First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.
— Octavia Butler, who died in 2006
If you put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and life. There are NO limits, There are only plateaus, and you must NOT stay there., you MUST go beyond them.
As Susanna Pechuro says, “I know that without my experience in the Gulag I wouldn’t be what I am today: a woman who is afraid of nothing…[I am] armored. I have passed the test.”
~ Monika Zgustova dressed for a dance in the snow Russia - Czechoslovakia - Siberia
IT NEVER WORKED. IT NEVER WILL: My Experience of Communism.
Nominative determinism of Jozef Imrich
Every single rich stat you need to know about the internet
TheNextWeb – “Our new Digital 2020 reports – published in partnership with We Are Social and Hootsuite – show that digital, mobile, and social media have become an indispensable part of everyday life for people all over the world. More than 4.5 billion people now use the internet, while social media users have passed the 3.8 billion mark. Nearly 60 percent of the world’s population is already online, and the latest trends suggest that more than half of the world’s total population will use social media by the middle of this year. Some important challenges remain, however, and there’s still work to do to ensure that everyone around the world has fair and equal access to life-changing digital connectivity.
You’ll find the full Digital 2020 Global Overview Report in the SlideShare embed below, but read on to find our summary of this year’s key headlines, numbers, and trends…”
“A professor at one of China’s top universities has quit what many academics would regard as a dream job after he gained celebrity status through an online “knowledge-sharing” platform.” (former GMU student, 2008 Ph.d)
Discovering millions of datasets on the web: MEdia Dragon - Google Blog: “Across the web, there are millions of datasets about nearly any subject that interests you. If you’re looking to buy a puppy, you could find datasets compiling complaints of puppy buyers or studies on puppy cognition. Or if you like skiing, you could find data on revenue of ski resorts or injury rates and participation numbers. Dataset Search has indexed almost 25 million of these datasets, giving you a single place to search for datasets and find links to where the data is. Over the past year, people have tried it out and provided feedback, and now Dataset Search is officially out of beta…”
It’s hard to believe MD reached a million views! It took many years to touch this milestone and as many know too well some blogs reach million in a day etc ... Yet these 18 years (in internet years Media Dragon is million years old) have passed in the blink of an eye! It seems like only yesterday, when I prepared that very first blogpost, finally published back in 2002 as my memoir hit the printing presses in Canada.
We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.
~ Shirley Abbott
The ten most hated classic novels are, on the whole, better than the ten most loved.
That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable ...
There's nothing that makes you more crazy than family. Or more happy. Or more exasperated. Or more... unconditionally secure as you blog your heart out despite the way blogs Make you also vulnerable ... It is not just about showing the parts of you that are shiny and pretty and fun - It is also about revealing what you deny or keep hidden from other people. We all do this to some extent. I bet you’ve never said to a friend, “Oh my god, I just love that I’m insecure.”
I have family dotted everywhere - My sisters' in Prague and Poprad as well as Pilhov; I've got aunts in Germany and France; cousins in Italy, England, Switzerland; nephews and nieces in The US and Canada. In law family in Kenya and Punjab.
All families are different and unique, but they all have one thing in common the realisation that blood is thicker than water. In the last few years the living pool of 82 cousins has been shrinking, tears flow from the eyes of loved ones the days we are are born, and the day we pass away...
The informality of family life is a blessed condition that allows us all to become our best while looking our worst.
Like blogs, books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways. They force us to reflect. They hurry us from point to point. They present direct ideas of various kinds, and they suggest indirect ones. In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights, of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions, without attaining some resemblance of them. When I read Thomson, I become Thomson; when I read Milton, I become Milton. I find myself a sort of intellectual camelion, assuming the colour of the substances on which I rest. He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour. His taste is rendered so acute, as easily to distinguish the nicest shades of difference. His mind becomes ductile, susceptible to every impression, and gaining new refinement from them all. His varieties of thinking baffle calculation, and his powers, whether of reason or fancy, become eminently vigorous. N
~Brene Brown
. . . . when you’re in a small 'blogging' boat, you can see who’s paddling hard and who’s looking around.
— Ev Williams
The Circle of MEdia Dragon - Synopsis: "In 'The Circle' you never know who you're playing against as contestants bond, flirt, and plot, all in an effort to earn clout exclusively through a unique social media platform. Everyone's competing to gain influence and avoid getting voted out. But who's for real and who's a catfish? With $100k on the line, what would you do — and who would you be — to win?"
Our distribution is rare. Our family and friends, deep readers audience is rarer. Our eclectic links are rarest. Joint the rare MEdia Dragon Circle ⭕️
A question is asked, an answer is ventured, a verdict of correct or incorrect is handed down. But there's more to the lives of quiz obsessives... ... biggest secret is that curiosity, not knowledge, is the key to success
Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the people who read blogs.
