Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Elizabeth Warren wants to break up the monopoly of the big tech companies (GAFFA) nothing that new as Tim Berners-Lee’s been saying similar for a year or so.
I do find it interesting watching the calls for Europe to get in the game, but then applying the same metrics to the European market? Something is not quite right there? Why would you want a copy of GAFFA’s, therefore recreating the cycle again?
We owe a lot to Sir Tim Berners-Lee on the 30th Anniversary of the web.
Tim Berners-Lee helped invent the world wide web 30 years ago. And he has consistently pointed out that the original dream that gave rise to it is under threat.
It is exactly 30 years since Sir Tim submitted a paper to his colleagues at CERN, suggesting a way of sharing data across networks, under the title “Information Management: A Proposal”. The humble title belies the importance of what was contained inside, which included a complete sketch for the networked information system that would on to become the internet we know today.
But its really important to think about the next 30 years.
Surveillance capitalism and governmental/state control are hot topics which very much threaten the fabric of the web. But so does our use of the web and the way we treat each other.
I had a really good 10min talk with Sir Tim Berners-Lee during the last Mozilla Festival, while talking about Solid, Databox and data trust. What got me as we talked, was ultimately we were talking about power and where it lies. Power in the hands of governments (Chinese model) , corporations (American model) or people? (could be the European model?)
I think remembering their are humans, not eyeballs, not lefties/rightwingers, etc is so important. Lets celebrate the people of the web!
https://twitter.com/whynotadoc/status/1105400124447039489
I rarely read twitter due to the API changes which I’ve talked about in the past. But I saw Teknoteacher talking about changing his followers after reading about Male tech CEOs follower accounts. I thought I’d share some things I discovered too. Especially reading this a while back.
So my results are above, using the online tool – https://www.proporti.onl.
But a while ago I used Open Human’s twitter archive analyzer by Bastian Greshake Tzovaras. It was super sobering!
Here is my replies by gender from when I first started using Twitter back in 2017. As you can see there was a massive spike of conversation with males in 2012, I also generally talk to more men than women on twitter.
Likewise when retweeting based on gender its mainly males. Recently its a lot closer to 50% which is great but I wonder with my lack of twitter use, how that will effect things? (I have requested a new update of my twitter data)
Of course my instant thought is there is noise in the figures as its not always clear if people are male or female for many reasons. But its disappointing to read Elon Musk’s tweet.
I use twitter for news orgs. My Insta has same women as men. What's up with the phoney PC police axe-grinding?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2016
And read about others such as…
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, follows 267 accounts on Twitter. Of those, 238 appear to be men. He follows nearly as many Twitter Eggs (15) as women (21).
Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, followed the most women (39) of any of the accounts examined by the Guardian, though that is still half the number of men he follows (78) out of a total of 165 accounts.
I’d really like to see this applied to race not just gender too. It reminds me how I was going to learn more Python so I can create this as a Juno personal notebook in Open Humans.
Updated…
I updated Open Humans with my latest Twitter data export and here are the results.
Once again very sobering to see. Got to make some changes.
Worth adding from TwArχiv site.
The graph shows you the number of replies to Twitter users that are classified as either
maleorfemale. The classifications are predictions based on users’ first names as given in their Twitter accounts. The predictions itself are performed by the Python packagegender_guesser. It uses name/gender-frequencies from a larger text corpus.mostly male,mostly female,andyandunknownclassifications are ignored. To decrease the noise the daily values have been averaged by a daily average over a 180 day window (dataframe.rolling('180d').mean()).Ideally these graphs would include non-binary folks. Doing this is a bit trickier. It is thus a work in progress.
Also worth mentioned…
Even more interesting than whether replying to people might be gendered can be the question which voices are being amplified . On Twitter a good indicator of amplification are retweets. These can be gender balanced or show biases, similarly to the replies to other users.
The graph shows you the number of retweets to Twitter users that are classified as either
maleorfemale. The classifications are again predictions made by the Python packagegender_guesser. To decrease the noise the daily values have again been averaged by a daily average over a 180 day window (dataframe.rolling('180d').mean()).Ideally these graphs would include non-binary folks. Doing this is a bit trickier. It is thus a work in progress.
I never got the chance to write about the Gillette advert and the absolutely insanity of the outcry by some men around it. Theres a ton of discussion, press and frankly shouting about it.
The best commentary/deconstruction I found of the debate is from Dr Nerdlove.
I released a video where I touched on the fact that Gillette released a new commercial that directly addressed toxic masculinity, asking men to do better and the reaction that a lot of people, mostly men, had to it.
As it turns out, I have a lot more to say about it because, well, it’s made people lose their goddamn monkey minds. This is an ad that is literally just saying “hey, men can do better” and people are acting as though this was the announcement that XY chromosomes have been made illegal and having chest hair means that you’re going to get rounded up to camps.
When I first saw the advert I felt impressed by the tone and expression. Yes they must have known calling out toxic masculinity was going to have a big backlash but they did it anyway. Hopefully knowing how important it is.
The accusation that this is an attack on men and manhood is kind of absurd on its face. Because we see a lot of traditional positive masculinity in here. We see dads barbecuing over the weekend with their kids, dads propping up, teaching and encouraging their sons, nurturing their daughters. We see the guys calling out bad behavior and ending fights and showing respect for others. And we see fathers protecting other people and — importantly — teaching their sons to be brave.
