Baby cries are an equivalent of C++ compiler error messages in the real world.
– Colleague of mine in a recent all-hands meeting

Some useful resources

• https://www.janefriedman.com/sample-permission-letter/
• https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/47628/can-i-share-my-notes-of-copyrighted-materials-on-my-blog
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use (US mostly)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_quote (EU mostly)

@mathias

Reading notes, scrapbooking, social media reposting and copyright

How does Fediverse feel about copyright infringement running rampant on social media? Think quoting, linking to visuals, boosting, reposting, etc.

I am thinking about publishing my reading notes frmo the last year. It’s not a blog, rather a collection of excerpts and quotes I want to remember and refer to later on. The purpose is to build a pile of material from which I then synthesise. Because that’s how I work and thing - any many others too (see the boom of interest in Zettelkasten, note taking etc.).

I keep my notes privately and that’s OK. I also realised that there is an ingerent value in making them public. It forces me not to be too sloppy and get to the point. All is good.

Now, I am a smart guy too and I heard about this thing called copyright. And fair use. And right to quote policy. Etc.

The problem is this:

1. extensive quoting, excerpting and annotating from 3rd party materials is a useful way to study and do research.
2. private note taking like this is protected by copyright limitations in most (if not all) jurisdictions.
3. making such notes public, can be quite useful for fellow souls on a similar research journey.
4. publication of such a scrapbook, however, infringines on copyright of the original authors. One can argue about subtleties here, but copying whole paragraphs (which is useful!) clearly is a potential problem.

Which leaves me with several options:

1. keep the notes private and thus make the world somewhat poorer (in eyes of the note-taker)
2. perform a risk analysis and if the assessed actual risk is relatively low (such as e.g., a requirement to coply with a potential DMCA notice), go ahead and see what happens.

But it also leads to a bunch of interesting questions. Twitter, Facebook or Mastodon are full of quoting, reposting, boosting, linking to 3rd party images and videos, etc. All that, effectively constitutes copyright infringement. How do we feel about all that? Are there any useful reading sources on this?

On wants and asks in human interactions and relationships

Healthy relationships in the end boild down to transactions like this: Tell me what you want, I will tel you what I want and we either meet in the middle, or realise it won’t work this time and can move on. No need to argue in vain.

Now, I can well understand why sometimes people are unable, uneasy, or unwilling to communicate clearly what they want. Yet, I still find it stunning how often people do not even know what is it what they want, yet get angry if they don’t get it.

A lot of pain and hurt could be saved if we dedicated more time to introspection and listening to our own emotions.

Infinitely zooming picture

http://arkadia.xyz/

This is fun. Infinitely zooming generative scene. It’s not the first one I encountered, but one of the most captivating. Worth storing a bookmark to brighten somebody’s day…

#link

A set of brackets is a barrier to understanding between the reader and the writer.
– [https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/02/stop-defacing-quotes-with-brackets.html]

The quote in itself is a standalone reminder of presence of friction in writing. Any writing.

The linked story is also interesting, but this quote just jumped out of the text as I was reading it. Probably (am I just being apologetic?) because I tend to (BS! I do it all the time and with passion (whatever that means)) overuse(!) parentheses (and other fancy characters on my keyboard) and such (but I do not do it on purpose - well, it just feels right (sometimes, obviously)).

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

European Space Agency (ESA) seeks new astronauts - applications open 31 March 2021

For the first time in 11 years, ESA is looking for new astronauts. These recruits will work alongside ESA’s existing astronauts as Europe enters a new era of space exploration.

https://www.esa.int/Newsroom/Press_Releases/Call_for_media_ESA_seeks_new_astronauts_-_applications_open_31_March_2021

Hey fediverse folk! Is there somewhere a map of federation/defederation of fediverse? I mean which instances see/listen to which other instances (since the relationship is asymmetrical). Does not have to be graphical, but ideally searchable (text files?).

Point is, I suspect my home instance might be blocked by some other instances I am interested in and I have no way to know whether people out there will even see my toots if I speak to them first.

Any explanations and pointers appreciated. Thanks.

Mercator map projection distortion animated

Anybody who deals with maps and geospatial data knows that different projections distort the world map in different ways. Still it’s instructive to see it in an good visualisation.

Animated maps of Mercator projection distortion of country areas in two maps by Neil Kaye.

Static version:
https://mobile.twitter.com/neilrkaye/status/1050722881657864192

Animated version:
https://mobile.twitter.com/neilrkaye/status/1050740679008296967

Mercator projection was designed to preserve angles of straight lines on a map. As a side-effect, it inflates sizes of objects farther away from the equator on the map: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection

SKATEBOARD SLIDE GUITAR! | Justin Johnson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUoI8omxf7Q

So yesterday we had a shovel guitar (https://qoto.org/@FailForward/105675348623260571). Let’s have an awesome skateboard guitar today! He plays it like a dobro. Fun!

On awkwardness of boosting one’s own toots vs. the scrapbox idea

Mastodon has this funny aspect that public timeline of an account is a completely separate beast from the Home timeline. Apart from all the foreign toots, the home timeline includes also all the responses by self to other conversations.

This led me to an idea to treat the public timeline as an archive of stuff I want to keep “for posterity” - the scrapbox idea. It is turning out to be a limiting feature.

Specifically, it leads to confused use of the toot boost facility. Originally, the boost of a toot is meant to make it visible to one’s followers. In turn, the public timeline turns into a set of toots one wants to “broadcast”. Complementary, “favourite” facility is useful as a signal of :thumbsup: emoji: “I read you!”. It’s more of an acknowledgement, rather than saving into a box of “favourited” toots. Simple “like”.

So far, so good. The problem starts with my idea of “misusing” the publicly visible timeline as a curated sequence of notes to keep. It makes it impossible to “boost” a toot to one’s followers with an intention to instigate a conversation. Additionally, if I want to keep some of my own comments which I make during an interesting conversation, I have to boost it. That is a somewhat socially awkward thing to do. It’s like screaming: “Hey, look what smart thing I just said!”. Now, that is silly…

Lesson learned

Clearly, Mastodon (and in fact any Fediverse tech, such as Friendica) is best used as a discussion tool: “broadcast stuff you want to be read and discussed”. My one month attempt to turn it into a tool for central storage of public notes of mine is turning negative.

While I still want my notes to be discussed, it’s clear it cannot be the primary purpose of my Mastodon account - if I want to use it for communication with people too. Proper use of Mastodon would turn my notes (kept in my account’s public timeline) into a mess.

A better idea is to keep notes outside of Mastodon and semi-automatically import them from outside. That seems to be a better design.

Either way, I like this Mastodon thing for communication. But not for my original idea of notekeeping.

Crankin’ Up the 3-String Shovel Guitar / Justin Johnson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9-ltPsbw9g

This guy is just awesome.

#cigar_box guitar #cbg #cigar_box #3_string #3_string guitar #shovel #shovel_guitar #spade #spade_guitar #slide_guitar #guitar #slide #slide_guitar solo #lap_steel #lap_steel solo #street_musician #blues #blues_guitar #blues_guitar solo #instrumental #jazz #rock #delta_blues #blues_festival #jazz_festival #festival #film #jazz_fest #best #greatest #shredding #diy #homemade #roots #lesson #nation #borderlands #theme_song #sound_track #video_game #game #fediradio

Getting out of the drama of the rescuer

the key skill for caring people is to listen to others without solving their problems for them.
– Lewis Psychology channel/Youtube