Style Sheets language—are 141 standard colors. Each has its own name, so beyond the essentials of “black” and “white” are shades like “papaya whip,” a warm orange pastel; “lemon chiffon,” a faint, milky yellow; and “burlywood,” which has likely made an appearance on a safari tour guide’s shorts.and
Thomas agreed. Frustrated with inconsistent displays, he started to find it futile to standardize color names. In response, he stated in an e-mail that he “sat down one evening with the handiest standard of subjective color names, a box of 72 Crayola crayons. That birthed "aquamarine," "orchid," and "salmon," to name a few.You gotta love standardization efforts!
"To authorities responsible for the measurement and distribution of time"
This is a real email: http://datacenter.iers.org/eop/-/somos/5Rgv/latest/16
"To authorities responsible for the measurement and distribution of time"
(related to the leap second in 2015)
Via AWS
We give names to moons of other planets, so why is ours called just "Moon"?
Google goes beyond "Other" for gender
Announcement postFor many people, gender identity is more complex than just "male" or "female." Starting today, I'm proud to announce that Google+ will support an infinite number of ways to express gender identity, by giving you the option to customize the way your gender is represented on your profile.
How to socialize an event properly (hastags omg)
How to socialize an event properly (hastags omg)
Design and engineering
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgtpyRSuaak Seriously good talk. Very powerful:- The elegance of simplicity.
- The power of experience. (What's a great experience?)
- The magic of stories. Technology + Art = Magic.
- At Pixar, creatives and techs get paid the same.
- It's really hard to get the tech people to respect the creative people and vice versa.
- Peer culture: everyone shows everyone else their work and get lot of feedback.
- Learning environment. Empowered people. Great at tech & creativity - work hand in hand together. Same team. Giving feedback.
- Product design + Engineering + Understand Consumer problem.
- Team of DIFFERENT thinking people. Not just engineers. Different. Respect each other. Bounce ideas of each other.
- Examine and understand a problem.
- Iterate to a solution.
- NEED A TEAM! Not one person, one designer, one product leader.
Medellin
Great photos of Medellin http://www.behance.net/gallery/Las-Golondrinas-Comuna-8-Medellin/5910203
Marketplace
Escrow and payment provider for marketplaces - https://www.balancedpayments.com/ looks good.
Developing the ability to get stuff done is crucial. Some quick thoughts:
- Technical skills.
- Maker's schedule. (so you get stuff done in a day)
- Process. (OKRs) (so you get stuff done in a week)
A startup accelerator for the world’s poorest
https://medium.com/on-startups/ca9a1a6c9da0 See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6380008
Tech is what makes a city great
http://pandodaily.com/2013/09/10/tech-makes-a-city-great-the-mckinsey-report/
National Geographic Photographer Meets Deadly Leopard Seal - Then This Happens.
Just watch the video, yey seal (and that it sucks to be a penguin).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-o-LGns_uY
Like for blogging?
Thinking: is the Like for blogging related to the Linkroll (since a link is like a Like)? I should get an email or notification when someone Likes my post. That's the feedback loop I'm talking about. And Liking should be 1-click. So is adding to the linkroll 1-click?
It is conceivable that there is simply no distributed solution that can compete in user experience with a closed solution like FB and such. But that doesn't sound like it would be true.
The new blogging, again
I'm oldschool but I like blue and white. New look today.
Now, the new blogging. Can we reproduce the LIKE in the world of blogging? The feeling of immediate feedback? The one-click micro-payment that has no limits.
Here's a related thought: why do people think stuff on blogs is more private than stuff on Facebook? (Technically it's not.) Because more people see it on Facebook. And you get feedback.
Blogs need more feedback. Commenting is too much work. Where's the LIKE button for blogging? (And I don't mean the Wordpress Like button, that just feel like micropayments to Matt.)
Mmm...
Classification conundrum: non-human persons
In which India declares dolphins "non-human persons". Cool. Only one but: humans can be performers. So why not dolphins? Still pretty cool, kinda sci-fi.
