BC CULTURE
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One of the most Monkey's Paw things about my life is my relationship to books. When I was a teenager, I read all the way through the school and public libraries, spent everything I had on books, and still couldn't get enough and dreamt of more.

1/

 Today, as a reviewer, I have more books than I can possibly read, huge, teetering mountains of books that I'm desperate to read, far beyond my ability to ever get through them. Periodically, I declare "book bankruptcy," sweep away the backlog and start over.

2/
Even then, my eyes are bigger than my stomach: I keep back a few books that I can't bear to part with and promise myself I'll read them someday. Usually I don't, but I just did, and boy did I ever make the right call with @TheUniverse's BROAD BAND.

https://t.co/CpaE8nxixA

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I have read a LOT of histories of computing, and I had a front row seat for a lot of the events depicted in this book - people I worked with, people I worked against - and yet I was surprised over and over again with details and perspectives I'd never encountered.

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For example, for some reason, my ninth grade computer science course included lengthy readings on ENIAC, Univac, the Mark I and the Mark II, but none of those mentioned that they were all programmed exclusively or primarily by women.

5/
And Evans doesn't just explain this fact, but - because she is a brilliant and lyrical writer - she brings these women to life, turns them into fully formed characters, makes you see and feel their life stories, frustrations and triumphs.

6/
Even the most celebrated women of tech history - Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper - leap off the page as people, not merely historical personages or pioneers. Again, these are stories I thought I knew, and realized I didn't.

7/
Some of this can be chalked up to the haze of history - I don't know much about the lives of Lovelace's contemporaries regardless of gender or class - but the main culprit here is erasure, obviously.

8/
These women were written out of the record from the beginning, and the process only accelerated over time. The professionalization of programming - the coining of "software engineer" - coded a female trade as a male profession and precipitated a mass exodus of women.

9/
But despite this, women continued as tech pioneers, excelling in the marginalized, disfavored parts of the field: UX, community, "girl games," hypertext, multimedia and so on.

10/
The specialities that men turned up their noses at, until women proved out their significance (and/or profitability) whereupon men rushed in to dominate them, shouldering women aside.

11/
Reading this outstanding, important book, I found my views on erasure and exclusion evolving, first being brought into focus by Evans's skilful weaving of biographies, interviews and historical source documents, which made the abstract idea of erasure concrete.

12/
From there, Evans demonstrated how marginalized people move into marginalized subfields, defying odds and overcoming hurdles that their mainstream - white, male, affluent - contemporaries don't face, and then elevate these subfields to centrality.

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This dynamic is present in many fields of endeavor - think of how Black music (blues, jazz, rock, hiphop) went from the margins to the center when it was co-opted by white musicians who often did a worse job for more money and fame.

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It's another example of what @scalzi calls "living life on the lowest difficulty setting," and it's the basis for affirmative action.

https://t.co/my4bTbFCz8

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Consider two candidates: one who attains the top of their field after being trained and supported by the best of the best, and the other who trails them by a step or two - but never had their advantages. Which one has the most potential?

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Broad Band isn't just a tale of the women whose stories were erased - it's also the implied story of all the people (not just women) whose stories never got to happen.

17/
Telling the erased stories of people who excelled against all odds through luck and brilliance exposes a void: the people who didn't have that luck, that brilliant, who never got to make a contribution.

18/
After all, the women pioneers in computing trend whiter and wealthier than the median person in America. The notable exceptions - like the Black women who made the space program possible - demonstrate this disparity arises from exclusion, not a lack of aptitude or desire.

19/
Broad Band isn't merely a celebration of the hidden heroes of the computing revolution - it's also an epitaph for all the people whose talent, aptitude, dreams and contributions were squandered by a system based on mass exclusion.

20/
What's more, it's a tale that shows that the differences between fields are socially - not biologically -determined. The women who break through to male-dominated roles as CEOs and VCs are just as prone to selling out workers and users as their male counterparts.

21/
I'm so glad that I saved my copy of Broad Band from my repeated book bankruptcies since 2018, but I confess that I didn't read that print copy - rather, I listened to the audiobook, which Evans herself reads.

