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Hi, my name is Andrew. This is my Tumblr.

[akurjata]

But if I know one fact (and I do) it’s that there will always be people with no other interests or life skills except finding out what’s happening and writing it down. You can give them big paychecks, but it won’t make them work any faster. You can fire them, but it won’t make them work any less. The moneyfolk come and go from media for reasons I will never understand, but when they’re gone—when things look the most bleak—that’s when your true reporter goblins come out to play.

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/the-awl-inflection-poin

[everydaylouie]

CAT PIANO

[oracle-fae]

Happy May, friends 🍄🌿✨

[akurjata]

China’s population falls for first time in more than 60 years

China’s population falls for first time in more than 60 years

Shift marks the start of a long period of population decline as China wrestles with demographic time bomb

[akurjata]

Public Enemy - By The Time I Get To Arizona

[akurjata]

Americans see Martin Luther King Jr. as a hero now, but that wasn't the case during his lifetime | CNN Politics

The fact that King is now beloved and has a national holiday commemorating his birthday wasn't something that during his lifetime appeared w

During the 1960s, King was a very divisive figure. The last Gallup poll to ask about his popularity during his lifetime, taken in 1966, found his unfavorable rating was 63%. This included 39% of Americans who gave him a -5 rating, on a scale with -5 being least favorable and +5 being most favorable.

King’s highly negative rating came when he had turned his attention from Southern de jure segregation toward de facto segregation in northern cities.

But even before then, King was far from a universally liked person. In the middle of 1964, when Congress was in the midst of passing many landmark civil rights laws, King’s favorable rating was just 44%. His unfavorable rating was basically equal at 38%.

When Americans were asked which three Americans they had the least respect for in a 1964 Gallup poll, King came in second at 42%. This was barely less than the 47% registered by George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama. Only 17% mentioned King’s name, when asked which three Americans they had the most respect for.

Perhaps even more revealing is that a lot of White Americans thought King was doing more harm than good for the fight for civil rights. In a 1966 Harris poll, 50% of White Americans indicated that he was hurting the civil rights effort. A mere 36% said he was helping. King’s favorable rating among them was 27% in 1966.

[lazywonderlvnd]

this tweet sends me into fucking hysterics once a day

[akurjata]

Well, it happened. We knew it was coming. A prick pulled the plug. And what bothers me most about it is how Space Karen did it. My mom passed away just before Christmas. Her decline was something everyone in the family saw coming and we prepared for her demise. It still hurts like hell, but […]

Federation exposes a lot of different data sources that you’d want to follow. Not all of these sources will be Mastodon instances: you may want to stay up-to-date with someone’s Micro.blog, or maybe another person’s Tumblr, or someone else’s photo feed. There are many apps and servers for you to choose from. 

It feels like the time is right for a truly universal timeline. That notion excites me like the first time I posted XML status to an endpoint.

One thing I remember from these early days: no one had any idea what they were doing. It was all new and things like @screen_name,  #hashtags, or RT hadn’t been invented yet. Heck, we didn’t even call them “tweets” or use a bird icon at first! The best ideas came from people using the service: all of the things mentioned above grew organically from a need. 

 That’s where I want to be in the future. Exploring unknown territory that empowers others and adapts to the needs of a community.

[akurjata]

Wait, is this a Canadian thing?

[akurjata]

Normalize Dark Corners!

There’s Nothing Wrong With Rolling Your Own.

"One of the very weirdest things about this moment where the internet consists of five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four is that using a website other than one of those giant silos has become intrinsically suspect. Hell, even hosting your own email is practically an admission of guilt these days. The other day, I dialed into a podcast for an interview with a great show and their recording system wouldn’t let me in. The only way to connect to it was with a login from one of the giant platforms."

[akurjata]

Jason Thorne: 

CTRL - SALT - DELETE. One of the new names for one of our city snow plows 

[akurjata]

Jeremy Mayer: 

Crow IV 

Assembled typewriter components

Life scale

[akurjata]

Letting books talk to each other - Austin Kleon

The art of reading more than one book at a time.

Austin Kleon:

"A few years ago, I wrote a post about reading more than one book at a time. I wrote, “One of my favorite ways [to generate new writing] is to have 3 or 4 books going at the same time and let them talk to each other.”"

I like this idea. I recently read "Ducks" by Kate Beaton and "Bedroom Rapper" by Cadence Weapon — one a memoir on working in the oilsands, the other on building a music career. But both reflected on a period of time in which the nascent internet was letting creators find audiences worldwide from more remote places, and had some themes I probably wouldn't have noticed if I'd not read them at the same time.

[akurjata]

"and now we go live, to Walter Croncat..."

[akurjata]

Asher's 2nd #ChineseNewYear fashion is a cape style gift that's slightly too big on him.  I'm going to make some minor adjustments with some double sided tape so it will fit him better.

[akurjata]

[akurjata]

Reading on a smartphone affects sigh generation, brain activity, and comprehension - Scientific Reports

Electronic devices have become an indispensable part of our daily lives, while their negative aspects have been reported. One disadvantage i

"We found that, compared to reading on a paper medium, reading on a smartphone elicits fewer sighs, promotes brain overactivity in the prefrontal cortex, and results in reduced comprehension. Furthermore, reading on a smartphone affected sigh frequency but not normal breathing, suggesting that normal breathing and sigh generation are mediated by pathways differentially influenced by the visual environment. A path analysis suggests that the interactive relationship between sigh inhibition and overactivity in the prefrontal cortex causes comprehension decline. These findings provide new insight into the respiration-mediated mechanisms of cognitive function."