Tantek’s Thoughts 2017-1

Indie Microblogging Kickstarter Micro.blog Hits Goal & Stretch Goal For Safe Replies! #indieweb

Manton Reece’s Indie Microblogging Kickstarter micro.blog closed this week at $86,696, successfully meeting both its original $10,000 goal, and super stretch goal of $80,000, for which they will hire a community manager to help support the new Safe Replies feature.

This is a huge step forward for the creation of an alternative to Twitter, in numerous ways, some obvious, many more subtle.

In addition to the usual nice UX you would expect (require) from a “Twitter replacement”, micro.blog is being built from the beginning to encourage independent writing on your own site, rather than forcing you to use yet another silo (like Ello).

To do this, micro.blog is being built primarily as a service for microblogs, wherever you might host them, with “the main posts pulled from independent sites.” In this way, micro.blog will be more of an aggregator service that displays a timeline, replies, favorites etc. from multiple sites instead of a social media silo, where all such action must take place directly on one site (or through a proprietary API).

Micro.blog is being built from the start to interoperate with heterogenous systems (i.e. not just with other micro.blog instances, a big distinction from many previous open source decentralized web efforts which focused primarily or exclusively on interoperating only with themselves).

The key to micro.blog’s heterogenous interoperability is open standards support from the beginning, from microformats to Micropub (W3C CR), from RSS to Webmention (W3C Recommendation).

Manton has also been actively working with the already diverse and growing IndieWeb Community, host to numerous self-dogfooded projects already implementing those open standards, and already posting, commenting, liking, RSVPing to each others websites in a truly decentralized and federated manner.

I’m really looking forward to the development of micro.blog. In particular, Manton has identified a key problem with existing silos like Twitter, and that is the rampant abuse and over-notifications that result due to bad UX and architectural decisions about replies, favorites, retweets etc. E.g. Blocked accounts can still @-reply and show-up on your public tweet permalinks.

Manton calls his approach to solving this problem “Safe Replies” and I think it has a lot of promise. I’m looking forward to tracking the UX of Safe Replies, and seeing if we can help make Safe Replies happen in a federated way as well, with extensions to Webmention etc.

https://scontent-ord1-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/16110079_627911050727938_7485363402554998784_n.jpg https://www.instagram.com/p/BPdy0NEArTB In flight: civil & rational discussion with a white woman who voted for Trump. #nofilter #RESIST tl;dr: Better message for change. (Hillary = status quo) She believes in him as an experienced business leader. She’s worried about growing federal debt, about lack of opportunity and progress for anyone below upper middle class (echoing Occupy messages). She saw no hope in Hillary, nothing she stood for, no believable plan for progress, for change. This is someone who is fit. Who runs on trails and goes bicycling. She rides road & mountain bikes with mostly men, has heard, constantly hears locker room like talk and has just come to expect that from men, even friends. She’s long past tired of it, expects it, accepts it, perhaps as fundamental to men driven by an evolutionary imperative to procreate. Life pursuing its continued existence. Her words. She thus found it easy to excuse, even dismiss Trump’s sexist & misogynist rhetoric. She’s not on Facebook. Nor Twitter. Sees them as unhealthy wastes of time, makes no excuses for Trump’s words there. She reads NYT & WSJ, questions and dislikes their biases, reads them anyway. Listens to NPR. Asked if I knew the show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! She said I sounded like Peter, one of the hosts. Talk to people. Ask questions rather than making assumptions. Find out how they came to think and believe what they do. Everybody has a background, everybody has context. Find out what you have in common as well as your differences. Accept that it’s ok to have both. We discussed and debated many things: eating healthier vs acquired diabetes and cancer treatments, personal choice & responsibility, healthcare systems in various countries, double standards, false equivalences in the media, political correctness, bullying, political contribution corruption, PEOTUS cabinet nominations from big money, women’s health and women’s rights. She’s convinced Roe v. Wade is solid, that states’s efforts are a bigger threat. “Don’t mess with Texas? No, Texas is a *mess*!” in reference to their recent anti-choice legislation. We talked about Obama commuting Chelsea Manning’s sentence. We discussed the ethics of whistleblowing. She wasn’t familiar with the details about Snowden. I suggested she check out the film. Apparently it was available on the in-flight entertainment system. So she started watching it as I watched Mr. Robot. Small steps. Respect. Communicate. Question. Listen. Suggest. Resist.