. . . . when you’re in a small 'blogging' boat, you can see who’s paddling hard and who’s looking around.
— Ev Williams
The Circle of MEdia Dragon - Synopsis: "In 'The Circle' you never know who you're playing against as contestants bond, flirt, and plot, all in an effort to earn clout exclusively through a unique social media platform. Everyone's competing to gain influence and avoid getting voted out. But who's for real and who's a catfish? With $100k on the line, what would you do — and who would you be — to win?"
Our distribution is rare. Our family and friends, deep readers audience is rarer. Our eclectic links are rarest. Joint the rare MEdia Dragon Circle ⭕️
A question is asked, an answer is ventured, a verdict of correct or incorrect is handed down. But there's more to the lives of quiz obsessives... ... biggest secret is that curiosity, not knowledge, is the key to success
Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the people who read blogs.
– Seth Godin
Meet the super humans
The Freelance Theatre Designer Life Isn’t For The Faint Of Heart
Joanna Scotcher trained as a sculptor, but when she started trying to sculpt doorways between spaces and the human interactions in those spaces, one of her professors hinted that she might consider the theatre. But, she notes, “a career in design ‘isn’t financially viable’ for most people, and the opportunities on offer – unpaid work, training schemes, assistant designing – ‘remain the preserve of the privileged few.’ It’s something she is passionate about changing.” – The Stage (UK)
Our Predictions About the Internet Are Probably Wrong
It’s easy to forget how unforeseeable the “unforeseeable” really is.
Nominative determinism of Jozef Imrich
Every single rich stat you need to know about the internet
TheNextWeb – “Our new Digital 2020 reports – published in partnership with We Are Social and Hootsuite – show that digital, mobile, and social media have become an indispensable part of everyday life for people all over the world. More than 4.5 billion people now use the internet, while social media users have passed the 3.8 billion mark. Nearly 60 percent of the world’s population is already online, and the latest trends suggest that more than half of the world’s total population will use social media by the middle of this year. Some important challenges remain, however, and there’s still work to do to ensure that everyone around the world has fair and equal access to life-changing digital connectivity.
You’ll find the full Digital 2020 Global Overview Report in the SlideShare embed below, but read on to find our summary of this year’s key headlines, numbers, and trends…”
“A professor at one of China’s top universities has quit what many academics would regard as a dream job after he gained celebrity status through an online “knowledge-sharing” platform.” (former GMU student, 2008 Ph.d)
Discovering millions of datasets on the web: MEdia Dragon - Google Blog: “Across the web, there are millions of datasets about nearly any subject that interests you. If you’re looking to buy a puppy, you could find datasets compiling complaints of puppy buyers or studies on puppy cognition. Or if you like skiing, you could find data on revenue of ski resorts or injury rates and participation numbers. Dataset Search has indexed almost 25 million of these datasets, giving you a single place to search for datasets and find links to where the data is. Over the past year, people have tried it out and provided feedback, and now Dataset Search is officially out of beta…”
As a hobby, blogging is something you enjoy doing and never get tired. You’re also not restricted to deadlines or niches and you’ll find yourself connecting with many hobby bloggers and writers in whichever platform you use.
I can post randomly on culture, politics, daily musings, music and all that pertained to life, writing, community. Remember to include links to great books, films, recipes, food, dine and wine, travel .... Through blogging you read and come across many creative characters you interact with amazing minds and it is nice especially to be part of deep blog community
“My blog is a collection of answers people don’t want to hear to questions they didn’t ask.”
The past is never dead, never past, as Faulkner says. What seems dead and inert can come to life in surprising ways. A 2000 year old Judean date palm seed, recovered from excavations at Herod the Great’s Palace in Masada, Israel was germinated in 2005. A 1,300-year-old sacred lotus recovered from a dry lakebed in northeastern China was geminated in 1995.
Deep bloggers like Allison have ways of sharing lessons learned from the virtual village communities who are often kinder and more soulful and more tightly knit ...
“My blog is a collection of answers people don’t want to hear to questions they didn’t ask.”
Deep bloggers like Allison have ways of sharing lessons learned from the virtual village communities who are often kinder and more soulful and more tightly knit ...
"Blogging is hard because of the grind required to stay interesting and relevant.”
– Sufia Tippu
– Sufia Tippu
The biggest lesson I’ve learned about blogging in 10 years
So, the biggest lesson I’ve learned about blogging in 10 years is that blogging is about connections. The thing is, it didn’t really take me 10 years to grasp this. In fact, I blogged about it in my FIRST year. It’s called Why Blogging Is Not Writing and it also came up on the list of reader favourites.
This lesson was reinforced for me in the most painful of circumstances in January when a dear friend of mine – who I met through blogging and with whom I would never have made friends were it not for blogging – lost her beloved husband very suddenly. I think about her every day, and I make contact with her every few days, just to let her know I’m thinking of her. To connect.
