Rafael Fajardo

Why Are There So Few Lefties in China?

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:15:18 -0600

Okay, I’m not actually linking to this post because of the odd statistic that there seem to be fewer left-handed people in China than elsewhere.

What I find interesting is the subtle prejudice against left-handedness that persists across the globe. Many people may not even be aware of it, but it’s so embedded in society, both culturally (don’t shake with your left hand) and linguistically (in Latin the word for left is sinistra, i.e. sinister). Most of manufacturing is also slanted to the right (doors, tools, etc).

I’ve become more aware of this as I guide my left-handed son through the various lefty adjustments, the correct scissors to pick, avoiding spiral-bound notebooks (because they dig into your hand), finding writing materials that smudge less as your hand moves across the words while writing in our right-handed language.

I also like in this article how it points out that because of these challenges, lefties are forced to be more flexible than their right-handed fellows, and that this may lead to us having a better balance between the left and right hemispheres of our brains.

Someone to look up to.

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:30:18 -0600

mistercray:

The father of one of my students was murdered last week. I can’t imagine going through that at such a young age. When he came back to school, it was as if nothing had ever happened. I heard him mention the upcoming funeral but with no more emotion than any other weekend plan. I don’t know if he is that much more emotionally stable than I am or if maybe his father wasn’t a big part of his life but I was shocked. For a couple days I couldn’t talk to him without actively trying to suppress the murder that was dominating my attention.

Just today I found out about another one of my student’s home lives. De’Andre was raised in New York until his mother and grandfather were gunned down in a robbery attempt. Grandma spent all of her money getting him out of New York and chose Orlando as a destination because of how Disney looked on TV.

Not surprisingly, these kids aren’t great students. It’s hard enough to convince a student that learning about the scientific method is worth while when they plan on having a long healthy life.

The current “Value Added Model” (used to determine wether a teacher is effective or not) uses all sorts of variables like past test scores, reading level, etc.. to predict how much a student is expected to learn, but one factor that is legally prohibited from being included in the algorithm is poverty. Can we as a state/country come together and recognize that poor people have different set of struggles in life that make learning incredibly harder? I hope so, especially because without doing so teachers are incentivized to go to the rich school districts and away from where the help is needed the most.

If this sounds depressing, it’s because it is.

Buycott : Finally an App That Reveals the True Story Behind the Brands You Buy

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:45:18 -0600

Buycott : Finally an App That Reveals the True Story Behind the Brands You Buy :

equalityandthecity:

Here’s how it works. After scanning a barcode Buycott traces the brand to the parent company that owns it and then let’s you know if it’s in conflict with the campaigns you’ve joined or created. A campaign has a goal (“Avoid Sweatshop and Child Labor” or “Support Veterans”, for example) and a list of companies that it aims to support (buycott) or avoid (boycott). So, if you support gun control, for example, the App will tell you that it’s a good idea to buycott Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and boycott Starbucks coffee.

Interface design critique in the New Yorker

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:53:55 -0600

By Bruce Sterling
May 16, 2013 | 2:23 am | Categories: Uncategorized

*It’s pretty good, too, but what is it doing in “The New Yorker”? “The New Yorker” was founded in 1925 as some kind of house organ for the Algonquin Round Table.

*The clear implication of this rather interesting essay about Google is that the New Yorker itself is someday doomed to become a set of Google Cards. This shouldn’t be too surprising, as Google knows who you are, where you are, and quite a lot about what you are thinking anywhere in the world, while the New Yorker always sort of hoped and figured that you were hanging around Manhattan learning to appreciate dry wit.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/the-evolution-of-google-design.html

Exclamation: Your World, in Full Resolution

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:28:44 -0600

Exclamation: Your World, in Full Resolution:

yahoo:

By Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!

Photos tell the stories — stories we’re inspired to relive, share with our friends, or capture simply to express ourselves. Collecting these moments is a part of our everyday. Since 2005, Flickr has become synonymous with inspiring imagery. Today, we’re thrilled…

hyperallergic: Did you see the new Flickr homepage? Cool! They...

