From ba107935bed4951609e851a07a9ab25b38aa9016 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Kathleen Fitzpatrick <3170201+kfitz@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 13:56:52 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] add learning --- _cache/webmentions.json | 200 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++- content/.obsidian/workspace.json | 30 ++--- content/blog/2025-09-04-learning.md | 30 +++++ 3 files changed, 244 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-) create mode 100644 content/blog/2025-09-04-learning.md diff --git a/_cache/webmentions.json b/_cache/webmentions.json index 9209bea..8158d48 100644 --- a/_cache/webmentions.json +++ b/_cache/webmentions.json @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ { - "lastFetched": "2025-08-31T18:43:43.036Z", + "lastFetched": "2025-09-07T17:51:51.984Z", "children": [ { "type": "entry", @@ -12472,6 +12472,204 @@ "mention-of": "https://kfitz.info/longevity/", "wm-property": "mention-of", "wm-private": false + }, + { + "type": "entry", + "author": { + "type": "card", + "name": "By: Ryan P. Randall", + "photo": "", + "url": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/" + }, + "url": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/postroll/", + "published": "2024-07-05T00:00:00-06:00", + "wm-received": "2025-09-04T02:03:12Z", + "wm-id": 1936203, + "wm-source": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/postroll/", + "wm-target": "https://kfitz.info/generosity-and-pragmatism/", + "wm-protocol": "webmention", + "name": "Postroll", + "content": { + "html": "

On this page

What’s a Postroll?

\n\n

How can a blogroll page function differently?

\n\n

On this postroll page—inspired by Brandon’s—I’ll list n share-worthy posts, aiming to add two or more new posts a week. This means that older entries will eventually cycle out of the list. (As of 2024-07-05, I’m still deciding how many n will equal, a number which will almost certainly intertwingle with how quickly I add new posts.)

\n\n

This approach is not quite analogous to a mixtape full of things that work well together, but it will hopefully highlight particular posts in a different way than my blogroll page’s more general “hey, check out this feed (or band / musician)” can do.

\n\n

My Postroll Proper

\n\n

This list is numbered chronologically, with “1” indicating the newest addition to the list. (It feels worth reiterating: 1. does not mean “best”, and it is also unrelated to when the post was published. The first link is just the most recently thing I’ve added to this list.)

