Dorian Taylor tool. In­ter­tw­ing­ler is an engine for making websites. Its specific focus is managing very large numbers of very small objects, densely connected to one another in disparate ways. It was borne out of an observation that the Web, at least out of the box, is actually pretty bad at this.... End Users: In­ter­tw­ing­ler was designed primarily as a substrate for communicating complex topics. It’s made to maximize linking between small pieces of information, in a style called dense hypermedia (IBIS?). This helps you gain comprehension while only having to read the parts you need to... Self-Hosters: In­ter­tw­ing­ler is designed to ship as a single, stand-alone, open-source package that you can run on your personal computer, your server—​whether in your house or in a data centre—​or your cloud account. Eventually, a version of In­ter­tw­ing­ler will run on your phone. In­ter­tw­ing­ler is designed to federate with other instances of itself, not only for scale but also for balancing security and availability. With In­ter­tw­ing­ler, your single source of truth can be virtualized and spread across multiple physical locations, for a single, seamless information space. https://intertwingler.net/ (more)

No We Can't. *As the polls were closing in Massachusetts on the evening of January 19th, turning Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat over to the Republicans for the first time in half a century, David Plouffe was busy reminiscing about the glory days. (more)

Why Barack Obama Failed to Build an Enduring Movement. How did this happen? In 2010, the meme that began to arise via articles in Rolling Stone and elsewhere is that Democratic political operative David Plouffe was to blame. From RS: After the 2008 election, Plouffe had taken OFA, previously known as Obama for America, and moved its entire operation into the Democratic National Committee. 2009-09-03-NoWeCant (more)

Baldur Bjarnason: The risks of OpenAI's Whisper audio transcription model. This weekend a story from ABC News on issues with audio transcription machine learning models did the rounds. “Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said”. The report highlights a number of very serious and real issues, but in the process glosses over a few details that might be important. ((2024-10-25) Researchers Say An AI-powered Transcription Tool Used In Hospitals Invents Things No One Ever Said) (more)

Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said. OpenAI has touted its artificial intelligence-powered transcription tool Whisper as having near “human level robustness and accuracy.” (more)

Bluesky is an initiative to develop a decentralized social network protocol. Organized by Twitter as a non-profit initiative, it was announced in 2019 and is in a research phase as of 2022. Bluesky is owned by the team itself, without any controlling stake held by Twitter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol) cf Open Social Networking Model (more)

Brian Balfour: There are four essential fits: Market Product Fit (not Product Market Fit), Product Channel Fit, Channel Model Fit, Model Market Fit. I'm going to dedicate a post to each of these fits, along with how you can apply this framework. (more)

Brian Balfour: Why Product Market Fit Isn't Enough. (Four Fits) There are certain companies where growth seems to come easily, like guiding a boulder down hill. These companies grow despite having organizational chaos, not executing the “best” growth practices, and missing low hanging fruit. I refer to these companies as Smooth Sailers (more)

collective action focused on the neighborhood or town?

Peter Limberg: The Meta Tribe. I was reminded of this sensemaking session, in which a few of us meta podcasters participated two weeks ago, on Tim Adalin’s Voicecraft Collective, just as it was dawning on us that the shit was going to hit the fan. A thought came alive for me during that chat: two tribes will form during this crisis: a kinetic and a meta tribe (more)

Writer, thinker, podcaster, and Stoic Peter Limberg convenes conversations about our fast-changing cultural landscape amidst the meta-crisis and how our many tribes and ideologies can better express embodiment, authenticity and "right relationship" to reality. https://newrepublicoftheheart.org/person/peter-limberg/ (more)

Kelsey Piper on Elite Hypocrisy. No society has ever done more than ours to require poor people to live like the elite do, and this is often really bad for them. We ban cheap housing because it's better for people to live in nicer housing. (more)

The Transition Towns and Green Wizard folks are tossing poo at each other. I think it’s more useful just now to talk about the things Hopkins’ critique got right. Rob Hopkins is a smart guy, and even though he’s garbled a fair number of the details, his post raises useful points regarding some of the core issues I’ve tried to bring up in the Green Wizards posts. The first of those is that one of the motivations behind the Green Wizards project is a recognition of the limitations of the Transition Towns project. I’ve discussed my concerns about that movement on several occasions on this blog, and don’t see any need to repeat those comments just now. The crucial point, though, is one that Hopkins himself cheerfully admits: that neither he nor anyone else in the movement can be sure that it will accomplish what it’s trying to accomplish. That’s a bold statement, and one that’s worthy of respect. Still, it has implications I’m not sure Hopkins has followed as far as they deserve. If the difficult future ahead of us can’t be known well enough to tell in advance what strategies will best deal with it, in particular, it seems to me that it’s a serious mistake to put all our eggs in one basket, whether it’s the one labeled “Transition” or any other. This is the underlying strategy that guides the Green Wizards project. I’ve argued here that the best approach to an unpredictable future is dissensus: that is, the deliberate avoidance of consensus.

Steve Yegge imagines a Wizard School, a 7-yr Boarding School (Apprenticeship for The Craft) graduating 18yr-olds (Educating Kids) to become coders and CTO-s who end up as millionaires by 22. An interesting alternative to High School and a College Education. Hmm, but I Commented you'd have to interview 10-yr-olds, and I don't think anyone has a predictive process for that... And if such a kid changed their minds, and didn't want to be a programmer anymore, what else would they do? Steve actually makes a pretty good argument that they end up as Renaissance people anyway, but I'm not sure I buy that for teenagers.

Idea for getting through the Long Emergency. Focus on the individual rather than Resilient Community? (more)

Scott Young had Book Club: This month we read The Wizard And The Prophet by Charles C. Mann. It’s a story of two men: Norman Borlaug and William Vogt with different visions of the world (more)

Robin Sloan: What would a wizard read? This new novel is my answer to that question (more)

wizardly name of Jason Fox https://www.drjasonfox.com/about

(male?) practitioner of magick

stage magic, or magick