If I ran MSNBC we'd be asking at the top of every show -- When will Merrick Garland indict someone in charge of the Jan 6 coup, or when will he resign to make room for the person who will. And Biden will you fire Garland if he refuses? We've waited too long. Out of patience.#
A demo of two-way interop between Drummer and LogSeq. I've read in an outline from LogSeq. Edited it. It autosaves, the change is immediately reflected in LogSeq. Open formats for the win. (This functionality is in development, not shipping yet.)#
Two favorite books of 2021: The Color Purple and Klara and the Sun. For the first, I highly recommend the audiobook which is narrated by the author. Want to understand how slavery works in the United States? How the culture it spawned is American culture? This is your book. Beautifully written story, a real page-turner, and a total eye-opener. Klara and the Sun is near-future science fiction, about artificial friends. It's interesting in a meta-way because the artificial friend in the book, Klara, becomes our artificial friend. Also beautifully written.#I didn't watch a lot of movies this year, but my favorite, hands-down, was (of course) Don't Look Up. It's more than a movie, it's an anthem, identifying the conclusion of our civilization one way or the other. We either overcome our need to be told simple bedtime stories and thus transform into something else, or we self-destruct. Either way, the past is not a template for the future. And they deliver the message in such an entertaining way! Maybe it's the last fun movie our species will ever create? People who judge the movie on its ability to entertain alone are totally missing the point. We have not only hit the wall, but it destroyed us. Now it's time to pick up the pieces, the best we can. As Dr Mindy says at the end, "We really did have everything." Note the past tense, and it's very true, in the movie and in our lives. The times of having everything is over. Now what can we salvage from the wreckage of our civilization?#
Jeff Jarvis hit a nerve with a post about how journalism covers science, which is a process -- and rarely produces a final answer. Same is true of software of course, and law, and pretty much everything that humans learn about. So what to do? Well, that's where blogging comes in. We need a combination of expertise and understanding of the scientific process, and the ability to communicate in a way that non-scientists can understand. So you can either teach journalists to be better at science, or give scientists the tools and training to be more effective communicators. There is a compromise possible -- merge the two. Bring expertise into the journalistic process, don't force science through the minds of journalists who dumb it down, or misrepresent it. This was the initial idea of blogging, it's why I went into academia in 2003. And why a person like Jarvis, who is a professor at CUNY and a pioneering blogger, is in an ideal position to start bringing about the needed change. #- Sometimes I wonder if dying is like waking from from a dream, hopefully with friends and loved ones waiting for you, like going to a diner after seeing a movie together and you all talk about how you liked it, and if you want to see it again.#