Definitions unclear -> go to jail
The dictatorship of data
How data was misused in the Vietnam war.In 1977, two years after the last helicopter lifted off the rooftop of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, a retired Army general, Douglas Kinnard, published a landmark survey called The War Managers that revealed the quagmire of quantification. A mere 2 percent of America’s generals considered the body count a valid way to measure progress. “A fake—totally worthless,” wrote one general in his comments. “Often blatant lies,” wrote another. “They were grossly exaggerated by many units primarily because of the incredible interest shown by people like McNamara,” said a third.
Census categories: What happens when you let everyone self-identify?
I've blogged about this before, the US census is an ongoing and fascinating categorization case study.
From the article: "By 1970 the government was collecting census data by mail-in survey. The shift to a survey had dramatic effects on at least one census category: race."
- First, it resulted in a dramatic increase in the Native American population. Between 1980 and 2000, the U.S. Native American population magically grew 110 percent. People who had identified as American Indian had apparently been somewhat invisible to the government.
- Second, to the chagrin of the Census Bureau, 80 percent of Puerto Ricans choose white (only 40 percent of them had been identified as white in the previous census). The government wanted to categorize Puerto Ricans as predominantly black, but the Puerto Rican population saw things differently.
Categories and the world: categorization of abuse and dependence
New and improved categorization of abuse and dependence just joins them, with this amazing quote in the article, where two students were trying to figure out the difference between abuse and dependence.
“Isn’t ‘abuse’ like when you get a DUI?” said the medical student.
“Yeah,” said the psychiatry resident, “and ‘dependence’ is when you get withdrawal, right?”
“I think ‘abuse’ leads to ‘dependence,’” said the neurology resident.
“Or maybe ‘abuse’ is not as bad as ‘dependence’?”
“So what about our patient? He’s pretty hard-core.”
“I see him all the time in the emergency room. Totally intoxicated.”
“I’ve seen him drunk on the train.”
That sealed the deal.
“Dependence it is!” they all agreed.
zipcar localization: british english, canadian english
Zipcar is the first site I have ever seen options for the type of English: American, British, Canadian.
Social design talk notes
Never too old to learn.- I believe in fundamentals.
- Adaptation, evolution. Design = solve the problem. (So changeable design > unchangeable design.)
- Community = group that works together.
- Group -> social -> trust.
- Trust each other to get things done.
- Our environment is everyone else.
- You want to be unique but also fit in. You feel lonely.
- So you form an "identity", so you can fit in but be apart. A representation of yourself.
- Create an outside world we can control. Collect. Music. Home. Friends we trust. World is not so scary then.
- Can also create inside world we control: yoga, music, meditation, learning, ...
- EVERYONE is doing this.
- People just need to talk.
- Need identity, trust.
- People need connection.
- If you write it out, forms a narrative. Story.
- Narrative leads to identity: this is me. This is what I did.
- The connections give things life.
- Graph is very valuable information.
- Don't hide info, show it all in feed.
- Keeps going, like life.
- Pile of things that I like.
- When something happens, send feedback (like, pin, repin, tag, ...).
Old faceted tags screenshot
Saved via here (via a trippy duckduckgo search), I found this screenshot of a semantic tagging system that I built and then gave a talk about around 2005/6 or so. The idea was that tags were organized in facets, which gave them some level of meaning (ie. "sanfran" is a place), and from that meaning and from tags that were used together, you could infer more meaning (ie. "peter has been to sanfran").
Wow this is exceedingly cool
But what is not so cool is that WP doesn't seem to let you post animated GIFs? Come on guys!
Click the image to see the animation.
Where the illustrators hang out
Salon.io is pretty interesting. Posting this here to not loose the link (which is also interesting). What an INTERESTING post!
2013 social media cleanup
Let's see:
- New blog at http://blog.petervandijck.com (and Wordpress.com's image import is just magical btw). This was the biggest deal.
- ITTT for cross-posting to Twitter from blog. This is meant to encourage me to blog as opposed to posting on Twitter.
- Turned off bunch of apps on Facebook. No more cross-posting from Twitter to Facebook. Twitter is work-world, Facebook is friends/family who don't care about my geeky rants.
- Still using Path as my private little Facebook for a few select people.
- Next: set up phone apps for everything.
New blog posts will go straight to Twitter
Perhaps this will inspire me to blog? The problem I'm trying to solve is that of audience.
My first blog post ever. Still pretty good :)