Meryn Stol › Likes

saying good bye to a loved one, for example, needs some ceremony/ritual/time/actions - and typically now the only option is to submit all their friends and family to an hour's religious preaching -which, no matter what you pick, perhaps only 15% of the audience will care about - wrapped around 15 minutes of ritual about the deceased. - Iphigenie

in the UK, the Humanist Association has created a set of ceremonies and there are trained officiants that can do non religious ceremonies. Never been to one, but the availability of them is a good thing. When I die, I want people to throw a party, wear bright colours, eat great food, support R if he's still around, reminisce my quirks and sillyness and be able to think "the world was a bit of a better place for her having been in it" << that last part I need to keep working on! :) - Iphigenie

You can see all of your email settings at http://friendfeed.com/setting... - Bret Taylor

I get these every day. - CW✔

"Two weeks ago, we launched version 2 of the FriendFeed API in beta. Since then, we've watched how developers have been using the API and collected a lot of their feedback. We've implemented some changes, and now, we're ready to remove the beta label!" - Bret Taylor from Bookmarklet

Bret - Think we'd all be interested in a longer list as more apps make use of the API. Great stuff - Charlie Anzman

See http://friendfeed.com/tudor... - Bret Taylor

با عضویت در اتاق " در ارتباط با توییتر... " از جدید ترین متعلقات این سرویس با خبر شوید... اسمایلی : (تبلیغات).http://friendfeed.com/twitte-r - سینه سرخ

"As a devoted FriendFeed user, I have tried to convince all of my friends and family to join the site, but a handful of them never quite got their accounts set up properly. With our new Recommend friends feature, I can fix their FriendFeed experience by recommending subscriptions to them." Try it out at http://friendfeed.com/friends... - Bret Taylor from Bookmarklet

fatma küfür istiyor - Joan Miro

Right now, if you want effective legislation around your industry, then you need to pay the right lobbyists, make the right campaign contributions, and write the right legislation at the right time in order to get it out of Washington. If you had to objectively pick the winning team in Washington, pick the team with deep pockets and great lobbyists, not the team with community organizers and signed petitions. It's a gross system that needs change. It's a cancer on our democracy. But looking for a specific innovation to try and change the way Washington works by the time Congress votes on SOPA is about as foolish as Steve Jobs trying to diet his way out of having pancreatic cancer. With billions of dollars in the bank, and not a lot of time left, isn't it worth going for the sure bet? Just spend the money. Then, after you're sure you beat cancer, worry about disrupting the system that caused it. It sucks, but those are the rules of the game. We can work to disrupt the rules of the game... more... - Iphigenie

The first (illusion) is that the economy will not bounce back on its own, at least not in a time frame that matters to ordinary people. Yes, all those foreclosed homes will eventually find someone to live in them, or be torn down. Prices will at some point stabilize and even start to rise. Americans will also adjust to a lower standard of living—not just living within their means but living beneath their means as they struggle to pay off a mountain of debt. But the damage will be enormous. America’s conception of itself as a land of opportunity is already badly eroded. Unemployed young people are alienated. It will be harder and harder to get some large proportion of them onto a productive track. They will be scarred for life by what is happening today. Drive through the industrial river valleys of the Midwest or the small towns of the Plains or the factory hubs of the South, and you will see a picture of irreversible decay. - Iphigenie

"Hypothes.is offers a list of twelve principles that indicate it's already looking out for concerns like this. Those principles include the following: Open source, open standards.To the extent practical. Work everywhere. Without consent. Non profit. Sustained by social enterprise. Neutral. Favor no ideological or political positions. 100% community moderated. Bottoms up, not top down. Merit based. Influence based on track record. Pseudonymous. Credibility without public identity. International. By design. Transparent and audit-able. In systems. In governance. Think long-term. Infrastructure for 100 years? Or longer? Many formats, many contexts. HTML, PDF, video, books. News, blogs scientific articles, legislation, regulations, Terms of Service, etc. Work with the best. Remain humble." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Ideas just aren’t what they used to be. Once upon a time, they could ignite fires of debate, stimulate other thoughts, incite revolutions and fundamentally change the ways we look at and think about the world. (...)Post-Enlightenment refers to a style of thinking that no longer deploys the techniques of rational thought. Post-idea refers to thinking that is no longer done, regardless of the style. (…) There is the retreat in universities from the real world, and an encouragement of and reward for the narrowest specialization rather than for daring — for tending potted plants rather than planting forests. (...)We are certainly the most informed generation in history, at least quantitatively. There are trillions upon trillions of bytes out there in the ether — so much to gather and to think about. And that’s just the point. In the past, we collected information not simply to know things. That was only the beginning. We also collected information to convert it into something larger than... more... - Amira from Bookmarklet

