#meta 2021-03-29

2021-03-29 UTC
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aaronparecki.com edited /OwnCast (+16) (view diff)
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tantek.com edited /wikifying (-12) "/* Do I have to use the wiki and mediawiki syntax? */ - a couple of trivializing words" (view diff)
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@t ↩️ indeed. Also mentioned in #IndieWeb chat^: “all you have to do is” “essentially” Still looking for a category for these words/phrases. Maybe “trivializers”? ^https://chat.indieweb.org/2021-03-29#t1616977040780000 https://tantek.com/t5Bu4 (twitter.com/_/status/1376335641655398404)
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[tantek] welp, it's going to take a while to remove downplayers from our docs. 😕
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[tantek] too much of an engrained habit / manner of speech.
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tantek.com edited /start_a_page (+15) "-just -simply, or section" (view diff)
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[tantek] like that. phew this is going to be quite a gardening task
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@kimberlyhirsh Being in a “life happens” moment myself (finishing my dissertation), I originally missed Tantek Çelik’s chat conversations & blog post about developing a “life happens” approach to community participation & care on the IndieWeb. I love this idea. http://tantek.com/2021/051/b1/life-happens (twitter.com/_/status/1376346585022541824)
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kimberlyhirsh.com edited /life_happens (+348) "/* Posts About */" (view diff)
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[kimberlyhirsh] Popping in before sleep with a quick thought about language on the Organizers page: in the past I've seen BIPOC preferred as a term to non-white (don't have a citation but can find one if it would be helpful) because using a term like non-white reinforces an assumption of white as default. I'm wondering if it's a good idea to change the language "non-male, non-cis" to something that is similarly affirmative rather than contradictory.
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[kimberlyhirsh] Maybe "women and non-binary people" and "trans," maybe others know of better terms. Off to sleep now but looking forward to hearing others' thoughts.
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[kimberlyhirsh] Also worth considering if there are other axes of marginalization worth mentioning explicitly, e.g. disability. Not sure of the IndieWeb demographics for other identities.
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aaronpk interesting. I had always thought of the use of “non-maike” and “non-white” on the page as a way to openly acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do there. I do appreciate that it might not come across that way to others though, and am happy to consider more inclusive language for sure
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aaronpk wtf autocorrect 🤦‍♂️
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[jeremycherfas] [tantek] Is it possible that terms you regard as trivializing from your point of view others, less confident, might see as encouraging? Especially if accompanied by a straightforward explanation that does in fact break a daunting task down into approachable and manageable steps?
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[tantek] it's a bait & switch [jeremycherfas]. those terms are superficially "encouraging" and then when the actual tasks / steps are unobvious, or in any way challenging or difficult, those that are "less confident" as you say, are more likely to doubt themselves than question whether "simply" "just" etc. inaccurately imply ease where there is none.
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[KevinMarks] "Condescending phrases" maybe? https://twitter.com/markjaquith/status/1376380360662081537?s=20
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@markjaquith @t @kevinmarks I removed almost all instances of “of course” from the Laravel docs for this reason. https://github.com/laravel/docs/pull/4974 I suggest we call it “mountaintopping”. As in, you are on top of the mountain, shouting down to people without gear or experience “step one: basically just climb it”. (twitter.com/_/status/1376380360662081537)
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[tantek] that's not bad, though quite mouthful
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[tantek] sort of related, focusing comms on the right things and simplifying as well, thread: https://twitter.com/hannahsrudd/status/1376290238759325705
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@hannahsrudd I have learnt a lot about science communication over the last 24 hours after showing #Seaspiracy to my non-scientist friends, who generally don’t care or have any interest in marine conservation, getting their feedback and then debriefing them on the issues raised. (twitter.com/_/status/1376290238759325705)
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@kkd いつか、IndieWebで多くの人が繋がる世界が来るといいなぁ。 https://wired.jp/2021/03/29/social-media-ceo-hearing-cant-defend-business-model/ (twitter.com/_/status/1376502514166726656)
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doug.holton.space edited /commonplace_book (+366) "added trilium, databyss, athens, dendron, foam. obsidian is not open source" (view diff)
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[jeremycherfas] ↩️ Fair enough. Right now, staring into a black pi-hole, i would give anything for the kind of step by step I was referring to, with or without condescension as long as it gets me there.
