Acclaimed author bell hooks dies at 69

Rest in power, bell hooks. What an intellectual, moral, literary force. If you haven't read her work, please do. It'll change the way you see the world. [Link]

Sick of being sick

I’ve got the more-intense cold that’s been doing the rounds, and I hate it. Of course, I’d much prefer to have this than COVID: as annoying as it is now, there shouldn’t be any long-term effects, and I’m not heading to the hospital any time

I blew $720 on 100 notebooks from Alibaba and started a Paper Website business

"TLDR; I started a business that lets you build websites using pen & paper. In the process I went viral on Twitter, made $1,000 in two days, and blew $720 on 100 paper notebooks from Alibaba." [Link]

Playing Startup Versus Building a Company

"Figuring out how to build and run a business isn’t easy—and a lot of the moves you need to make aren’t intuitive. However, too many people approach it by just copying what it seems like everyone else is doing without taking a hard look at what

Alternatives to the metaverse

One of the most striking facets of the metaverse is that it doesn’t exist and nobody can agree on how to define it, but there are a lot of people who are really excited about it. And because so many people are excited about it, the hype itself may

Thoughts and actions for the week of December 13

Thoughts 1. My high school yearbook said that I was likely to become a journalist. Aside from a brief foray into film reviewing (one of the best gigs I’ve ever had), that didn’t happen. Instead, I was sucked into software development as a way to tell stories. 2.

Reimagining projections for the interactive maps era

"We have put a lot of thought into making this feature feel seamless and natural, so that our customers could adopt it on all kinds of map apps by adding one line of code. Let’s take a deep dive into why we did it, and how it works

Peter Thiel’s Free Speech for Race Science Crusade at Cambridge University Revealed

"Their common concern was the increasing threat from the advancement of a ‘liberal’ agenda to traditional Christian religious and theological beliefs – including an unnerving fascination with race science." Lots to digest here. [Link]

‘They were a bit abrasive’: how kids’ TV Clangers secretly swore

“The Clangers were briefly drawn into this combative arena in a special one-off episode called Vote for Froglet, in which Postgate tried to persuade the planet’s residents of the virtues of the two-party system. After a snap election, with the Soup Dragon running on the “free soup for all”

Laclede County, MO Health Department stops COVID work

"The local health department of a rural southern Missouri county is halting its COVID-19 response efforts after Attorney General Eric Schmitt wrote agencies this week demanding they drop mitigation measures." It's like they're actively trying to kill people. [Link]

On the death of Lina Wertmüller

In the New York Times: Lina Wertmüller, who combined sexual warfare and leftist politics in the provocative, genre-defying films “The Seduction of Mimi,” “Swept Away” and “Seven Beauties,” which established her as one of the most original directors of the 1970s, died overnight at her home in Rome, the Italian

Building ActivityPub into Known

ActivityPub is the protocol standard of the Fediverse: a set of interoperable, open source social networking platforms that notably includes Mastodon and Write.as. It’s the closest we have to a vibrant, distributed social networking ecosystem. Known has supported Indieweb standards since the beginning, but Fediverse has been notably