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:27:46 -0600

hyperallergic:

Did you see the new Flickr homepage? Cool! They JUST rolled this out. Now, how will this integrate with Tumblr? Wait, doesn’t it look like Tumblr?

"And, as always, our ranks thin at the deeper technical levels. We get stalled at marketing and..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:15:16 -0600

“And, as always, our ranks thin at the deeper technical levels. We get stalled at marketing and customer support, writing scripts for Web pages. Yet coding, looking into the algorithmic depths, getting close to the machine, is the driver of technology; and technology, in turn, is driving fundamental changes in personal, social and political life.”

- How to Be a ‘Woman Programmer’ - NYTimes.com

"The second requirement is a high tolerance for failure. Programming is the art of algorithm design..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:30:31 -0600

“The second requirement is a high tolerance for failure. Programming is the art of algorithm design and the craft of debugging errant code. In the words of the great John Backus, inventor of the Fortran programming language: “You need the willingness to fail all the time. You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they don’t work. And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work.””

- How to Be a ‘Woman Programmer’ - NYTimes.com

Bono and Hewson were right to go to Rogan, because for him,...

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:45:29 -0600

Bono and Hewson were right to go to Rogan, because for him, process is paramount (though their companies have since parted ways). For Rogan, working with only factories that treated workers fairly, cleaned wastewater properly, and achieved the best possible product was just a given. And he also took it for granted that the sophisticated customers his brand attracted should be willing to pay a little more for clothing produced in ethically sound conditions. It wasn’t just marketing; it was a way of doing business. (via Fast Fashion, Unraveled — Global Studies — Medium)

paperbits: For all that Yahoo! completely screwed up and deleted Geocities, my Flickr photo stream...

Sun, 19 May 2013 17:38:50 -0600

paperbits:

For all that Yahoo! completely screwed up and deleted Geocities, my Flickr photo stream is still there and works as well as it did in 2005. Not a single URL has broken, not a single image is missing.

I’ve read the stories of how upcoming.org, del.icio.us, and other companies were acquired, languished, and died. And Flickr’s persistence has led to its fall from grace as the most obvious place to share photos online.

But compared to technologies absorbed by Google, Facebook, and Twitter, that doesn’t seem so bad. Anyone here use Stikkit? How about dodgeball? Jotspot? Socialtext?

Use IFTTT —while it lasts— to archive your blog as you write it. Make multiple connections to the people you care about. Stay in touch. This, too, shall pass.

"Tumblr’s users aren’t afraid of Yahoo because of its turbulent management over the last ten years,..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 17:06:58 -0600

“Tumblr’s users aren’t afraid of Yahoo because of its turbulent management over the last ten years, or because of its current leader, or because of what happened to Flickr or Konfabulator or del.icio.us or any number of other beloved services that Yahoo has acquired and let wither on the vine. They’re afraid of Yahoo because they don’t know what the hell it is”

- The Real Reason Yahoo Is Buying Tumblr

Yahoo! Just Bought Tumblr for $1.1 Billion

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:24:58 -0600

Yahoo! Just Bought Tumblr for $1.1 Billion:

rhube:

twistedsoup:

slothturtle:

That rumored $1 billion offer from Yahoo! to buy Tumblr? It’s looking like a forgone conclusion at this point. But things are messy and speculative and there are already doomsayers predicting this is a bad idea for everyone involved. But mostly they’re predicting it’s bad for Yahoo!

Ruh roh

My guess is that they already have some kind of monetization plan in order. Nobody spends over a billion on a site that made something less than 1.5mil last year without a plan. So I’d say we should expect adverts, and possibly sponsored Tumblr accounts and stuff, but no immediate shut-down.

:(

Although if they start offering more services (like a search function that can deal with combinations or an auto-generated tags page) I might pay for them.

kateoplis: “I should not be this sad about the sale of a website. I should not be this sad about...