22/
Evans isn't just a superb writer, interviewer and researcher - she's also a brilliant voice actor, whose reading is gripping, exuberant, sorrowful and enraging by turns. I love hearing a book read by its author...when the author is a good reader. Evans is the whole package.

eof/
ETA: if you'd like to read or share this review as a blog post, here's a copy on my site https://t.co/iSBh8s9m7q, which has no trackers, ads or surveillance.

https://t.co/tUTRPUgNbx

More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
There are lots of problems with ad-tech:

* being spied on all the time means that the people of the 21st century are less able to be their authentic selves;

* any data that is collected and retained will eventually breach, creating untold harms;

1/


* data-collection enables for discriminatory business practices ("digital redlining");

* the huge, tangled hairball of adtech companies siphons lots (maybe even most) of the money that should go creators and media orgs; and

2/

* anti-adblock demands browsers and devices that thwart their owners' wishes, a capability that can be exploited for even more nefarious purposes;

That's all terrible, but it's also IRONIC, since it appears that, in addition to everything else, ad-tech is a fraud, a bezzle.

3/

Bezzle was John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." That is, a rotten log that has yet to be turned over.

4/

Bezzles unwind slowly, then all at once. We've had some important peeks under ad-tech's rotten log, and they're increasing in both intensity and velocity. If you follow @Chronotope, you've had a front-row seat to the
INTERNET
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Stop saying "it's not censorship if it's not the government"; Trump's swamp gators find corporate refuge; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/7JMcAbaULj

#Pluralistic

1/


Monday night, I'll be helping William Gibson launch the paperback edition of his novel AGENCY at a Strand Bookstore videoconference. Come say hi!

https://t.co/k3fvBdqOK0

2/


Stop saying "it's not censorship if it's not the government": I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.

https://t.co/7I0MpCTez5

3/


Trump's swamp gators find corporate refuge: The Swamped project.

https://t.co/MUJyIOr2iw

4/


#15yrsago A-Hole bill would make a secret technology into the law of the land https://t.co/57bJaM1Byr

#15yrsago Hollywood’s MP loses the election — hit the road, Sam! https://t.co/12ssYpV46B

#15yrsago How William Gibson discovered science fiction https://t.co/MYR0go37nW

5/
TRUMP
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Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
After the 9/11 attacks, airlines and public buildings adopted a flurry of "security" measures, like taking away pen-knives from fliers or requiring visitors to office buildings to be photographed or present a driver's license.

1/


Bruce Schneier's seminal 2003 "Beyond Fear" called these measures: #securitytheater.

Schneier pointed out that these measures would be easy to circumvent, and were thus providing only the comforting appearance of security - not security

Security theater is worse than nothing. Security theater gives people the false impression that their risks have been mitigated, when actually things are just as dangerous.

After al, if you know that danger exists, you can take some steps to mitigate or avoid it.

3/

But if you have the false impression that you've been made safer, you might unwittingly engage in risky behavior.

4/

Like, if you know your car's brakes are flaky, you might nurse the car along to the mechanic at low speed on side-streets.

But if you don't know about the brakes, you're apt to discover their flaws at 75mph on the freeway.

5/
FOR LATER READ
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
The remix culture of the early 2000s left an indelible impression on me, an enduring delight in the power of whimsy, juxtaposition, virtuosity and ingenuity - and the ability of strangers all over the world to collaborate without any explicit coordination.

1/


The recent Bernie-mittens meme was a sterling example of this, tickling me right to my core, and I just happened on an especially delightful apex example of the form: @ToastedShoes's video of Sanders incorporated into eight AAA

Toasted Shoes got @JoeMashups to create a 3D model of Sanders, then tapped a bunch of different mashup artists to turn the Sanders sprite into playable characters in the games, showing them off in a narrated video.

3/

I'm not much of a fan of video-game streamers' narration, and I confess that I found the video more entertaining without the narration, but to each their own - Shoes was clearly enjoying himself, as were the commenters on the video.

4/

They had a lot to be pleased by.

Sanders as a Sith Lord in Star Wars Battlefront 2:

5/
FUN
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
As the Qanon prophecies fail and the cult-members struggle to resolve their cognitive dissonance, it's a good time to revisit the history of paranoid, conspiratorial political movements in American history - the "paranoid style" that has dominated since the Revolution.

