I am having trouble finding things to give conference talks on!
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I’m doing a 366 Day Challenge, and am 324 days in! You can follow along on my PixelFed account.
I spent the start of the week watching lots of web dev conference talks. I’ve been trying to plan what I would talk about next year. I started writing out some ideas, but realized that my list was kinda spiraling out of control. Here’s a few of the entries that I shared:
– How to save the world through web development (you can’t)
– What we’ve done and how we can fix it
– What do you do when nothing sparks joy?
– Oops, All Depression
It turns out that I don’t really have a lot that I want to talk about. I think that I do, and I always have ideas swirling around my head. But they don’t feel totally concrete to me. They don’t feel like topics that I have any right or authority to speak over others about.
Maybe I’ll change my mind again when I start writing some more. Maybe I’ll stop feeling like the things that I think and care about are pointless in the face of everything that 2020 represents.
For now, I’m going to try to feel comfortable shelving that idea, and maybe learning to do the same in the future. I’m also going to share some stuff that interested me this week below:
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Ok which one of yall wrote the wikipedia page about mewtwo – @prehensile@tech.lgbt
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The Man Who Helped Turn 4chan Into the Internet’s Racist Engine – Rob Arthur, Motherboard
When it comes to platforms professing “free speech, no matter what views” for all users, I’m not buying it. I have yet to see a platform use this as a sales pitch that wasn’t founded with far-right extremism at its heart.
Wait… Did Ron Watkins Just Rat His Dad Out as Q? – Alyse Stanley, Gizmodo
Similar to above, is it any surprise to anyone that the maintainers of another far-right extreme site could make up an entire conspiracy theory driven political movement?
This is unlikely to change the opinions that anyone holds on Q-Anon, even if it could demonstrably and factually be proven, whatever that means to acolytes these days.
Everyone Should Have Access to the Web – Jay Hoffman, The History of the Web
The number of people that have access to the web has never been higher than it is now. But it has still slowed in growth a great deal over the past few years. Especially when you compare it to the explosion of growth in social media usage.
Jay has also been continuing his series about the history of the web over on CSS Tricks too. The latest chapter is on the history of publishing on the web, which is where it starts to get really interesting to me.
Twitter ‘exploring’ adding a dislike button or downvote system – Jack Morse, Mashable
The amount of stretch that has to be put into making a clickbait article like this is kinda tremendous. Then again, Twitter could have something to distract from actually having to police Trump after his term is over.
I mean, I feel like the title of this article is obvious but, you know, sometimes it still needs to be spelled out.
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We could all use a bit more Sonic the Hedgehog sometimes.
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Here are some of those conference talks that I liked when I watched them this week. Most are a few years old, but I think that they’re all still interesting.
Jenn Schiffer, Engineer/Artist
Let Us Now Praise Ordinary People – Mike Monteiro
“CSS Algorithms” by Lara Schenck
Beth Dean – Emotional Intelligence in Design
The Internet Was A Mistake – Wisecrack
How the tech sector could move in One Direction – Sacha Judd
I love the way that this video approaches various arguments for and against caring about data security and privacy. It covers so many various responses in a short amount of time, and based on countless conversations that I’ve had with people about privacy, sounds like how people actually think and speak on the topic.
The Shape of Infinity – Jacob Geller
This is trippy in such a good way.
I love Hilda, I love Zelda, and I love We Bare Bears. Put them together and you have a winner.
Hope yall are gearing up for a safe Thanksgiving. I’ll be celebrating in a small group that I regularly see. Try to relax some this week 💝
