Batfort

Style reveals substance

Category: The Reader (page 3 of 4)

The Reader: People who understand internet marketing, and people who don’t

I have no idea who took this photo but it’s already a “classic”

 

 

» Do not waste one more second:

One way or another, the end is coming. But if you truly, deeply engage here, you can live more life in a week than most people live in an entire lifetime. By that I do not mean that you can have more experiences, I just mean that you can experience far more moments with far more depth and clarity than someone who’s just drifting through life on autopilot. One week fully and consciously appreciated contains more lived life than an entire stay in this world from cradle to grave when it is taken for granted.

 

» How to level up in the culture war

» The world’s most depressing overview of Ulcerative Colitis

» Luxury fashion brands don’t control their own conversation anymore

According to Tribe Dynamics, the top influencer driving the conversation on luxury products is the popular — and controversial — singer-songwriter, model and make-up artist Jeffree Star, who has over 500 million views on YouTube and almost five million followers on Instagram. “[Star] is talking not just about the beauty brands, but also the fashion apparel and accessories products,” says Begley, recalling a meeting in which representatives from one luxury house told him they didn’t want to be associated with Star, although he was already driving more conversation about the brand than anyone else.

“[Star] is shaping the perceived messaging. [Luxury houses] don’t have to make him the face of their brand, but this is a new wave of publishers that you have to manage and work with….Think about this as PR,” he continues. “How have you treated editors in the past? You got product into their hands pre-release. You built relationships with these people and created experiences that shaped their view of the brand.”

» On that note, Why nobody sympathizes with the media

» The Jake Paul story never ends. Good at sales, or just manipulative? Knowing that Gary Vaynerchuk is an investor in the Jake Paul brand changes the story quite a bit, for me at least. Listening to Shane Dawson talking to him about “how he doesn’t know what he’s doing is wrong” is like watching a rabbit explain to a shark how eating grass is better than snacking on surfers.

Not saying that Jake Paul is right, necessarily, but the discrepancy in worldview is large. Shane “I FINALLY HAVE MERCH!” Dawson comes from an entirely different place from Jake “yo” Paul.

 

The Reader: Media Smears, Social Skills, and GaryVee

When I came up with the idea of #storyvember, I didn’t think about this series that I’ve started to feature on the weekends. Because this format doesn’t lend itself well to story, I’m not going to worry about smashing it into the “story” format just yet. I’ll chew on it for a while, and maybe by the end of the month I’ll modulate this list into a story of its own.

» IRB doesn’t apply in research online by social media companies, and now it’s starting to fail in real life. I don’t know if this is a win for dismantling outdated institutions, or a loss for humanity. Please be alert and aware in any medical setting.

» They did it to Mike Cernovich and co earlier this week. Now they’re coming for Julian Assange. Caitlin Johnstone is always worth a read.

The point is to create public revulsion for Julian Assange, thereby killing sympathy for his unconscionable persecution and dampening the impact of any future WikiLeaks releases. The point is to marry Assange’s name with the idea of bad smells, so that the public will begin to find themselves increasingly disgusted by him and everything he stands for without quite remembering exactly why they feel such disdain for him.

» Socialite Magazine is an interesting read, for those of us who struggle with social skills. I find that for myself, it’s not the actual skills involved (I can get along with anybody if I have to), rather it’s the realization that I need to deploy those social skills and that I could, in fact, make a new friend at any given point in time. Perhaps that’s the difference between Extraverted Feeling (me, even though it’s weak) and Introverted Feeling (the ISTJ who writes Socialite Mag)

» A little birdie told me that Colourpop’s Boss Brow Gel is a dupe for Glossier’s Boy Brow. Ordering some now, I’ll report back when I have an opinion.

» Hawaiian Libertarian has graced us with a new post. Look past the gloss of “tinhat conspiracy theorist” and look for the big picture—Keoni knows what he’s talking about. Read and learn.

» K-pop has avante garde music, too

» In honor of #storyvember: What is a Story?

» Watch out for the goo-roos slipping blood into your taco (read this if you’re trying to launch a business or sell a product)

» Intro to Visual Culture (warning: lots of academicese)

  • “Visual Culture” studies recognizes the predominance of visual forms of media, communication, and information in the postmodern world.
  • Has there been a social and cultural shift to the visual, over against the verbal and textual, in the past 50 years, and has it been accelerating in the past 10 or 20 years?
    • Or are our written, textual, and visual systems continuing an ongoing reconfiguration in a new (recognizable) phase?
  • Study of visual culture merges popular and “low” cultural forms, media and communications, and the study of “high” cultural forms or fine art, design, and architecture.

 

The Reader: Font choice is super-important and fashion designers are trolls

Hello friends,

I love the end of October; in my part of the world, it’s finally starting to feel like fall. This weekend I’ve been raking leaves and curled up in front of my fireplace. I’ve discovered a renewed interest in practical wisdom—that only comes from doing something—so as I do an activity I ask myself “what am I teaching myself with this?” Am I teaching myself to be passive and accept something that someone else is offering to me? Or am I pushing myself to do and to accomplish things for myself?

