To be truthful I have not read an awful lot this week, so some of these are bites from the last month or so, but all are things that have struck me or stuck with me and that I think are worth sharing.
“Will it be enough? I don’t know. What I do know is that doing something—doing anything—is better than doing nothing. That action is the best antidote to despair. And that in the end we have no choice but to try. For as Greta Thunberg has observed, ‘Change is coming, whether you like it or not.’ Whether that is a threat, a promise or both is up to us”.
Unearthed by James Bradley
I might be spoiling this piece by posting it’s last paragraph but Woof! If you read anything about the climate crisis and the Skolstrejk I want it to be these damning but hopeful 68 words. The Strike was of course massive, and I definitely felt the absence of staff and students on campus even though I was not able to strike myself.
A hard pivot away from climate catastrophe, but here we go. Even though I haven’t been reading as much as I like to, I have been listening to podcasts as much as usual (if not more). A friend turned me on to You’re Wrong About which I will definitely find an excuse to talk about again in more detail, but I mention it now to bring attention to the work of co-host Sarah Marshall’s sprawling wondrous piece on the making of Titanic and the ensuing cultural phenomena surrounding the film and Leonardo DiCaprio.
“When the unafflicted tried to make sense of the phenomenon following the movie’s release, they tended to focus on Leo’s looks and his celebrity, and of course they weren’t wrong. Like all adolescent crushes, he was perfect and remote: He couldn’t hurt you, couldn’t reject you, couldn’t disappoint you. And as Jack Dawson, he was pure fantasy: so handsome as to seem almost unearthly; an androgynous angel who wanted only to love you, to worship you, and to be the idea of a romantic partner, one with whom reality could never try to compete”.
The Incredible True Story Of How “Titanic” Got Made by Sarah Marshall
I wanted to share this one because I am embarrassed that the core premise of this article is not something that had occurred to me. How inclusive is coding if it relies on English? There are many other interesting points about the promises and the realities of the Internet that we work with today – important reflection now that we’ve had the World Wide Web for 30 years.
“But many newer languages, like Python, Ruby, and Lua, come from non-English speaking countries (the Netherlands, Japan, and Brazil) and still use English-based keywords. The initial promise of the web is, for many people, more of a threat—speak English or get left out of the network”.
Coding Is for Everyone—as Long as You Speak English by Gretchen McCulloch
Lastly – the best single serve Twitter that I have seen in awhile: Emoji Mashup Bot. The angry party emoji is me thinking about emails I need to answer while I am trying to enjoy myself after work.