\n\n
  1. Tracy Durnell’s Using personal weeknotes as a tool for attention reflects on how she started using weeknotes and how she uses them now, with an emphasis on awareness, accountability, and shaping her own behavior. I also really appreciate how she shares her weeknotes template and the process she uses for compiling them.
    2. \n
  2. Ernie Smith’s Cassingle Culture weaves a ton of punk / (indie) pop culture / media history into a breezy yet deep narrative of cassette singles. Bow Wow Wow? Boy George? Malcolm McLaren? Yep, they’re all in just the first few paragraphs, before we even get to the Go-Go’s and R.E.M.
    3. \n
  3. Jacky Alciné’s post about not bothering with electoral politics online anymore provides me a very welcome reminder of what’s behind some people’s reasons to avoid discussions of elections online.
    4. \n
  4. Jason Heppler’s How I use Obsidian post covers a lot of the strengths to using Obsidian for notes and longer-form writing. Although I don’t currently use any of the plugins or organizational strategies discussed here, I’m considering making a Dataview-powered way of searching my literature notes along the lines of the Doing History with Zotero and Obsidian guide by Elena Razlogova linked to from this post.
    5. \n
  5. James’s reflection on four years of the personal web mentions a lot of same things I find so compelling about maintaining a website / blog / digital garden. You can do things with less worry about other people’s expectations.
    6. \n
  6. As soon as you encounter the three-digit number in the title of John Coulthart’s Weekend links 732, you can realize how long this blog has been running. It’s been a constant in my RSS readers for coming up on two full decades—I feel like I probably first heard of it through Arthur magazine or something! This particular week includes a mention of a new album where Shackleton (purveyor of often-otherworldly bass & percussion music) collaborates with Six Organs of Admittance (conjuror of often-psychedelic folk), links ranging from a pulp paperback book artists to a Wire magazine article on experimental radio to a collection of 60s acid rock buttons, and a great Japanese woodblock print from the late 1800s.
    7. \n
  7. Anil Dash’s Today’s AI is unreasonable succinctly describes what I also find regrettable about the current generative AI hype: they generate bullshit by design, this bullshit is inconsistently generated in ways that cannot be easily debugged by users, and systems designed around these types of unpredictability and unreasonableness tend to remove agency from users.
    8. \n
  8. Sara Joy’s This is My Church resonates with me both regarding particular communities (I helped start a swing dancing club at UC Riverside as an undergrad) and regarding the ways that social media and blogging communities feel to me now.
    9. \n
  9. Tracy Durnell’s The injustice embedded in our infrastructure quickly weaves together a game, a book, an email, a city’s community budget process, and other people’s blogs while making the post’s point. This is a really nice example of how a blog post can act as a condensed essay, taking a reader on a quick travel through a set of ideas and perhaps coming away with a changed perspective.
    10. \n
  10. John M. Jackson’s Befores and afters profoundly resonates with me in terms of no longer feeling like I’m “part of the new guard.” Although I’m actually new enough as an instructional designer to not even know whether there’s as much of a sense of “newer” and “older” guards in this field as there is in librarianship, I definitely feel like I’m traversing similar thresholds in life. As a side note, I also appreciate how John tends to add sections like “What I’m reading” and “Garden update” to his posts.
    11. \n
  11. Keenan’s An alarmingly concise and very hinged summary of what it was like to build this site from scratch relates how they built their site… a story told with enough zest and humor that I feel better about the peculiar blend of empowerment and continual facepalming that drive my own site.
    12. \n
  12. Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s Generosity and Pragmatism shares an insight from Deb Chachra’s How Infrastructure Works about how being generous is simultaneously being pragmatic. This post is also a great example of a type of blog post that hovers somewhere between a long social media post and a miniature essay.
    13. \n
  13. Arthur Boston’s When Do Checks Become Review? asks what lines we can draw around peer review and integrity checks.
    14. \n
  14. Olu Niyi-Awosusi’s Weeknotes #4 (Week 24, 2024) showed me how nicely one can style a site made with Quartz—and the look of Olu’s Bear-based blog inspired me to trim the author sidebar links and some other elements from most of my own blog pages. Their various weeknotes are also a great example of that genre of blog post!
    15. \n
  15. Spoiler alert! W. Evan Sheehan’s Twelve favorite problems currently only has a list of 5. I can’t remember previously hearing about this “favorite problems” framework, which Evan ascribes to Richard Feynman, but I’m instantly a fan.
    16. \n
  16. Vic Kostrzewski’s My mental health stack – everyday things I use for my mental health shares a lot of technologies that I don’t use, but I deeply appreciate this sharing of struggles and approaches.
    17. \n
  17. Mandy Brown’s Common future reading note connects Ursula Franklin’s earthworm theory of social change to climate change, since talking about the weather is increasingly one way of talking about our common future.
    18. \n
  18. Sri Seah’s GHDR Report 0404: Powered by Prosocial Motivation shares a great insight into motivation—and I think I’m often motivated similarly, by feeling connections with other people. (The post also touches on how Sri has “conversations” with ChatGPT, a use I’d rarely considered before outside of working with students.)
    19. \n
  19. John Maxwell’s All I Need to Know about DH I Learned in a MOO shares welcome insights about some early formats of online communities.
    20. \n
  20. Robb Knight’s Slash Pages is a brief and welcome backstory for why he started Slashpages.net.
    21. \n
  21. P.L. Thomas’s What Works?: The Wrong Question for Education Reform shares his personal educational history as well as pointing out various ways that “what works?” is untenable as a question for education reform.
    22. \n
  22. Brandon’s On Adding A Blogroll Slashpage gave me the idea for this alterative format in the first place.
    23. \n

Other Peoples’s Postrolls (OPP)

\n\n

Do you have a postroll page? Let me know and I’ll try to add it here.