See also: 'The Secret of Innovation: The Best Ideas Are Small': "Malcolm Gladwell praised what he saw as the real genius of Apple’s late CEO [Steve Jobs]. He was a tweaker. He took things that existed, such as the computer mouse and the smartphone and the tablet, and he made them more perfect. (...) The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world. The tweaker... more... - Amira

"There is a subtle optimism lurking in all of Kahneman’s work: it is the hope that self-awareness is a form of salvation, that if we know about our mental mistakes, we can avoid them. As Kahneman and Tversky noted in the final sentence of their classic 1974 paper, “A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could improve judgments and decisions in situations of uncertainty.” Unfortunately, such hopes appear to be unfounded. Self-knowledge isn’t a cure for irrationality; even when we know why we stumble, we still find a way to fall. Kahneman admits that his decades of groundbreaking research have failed to significantly improve his own mental performance. His greatest legacy, perhaps, is also his bleakest: by categorizing our cognitive flaws, documenting not just our errors but also their embarrassing predictability, he has revealed the hollowness of a very ancient aspiration. Knowing thyself is not enough. Not even close." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

It would be enough for me if we could just understand how much we don't understand so we weren't quite so arrogant. - Todd Hoff

from Michael Lewis: "He was working on a paper about human intuition with Gary Klein who was the leader of a school of thought that stressed the power of human intuition, and disagreed with the work of Kahneman and Tversky. Kahneman said that he did this as often as he could: seek out people who had attacked or criticized him and persuade them to collaborate with him. He not only... more... - Adriano

"Like information in a book, unfolding events are stored in human memory in successive chapters or episodes. One consequence is that information in the current episode is easier to recall than information in a previous episode. An obvious question then is how the mind divides experience up into these discrete episodes? A new study led by Gabriel Radvansky shows that the simple act of walking through a doorway creates a new memory episode, thereby making it more difficult to recall information pertaining to an experience in the room that’s just been left behind. (…) The key finding is that memory performance was poorer after travelling through an open doorway, compared with covering the same distance within the same room. “Walking through doorways serves as an event boundary, thereby initiating the updating of one’s event model [i.e. the creation of a new episode in memory]” the researchers said. (…) How event perception and segmentation influence the structure of long-term memory,’... more... - Amira from Bookmarklet

"A look at some of the more fascinating cognitive failures of the human mind: Denial, Delusion, and Self-Deception. Humans frequently ignore painful or frightening truths, subconsciously believing that denial can protect us. Instead, our delusions make us ever more vulnerable, and whatever suffering we choose to ignore continues unabated. The implications for policy makers, investors, and just about everyone else are enormous." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Congrats! - Joel Kotarski

that's awesome, man. you changed my and many others' life, right here! I personally owe you a lot. - Ahmet Alp Balkan

""The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely." — Bill Gates" - I like big Botts from Bookmarklet

Tough day for us all. - Louis Gray

Wow. - Stephen Mack from iPhone

:( - Roberto Bonini

:( - Louis Gray

On the virtues of making a tablet in a mid-size range for niche uses. - Jill O'Neill

You are awesome! - I like big Botts

Word. - DB - Just DB

"Among the hundreds of interesting ideas in the book, there is one that I simply can’t get out of my head. Referring to how our minds work, Kahneman writes that not only are we sometimes “blind to the obvious,” but also we are “blind to our blindness.” For me, that one sentence summarizes a fundamental insight of his life’s work. It’s one of those simple insights which is obvious when you think about it, but somehow incredibly easy to forget when mesmerized by the happenings of everyday life, leading to poor decision making." --Steven Levitt \\ Kahneman publications: http://www.princeton.edu/~kahnem... - Adriano

cf. Leonardo da Vinci: "There is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgment." - Adriano

"Daytime white-noise listeners say the sounds serve two main purposes: to block out distractions and lessen sounds that cause anxiety. "Certain types of noises can be relaxing," says Robert Fifer, director of audiology and speech language pathology at the University of Miami. White noise can be used to create a more relaxing working environment, masking sounds and promoting a sense of privacy, he says. One small study examined white noise in a classroom environment. The research, led by Goran Soderlund and Sverker Sikström of Stockholm University, looked at 51 students at a secondary school in Norway and found that those who normally had difficulty paying attention performed better when white noise was added to the classroom. The authors theorized that white noise boosted neural activity, helping the brain work more efficiently. The study predicted that white noise could help children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) learn to focus on schoolwork better." http://www.behavioralandbrainf... - Adriano from Bookmarklet

For signal processing details and a Linux implementation, see https://gist.github.com/1209835 - Adriano