It’s a little disingenuous to say that this is an attack on men when the point of the entire ad is all but literally spelled out for you:
We believe in the best in men.
If I was to add anything else to the advert it would be Tony Porter’s words.
My liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman
Just found my ticket from a while ago when I watched a live recording of the Guilty Feminist. The recording when up a while later, its always interesting to hear the recording after being at a live event.
I first heard about the 56 black men project through a podcast by the resource group’s Jonathan.
In the podcast Jonathan talks about archetypes and stereotypes, defining them very carefully.
Archetypes & Stereotypes are similar but not the same
“I find when people think of positive stereotypes, they are more likely to use the word archetype”
Humans find Archetypes And Stereotypes Useful
“Stereotypes are great examples of heuristics or mental shortcuts that we use to help us negotiate our day-to-day lives.”
Archetypes & Stereotypes Can and Should Evolve
“existing archetypes and stereotypes have led to the world we live in now, new archetypes and stereotypes could lead us to a new world”
This all leads nicely in to his role taking part in the 56 black men project.
Reading through the twitter feed and hashtag, there’s some really interesting comments from others. I personally have avoided wearing hoods slightly because of the stereotype and I don’t find them that comfortable to wear. I like seeing around me (being aware of my surroundings is important for me).
I’m super aware of my presence on people around me, especially females. Its been drummed into me from a very early age mainly media like films and tv. Anything to help change this stereotype especially around black males, is very welcomed!
We apologize for this breach and the fact that your email address might have been part of it. The email addresses were included in the breach along with a hashed password – not the actual password (which has been expired and can no longer be used to access the account on MyHeritage). Other than this, there has not been a violation of the data. See our official statement here and an updated statement here.Please be advised that this incident does not affect the privacy of any sensitive information you have on your online family site, including DNA information and family trees. Only hashed versions of passwords were stolen, which means they cannot be used to log in to your private account on MyHeritage.
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Maybe I deleted my account too soon, unfortunately giving them a easy out. I should have done the GDPR request then deleted my account afterwards! I was looking forward seeing proof the account was a shadow profile
I received a email from have have I been pwned that my email address and password had been exposed in breach from My Heritage. Most breaches are somewhat worry-some but as I don’t use the same passwords because I have a password manager with lengthy random passwords; its less of a problem.
What was shocking about the myheritage breach for me, was that I have never logged in to or used myheritage ever. If I had an account, I would have an entry in my password manager. To confirm this I have requested my data via GDPR.
I believe a member of my large family entered my email address and then added details about me into myheritage, therefore creating a shadow profile for me to log into. It makes sense, as others in the family can fill in details they have for me. So the password which was leaked isn’t even set by me, but rather auto generated by myhertiage? The only way I could get access to the account was via a password reset. Once in I deleted my account straight away, but I thought about it some more.
The leaked/breached password and login would give the buyer access to any information my family member entered including date of birth, relationships with other members of the family, etc.
If I’m right this is deeply troubling and a worrying precedent!
Its super depressing and even with 39 days left till Brexit, we still don’t know what on earth is going to happen. Even Jon Oliver can’t express how painful it is to watch the news everyday and see the PM of the UK trying to act strong with a crappy deal and following the will of the UK people.
John Oliver tackles #brexit for an American audience.
I would laugh if it wasn't so true! pic.twitter.com/sOanVS25zX— Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden (@cubicgarden) February 18, 2019
Its a crappy situation the PM stepped into but I’m far from forgiving as she could delay article 50 and delay this clusterf**k. There is no way we should be allowed to leave without clear plans and a proper deal, if thats what we must do (I of course don’t buy it, I want to stay in the European union and always have done).
Tried searching google for "migrate to europe from the UK". Certainly not enough information 🙁#brexit
— Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden (@cubicgarden) February 18, 2019
All I can do is put my head in my hands and think about how to escape the UK.
Every once in a while delight of getting involved with something from near the start of its journey. These types of projects tend to have some very driven but cool people behind it.
Livia Filotico is the founder/creative director of the festival and been my main contact. She started the whole thing with a kickstarter. She didn’t get the money she requested but is pursuing the whole thing anyway, looking for other funding elsewhere.
So why the moon festival?
Celebrating people’s relationship with the Moon across cultures, time and disciplines and coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing in July 2019.
This year it will be 50 years since we first landed on the moon! It feels like lifetimes ago but actually its 50 years this July. When Livia explained this to me, I was shocked there was more celebrations planned for a massive achievement of human engineering and spirit.
Plans are a foot including a magical first event with Margaret Atwood. The festival was recently in the guardian’s 10 european art anniversaries in 2019 alongside some incredible art events.
I have been in talks with Livia for the BBC to be involved in some way too, but more importantly helping her out by connecting her with different people I know. We tried a number of things including attempting to put on a TEDxMoon! How amazing would that have been?!
The whole festival has a human storytelling emphases, which fits well with some of my research. But I was very happy for Livia to take me on board as a digital advisor recently…
We are utterly delighted to welcome the legendary @cubicgarden to our Moon Famiglia as our digital advisor. https://t.co/DQuo0RHDOn
— MoonFestival (@Moon50Festival) February 8, 2019
The whole thing is shaping up well but could be massively accelerated with a few more sponsors behind some of the planned events. Interestingly its not just happening in birth place of modern time (London greenwich/woolwich) but also a couple of other places in the world. Maybe if you are interested in running a part of the moon festival in your city/country, get in touch with Livia. Would be amazing to see more international connected events.