\n\n

(I can’t commit to maintaining this kind of list forever, for the same reasons that maintaining a blogroll can be awkward. But I’m excited to point to some other postrolls for now.)

\n\n

Kudos

\n

\n Did you enjoy this? Let me know: \n

", + "text": "On this pageWhat’s a Postroll?My Postroll ProperOther Peoples’s Postrolls (OPP)What’s a Postroll?\n\nHow can a blogroll page function differently?\n\nOn this postroll page—inspired by Brandon’s—I’ll list n share-worthy posts, aiming to add two or more new posts a week. This means that older entries will eventually cycle out of the list. (As of 2024-07-05, I’m still deciding how many n will equal, a number which will almost certainly intertwingle with how quickly I add new posts.)\n\nThis approach is not quite analogous to a mixtape full of things that work well together, but it will hopefully highlight particular posts in a different way than my blogroll page’s more general “hey, check out this feed (or band / musician)” can do.\n\nMy Postroll Proper\n\nThis list is numbered chronologically, with “1” indicating the newest addition to the list. (It feels worth reiterating: 1. does not mean “best”, and it is also unrelated to when the post was published. The first link is just the most recently thing I’ve added to this list.)\n\nTracy Durnell’s Using personal weeknotes as a tool for attention reflects on how she started using weeknotes and how she uses them now, with an emphasis on awareness, accountability, and shaping her own behavior. I also really appreciate how she shares her weeknotes template and the process she uses for compiling them.\n Ernie Smith’s Cassingle Culture weaves a ton of punk / (indie) pop culture / media history into a breezy yet deep narrative of cassette singles. Bow Wow Wow? Boy George? Malcolm McLaren? Yep, they’re all in just the first few paragraphs, before we even get to the Go-Go’s and R.E.M.\n Jacky Alciné’s post about not bothering with electoral politics online anymore provides me a very welcome reminder of what’s behind some people’s reasons to avoid discussions of elections online.\n Jason Heppler’s How I use Obsidian post covers a lot of the strengths to using Obsidian for notes and longer-form writing. Although I don’t currently use any of the plugins or organizational strategies discussed here, I’m considering making a Dataview-powered way of searching my literature notes along the lines of the Doing History with Zotero and Obsidian guide by Elena Razlogova linked to from this post.\n James’s reflection on four years of the personal web mentions a lot of same things I find so compelling about maintaining a website / blog / digital garden. You can do things with less worry about other people’s expectations.\n As soon as you encounter the three-digit number in the title of John Coulthart’s Weekend links 732, you can realize how long this blog has been running. It’s been a constant in my RSS readers for coming up on two full decades—I feel like I probably first heard of it through Arthur magazine or something! This particular week includes a mention of a new album where Shackleton (purveyor of often-otherworldly bass & percussion music) collaborates with Six Organs of Admittance (conjuror of often-psychedelic folk), links ranging from a pulp paperback book artists to a Wire magazine article on experimental radio to a collection of 60s acid rock buttons, and a great Japanese woodblock print from the late 1800s.\n Anil Dash’s Today’s AI is unreasonable succinctly describes what I also find regrettable about the current generative AI hype: they generate bullshit by design, this bullshit is inconsistently generated in ways that cannot be easily debugged by users, and systems designed around these types of unpredictability and unreasonableness tend to remove agency from users.\n Sara Joy’s This is My Church resonates with me both regarding particular communities (I helped start a swing dancing club at UC Riverside as an undergrad) and regarding the ways that social media and blogging communities feel to me now.\n Tracy Durnell’s The injustice embedded in our infrastructure quickly weaves together a game, a book, an email, a city’s community budget process, and other people’s blogs while making the post’s point. This is a really nice example of how a blog post can act as a condensed essay, taking a reader on a quick travel through a set of ideas and perhaps coming away with a changed perspective.