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boffosocko.com edited /commonplace_book (+489) "Subsection for Obsidian since it is not a silo-based application" (view diff)
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[chrisaldrich] Re: simple, just, etc. There's a long tradition in mathematics of phrases like "it's easy to see/prove/justify/show that.." but I'm not aware of a broader common name for it. Somewhat closely related to it in meaning is the idea of handwaving or a handwaving argument which is sometimes accompanied with such a phrase. https://boffosocko.com/2015/11/04/an-actual-handwaving-argument-in-mathematics/
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Loqi [Chris Aldrich] What An Actual Handwaving Argument in Mathematics Looks Like https://boffosocko.com/2015/11/04/an-actual-handwaving-argument-in-mathematics/Handwaving during Algebraic Number Theory
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[chrisaldrich] Here's some various takes on the concept from a variety of folks: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/54431/why-do-people-use-it-is-easy-to-prove
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[chrisaldrich] That cartoon actually appears in that conversation thread...
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[chrisaldrich] 🙂
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[chrisaldrich] In the book, Made to Stick, the authors call a similar idea the "Curse of Knowledge". https://boffosocko.com/2018/01/28/book-review-made-to-stick-why-some-ideas-survive-and-others-die-author-by-chip-heath-and-dan-heath/#You%20can%E2%80%99t%20unlearn%20what%20you%20already%20know
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[chrisaldrich] As I'm looking back at some of my highlights there, many seem like they could be applied directly to IndieWeb ideas to help make them more accessible to the new and uninitiated.
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[chrisaldrich] Any other ideas of what we could call this phenomenon?
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[tantek] [chrisaldrich] do you mean the words/phrases themselves? Currently KartikPrabhu and [Jeremy_Keith] gave +1s to "Downplayer(s)". There have been a few other suggestions but they were either too broad, or had implications (of problems) outside of this phenomenon
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[chrisaldrich] I'm "just" seeing/reading the convo in #indieweb from yesterday now...
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[tantek] also the threadtree here: https://twitter.com/t/status/1376330153047982084
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@t Are there other words like: "basically" "just" "simply" used in explanations/instructions to obscure actual complexity or difficulty? Is there a name for such words? They often shame the reader as a side-effect (if it’s not easy, it must be my fault) https://tantek.com/t5Bu3 (twitter.com/_/status/1376330153047982084)
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[chrisaldrich] picking one to have a page is the key, all the rest can redirect to it.
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[KevinMarks] 'trivial' or 'trivially' is another one from maths
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[tantek] Kevinmarks, probably why I went there first
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[chrisaldrich] downplayers is a good broad word for it all...
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[tantek] [chrisaldrich] I wouldn't say "all the rest". Some of them were adjacent, not actually meaning this. E.g. "gaslighting" means something very different
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[chrisaldrich] there's definitely many which are related or tangential, obviously a broad spectrum
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[tantek] [KevinMarks] one of the reasons "trivial" or "trivializers" didn't sit well with me was the two distinctly different aspects of meaning of "trivial", i.e. very simple/basic, and "of trivia", e.g. like in the "Trivial Pursuit" sense of nearly "useless" but obscure knowledge.
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[chrisaldrich] At the far end of the spectrum there's also doubletalk, doublespeech, technobabble, and politicobabble. (See https://boffosocko.com/2016/09/30/complexity-isnt-a-vice-10-word-answers-and-doubletalk-in-election-2016/ for examples).
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[chrisaldrich] Some are sure to think that this is were some of our argot and acronym soup (PESOS, POSSE, PASTA, etc.) are headed when the goal is to try to make the various methods (and directions of data flow) in syndication more concrete.
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[tantek] not sure it's a "spectrum" [chrisaldrich], more a broader category of "language abuse/misuse" in many different ways. better not to dilute specific meanings as if they could apply to each other
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[chrisaldrich] Within linguistics some are considered modal particles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_particle
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[tantek] jargon is a separate issue and why we route folks from #indieweb -> #indieweb-dev
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[tantek] wow that's a horrible phrase that has no connection to its meaning
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[tantek] did I ever mention how academics are particularly bad at creating usable (as in good at communicating) phrases?
