They digitized #TheBookOfKells !
If you know nothing else about medieval European illuminated manuscripts, you surely know the Book of Kells. “One of Ireland’s greatest cultural treasures” comments Medievalists.net, “it is set apart from other manuscripts of the same period by the quality of its artwork and the sheer number of illustrations that run throughout the 680 pages of the book.” The work not only attracts scholars, but almost a million visitors to Dublin every year. “You simply can’t travel to the capital of Ireland,” writes Book Riot’s Erika Harlitz-Kern, “without the Book of Kells being mentioned.
I hope there's a whistleblower at the New York Times and/or FBI who will reveal the source or sources who got the Paper of Record to help Trump win the presidency and derail the Clinton campaign.
Read this by @willbunch
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/mcgonigal-russian-oligarch-trump-2016-election-20230129.html
and this by Timothy Snyder
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-specter-of-2016
The metastasizing FBI scandal has many facets, but unraveling the Times' role is crucial for journalism -- and the paper has stonewalled relentlessly since 2016.
I studied capitalism in college because it was a particular interest of mine. I hated it. I also wanted to understand it, so that I could know why it rubbed me the wrong way and live intentionally to push against it.
There was this moment when I was in a grad course and the professor was talking about self-optimizing markets. That's when it hit me. I literally stood up in the class, interrupted everything and went like "wait, the math isn't optimizing for income inequality". It was kind of funny watching more than 100 little economists in training suddenly start tearing apart the equation at once. You could literally hear the sound of frantic spreadsheeting and charting.
In the end, the professor himself said that it was true, you could achieve a fully "optimized" economy with literally everything being owned by a handful of people. Made me think.
How is a system supposed to be beneficial for us all when the mathematics at its core don't actually consider societal benefit?
If an economy is fully "optimized" but everyone is sick, sad, and angry - is it actually optimal?
A mathematical model can make sense without being sensible. This is why I have an implicit distrust of algorithms and other systems of optimization. It's also why I'm a socialist.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
i've sort of belatedly started using #duckduckgo instead of google for search, on desktop and mobile. i put it off for a long time (while simultaneously advocating it to others!) because i thought the search quality would be frustratingly low for my use case. because i'm a snowflake and have specialize search needs. obvs. ❄️
it's been a few days, and so far the experience has taught me that google's search quality is frustratingly low. i didn't realize how much time and brainpower i was spending checking results for the 'ad' tag, or scrolling past nonsense content farm trash on quora and similar. with ddg i've usually clicked on the first result on the page, my own incredulity notwithstanding.
it's also been liberating to search for things without worrying about how the act of searching will alter my experience of the rest of internet. i feel like the world is at my fingertips again!
anyway, if you've been procrastinating on duckduckgo like i was, give it a shot. you can always go back if it's terrible, but it might be awesome.
Art Of Josh Lange 
Joe Veyera
Dan Gillmor
Scarlet the Fox
gemma lynn ⇒ ello@void