\n John M. Jackson’s Befores and afters profoundly resonates with me in terms of no longer feeling like I’m “part of the new guard.” Although I’m actually new enough as an instructional designer to not even know whether there’s as much of a sense of “newer” and “older” guards in this field as there is in librarianship, I definitely feel like I’m traversing similar thresholds in life. As a side note, I also appreciate how John tends to add sections like “What I’m reading” and “Garden update” to his posts.\n Keenan’s An alarmingly concise and very hinged summary of what it was like to build this site from scratch relates how they built their site… a story told with enough zest and humor that I feel better about the peculiar blend of empowerment and continual facepalming that drive my own site.\n Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s Generosity and Pragmatism shares an insight from Deb Chachra’s How Infrastructure Works about how being generous is simultaneously being pragmatic. This post is also a great example of a type of blog post that hovers somewhere between a long social media post and a miniature essay.\n Arthur Boston’s When Do Checks Become Review? asks what lines we can draw around peer review and integrity checks.\n Olu Niyi-Awosusi’s Weeknotes #4 (Week 24, 2024) showed me how nicely one can style a site made with Quartz—and the look of Olu’s Bear-based blog inspired me to trim the author sidebar links and some other elements from most of my own blog pages. Their various weeknotes are also a great example of that genre of blog post!\n Spoiler alert! W. Evan Sheehan’s Twelve favorite problems currently only has a list of 5. I can’t remember previously hearing about this “favorite problems” framework, which Evan ascribes to Richard Feynman, but I’m instantly a fan.\n Vic Kostrzewski’s My mental health stack – everyday things I use for my mental health shares a lot of technologies that I don’t use, but I deeply appreciate this sharing of struggles and approaches.\n Mandy Brown’s Common future reading note connects Ursula Franklin’s earthworm theory of social change to climate change, since talking about the weather is increasingly one way of talking about our common future.\n Sri Seah’s GHDR Report 0404: Powered by Prosocial Motivation shares a great insight into motivation—and I think I’m often motivated similarly, by feeling connections with other people. (The post also touches on how Sri has “conversations” with ChatGPT, a use I’d rarely considered before outside of working with students.)\n John Maxwell’s All I Need to Know about DH I Learned in a MOO shares welcome insights about some early formats of online communities.\n Robb Knight’s Slash Pages is a brief and welcome backstory for why he started Slashpages.net.\n P.L. Thomas’s What Works?: The Wrong Question for Education Reform shares his personal educational history as well as pointing out various ways that “what works?” is untenable as a question for education reform.\n Brandon’s On Adding A Blogroll Slashpage gave me the idea for this alterative format in the first place.\nOther Peoples’s Postrolls (OPP)\n\nDo you have a postroll page? Let me know and I’ll try to add it here.\n\n(I can’t commit to maintaining this kind of list forever, for the same reasons that maintaining a blogroll can be awkward. But I’m excited to point to some other postrolls for now.)\n\nBrandon’s Postroll.\n Jedda’s Postroll.\nKudos\n\n Did you enjoy this? Let me know:" + }, + "mention-of": "https://kfitz.info/generosity-and-pragmatism/", + "wm-property": "mention-of", + "wm-private": false, + "rels": { + "canonical": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/postroll/" + } + }, + { + "type": "entry", + "author": { + "type": "card", + "name": "By: Ryan P. Randall", + "photo": "", + "url": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/" + }, + "url": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/blogroll/", + "published": "2024-02-18T00:00:00-07:00", + "wm-received": "2025-09-04T02:01:41Z", + "wm-id": 1936195, + "wm-source": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/blogroll/", + "wm-target": "https://kfitz.info/", + "wm-protocol": "webmention", + "name": "Blogroll", + "content": { + "html": "

On this page

Blogs! They’re like podcasts for reading!