1/


After all, the very first skirmishes of the US war of independence were based on a conspiracy theory: that the levy on tea was a prelude to a sellout of the colonists to transnational mercantalist interests. US politics have always been conspiratorial.

2/

I found @zacharykarabell's @politico history of the Know Nothing party especially useful, as it tells the story of what happens when surging, paranoid, fractious political movements

The American Party was a secret 19th century organization founded on a conspiracy theory: that Irish immigrants were secretly planning a takeover of the US on behalf of the Pope.

4/
HISTORY

More from Culture

Paras Chopra
Paras Chopra
@paraschopra
1/ Here are my notes from @robertwrighter's book - Nonzero: the logic of human destiny. I enjoyed the book very much.

The basic premise of the book is that history has a direction which favors co-operation and non-zero sum games, and that causes an increase in complexity.


2/ Starting from the first replicating molecule which co-operated with an outer layer to form first proto-cell, evolutionary and cultural history is full of examples where two entities come together to survive and progress a lot more than they would have done individually.

3/ This co-operative entity fares much better than two individual entities because of specialization. If two entities are in the same boat - that they win together or lose together - then trust is implicit.

4/ In a non-zero sum game, trust causes entities to focus on what they do best.

For example, eukaryotic cells - the ones animals and plants have - emerged when two proto-cells merged, and one took the role of energy generator (mitochondria), the other specialized in protection.

5/ Some scientists believe that even nucleus in a cell is a result of an early cell merging with another cell.

So M&A is not a recent phenomena, entities have been merging because of common interests ever since life started.
CULTURE
dan spaceman
dan spaceman
@ohlaika
I'm gonna do my other star wars thread tomorrow, which will primarily be me yelling at a @RowanKaiser-shaped strawman for calling the First Order and The Resistance "cosplayers who the rest of the galaxy has to deal with"

the deal w/the New Republic, the First Order, and the Resistance is very weird and complex and I actually take issue with how Story Group frames the actual conflict.

pre-TFA stuff is presented as a "cold war" between the New Republic and the remnants of the Empire that form the First Order, which 100% makes sense.

But they frame the First Order's attack on the Hosnian system and the subsequent battle that takes place across TFA and TLJ as a full on war when it's very clearly a coup. A war implies at least equal standing, but the First Order completely wrecks shop and takes over the galaxy.

ok never mind I'm fucking doing this now.

The First Order fleet we see in TLJ is *not* the entire fleet of the First Order (I don't even think Starkiller Base was their main base of operations honestly, it couldn't have been considering they were operating out of Wild Space)
CULTURE
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Nick Kapur
Nick Kapur
@nick_kapur
A thread of images from a Japanese illustrated history of America from 1861.

Here is George Washington (with bow and arrow) pictured alongside the Goddess of America. 1/


Here is Christopher Columbus (seated at center) reporting his discovery of America to Queen Isabella of Spain.

So far, kinda normal, but wait for it.... 2/


Now it's the American Revolution. Here is George Washington defending his wife "Carol" from a British official named "Asura" (same characters as the Buddhist deity). 3/


And here is Washington's "second-in-command" John Adams battling an enormous snake. 4/


Here is Washington and his wife "Carol" meeting an extremely youthful Benjamin Franklin, who has an impressive squat. 5/
CULTURE
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Inequality requires narrative stabilizers. When you have too little and someone else has more than they can possibly use, simple logic dictates that you should take what they have.

1/


The forbearance exercised by the many when it comes to the wealth of the few isn't down to guards or laws - rather, the laws and the guards are effective because of the STORY, the story of why this is fair, even inevitable.

2/

Think of the story of monarchy and its relationship to the Church: the Church affirms that the monarch (and the aristocracy) was chosen by God ("dieu et mon droit") and the monarchy reciprocates by giving the Church moral and economic power within the kingdom.

3/

Capitalism replaced the story of divine will with a story of a self-correcting complex system: humans are born and raised with a variety of aptitudes and tastes, and at any moment, historical exigencies dictate that some individuals are better suited than others to do well.

