Category Archives: Links of Note

Links of Note

Posted on by

Matthew Inman, of The Oatmeal fame, has put out a list of Ten Eight Marvelous and Melancholy Things I’ve Learned About Creativity. Well, not so much of a list as a series of delightful and educational comics. Funny and smart and so very true. Worth looking at whether you are a creative sort or someone in your life is. Love it so much!

Next up … Getty Images is suing Stability AI for copyright infringement! It’ll be interesting to see how this case turns out, but it’s undeniable that images were scraped from Getty, so you’d think they’d win. Guess we’ll find out eventually, and maybe AI outfits will finally have to stop just sucking up everything on the internet without care for ownership or copyright.

And in closing, a year old story about how Facebook got the way it was (and still mostly is) that explains the reasons why I ditched that place years ago, though I didn’t know the behind the scenes stuff going on, I definitely knew things were swirling a drain. Now I know why, and you can too.

Links of Note

Posted on by

Always keep in mind that anything you read on the internet may very well be the mad ravings of a delusional computer.

Next time you’re on your favorite news site, you might want to double check the byline to see if it was written by an actual human.
CNET, a massively popular tech news outlet, has been quietly employing the help of “automation technology” — a stylistic euphemism for AI — on a new wave of financial explainer articles, seemingly starting around November of last year.
Futurism/The Byte

This is an absolutely delightful photography project you simply must see! It’ll make you giggle, I promise!

“Passport Photos” looks at one of the most mundane and unexciting types of photography. Heavily restricted and regulated … It seems almost impossible for any kind of self-expression.

The series tries to challenge these official rules by testing all the things you could be doing while you are taking your official document photo.
Max Siedentopt – Passport Photos

Links of Note

Posted on by

Just a few links to things I’ve had open in my browser tabs for a while, with the intention of writing actual blog posts, but I’ve had a serious case of the holiday lazies. I’ve also not been feeling so great, because the cedar is breeding. 🤣

First up we have all the info you need on the findings of the January 6 Committee. If you watched the televised hearings, you might think you know most of what there is no know. You’d be wrong. There’s so much more.

Welcome to this all-source repository of information for analysts, researchers, investigators, journalists, educators, and the public at large.

Check out our new addition below: A curated repository of deposition transcripts from the House Select Committee.
Just Security – January 6 Clearinghouse

Next up is a nightmare hellscape of a story about a cop who teaches other cops to use his own invented junk science to put innocent people behind bars. He can just sense when someone is guilty by listening to the 911 call, and for a fee, he can teach your local cops how sense it too! In fact, he probably already has taught them his bullshit.

Tracy Harpster, a deputy police chief from suburban Dayton, Ohio, was hunting for praise. He had a business to promote: a miracle method to determine when 911 callers are actually guilty of the crimes they are reporting. “I know what a guilty father, mother or boyfriend sounds like,” he once said.
Criminal Justice – Propublica

Yeah, Covid isn’t over. I’m certainly not pretending it’s over. It makes me angry that everyone who isn’t me is pretending it’s over when it clearly isn’t.

It’s that time of year again. Christmas? The holiday season? No, the time of year when we’re all supposed to pretend…Covid’s over. Smile!! Hey, take a selfie while you’re at it!! We won!! Or did we? Me? I’m tired of pretending that Covid’s over, and you should be, too.
Umair Haque – Medium

I’m doing my best! I too want to get back to blogging! Look, I’m doing it right now! 🤣

In the beginning, there were blogs, and they were the original social web. We built community. We found our people. We wrote personally. We wrote frequently. We self-policed, and we linked to each other so that newbies could discover new and good blogs.

I want to go back there.
Bring Back Personal Blogging – The Verge

And finally, a nice post comparing social media outlets. You don’t have to be on Twitter to watch the Twitter train wreck. It’s constantly national freaking news. Of the people I know who haven’t left it yet, I’m beginning to assume they like it there best, and I’m gonna start holding that against them.