If you’re not blogging to connect with people, you’re not doing it right.
Despite all its issues, YouTube is a nearly unmatched repository of humanity's accumulated knowledge – you can learn about everything from quantum mechanics to re-keying door locks
BREAKING BAD: How to overcome online negativity. In Business Insider, the strategies that enabled one hotel in New York to dominate the TripAdvisor rankings. An excerpt from my new book, The Power of Bad.
Despite all its issues, YouTube is a nearly unmatched repository of humanity's accumulated knowledge – you can learn about everything from quantum mechanics to re-keying door locks
Short Story Collections, The Record Albums Of Fiction
Author Naomi Ishiguro: “I’ve always enjoyed the idea of total mundanity, and the struggles and the happinesses of ordinary life, and then contrasting it with something a bit strange; the possibility of magic in the everyday.” –The Guardian (UK)
BREAKING BAD: How to overcome online negativity. In Business Insider, the strategies that enabled one hotel in New York to dominate the TripAdvisor rankings. An excerpt from my new book, The Power of Bad.
We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.
~ Shirley Abbott
The ten most hated classic novels are, on the whole, better than the ten most loved.
That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable ...
Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.
There's nothing that makes you more crazy than family. Or more happy. Or more exasperated. Or more... unconditionally secure as you blog your heart out despite the way blogs Make you also vulnerable ... It is not just about showing the parts of you that are shiny and pretty and fun - It is also about revealing what you deny or keep hidden from other people. We all do this to some extent. I bet you’ve never said to a friend, “Oh my god, I just love that I’m insecure.”
I have family dotted everywhere - My sisters' in Prague and Poprad as well as Pilhov; I've got aunts in Germany and France; cousins in Italy, England, Switzerland; nephews and nieces in The US and Canada. In law family in Kenya and Punjab.
All families are different and unique, but they all have one thing in common the realisation that blood is thicker than water. In the last few years the living pool of 82 cousins has been shrinking, tears flow from the eyes of loved ones the days we are are born, and the day we pass away...
The informality of family life is a blessed condition that allows us all to become our best while looking our worst.
Like blogs, books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways. They force us to reflect. They hurry us from point to point. They present direct ideas of various kinds, and they suggest indirect ones. In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights, of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions, without attaining some resemblance of them. When I read Thomson, I become Thomson; when I read Milton, I become Milton. I find myself a sort of intellectual camelion, assuming the colour of the substances on which I rest. He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour. His taste is rendered so acute, as easily to distinguish the nicest shades of difference. His mind becomes ductile, susceptible to every impression, and gaining new refinement from them all. His varieties of thinking baffle calculation, and his powers, whether of reason or fancy, become eminently vigorous. N
A Collection of Children’s School Notebooks from Around the World
Hardly any scientific finding has permeated popular culture more profoundly, transmuted its truth into a more pervasive cliché, or inspired more uninspired college application essays than the fact that no two snowflakes are alike. But for the vast majority of human history, the uniqueness of snowflakes was far from an established fact.
A skeptic tries ‘forest bathing’ National Geographic
The long-time host of PBS NewsHour Jim Lehrer died this week at the age of 85. In this age of news as entertainment and opinion as news, Lehrer seems like one of the last of a breed of journalist who took seriously the integrity of informing the American public about important events. In a 1997 report by The Aspen Institute, Lehrer outlined the guidelines he adhered to in practicing journalism:
These are fantastic guidelines; as veteran journalist Al Thompkins said recently: “I would like to add a 10th rule: Journalists should be more like Jim Lehrer.”
Addendum: Even though this is a mere blog that has different goals and moves at a different pace than traditional journalism, I try (try!) to adhere to Lehrer’s guidelines on kottke.org as much as possible. I found out about his rules on Twitter in the form of a context-free screenshot of an equally context-free PDF. Lehrer would not approve of this sort of sourcing, so I started to track it down.
All initial attempts at doing so pointed to the truncated list (as outlined in the Harvard speech and in this 2009 episode of the NewsHour), so I wrote up a post with the nine rules and was about to publish — but something about the longer list bugged me. Why would someone add more rules and attribute them to Lehrer? It didn’t seem to make sense, so I dug a little deeper and eventually found the Aspen report in bowels of Google and rewrote the post.
In doing all this, I rediscovered one of the reasons why Lehrer’s guidelines aren’t followed by more media outlets: this shit takes time! And time is money. It would have taken me five minutes to find that context-free PDF, copy & paste the text, throw a post together, and move on to something else. But how can I do that when I don’t know for sure the list is accurate? Did he write or say those things verbatim? Or was it paraphrased or compiled from different places? Maybe the transcription is wrong. Lehrer, of all people, and this list, of all lists, deserves proper attribution. So this post actually took me 45+ minutes to research & write (not counting this addendum). And this is just one little list that in the grand and cold economic scheme of things is going to make me exactly zero more dollars than the 5-minute post would have!
