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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>
              </blockquote>
            </blockquote>
            <br>
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