\n\n

Here are some of the ones I follow and always enjoy reading in my RSS reader of choice (where I also lifted that “podcasts for reading” line).

\n\n

There’s enough here that I almost always have more to read when I open up my RSS app, which is helping wean me away from social media’s tiny shards of attention and toward somewhat longer pieces of thought. These are a mix of ones I’ve followed the longest and ones that are most regularly updated.

\n\n

[This is a first pass as of 2024-02-18. I’ll go back and add/describe more soon enough.]

\n\n

Accessibility and/or (Web) Design(ers)

\n\n

Arts, Culture, and/or Reading

\n\n

Higher Education and Related

\n\n

Instructional Design and/or Pedagogy

\n\n

Library Workers & GLAM

\n\n

Uhh… “Other”?

\n\n

Kudos

\n

\n Did you enjoy this? Let me know: \n

", + "text": "On this pageAccessibility and/or (Web) Design(ers)Arts, Culture, and/or ReadingHigher Education and RelatedInstructional Design and/or PedagogyLibrary Workers & GLAMUhh… “Other”?Blogs! They’re like podcasts for reading!\n\nHere are some of the ones I follow and always enjoy reading in my RSS reader of choice (where I also lifted that “podcasts for reading” line).\n\nThere’s enough here that I almost always have more to read when I open up my RSS app, which is helping wean me away from social media’s tiny shards of attention and toward somewhat longer pieces of thought. These are a mix of ones I’ve followed the longest and ones that are most regularly updated.\n\n[This is a first pass as of 2024-02-18. I’ll go back and add/describe more soon enough.]\n\nAccessibility and/or (Web) Design(ers)\n\nJacky.wft, by Jacky Alciné.\n Tracy Durnell.\n Sara Joy.\n Robb Knight.\n Chris McLeod.\n Thomas Rigby.\n Dave Rupert.\n DSri Seah maintains separate feeds for their journal and Groundhogs’ Day Reviews.\n Pixels of the Week, by Stéphanie Walter.\nArts, Culture, and/or Reading\n\nA Working Library by Mandy Brown.\n CrimethInc., by the CrimethInc anonymous collective.\n { feuilleton }, by John Coulthart, provides art delights. Tends to have weekly links as well as specific posts throughout the week as well.\n Justseeds, from the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative.\n the Quietus, yep, by the Quietus.\nHigher Education and Related\n\nkfitz, by Kathleen Fitzpatrick.\n Jon-E by Jonny Saunders.\n Super Bon!, by Jonathan Sterne.\nInstructional Design and/or Pedagogy\n\nAll Things Pedagogical by Ann Gagné.\n Vic Work by Vic Kostrzewski.\n Radical Scholarship by Dr. P.L. (Paul) Thomas.\nLibrary Workers & GLAM\n\nJohn, from the Library, by John Jackson.\n Librarian.Net, by Jessamyn West.\n Librarian of Things, by Mita Williams.\nUhh… “Other”?\n\nThings That Caught My Attention, by Dan Hon.\n Erin Kissane’s blog.\n Unfinished Business, Dan Sinker’s blog.\nKudos\n\n Did you enjoy this? Let me know:" + }, + "mention-of": "https://kfitz.info/", + "wm-property": "mention-of", + "wm-private": false, + "rels": { + "canonical": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/blogroll/" + } + }, + { + "type": "entry", + "author": { + "type": "card", + "name": "", + "photo": "", + "url": "" + }, + "url": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/_posts/2024-07-02-wa-2024-week-26", + "published": null, + "wm-received": "2025-09-04T02:01:00Z", + "wm-id": 1936185, + "wm-source": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/_posts/2024-07-02-wa-2024-week-26", + "wm-target": "https://kfitz.info/expedient/", + "wm-protocol": "webmention", + "mention-of": "https://kfitz.info/expedient/", + "wm-property": "mention-of", + "wm-private": false, + "rels": { + "canonical": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/_posts/2024-07-02-wa-2024-week-26" + } + }, + { + "type": "entry", + "author": { + "type": "card", + "name": "By: Ryan P. Randall", + "photo": "", + "url": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/" + }, + "url": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/weekly-assemblage/wa-2024-week-26", + "published": "2024-07-02T17:39:49-06:00", + "wm-received": "2025-09-04T02:00:01Z", + "wm-id": 1936163, + "wm-source": "https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/weekly-assemblage/wa-2024-week-26", + "wm-target": "https://kfitz.info/expedient/", + "wm-protocol": "webmention", + "name": "Weekly Assemblage for 2024 Week 26", + "content": { + "html": "