It’s a revealing question.


 

» Why Are We Still Teaching Reading the Wrong Way? Phonics, as it turns out, teaches kids how words are an physical manifestation of an abstract system. Teaching “whole language” is the equivalent of “do what I tell you and don’t ask questions,” rather than giving children the tools to think and discover for themselves.

while you’re likely to find some phonics lessons in a balanced-literacy classroom, you’re also likely to find a lot of other practices rooted in the idea that children learn to read by reading rather than by direct instruction in the relationship between sounds and letters. For example, teachers will give young children books that contain words with letter patterns the children haven’t yet been taught. You’ll see alphabetical “word walls” that rest on the idea that learning to read is a visual memory process rather than a process of understanding how letters represent sounds. You’ll hear teachers telling kids to guess at words they don’t know based on context and pictures rather than systematically teaching children how to decode.

» Someone is already looking at MBTI type and personal style, and I love it. The site is more more sales-oriented than a thorough examination, but it’s still something to go off rather than simply expanding through first principles.

» In grantland, the wrong font can mean certain death. This PI’s grant got rejected because of byzantine font rules in the VA’s grant review system. Given the sheer volume of grant submissions to go through, I can understand why something as arbitrary as formatting is used to disqualify applications—just to narrow down the field.

» This one has been making the rounds: Instagram Has a Massive Harassment Problem.

But Instagram’s current reporting pathway doesn’t allow users to explain exactly why something is offensive, leaving moderators to guess.

“There could be all sorts of things that the user understands that the moderator doesn’t,” Andy said. “So many of my co-workers are old, people who did not grow up thinking like anything like this would ever happen. They got hired because their résumé says, ‘I have a Facebook account,’ but you need a Ph.D. in 4chan slang sometimes, and stuff that’s specific to Instagram, in order to understand what someone means when they post something. We just have no context about the stuff that we get related to harassment, and it makes it a lot harder to interpret who is attacking.”

» I remain interested in Wim Hof breathing.

» Ironic fashion is nothing new (and never will be while premium fashion trolls like Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld are still around).

» Everything I knew about reading was wrong—a recap of Naval Ravikant’s approach to reading. I’ve heard a lot about this guy on Twitter, so I listened to the podcast that was the origin of this list. He had some interesting things to say, but he’s not the luminary I was expecting. I will continue to be mildly interested.

» The Builders of Ocean Grove had a Higher Calling

» The Man Who Pioneered Food Safety

» Coming to terms with six years in science: obsession, isolation, and moments of wonder. This is a frank essay about the realities of getting a PhD in science, from someone who made it through. If you are interested in pursuing a PhD at all, read this.

» I’m considering chinoiserie wallpaper for my bedroom.

» FBI Admits It Used Multiple Spies To Infiltrate Trump Campaign

 

 

The Reader: Tiny Ferns Edition

» Cait Johnstone on why forgiveness is overrated

» Melania Trump hates fake news, too

“I often asking myself, if I would not wear that jacket, if I will have so much media coverage,” she said. “It’s obvious I didn’t wear the jacket for the children. I wore the jacket to go on the plane and off the plane. And it was for the people and for the left-wing media who are criticizing me.”

She continued, “I want to show them that I don’t care. You could criticize whatever you want to say, but it will not stop me to do what I feel is right.”

» Google hates us

» Like many behind-the-scenes people, stylists aren’t paid that much

» I’m not sure what this is, but it’s hosted on The Guardian (something about an “accountability free” zone)

» Retail’s innovation problem

» Thoughts on the gig economy

» How the purge of Alex Jones on social media impacts everyone

» You can find cool things to do anywhere, Hawaii edition

» Interesting how things look from the middle, rather than from the outside: Soon-yi on Woody Allen

» Private enterprise once again does it better than the government

» “You better like it”

» Artificial intelligence can now decipher Medieval graffiti

The Reader: September 2019

Wasn’t The Reader the title of some clickbait romance movie a while back? Starring Kate Winslet? (It was.) Alas, Kate Winslet will not read you this list of articles that are open in all the tabs of my browser. You have to do that for yourself.

Without further ado

Not Reading Material

  • I like these shoes, but I try not to buy fake leather. I’ll probably waffle over it until they sell out in my size.
  • Made you look.
  • I’m toying with learning architectural drawing because it would be immensely satisfying.

Things I Love

8-oz cans of Perrier ♕ That delicious feeling of anticipation before a big change ♕ Queen Helene’s Mint Julep masque ♕ Stretching luxuriously in between freshly-washed sheets ♕ K-pop fanvids ♕ The ability to think, hope, and pray ♕

Batfort Reader: Week of August 5, 2018

Hey! I like sharing fun stuff, and my browser’s getting too full to function. Here are some of the interesting things that I’ve considered this week.

