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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/6/22 6:52 PM, glen wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:66AEBC41-CAE4-4340-B1B6-2908A15FF96A@gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
That you call Mastodon 'twitter-like' is discomforting. </blockquote>
I call it that only because that is what I was looking for... and
because that is how Mastodon is often touted in this moment that
people are seeking Twitter-ternatives. <br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:66AEBC41-CAE4-4340-B1B6-2908A15FF96A@gmail.com">ActivityPub
is fundamentally different.I guess the premature registration is
reasonable, given the politics of the moment. But the 'fediverse'
really is distributed, very unlike twitter.</blockquote>
I've been a fan of distributed and decentralized (even federated)
since forever as well has having been an early enthusiast of the
potential for self-organizing, collective, social phenomenon,
especially when mediated by global electronic networking. I'm just
too old, tired, cynical to do more than pantomime the shaking of my
tiny fist as I mouth vacuously "get off my lawn" into the
aether-void of my faulty apprehensions and memories.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:66AEBC41-CAE4-4340-B1B6-2908A15FF96A@gmail.com"> I
really love that the Gab twits ported to Mastodon. That, unlike
Musk's perverted conception, is a real example of free speech. You
really are free to turn open source and open protocol to your
weirdo subculture. We just don't have to link to you.<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:66AEBC41-CAE4-4340-B1B6-2908A15FF96A@gmail.com"><br>
Don't think 'twitter-like'. Think 'decentralized'.<br>
</blockquote>
<p>bottom line is that in principle I'm a fan of *all* of this but
simply missed my window... had more of it been more available (and
mature) earlier in my life I might well be swimming in the
self-similar fractal stew of alternative modalities and
subcultures linked together by federated/distributed models....
To (ab)use SGs favorite metaphor... a member of a a fractal
Acequia Association faciltating the delivery of fresh, nourishing
water to every farmer, gardener, great and small, Peone and Noble
rather than wait for the giant smog-cloud in the sky to drop it's
acid rain on us.</p>
<p>In any case, I'm glad that there are others who in fact *can*
indulge in these distributions (temporal, spatial, spectral) of
conceptions, options, and idioms... maybe this rich (dare I say
lush?) diversity will rescue us from the technological lock-in,
canalization, corporate greed, and what *also* feels like the
babble of post-Babel sometimes.</p>
<p>I think what I was exhibiting in my lame response to "how do I
leave the Twitterverse/GR/ even though i was only barely there?"
was a conceptual lock-in to the extant examples, the niches the
current (or recent previous) landscape offers instead of properly
looking forward to the ones I am probably embedded in if I would
just muster the energy and focus to look around and make sense of
it. AlternativeTo.Net seemed to provide my frail old eyes a
snapshot in the Hellride (Zelazny-Amber reference) I feel I am
making (clinging desperate to the back of my mount) through the
rapidly evolving landscape. <br>
</p>
<p>There is probably some lesson from <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism">Essentialism</a>
(and it's failures) in this random, reflective maundering...</p>
<p>In short... "sadly you are right".<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:66AEBC41-CAE4-4340-B1B6-2908A15FF96A@gmail.com"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On November 6, 2022 5:51:40 PM EST, Steve
Smith <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com"><sasmyth@swcp.com></a> wrote:
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt
0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);
padding-left: 1ex;">
<p>Trying to understand BookWyrm vs StoryGraph vs GoodReads
and Twitter vs Mastadon (and beyond), I found this
aggregator of alternative recommendations:<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://alternativeto.net/" moz-do-not-send="true">https://alternativeto.net/</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>which doesn't necessarily solve anything, it just makes it
obvious how challenging "too many choices" can be...</p>
<p>After a lame attempt to go with Mastadon I decided to
abandond Twitter-like things altogether. I doubt I will be
willing to throw GoodReads over for anything else because of
the participating base of my own personal/family network
there. I can at least avoid clicking through a GoodReads
recommendation to order from Amazon. <br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://alternativeto.net/software/bookwyrm/"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://alternativeto.net/software/bookwyrm/</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I haven't begun (tried?) to evaluate AlternativeTo.Net
itself... <br>
</p>
<p>Is this the tragedy of the "free market" (subset of
"commons")?</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/4/22 3:00 PM, glen wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:69f38462-3fb3-5519-1fc2-8541923fc479@gmail.com">I'd
forgotten about this until the release yesterday: <br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://joinbookwyrm.com/" moz-do-not-send="true">https://joinbookwyrm.com/</a>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 11/2/22 14:52, Steve Smith wrote: <br>