Actual news outlets covering actual news have an enormous incentive to cut corners on this stuff, especially when news budgets have been getting squeezed on all sides for the better part of the last two decades. It should come as no big surprise then that the media covers elections as if they were horse races, feasts on the private lives of celebrities, and leans heavily on entertaining opinions — that all sells better than Lehrer’s guidelines do — but we should think carefully about whether we want to participate in it. In the age of social media, we are no longer mere consumers of news — everyone is a publisher and that’s a powerful thing. So perhaps Lehrer’s guidelines should apply more broadly, not only for us as individuals but also for media companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter that amplify and leverage our thoughts and reporting for their own ends.
A skeptic tries ‘forest bathing’ National Geographic
Your online activity is now effectively a social ‘credit score’ Engadget
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It NYT. Facial recognition.
The long-time host of PBS NewsHour Jim Lehrer died this week at the age of 85. In this age of news as entertainment and opinion as news, Lehrer seems like one of the last of a breed of journalist who took seriously the integrity of informing the American public about important events. In a 1997 report by The Aspen Institute, Lehrer outlined the guidelines he adhered to in practicing journalism:
- Do nothing I cannot defend.*
- Do not distort, lie, slant, or hype.
- Do not falsify facts or make up quotes.
- Cover, write, and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.*
- Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.*
- Assume the viewer is as smart and caring and good a person as I am.*
- Assume the same about all people on whom I report.*
- Assume everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
- Assume personal lives are a private matter until a legitimate turn in the story mandates otherwise.*
- Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories and clearly label them as such.*
- Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously.*
- Do not broadcast profanity or the end result of violence unless it is an integral and necessary part of the story and/or crucial to understanding the story.
- Acknowledge that objectivity may be impossible but fairness never is.
- Journalists who are reckless with facts and reputations should be disciplined by their employers.
- My viewers have a right to know what principles guide my work and the process I use in their practice.
- I am not in the entertainment business.*
These are fantastic guidelines; as veteran journalist Al Thompkins said recently: “I would like to add a 10th rule: Journalists should be more like Jim Lehrer.”
Addendum: Even though this is a mere blog that has different goals and moves at a different pace than traditional journalism, I try (try!) to adhere to Lehrer’s guidelines on kottke.org as much as possible. I found out about his rules on Twitter in the form of a context-free screenshot of an equally context-free PDF. Lehrer would not approve of this sort of sourcing, so I started to track it down.
All initial attempts at doing so pointed to the truncated list (as outlined in the Harvard speech and in this 2009 episode of the NewsHour), so I wrote up a post with the nine rules and was about to publish — but something about the longer list bugged me. Why would someone add more rules and attribute them to Lehrer? It didn’t seem to make sense, so I dug a little deeper and eventually found the Aspen report in bowels of Google and rewrote the post.
In doing all this, I rediscovered one of the reasons why Lehrer’s guidelines aren’t followed by more media outlets: this shit takes time! And time is money. It would have taken me five minutes to find that context-free PDF, copy & paste the text, throw a post together, and move on to something else. But how can I do that when I don’t know for sure the list is accurate? Did he write or say those things verbatim? Or was it paraphrased or compiled from different places? Maybe the transcription is wrong. Lehrer, of all people, and this list, of all lists, deserves proper attribution. So this post actually took me 45+ minutes to research & write (not counting this addendum). And this is just one little list that in the grand and cold economic scheme of things is going to make me exactly zero more dollars than the 5-minute post would have!
Actual news outlets covering actual news have an enormous incentive to cut corners on this stuff, especially when news budgets have been getting squeezed on all sides for the better part of the last two decades. It should come as no big surprise then that the media covers elections as if they were horse races, feasts on the private lives of celebrities, and leans heavily on entertaining opinions — that all sells better than Lehrer’s guidelines do — but we should think carefully about whether we want to participate in it. In the age of social media, we are no longer mere consumers of news — everyone is a publisher and that’s a powerful thing. So perhaps Lehrer’s guidelines should apply more broadly, not only for us as individuals but also for media companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter that amplify and leverage our thoughts and reporting for their own ends.
Charts depicting the growth of Apple over the past decade. In terms of revenue, "the Apple of January 2020 is roughly six times the size of the Apple of January 2010".
Flexible ‘Dragon’ drone autonomously shapeshifts to fly through tight spaces
The National Archives admits they modified an exhibition photo of the 2017 Women's March by blurring out references to Trump and women's body parts (e.g. "This Pussy Grabs Back") on signs. No defense for this whatsoever.Flexible ‘Dragon’ drone autonomously shapeshifts to fly through tight spaces
