Monthly Archives: April 2019

Tell Don’t Show

Continuing my closing tabs blogging series…

Here’s a small rabbit hole I went down, originally looking at how “show, don’t tell” isn’t objective writing advice, but the result of CIA anti-communist propaganda. (Full disclosure: I was definitely super pro show don’t tell. As of now, I barely write so I have no writing philosophies. But when I watch TV, I do prefer economical story-telling and that typically means I don’t enjoy too much exposition, but I suppose a little tell can go a long way.)

https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/10/14/16469616/show-dont-tell-political

The CIA Battled the Kremlin With Books and Movies

https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Iowa-Flattened-Literature/144531

https://slate.com/culture/2010/11/mfa-vs-nyc-america-now-has-two-distinct-literary-cultures-which-one-will-last.html

https://uncannymagazine.com/article/let-me-tell-you/ (this one is related bashing of show, don’t tell)

Also, I might get these two books:

The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders
The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing by Mark McGurl

Social and Kids

Found this article very interesting. I read it with Stevie: What I Gave My Kid Instead of a Smart Phone.

Might get an art table for Fiona. Will have to discuss this with other parents too I suppose. I don’t want to be alone on this. (Part of discussing this also means getting a broader support system for myself as a parent.)

On a related note, I can’t imagine giving my kid access to YouTube given all the terrifying shit on there.

Stevie and I recently did a digital detox. I’m failing at reintegrating digital stuff into my life. Kinda binging now. This blogging is an attempt to close some open tabs so that I don’t get distracted when I use Safari on my phone.

Sorry, no deeper thoughts on this. Just wanted some way to record that I read this besides leaving an open tab or saving it on a bookmark and never revisiting it.

I want to get my own digital life in order before I figure out how I’ll handle my kid’s. Luckily, I have years.

CRDT Rabbit Hole

I went down this rabbit hole looking at Conflict-free Resolution Data Types. Needed some place to put these links and here will suffice. I think distributed is the future of the web and it won’t be blockchain. Anyway, still in initial research phases. Maybe automerge is the future of AIC.

https://medium.com/all-the-things/a-web-application-with-no-web-server-61000a6aed8f

http://nathanmarz.com/blog/how-to-beat-the-cap-theorem.html

https://medium.com/@pvh/pixelpusher-real-time-peer-to-peer-collaboration-with-react-7c7bc8ecbf74

https://github.com/automerge/automerge

https://github.com/automerge/hypermerge/tree/master/examples/chat

Distributed Systems and the End of the API

https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03960

http://christophermeiklejohn.com/distributed/systems/2013/07/12/readings-in-distributed-systems.html