Finished #HotChocolate15k 5.9mi in 1:00:52. 10:19/mi pace, my fastest measured race pace since late 2015! Previous year’s race paces for comparison: * 2016-338 11:51/mi ~1/4 marathon North Face #ECSCA tantek.com/2016/359/t2/weeks-ago-ecsca-colder-start * 2016-213 11:16/mi 1/2 marathon SF Marathon 1st half tantek.com/2016/221/t4/finished-eighth-half-marathon * 2016-135 10:50/mi 7.46 mi (12km) Bay to Breakers tantek.com/2016/181/t1/npsf-pr-wednesday-faster Very different races, and all longer (and more vertical climb). Looking back further, only the second half of 2015 (pre-injury) had faster race paces. Before that, my 2015 Bay to Breakers pace was a slower 10:27/mi. And before that, my only faster race pace was at Bay to Breakers 2014. In addition, my running watch recorded my fastest mile today at 9:02, just three seconds off my recent timed track mile of 8:59. It was sprinkling as we filed into the Hot Chocolate 15k corrals. Soon after they announced the course had been shortened, to 9.82 kilometers (if I heard correctly) because sea water from the Pacific Ocean had flooded the Great Highway, the middle out & back portion of the 15k course! After crossing the start, we wound our way around various twists and turns in Golden Gate Park. All the roads were familiar, however the rain and energetic crowd made it quite a different experience. I had never run in the rain when I ran my first half marathon nearly three years ago (Kaiser 2014), where there was rain, wind, and wind chill. I was stubborn more than resilient. I had set my mind on running the race, despite the discomfort. Still, that didn’t stop me from complaining afterwards, and my sore swollen knees made me question whether it was a good idea in the first place. In over three years of working out with November Project, whether in pouring rain here @Nov_Project_SF in Alamo Square, or running up Harvard Stadium Steps in sub-freezing temperatures with @Nov_Project_BOS, I’ve had the opportunity to learn and adapt to working out in more and more extreme weather conditions. Rain was expected today, and yet the forecast kept changing, even as I went to sleep last night. I double-checked this morning, plenty of rain expected, low 50s F temperatures. From all my NovermberProject rain running experiences, I knew shorts and a tanktop would be fine, as long as I started with a longsleeve for the first 10-15 minutes while I warmed up, wrapping it around my waist for the remainder of the race. Aside from a brief walk to take off my longsleeve, and another to grab a water cup at the first fuel station, I ran the entire 5.9 miles non-stop. It felt great. Yes it was humid, which perhaps posed the biggest breathing challenge. In spite of which, I felt strong, and felt good pushing myself to that limit. Whenever the rain picked up, I just smiled, because I was ready for this. At two different spots on the course, I spotted fellow NPSF friends Tony and Krissi, getting a boost from their smiles, cheering, and encouragements. With less than two miles to go, Krissi jumped in and helped run me and another NPSF runner, Cara, up the last big hill. As we crested that final big hill, I got another boost knowing the finish wasn’t far, and sprinted downhill past quite a few in the crowd. At the end of the downhill I could see the lights of the finish line, just a short uphill away. The elapsed time on my watch read just under an hour. I pushed a little harder up that last hill, and could tell I wasn’t quite going to make it before the hour turned over. However, it did help, and I could tell I was close enough to push and finish before another minute went by. Finished at 1:00:52, and kept running a bit to extend my distance. I grabbed a bottled water near the end of the finish chute, and realized I somehow missed getting a medal! I ran back through the flow of finishers, picked up my medal, and then saw NP friends Ava, Holly, and Stephanie running alongside the course (having completed their race a while ago). I dodged back out through the crowd and sprinted to catch up to them. Apparently they were finishing out their total 15k! I joined them for a bit, finished 6ish miles myself, and returned to the Golde Gate Park Music Concourse, finding more friends. We picked up our finishers chocolate kits which were amazing. A cup of hot chocolate, with optional marshmellow. The rain was falling harder and colder, so we took refuge near the concourse’s underground parking area. The finisher’s large plastic chocolate mug included a receptacle of chocolate fondue, into which I dipped the included chocolate cookies, a rice crispy treat, and a banana. Delicious. All in all, a good start to the 2017 racing season. Next: Surf City Half Marathon, Huntington Beach, California, in four weeks.