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:05:59 -0600

kateoplis:

“I should not be this sad about the sale of a website. I should not be this sad about the sale of a website. I should not be this sad about…”

—

Laura Olin

Everything’s going to be OK.

that’s what I keep telling myself. Yet…

thejogging: Jogging presents ‘Soon’ an exhibition at the Still...

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:00:45 -0600

thejogging:

Jogging presents ‘Soon’ an exhibition at the Still House, opening Friday May 24, 2013 from 6 - 9:00 pm.

After party music provided by Slava.

http://enterstillhouse.com/
http://thejogging.tumblr.com/
http://soundcloud.com/slava

‘Soon’

For most, the trip to the Still House is a lengthy one, poetically punctuated at the end of Brooklyn’s Van Brunt Street by a view of the Statue of Liberty standing in the Hudson River. Upon congratulating yourself for completing an hour-long MTA commute, one wonders how exponentially more relieved America’s immigrants were upon seeing that 19th century landmark after boating across an infinite expanse of water for weeks on end. Could our great-great-great-grandparents have imagined the industrialized country they’d build and the habits of consumption and production they’d pioneer would become so powerful, so globally ubiquitous that future residents would be returned to that same infinite aquatic expanse? We are potentially the first generation of people to begin making down payments on a hellacious environmental check that has long been deferred. Historically we owe the situation we are in to a false sense of permanence about our economies, lifestyles, and even our species itself. There is a pervasive sense of temporality in our present moment, though. We comment “you only live once” on videos of viral celebrities that disappear as quickly as they emerge, using cell phones that are obsolete within the year we purchase them. Through one lens, our digital lives are training us to care less about permanence, to focus our attention on the fleeting beauty of connectivity. But it’s hard to live in the moment, and the devices that could teach us how to do just that more often than not separate us from the reality we seek through them. There is a togetherness in the approaching catastrophe, one that threatens to level all political and religious difference as surely as it threatens to nullify the entirety of land space and the national distinctions that geography provides. It is perhaps more difficult to acknowledge the uniformity of the fate we march towards than the imminent catastrophe itself; to change is to admit defeat. Still today, when it rains, the waves crash freely into rocks feet away from Fairway Marketplace, tickling organic paninis on the unprotected patio eating area with a reminder the destruction they recently wrought. We imagine a time (perhaps now?) when Jogging will no longer need to labor over combining food items in irreverent ways to make sculptures, a time when the Atlantic Ocean will carry goods from Fairway up to the fourth floor, into the Still House, and create our work for us. Until then, we anticipate that impermanence in the art we create. Today’s lifeguards will be tomorrow’s installation photographers.

Introduction to Jogging

Jogging is a context-driven art project consisting of 15 team members based in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Oslo. Founded by Brad Troemel and Lauren Christiansen in 2009, Jogging started in response to the attention economy, lamenting the way laborious, long term artworks were drowned in the deluge of information flowing through the social media networks. A photograph of an artwork that required months of labor is given the same gravity as a photograph of a high school friend’s lunch decision, leading the artists to strategize more effective ways of creating and dispersing art in light of their mediated environment.

Troemel and Christiansen used discarded objects and installation materials left over from the exhibitions they hosted at their Chicago apartment gallery, the now closed Scott Projects (2008 - 2009). Materials would be found, sculpted as new artworks, photographed as installation images in the gallery, posted to Tumblr, and then physically discarded, leaving only the digital image behind to be shared and reused online. Jogging’s title refers to the speed the two artists produced artworks with, running through themes in content and media with an indifference to immediate cohesion, preferring to allow patterns in meaning to become evident to themselves and their audience over time.

Seeing the way their sculptures-turned-Tumblr posts essentially functioned as images, the artists reached a turning point in late 2009 when they would occasionally cut out the middleman (physical objects) and proceed to digitally composite the Google Image Searched products, textures, and scenes together, titling the resultant works as sculptures, paintings, installations, and all else. These digitally altered images were then posted on Tumblr alongside “straight” installation images, as well as digitally edited installation images of objects the artists physically constructed. Rather than contextualizing the discrepancies between textual descriptions and visualized realities as an extension of the Pictures Generation’s long-running attack on the notion of photography as an indexical medium, Jogging instead sought to position these discrepancies as an extension of artists’ autonomy to render work more freely in a mediated environment where the ubiquity and malleability of digital images offered an alternative to the material and monetary limitations of strictly physical works.