"Back in the mid-1990s, when online relationships were barely a blip on anyone’s computer screen, songwriter Randy Newman earned an Oscar nod for “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,’’ a jaunty, sentimental hymn to childhood fellowship. On television, the NBC sitcom “Friends’’ hit the ratings jackpot with its cast of young urbanites bound together by proximity and camaraderie. These days? If not exactly a dime a dozen, friends are not what they used to be. What the term “friend’’ signifies seems harder to pin down, at any rate, having been Facebooked (ugh) into a transitive verb and overworked to the point where compliant preschoolers are encouraged to call everyone at school a friend (indeed) whether that label truly applies or not. “To me, the term is constantly in flux,’’ says Charlene DeLoach Oliver, a local blogger (CharleneChronicles.com) on health and fitness issues for young moms. “A teen, for instance, will have a completely different perspective on who’s a friend than my grandmother will. To her, a friend is someone she sees once a week, in person. Me? I have virtual ‘friends’ I’ve never even met.’’" - Wildcat from Bookmarklet

I can't even bring myself to use 'defriend' or 'unfriend' unless it's actually happening. Meaning, I plan to no longer interact with that person AND I had considered them a friend. Usually, I just use 'unfollow' or 'unsubscribe' Most people I "meet" online, I think of as "people I know"...just a step below acquaintance. I don't pretend to know anything about them, & they most definitely... more... - Anika

"In a study published January 21 in Science, researchers asked 200 college students to spend five minutes reading a short passage about a scientific subject. Afterwards, they were either told to re-read it several times, as if cramming for a test; make “concept maps” of the material; or spend 10 minutes writing a free-form essay about the passage." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

#memory - Maitani

"To make progress, we need to be able to imagine alternative realities — better ones — and we need to believe that we can achieve them. (…) A growing body of scientific evidence points to the conclusion that optimism may be hardwired by evolution into the human brain. (…) Our brains aren’t just stamped by the past. They are constantly being shaped by the future. (…) Memories are susceptible to inaccuracies partly because the neural system responsible for remembering episodes from our past might not have evolved for memory alone. Rather, the core function of the memory system could in fact be to imagine the future (…) The system is not designed to perfectly replay past events. (…) It is designed to flexibly construct future scenarios in our minds. As a result, memory also ends up being a reconstructive process, and occasionally, details are deleted and others inserted.” - Amira from Bookmarklet

Excellent article, thanks for posting this. - Dick Pelletier

"Talented people seek an environment open to differences. Many highly creative people, regardless of ethnic background or sexual orientation, grew up feeling like outsiders, different in some way from most of their schoolmates. When they are sizing up a new company and community, acceptance of diversity and of gays in particular is a sign that reads “non-standard people welcome here.” The creative class people I study use the word “diversity” a lot, but not to press any political hot buttons. Diversity is simply something they value in all its manifestations. This is spoken of so often, and so matter-of-factly, that I take it to be a fundamental marker of creative class values. Creative-minded people enjoy a mix of influences. They want to hear different kinds of music and try different kinds of food. They want to meet and socialize with people unlike themselves, trade views and spar over issues. (...) What makes most cities unable to even imagine devoting those kinds of resources or... more... - Amira from Bookmarklet

"We've won the war on boredom! If you have a smartphone in your pocket, a game console in the living room, a Kindle in your backpack and an iPad in the kitchen, you never need to suffer a minute without stimulation. Yay! But experts say our brains need boredom so we can process thoughts and be creative. What change would you expect to see in a world that has declining levels of boredom and therefore declining creativity? You might see people acting more dogmatic than usual. If you don't have the option of thinking creatively, the easiest path is to adopt the default position of your political party, religion or culture. Yup, we see that. You might see the headlines start to repeat, like the movie "Groundhog Day," with nothing but the names changed. We're there. You might find that people seem almost incapable of even understanding new ideas. It's worth keeping an eye on the link between our vanishing boredom and our lack of innovation." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"There is good reason to question whether any new technology can effectively imitate our face-to-face interactions. There's a long history of such claims, and none of them has panned out. A recent study led by Isaac Kohane at Harvard Medical School analyzed more than 35,000 different peer-reviewed papers and mapping the location of every co-author. He found that scientists located closer together produced papers of significantly higher quality, at least as measured by the number of subsequent citations. In fact, the best research was consistently done when scientists were working within roughly 30 feet of each other. For too long, we've imagined technology as a potential substitute for our analog life, as if the phone or Google+ might let us avoid the hassle of getting together in person. But that won't happen anytime soon: There is simply too much value in face-to-face contact, in all the body language and implicit information that doesn't translate to the Internet." - Adriano from Bookmarklet