On this page

Weekly Whaaa…?

\n\n

Flock of the Week

\n\n

A family of wild turkeys has apparently taken up residence in our neighborhood. I’ve seen them strolling, scratching, and insect-buffeting their way through our yard twice, and also seen them a few streets away on an evening walk. Two adults, plus about seven offspring.

\n\n

I’m used to our many geese neighbors, but the turkeys were quite a surprise the first time I saw them! The cat has seemed even more surprised both times he’s seen them.

\n\n

Viewing

\n\n

Ugly Betty

\n\n

We somehow tore through all of Ugly Betty in the last few months. I never caught it during its initial airing, but at least to me, it certainly doesn’t seem as outdated as its age might suggest.

\n\n

Star Trek: Discovery

\n\n

We also made it through the first couple seasons of Star Trek: Discovery, the first of which was much more of a slog. Although I can definitely get why it’s a compelling idea to put a jumble of redemption narratives at the center of interlocking stories set in the Star Trek world, I honestly don’t comprehend what audience they had in mind for the repeated torture sequences involved in one of these storylines.

\n\n

We almost gave up on watching it—multiple times!

\n\n

Thankfully, the second season rediscovers excitement at the prospect of strange new worlds, and decides to be far less hostile to the viewer.

\n\n

Star Trek: Picard and Lower Decks

\n\n

As part of our Viewing Alpha, we’re watching all the series and movies in release order. At this point we’ve also watched the entire—and quite fun—first season of Picard and are partially through Lower Decks. They’re both much more pleasant than Discovery’s first season, and Lower Decks in particular is very rewarding considering the way we’re doing such an extended speed-run of everything.

\n\n

BookWyrm

\n\n

Seeing Kathleen Fitzpatrick mention BookWyrm on her blog provided just enough of a nudge for me to start trying it again. I went ahead and made lists from the books in my exam reading lists, and I’m hoping that the extra potential for interaction on BookWyrm will give me more inertia on both the lists and using that site in general.

\n\n

Of course, I’m still going to keep tracking my reading here, especially since I’ll be able to annotate articles and add my own extended notes and posts.

\n\n

If you’re on BookWyrm and want to connect, please do. If you’re not, why not give it a try? It’s a nice, gentle introduction to some of the core ideas of the “Fediverse” (the collectively-owned network of platforms like Mastodon).

\n\n

Site Refinements of the Week

\n\n

Did you know that, by default, Jekyll’s “related posts” are actually just the most recent posts, not posts more meaningfully related to the content of a post? Yeah, that’s bugged me for years. And I’ve finally done something about it.

\n\n

After a bit of searching, I found this post from Webjeda, which is written to work either by tag or by category. I use both here, so I’ve been slowly weaving the two together. Currently I prioritize tags as more meaningful than categories, so if a post has both tags and a category, its tags will determine what goes in the “related” section. (I do still want to work out what to display when a post has neither tags nor categories. Probably I’ll extend my current set of if statements into a larger set of if/elsif/else statements.)

\n\n

I also improved on the Webjeda code by using actual semantic elements. Why use a bunch of <div> elements when you’re really making an unsorted list? Accept<ul> and <li> as your friends already, developers!

