Weekly Web Harvest for 2018-10-14

  • Notes of Cabinet Meeting on Edmond Charles Genet, 2 August 1793
    . The Presidt. was much inflamed, got into one of those passions when he cannot command himself. Run on much on the personal abuse which had been bestowed on him. Defied any man on earth to produce one single act of his since he had been in the government which was not done on the purest motives. That he had never repented but once the having slipped the moment of resigning his office, and that was every moment since. That by god he had rather be in his grave than in his present situation.
  • The Story Behind the Mysterious Guillotine on a Brooklyn Roof – VICE
    “So, yeah, this is kind of the idea behind that—just like, here’s your free healthcare. It’ll solve your problems.”
  • Georgetown Law Students Object to Exam Software
    More than 500 law students at Georgetown University have signed a petition asking the law school to scrap its new exam software.

    In a letter to administrators, students raised privacy and security concerns about the Exam4 platform and objected to the requirement to install it on their personal laptops in order to take their finals.

  • Changes to Twitter’s rules may kill off its most entertaining bots — Quartz
    . “But I am beginning to suspect that once we all leave Twitter, they will realize that we represent a lot of what made Twitter good, and that maybe the platform needs fun bot makers more than we need Twitter.”
  • [Easy Chair] | The Wizard of Q, by Walter Kirn | Harper’s Magazine
    He’d discovered a principle of online storytelling that had eluded me all those years ago but now seemed obvious: The audience for internet narratives doesn’t want to read, it wants to write. It doesn’t want answers provided, it wants to search for them. It doesn’t want to sit and be amused, it wants to be sent on a mission. It wants to do.
  • Reflecting on a MagicMirror Build – DEV Community ??????
    MagicMirror² is an open source modular smart mirror platform. With a growing list of installable modules, the MagicMirror² allows you to convert your hallway or bathroom mirror into your personal assistant.
  • Maps, Minds, and Stories
  • [untitled]
    Now that the crypto bloodbath is in full view the new refuge of the
    crypto scoundrels is “blockchain”, the technology underlying crypto
    that is now alleged to be the cure of all global problems, including
    poverty, famines and even diseases. But as discussed in detail below
    blockchain is the most over-hyped – and least useful – technology in
    human history: in practice it is nothing better than a glorified
    spreadsheet or database.

  • Kara Swisher on the worst and best bosses she’s ever had.
    : ‘Babylon was.’ Which means: Every major power falls.”
  • #digitalsherlocks hashtag on Twitter
    Interesting crowd participation pattern in media analysis — mainly Russia related.