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[tantek] my favorite of the past year is "social distancing" which really means "physical distancing"
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@fluffy New post: Notes: Knuckleheads' Club https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/chatter/554-Knuckleheads-Club #IndieWeb #Google #Monopolies (twitter.com/_/status/1376590787698393095)
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[chrisaldrich] Also related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounding_in_communication
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[chrisaldrich] tantek, I like to call those words/phrases Humpty Dumpty-isms: https://boffosocko.com/2011/08/16/meaning-according-to-humpty-dumpty/
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[tantek] lol
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[KevinMarks] this paper feels somewhat related - minimising the messy data tasks to focus on the models https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-data/pdf/0d556e45afc54afeb2eb6b51a9bc1827b9961ff4.pdf
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[chrisaldrich] academics are in the same boat as us trying to clearly communicate back to those less knowledgeable about their fields. Once you've studied and immersed yourself in something with a series of your own terminology, meanings, and definitions, it's hard to go back and ensconce that in easier, clear language for others to understand. (Again, the Curse of Knowledge...)
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[chrisaldrich] Science, physics, chemistry, and engineering have spent over a century now parsing over what "entropy" is really supposed to mean.
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[tantek] chrisaldrich, except in many cases phrases are picked that seem to be deliberately misleading (like "social distancing") which had seemingly trivial (lol I know) "obvious" direct-meaning alternatives. Like 🤔 "We need a phrase to capture keeping physically people apart, like at a distance. I know, because it's people let's call it 'social distancing'. Yeah!" 🤦‍♂️
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[tantek] in those cases, it's actually *better* to use jargon (which is more clear about it being a "new" or "novel" or "special" thing) instead of using words that sounds seemingly familiar, but have a different meaning than that familiar meaning
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[chrisaldrich] and even more better if they can make that new word rhyme with "orange" so we'll finally have something to use in our poetry... 😁
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[tantek] hahaha that's quite genius. taking that to #indieweb-chat
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Loqi rofl
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[chrisaldrich] "just" and "simple" could be considered hedges to indicate broad gaps between the speaker's knowledge base/viewpoint and that of the listener, particularly when in larger and diverse crowds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_(linguistics)
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evgenykuznetsov.org edited /Main_Page-ru (+8) "Так перевод менее точен, зато фраза куда более по-русски." (view diff)
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evgenykuznetsov.org edited /projects (+34) "/* Hugo */ - shamelessly add myself" (view diff)
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[tantek] [chrisaldrich] related but more adjacent. See the examples here, note that "just" was not a hedge but rather "insignificant" was
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[tantek] here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_(linguistics)#Types_of_hedges
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evgenykuznetsov.org edited /projects (+22) "/* Hugo */" (view diff)
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[chrisaldrich] In that example there is an entire hedging _phrase_ which includes a verb and an adjective of which "just" is a part: "might just be a few insignificant". The direct (non-hedging) version of the sentence there would read: "There are problems we need to address."
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[chrisaldrich] I've _just_ gone down the rabbit hole. (https://www.semanticsarchive.net/Archive/GI2YmUwN/Wiegand2016.pdf)
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[tantek] loooool. sharing the title here so you don't have to click: "Just and its Meanings: Exclusivity and Scales in Alternative Semantics and Speech Act Theory"
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[KevinMarks] So just is simply unjust
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@jamesvandyne VERY fun hack: using lazy loading turbo-frames as a queue in dom. Each row needs to be imported. Frame source is api (returns html) and loads when visible. Scroll the page and one-by-one it imports your images. ZERO JS. #IndieWeb https://tanzawa.jamesvandyne.com/bc847a53-c138-488d-a412-5cf697c5a64f (twitter.com/_/status/1376655104867147776)
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[chrisaldrich] What is education?
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Loqi IndieWeb for Education is the application of indieweb principles to one's personal site with a particular emphasis on use cases for education, pedagogy, research, academic samizdat, and collaboration https://indieweb.org/education
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[chrisaldrich] IndieWeb for Education << [https://tatianamac.com/posts/let-me-learn/ Let me learn: Provide tutorials in more formats] an article by Tatiana Mac about how the web and [[accessibility]] related ideas might also be used in digital pedagogy to help learners understand and retain knowledge.
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Loqi ok, I added "[https://tatianamac.com/posts/let-me-learn/ Let me learn: Provide tutorials in more formats] an article by Tatiana Mac about how the web and [[accessibility]] related ideas might also be used in digital pedagogy to help learners understand and retain knowledge." to the "See Also" section of /Indieweb_for_Education https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=75103&oldid=74970
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