Still not sure about removing Facebook* from your life?

They embed tracking data inside photos you download, in an attempt to track you outside of the account and platform.

(* This includes Messenger, Instagram, and Whatsapp.)

Long form writing on the web is like anything else that has the most value; it might not be the easiest, quickest, or most convenient option, but you will benefit from it the most in the long run.

Look at Seth Godin, for instance, and combine 7 of his posts. That’s long form.

TIL about the American Community Survey. I know “the” census gets the vast majority of public attention but I hope more and more people in the US both learn and talk about the ACS.

A vulnerability in the Mac Zoom Client allows any malicious website to enable your camera without your permission.

– Jonathan Leitschuh, Zoom Zero Day

Yikes.

… small groups of deeply passionate people can often be more productive than large groups of casually interested people.

– John Green, Why Are Humans Suddenly Getting Better at Tetris?

In which John Green continues to be good at the whole words thing.

Do By Friday: The Kill Zone

This was, as they say, a good one.

In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity.

– Holly Cooper, co-director of University of California, Davis’ Immigration Law Clinic.

Holly is talking about one of the concentration camps.

There are a number of different third-party Micro.blog projects in development. Using Today I Learned (@til), you can find and keep up to date on their progress.

Here’s a starter pack:

Quick list of recent additions to the Micro.blog community:

Language and the New Social Web

(Note: I originally wrote this on Slack, as part of a thread about Micro.blog as a name.)

I know naming isn’t easy but I think I find it hard because M.b gets used for the company, individual blogs, the app and the timeline respectively in the following sentence (although arguably the second “Micro.blog” should be “microblog”):

“When I post to my Micro.blog hosted Micro.blog using Micro.blog it gets cross-posted to Micro.blog”

– Matthew Lindfield Seager (@matt17r), in the Indie Microblogging Slack

I think part of the issue here, especially if you’re going to compare to social media silos, is that they are not interested in differentiating these things… whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, whatever… they are simply interested in people not ever thinking about the technical side of things.

Meanwhile, Micro.blog fully embraces the technical side of things yet is also driven by a desire to make things as simple as possible.

As such, tbh, things aren’t cleanly and easily tucked into a nice little marketable pocket of jargon. If people don’t like the inevitable downsides of social media silos then they’re going to have to at least become aware of things like “blogs”, “posts”, “microblogs”, and so on.

That doesn’t mean people have to become experts or even especially comfortable with these concepts but they will need to acknowledge that there is no easy, one-size-fits-all answer for posting and sharing things on the web. Maybe over time the language will get easier but I don’t think it’s going to be because the marketing improves; rather, it’s time for people on the web to become better citizens.

Behind me, a filled room of 9/11 first responders, and in front of me, a nearly empty Congress. Sick and dying, they brought themselves down here to speak to no one. Shameful. It’s an embarrassment to the country and it is a stain on this institution.

– Jon Stewart

Starting my day with a combination of Life and Experience, from the master himself.

Looking forward to;

  • early morning writing;
  • a lot of @til work;
  • finally conquering some significant domestic tasks.

Let’s go! 💪🏻

I don’t have a recommendation for Micro Monday but I do have suggestions:

Enjoy! ⭐

They should isolate the Apple Music or News team and force them to go through App Review, pay 30%, etc to get a better feel for what it’a really like.

– David Barnard, via Twitter

An interesting idea, eh @manton. 🤔

Up to 3.7 million pensioners who previously received a free TV licence will now have to pay for it.

– The BBC

Perhaps they should all just die… and decrease the surplus population.

As I’ve just said in this conversation, think about it, those who are cynical with regard to AR technology:

Augmented Reality + Voice Control

For privacy-focused companies like Apple this is a part of the tech industry with great potential to do so much good for the world.

Apple also revamped bug reporting for WWDC. There’s so much stuff this year.

Comments is the new issue of xkcd and yet again Randall Munroe is right on the money. 😘👌🏻

Taika Waititi’s intro for his commentary on Thor: Ragnarok is probably the best thing you’re going to watch today.

Tim Smith’s Bokeh has been funded, which is great news! There’s still time to back it and get both early access and a discounted membership.