Reading

The Curse of Work (and the double curse of working for the university)

Starbuck’s “Third Place” policy (I’m thinking about what a medical third place might look like)

Myth of the Week: White People Have No Culture

Ben Shapiro’s Pedo Pal Problem

Crohn’s disease successfully treated with the paleolithic ketogenic diet (this is one of the articles that convinced me to try life as a Carnivore)

Did a Russian Tsar fake his own death and become a monk? I loves me a good conspiracy theory.

Nikola Tesla’s connection to Donald Trump

A copywritten letter on how to learn copywriting

A K-pop stylist explains her thought process (More of this, please.)

 

Things other than Reading

Book of Hours digital collections (surprise~~)

Pewdiepie has merch out and I’m considering this white long-sleeve tee

How to fight desertification and reverse climate change (hint: it’s not what you think)

GaryVee’s Clouds and Dirt sneakers (probably sold out by now) (yup)

Architecture MMXII

What? Another side project?

 

YouTube

The Batfort Reader

Here’s an idea: instead of calling this posts “linkshame,” I’ll rebrand and share what has caught my attention long enough to want to capture. Positive and helping-focused instead of negative and self-focused.

Articles

» Signaling concern over industry funding, Congress presses for transparency at groups supporting NIH, CDC

» Another article on why Peer Review is Not Scientific

» The founder of Cut the Knot.org recently passed away, so I checked it out. Good way to learn math, if you want.

» You can now download printable zines of Catlin Johnson articles. I love this idea.

» A Brief Introduction to Meme TherapyIf the meme strike notes are good, looking at fifty will save you from reading half a dozen books. They might not equip you to defend or attack a position beyond that, but that isn’t the point. The point is either carving out a space for certain ideas to be heard, or closing off a space and booting certain ingroups or positions outside of the sphere of acceptable public discourse.
[Scott Adams would call this “directional truth” rather than “exact truth.” -eds.]

» I’m intrigued by SocialMatter. Gotta love a neoreactionary website with a dot net address.

» The Puritan Intellectual Tradition in America, Part 1: Nineteenth-Century Optimism and Utopian Idealism

» It’s interesting to read this after having been to NYC: The Death of New York City

» The Only 3 Things I Need in a Partner

» Putting a Funny Face on Crohn’s Disease

» Global Stocks Lost Over $10 Trillion In H1, Just Wait For The Second Half

» I dream of living in a community like this one day: The History of the Cotton District

» How to Reinvest your Money

» Lack of group-to-individual generalizability is a threat to human subjects research. This is a big deal, and a truth that you’ve probably encountered if you are an n=1 experimenter.

 

Books and Other Things to Buy (or Not)

 

 

The Reader: 6-26-18

Funny that I posted yesterday about having no energy when you’re sick, because today I’m sick. So instead of posting some incomprehensible and low-energy article, I’ll post all the open tabs in my browser.

 

Read

 

Unread

 

Not Reading Material

 

Weirdest Takeaway

Even bees should be eating more protein (fromThe Great Nutrient Collapse):

[The researchers] found that the protein content of goldenrod pollen has declined by a third since the industrial revolution—and the change closely tracks with the rise in CO2. Scientists have been trying to figure out why bee populations around the world have been in decline, which threatens many crops that rely on bees for pollination. Ziska’s paper suggested that a decline in protein prior to winter could be an additional factor making it hard for bees to survive other stressors.

The Reader: Week of 4-22-18

Publicly shaming myself into reading or closing all the tabs on my browser. May you read more than I!

Read

How Clientless Copywriting Made Gene Schwartz Rich

How to Enlarge Your Ego

The Trans-Pedantic Partnership + Escape Pod for Young Radicals

Physicists Confirm There’s a Second Layer of Information Hidden in Our DNA

 

Unread

A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe [pdf]

“Fallacies” aren’t what you think they are–and they aren’t very useful

The Stifling Uniformity of Literary Theory

Machiavellian Thinking vs. Conventional Logic

Grammar for Academic Writing [pdf]

Gohmert Hearing On Imran Awan: Wasserman Schultz IT Aide Managed House Cybersecurity Remotely From Pakistan

Not Readable

The Coddling of the American Mind preorder

Buy Letterpress

The Reader (revisited)

Hello, it’s that time to post all the tabs open in my browser that are silently mocking me for not yet reading them! [Insert something about the Protestant work ethic here.]

 

Read

How I Became an Artist & A Quick Beginner’s Guide to Drawing

The Blockchain Man

Morality, Compassion, and the “Sociopath” (part of a series)

Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

 

Unread

Tchaikovsky on Work Ethic vs Inspiration (via Brainpickings)

Mental Models (aka training for one’s intuition?)

Live Not By Lies (the famous essay)

Academia’s Consilience Crisis

Live Not By Lies (a blog post responding to a book on genetics)

 

Video

Openness: Creativity and Intelligence

This is not Clown World

 

Other stuff

Carlo Gesualdo (I hear his madrigals are sublime)

Lucid Mattress (via Cernovich)

My Pillow (via /r/the_donald)

Global IQ

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