Category: bookmarks

NativeLand.ca

~ cafebedouin

“Our Mission

We strive to map Indigenous lands in a way that changes, challenges, and improves the way people see the history of their countries and peoples. We hope to strengthen the spiritual bonds that people have with the land, its people, and its meaning.

We strive to map Indigenous territories, treaties, and languages across the world in a way that goes beyond colonial ways of thinking in order to better represent how Indigenous people want to see themselves.”

—NativeLand.ca

I tried searching my area and learned I knew next to nothing of the native people who live in the region. Recommended.

Grayson’s Art Club

~ cafebedouin

“Grayson Perry, one of Britain’s leading artists, brings the nation together through art, making new works and hosting masterclasses set to unleash our collective creativity during lockdown.”

—Grayson’s Art Club

Annoying DRM on mobile, but bookmarking for when I’m on a more DRM friendly platform.

Tubi

~ cafebedouin

“Tubi is the People’s Champ and perhaps the last bastion of hope for unifying our fractured culture. It’s where you can see Duck Dynasty featured prominently alongside Dead Presidents in the “Not on Netflix” category. A category that exists to brag a little, but also to unify us against a common enemy. Netflix doesn’t want the Duck Dynasty people hanging out with the Dead Presidents people and we all fuckin’ know it. Tubi is the streaming service for the curious, the unsatisfied, the broke, the thinker and the idiot, the normie and the outsider. Tubi is for all of us, and we’re god damn lucky to have it.”

—Joe McAdam, “Tubi, The People’s Champ.” Recommend If You Like. July 19, 2021

We really need more reviews in this style. Who wouldn’t want to dumpster dive this content after reading this recommendation?

Tildeverse & Rawtext.club

~ cafebedouin

I was checking out Lagrange, which is a web browser for the Project Gemini Internet protocol. The Gemini protocol is a text based, privacy focused communications protocol, and Lagrange renders the text beautifully.

But, during the course of checking it out, I was reminded of the Tildeverse. In short, tilde communities are playgrounds for people interested in multi-user *nix systems. It’s a kind of return to old *nix and BBS systems that you, if you are old enough, used to connect to with telnet or a modem, and features tools like IRC, which I haven’t used for years. There are a variety to choose from, e.g,, tilde.team, envs.net, tilde.club, ctrl-c.club, rw.rs, sdf.org, etc. Personally, I found the thinking behind rawtext.club in line with my attitudes about working from the command line, text, and the problems with social media. Their values include: off the web, DIY, resource minimalism, non-profit, and asynchronous. Here’s a bit from their social contract:

“People in democratic countries might be saying, “but don’t we have a government and legal system to protect us?”. In theory yes – but as history shows, these legal systems are often distorted to encourage those abuses. The corporations and wealthy individuals responsible are either good friends with governments, or hard at work “convincing” them. They are funding intense lobbying efforts to influence politicians, and entire media campaigns to erase public awareness of their work (or, similarly, to manufacture consent). The end result is that public service and regulations are being systematically dismantled and neutralized as an obstacle to reckless, short-sighted profiteering. The institutions that are nominally for the people, by the people, and designed to protect the people, turn out to be none of those, and we are being broken apart into a bickering sea of lonely individuals.”

https://rawtext.club/social-contract.html

Hal Higdon’s Running Programs

~ cafebedouin

“[Hal Higdon]’s all about the democratization of running,” his daughter, Laura Sandall, said. “He was all about making sure that anyone who wanted to get out and run could have a training program at their fingertips.”

At their fingertips, and at the top of Google search results. His free training plans have remained some of the most frequently used — a rarity in a world where most plans and coaches cater to runners who are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for personalized schedules.

-Talya Minsberg, “The 90-Year-Old King of Training Plans.” The New York Times: Running Newsletter. July 19, 2021

The Hal Higdon website has a variety of plans for various distances. I simply looked at the base plan for intermediate runners, which as you can see below, is a perfectly sane running program. Bookmarking for future reference.

LongTrailsMap.net

~ cafebedouin

Welcome to LongTrailsMap.net: Interactive 3D maps of long distance nature trails from around the world!

The purposes of the site are:

* To help members of the community find their next destination.

* To increase awareness of the long trails, especially the newer and lesser known long trails.

* To motivate the responsible development of new long trails, especially efforts to connect existing trails.

–LongTrailsMap.net

I always liked the idea of a several month walk. I’ve spent a week on the Appalachian Trail as a child, and I think spending some time on a long trail would likely be good for most people with the ability. I didn’t see it on this map, but The Trans Canada Trail is the current one that is top of mind.

Crony Connect

~ cafebedouin

“Crony Connect allows you to identify politically-connected individuals, using data from Companies House, the Electoral Commission and the MP’s Register of Financial Interests.

How does it work? When you enter the name of an individual, Crony Connect looks for any companies linked to that individual in the Companies House database. Then it searches for the individual and any of their associated companies in the donations and financial interests databases.”

–Crony Connect

I tried Michael Gove, 1967 and August and it had two entries. One indicated he was affiliated with the Henry Jackson Society, which probably doesn’t add much to what you might know of his politics. But, it’s interesting none-the-less.

I like how projects like these try to make information more accessible and present it in different ways. It also shows the problems in how information is organized. For example, Michael Gove should have one authority record, and all variants should point to the authority record, rather than multiple listings based on whether his middle name is included or not.

Crony Connect reminded me of TheyRule.net, which was a Flash site from 2001 that described itself in this way:

“They Rule is a website that allows you to create maps of the interlocking directories of the top 100 companies in the US in 2001. The data is static, so it is fast becoming out of date, as companies merge and disappear and directors shift boards.”

But, the site provided a visual representation of interlocking corporate boards that showed how information and power is shared in a visual way. I found it fascinating. But, it also shows how quickly this information changes, so there needs to be a dynamic way to generate and present this information that makes these kinds of relationships clear. Because it is when they are not clear that corruption flourishes.

Crony Connect is an interesting attempt along these lines. I found the search mechanism, particularly the need to include birth year and month, a bad user experience. But, I liked the spirit of the thing.