After a brief hiatus in 2011, Jogging energetically returned in 2012 with an expanded team of like-minded artists. These core members include the project’s founders as well as Andreas Banderas, Andreas Ervik, Aaron Graham, Artie Vierkant, Andrew Christopher Green, Evan Drolet Cook, Haley Mellin, Jesse Stecklow, Joshua Citarella, Justin Kemp, Masood Kamandy, Rachael Milton, and Spencer Longo. With the added help, Jogging’s increased post rate attracted the attention of a widespread audience beyond the art world, propelling the project to the top 1% of Tumblrs in terms of followers. Soon after, Jogging started accepting moderated submissions from anyone interested in participating. Hundreds of people have since submitted work to the project, working from and evolving the visual trends set forward by members.

The context-specific approach Jogging started with through the use of Tumblr as means of making art in the attention economy has now expanded into a variety of other contexts –including stock photography, books, outsourced material production– and continues through this exhibition at the Still House.

wired: “There were no other competing bids, despite reports, to snap up the New York-based hipster...

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:57:16 -0600

wired:

“There were no other competing bids, despite reports, to snap up the New York-based hipster blogging service.”

— Kara Swisher needs to stop calling Tumblr a hipster blogging service. (Oh, and she says the deal was unanimously approved. On a side note, TechCrunch suggests that the reason why Tumblr accepted the lower deal is because many of their executives have departed in recent months.)

The TechCrunch post had awkward grammar that made it unclear which company’s executives had departed, Yahoo!’s or Tumblr’s.

joelaz: Say it ain’t so, Tumblr!

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:55:28 -0600

joelaz:

Say it ain’t so, Tumblr!

synecdoche: If you guys are planning on dramatically deleting your accounts when Yahoo! buys...

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:54:29 -0600

synecdoche:

If you guys are planning on dramatically deleting your accounts when Yahoo! buys Tumblr, can you at least migrate back to livejournal? It’s so cold and lonely there.

"The Internet will kill everything you love. But by the time it dies, you won’t even care."

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:53:12 -0600

“The Internet will kill everything you love. But by the time it dies, you won’t even care.”

- Squashed: If Yahoo buys Tumblr… (via nevver)

johndarnielle: wilwheaton: I really hope Yahoo doesn’t fuck up Tumblr like it’s fucked up … well,...

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:52:47 -0600

johndarnielle:

wilwheaton:

I really hope Yahoo doesn’t fuck up Tumblr like it’s fucked up … well, every single thing it’s ever touched in the history of the universe.

See here’s the thing though. The only way to prevent something like this would have been to make Tumblr an unwelcoming space, and that’s where we run into the Usenet Paradox. If you try to keep a cool thing to yourself, you get called cliquish, elitist, a snob. But if you don’t work to police its borders — which you probably shouldn’t do, because the people calling you cliquish probably have something of a point, and being an actual border-policing snob saps the fun right out of the thing you’re ostensibly trying to protect — then the people with the money are coming for it. Every single time. Forever. And they will do what they do, because it’s what they do. I can’t speak on behalf of my friends, but I’d hazard a guess that my old buddies Alternative Rock, Rap, Jazz, Independent Film, Things That Are About Vampires and/or Zombies, and The Neighborhoods of Several Large American Cities will co-sign me on this.

*I just invented this paradox. If you wanna option it for a film please do holler, I see immense prospects for development

jonnyskov: warrenellis: Yahoo to acquire Tumblr in $1.1 billion cash deal Wut. This seemed so...

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:50:33 -0600

jonnyskov:

warrenellis:

Yahoo to acquire Tumblr in $1.1 billion cash deal

Wut. This seemed so insane I had to look it up. And it’s totally true. Either Tumblr is about to start a sad downward spiral or else Yahoo is going to get a lot more interesting.