\n\n

Finally, I made the tags and categories functional links. And, since the list of tags could quickly become unruly, I hid those within a <details> disclosure widget. I’ve thus far only ever used a single category at a time (and plan to continue that), so those always remain visible at the bottom of each related post’s excerpt rather than requiring extra interaction.

\n\n

As far as I can tell, this is all done accessibly. To reduce repeated content for screen readers—and to lower cognitive load for everyone—I also removed the author sidebar from most posts and pages.

\n\n

If you have any feedback on any of this, I’d appreciate hearing from you!

\n\n \n

Kudos

\n

\n Did you enjoy this? Let me know: \n

\n\n

\n Perhaps even leave a comment below?\n

", + "text": "On this pageFlock of the WeekViewingUgly BettyStar Trek: DiscoveryStar Trek: Picard and Lower DecksBookWyrmSite Refinements of the WeekWeekly Whaaa…?\n\nFlock of the Week\n\nA family of wild turkeys has apparently taken up residence in our neighborhood. I’ve seen them strolling, scratching, and insect-buffeting their way through our yard twice, and also seen them a few streets away on an evening walk. Two adults, plus about seven offspring.\n\nI’m used to our many geese neighbors, but the turkeys were quite a surprise the first time I saw them! The cat has seemed even more surprised both times he’s seen them.\n\nViewing\n\nUgly Betty\n\nWe somehow tore through all of Ugly Betty in the last few months. I never caught it during its initial airing, but at least to me, it certainly doesn’t seem as outdated as its age might suggest.\n\nStar Trek: Discovery\n\nWe also made it through the first couple seasons of Star Trek: Discovery, the first of which was much more of a slog. Although I can definitely get why it’s a compelling idea to put a jumble of redemption narratives at the center of interlocking stories set in the Star Trek world, I honestly don’t comprehend what audience they had in mind for the repeated torture sequences involved in one of these storylines.\n\nWe almost gave up on watching it—multiple times!\n\nThankfully, the second season rediscovers excitement at the prospect of strange new worlds, and decides to be far less hostile to the viewer.\n\nStar Trek: Picard and Lower Decks\n\nAs part of our Viewing Alpha, we’re watching all the series and movies in release order. At this point we’ve also watched the entire—and quite fun—first season of Picard and are partially through Lower Decks. They’re both much more pleasant than Discovery’s first season, and Lower Decks in particular is very rewarding considering the way we’re doing such an extended speed-run of everything.\n\nBookWyrm\n\nSeeing Kathleen Fitzpatrick mention BookWyrm on her blog provided just enough of a nudge for me to start trying it again. I went ahead and made lists from the books in my exam reading lists, and I’m hoping that the extra potential for interaction on BookWyrm will give me more inertia on both the lists and using that site in general.\n\nOf course, I’m still going to keep tracking my reading here, especially since I’ll be able to annotate articles and add my own extended notes and posts.\n\nIf you’re on BookWyrm and want to connect, please do. If you’re not, why not give it a try? It’s a nice, gentle introduction to some of the core ideas of the “Fediverse” (the collectively-owned network of platforms like Mastodon).\n\nSite Refinements of the Week\n\nDid you know that, by default, Jekyll’s “related posts” are actually just the most recent posts, not posts more meaningfully related to the content of a post? Yeah, that’s bugged me for years. And I’ve finally done something about it.\n\nAfter a bit of searching, I found this post from Webjeda, which is written to work either by tag or by category. I use both here, so I’ve been slowly weaving the two together. Currently I prioritize tags as more meaningful than categories, so if a post has both tags and a category, its tags will determine what goes in the “related” section. (I do still want to work out what to display when a post has neither tags nor categories. Probably I’ll extend my current set of if statements into a larger set of if/elsif/else statements.)\n\nI also improved on the Webjeda code by using actual semantic elements. Why use a bunch of
elements when you’re really making an unsorted list? Accept