<blockquote type="cite"> <br>
On 11/2/22 9:43 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote: <br>
<blockquote type="cite">Thanks, Glen. <br>
<br>
It would be nice if there were a public bibliographic
reference url that one could use to name a book that
only conveyed the thing in itself. Goodreads was that
once, then Amazon bought them. Ditto for video and
audio recordings and other objects of public interest. <br>
</blockquote>
<br>
I admit to continuing to use Goodreads this way in spite
of two problems... the Amazon affiliation/ownership of
course, but also the too often spotty reviews... I don't
provide many nor particularly good reviews myself, so I've
no room to complain really. <br>
<br>
So I suppose I agree with your "public bibliographic
reference url" point. It seems as if Wikipedia is a good
candidate but I haven't done the work to understand how
new entries are made... are they always required to be
made by a citizen of the community who is NOT affiliated
with the book (publisher, author, etc)? I find a *lot* of
the books I seek in Wikipedia and prefer them for
reference when their book-description (and cross links to
related works, author, etc) are particularly apt, but that
is also spotty. I use Goodreads mostly to follow what
family/friends are reading and what *they* think of their
reads. <br>
<br>
The trend toward crowd-sourced public-use corpii being
acquired by private interests (even public corporations
are private interests) is disturbing (FB <-Mapillary,
Amazon<-Goodreads)... Twitter->BoringCo, etc) <br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"> <br>
Eugenia Cheng has other books and a pile of youtube
videos. Interestingly, her primary institutional
affiliation is the Art Institute of Chicago, where as
resident scientist she teaches math to art students.
She has a public reading for kids scheduled in Jersey
City this month. Her definition of category theory is
"the mathematics of mathematics" which she expands as
"the logical study of the logical study of logical
things." <br>
<br>
Hasok Chang has a third book, Is Water H2O, which Amazon
fails to index on his amazon author page, though it is
on amazon at a blistering price in every available
format. I found a pdf on the internets. It's details
the history of working out the chemical identity of
water. Two themes are that 1) the consensus answers to
scientific questions often change in anticipation of the
arrival of corroboration, 2) there are often multiple
acceptable answers to scientific questions. These are
possibly consequences of being a realisitic realist. <br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Interesting set of recursions... we CS types tend to love
our arbitrary-depth recursion, but the special cases like
double-negatives, and Rummy's unkown unknowns and now
Chang's logical logicologoy of logics and realistic
realists are ... *special*? While some may prefer
"turtles all the way down" sometimes just a few turtles
deep suffices? <br>
<br>
- Steve <br>
<br>
PS... couldn't help hearing/reading "Cheech&Chong" on
the first reading of this thread. <br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"> <br>
-- rec -- <br>
<br>
On Wed, Nov 2, 2022 at 9:57 AM glen <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:gepropella@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true"><gepropella@gmail.com></a>
wrote: <br>
<br>
There. I fixed that for you. 8^D <br>
<br>
On 11/1/22 19:36, Roger Critchlow wrote: <br>
> Interesting visit with my old boss/friend
today, he mentioned some books of interest, and while
looking for them I discovered yet another book. <br>
> <br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-joy-of-abstraction-an-exploration-of-math-category-theory-and-life-eugenia-cheng/18557720?ean=9781108477222"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-joy-of-abstraction-an-exploration-of-math-category-theory-and-life-eugenia-cheng/18557720?ean=9781108477222</a><br>
<br>
> Exploration-Category-Theory/dp/1108477224> <br>
> Eugenia Cheng, The Joy of Abstraction: An
Exploration of Math, Category Theory, and Life,
published October 2022. <br>
> <br>
> A presentation of category theory that keeps
the underlying algebra basic. <br>
> <br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/inventing-temperature-measurement-and-scientific-progress-hasok-chang/9513488?ean=9780195337389"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://bookshop.org/p/books/inventing-temperature-measurement-and-scientific-progress-hasok-chang/9513488?ean=9780195337389</a><br>
<br>
> Hasok Chang, Inventing Temperature: Measurement
and Scientific Progress <br>
> <br>
> An itemized history of temperature and all the
wrong turns taken along the way, more detail than even
the author cares to read again. Poetic justice to
examine the operation of the pragmatist's ratchet and
pawl over the centuries as it rescues workable
definitions of temperature from thermal confusion. <br>
> <br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/realism-for-realistic-people-a-new-pragmatist-philosophy-of-science-hasok-chang/18368583?ean=9781108470384"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://bookshop.org/p/books/realism-for-realistic-people-a-new-pragmatist-philosophy-of-science-hasok-chang/18368583?ean=9781108470384</a><br>
<br>
> Hasok Chang, Realism for Realistic People: A
New Pragmatist Philosophy of Science, available on
kindle on November 30, 2022. <br>
> <br>
> -- rec -- <br>
<br>
-- ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
<br>
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