This will be the focal page for some linked excerpts of A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. The scope ranges from room details to Society Design. You can free the full-text by buying the book or going to his site. (Some excerpts are re-worded a bit to directly use WikiNames instead of making those pattern names as redundant labels in the text. So the wording here may be a bit less elegant at times...) There's a strong SmallWorld flavor here. (more)

see compelling

irrestible (more)

trilogy of large novels (total ~2500 pages) by Neal Stephenson: Quick Silver, The Confusion, The System Of The World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle. Basically takes place over the lifetime of Isaac Newton (1642-1727), and he is sometimes a major character in the books. (Though large sections go without a mention of him.) (more)

The 2nd biggest service of the Fediverse, after Mastodon. Misskey is an open-source and distributed platform for microblogging. Development was started in 2014 by syuilo in Japan. It features an abundance of features such as Drive, Reactions and more as well as a very high UI customizability. While Misskey started centered around Bulletin Boards as its main feature, the growth in popularity due to the addition of a timeline that let users post short messages and view them in chronological order lead to a gradual shift in the main focus of development towards this kind of functionality. Misskey was not always a decentralized service, but became decentralized through the adoption of ActivityPub in 2018. https://misskey-hub.net/en/docs/about-misskey/ (more)

Robin Berjon is a French computer scientist and political writer. He is the editor of the W3C HTML5 specification.[1] In 2012 he was elected to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) but he resigned early in 2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Berjon Working on IPFS. (more)

computer from Apple Computer that runs MacOS (and now MacOS-X). (more)

the Apple Macintosh Operating System built on top of FreeBSD. (more)

An antilibrary is a collection of books that are owned but have not yet been read. The term was coined by Nassim Taleb. The concept it describes has been compared to the Japanese tsundoku. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilibrary your to-read booklist (more)

The naturalistic decision making (NDM) framework emerged as a means of studying how people make decisions and perform cognitively complex functions in demanding, real-world situations. These include situations marked by limited time, uncertainty, high stakes, team and organizational constraints, unstable conditions, and varying amounts of experience... The NDM movement originated at a conference in Dayton, Ohio in 1989, which resulted in a book (Decision Making in Action: Models and Methods ISBN:978-0-89391-943-6) by Gary Klein, Judith Orasanu, Roberta Calderwood, and Caroline Zsambok.[1] The NDM framework focuses on cognitive functions such as decision making, sensemaking, situational awareness, and planning – which emerge in natural settings and take forms that are not easily replicated in the laboratory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_decision-making (more)

parable/meme about not letting any Nazis into your bar - These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after a while, they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too. And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh dang, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nazi_bar cf Tipping Point, social media (esp Twitter), virtual community

Friendica (formerly Friendika, originally Mistpark) is a free and open-source software[5] distributed social network. It forms one part of the Fediverse, an interconnected and decentralized network of independently operated servers... Friendica users can connect with others via their own Friendica server, but may also fully integrate contacts from other platforms including Diaspora, Pump.io, GNU social, email, Discourse[9] and more recently ActivityPub (including Mastodon, Pleroma and Pixelfed) and Bluesky[10][11] into their 'newsfeed'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica (more)

Mind Mapping software, written in Java http://freemind.sourceforge.net/ (more)

Ben Thompson: Intel and the Danger of Integration. The details of Brian Krzanich’s departure, though, ultimately don’t matter: his tenure was an abject failure, the extent of which is only now coming into view. (more)

An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip, computer chip, or simply chip, is a small electronic device made up of multiple interconnected electronic components such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors. These components are etched onto a small piece of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Integrated circuits are used in a wide range of electronic devices, including computers, smartphones, and televisions, to perform various functions such as processing and storing information. They have greatly impacted the field of electronics by enabling device miniaturization and enhanced functionality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit

Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware.[3] Intel designs, manufactures and sells computer components and related products for business and consumer markets. It is considered one of the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturers by revenue[4][5] and ranked in the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue for nearly a decade, from 2007 to 2016 fiscal years, until it was removed from the ranking in 2018.[6] In 2020, it was reinstated and ranked 45th, being the 7th-largest technology company in the ranking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor)[3][4] is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semiconductor company,[5] the world's largest dedicated independent (pure-play) semiconductor foundry,[6] and one of Taiwan's largest companies,[7][8] with its headquarters and main operations located in the Hsinchu Science Park in Hsinchu. It is majority owned by foreign investors.[9] Founded in Taiwan in 1987 by Morris Chang, TSMC was the world's first dedicated semiconductor foundry and has long been the leading company in its field.[10][11] When Chang retired in 2018, after 31 years of TSMC leadership, Mark Liu became Chairman and C. C. Wei became Chief Executive.[12][13] It has been listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE: 2330) since 1993; in 1997 it became the first Taiwanese company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: TSM). Since 1994, TSMC has had a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.4% in revenue and a CAGR of 16.1% in earnings.[14] Most of the leading fabless semiconductor companies such as AMD, Apple, ARM, Broadcom, Marvell, MediaTek, and Nvidia, are customers of TSMC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC

Railroad Train for your Commute (more)

James Allworth: Intel's Disruption is Now Complete. Clayton Christensen shared with Andy Grove his research on how steel minimills, starting at the low end of the market, had gained a foothold and used that to expand the addressable market, continued to move upmarket, and finally disrupted the giant incumbents like US Steel. Grove immediately groked it. (more)

*a simulated or otherwise medically ineffectual treatment for a disease or other medical condition intended to deceive the recipient. Sometimes patients given a placebo treatment will have a perceived or actual improvement in a medical condition, a phenomenon commonly called the placebo effect. (more)