4/

When it's railroad time, there are people who were born to oversee the laying of track and the coordination of rail networks: markets find those people, allocate capital to them, and allow them to mobilize that capital to produce shared prosperity for all of us.

5/
CULTURE
Estella Mirai \U0001f3f3\ufe0f\u200d\U0001f308
Estella Mirai 🏳️‍🌈...
@EstellaMirai
Authors, you deserve an agent who…

Replies to your emails in a timely fashion, and lets you know when they won’t be able to.
(1/13)

Reads your manuscripts, revisions, outlines, and other materials in a timely fashion, provides an EDA when needed, and lets you know if a delay occurs.
(2/13)

Communicates in a way that works for YOU, be that email, texting, or phone, and is open FROM THE CALL STAGE about any forms of communication they are unable or unwilling to use.
(3/13)

Understands and respects YOUR publishing goals, and is upfront and honest about how realistic they are.
(4/13)

Respects your decision to turn down any offer, for any reason, and to hold out for YOUR minimum requirements for taking an offer.
(5/13)
CULTURE

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\u0100yudhika
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Dr. Anandibai Joshi

Upon her birth on 31 March 1865 she was named Yamuna, after the holy river. Her parents Gunputrao Amritaswar Joshee & Gungabai Joshee came from a long lineage of wealthy landlord family in Kalyan of Bombay Presidency, whose wealth was now waning.


Anandi was the sixth of 10 children, & had 4 brothers (only two of which survived) & five sisters. Her father was particularly fond of her, as she was a bright child with an inquisitive mind. Being an educated man himself, Ganpatrao assured that his daughter was taught Marathi.

As was common practice she was married at a tender age of 9, to Gopalrao Joshi, a 29 year old widower who worked as a postal clerk in the same city. After marriage her husband named her ‘Anandibai’ (which means ‘Joy of my heart’).

Gopalrao was man ahead of his times with reformist ideas & had married Anandibai on the condition that he would be allowed to educate his wife.

He even tried to enroll Anandi in a missionary school, but did not succeed. Despite being the supportive husband, Gopalrao had his flaws.

He was a strict teacher & would sometimes resort to beating if Anandi slacked in her studies.
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सा विद्या या विमुक्तये...
@raghav_aanya
#ज्योतिष_विज्ञान #मंत्र_विज्ञान

ज्योतिषाचार्य अक्सर ग्रहों के दुष्प्रभाव के समाधान के लिए मंत्र जप, अनुष्ठान इत्यादि बताते हैं।

व्यक्ति के जन्म के समय ग्रहों की स्थिति ही उसकी कुंडली बन जाती है जैसे कि फ़ोटो खींच लिया हो और एडिट करना सम्भव नही है। इसे ही "लग्न" कुंडली कहते हैं।


लग्न के समय ग्रहों की इस स्थिति से ही जीवन भर आपको किस ग्रह की ऊर्जा कैसे प्रभावित करेगी का निर्धारिण होता है। साथ साथ दशाएँ, गोचर इत्यादि चलते हैं पर लग्न कुंडली का रोल सबसे महत्वपूर्ण है।


पृथ्वी से अरबों खरबों दूर ये ग्रह अपनी ऊर्जा से पृथ्वी/व्यक्ति को प्रभावित करते हैं जैसे हमारे सबसे निकट ग्रह चंद्रमा जोकि जल का कारक है पृथ्वी और शरीर के जलतत्व पर पूर्ण प्रभाव रखता है।
पूर्णिमा में उछाल मारता समुद्र का जल इसकी ऊर्जा के प्रभाव को दिखाता है।


अमावस्या में ऊर्जा का स्तर कम होने पर वही समुद्र शांत होकर पीछे चला जाता है। जिसे ज्वार-भाटा कहते हैं। इसी तरह अन्य ग्रहों की ऊर्जा के प्रभाव होते हैं जिन्हें यहां समझाना संभव नहीं।
चंद्रमा की ये ऊर्जा शरीर को (अगर खराब है) water retention, बैचेनी, नींद न आना आदि लक्षण दिखाती है


मंत्र क्या हैं-
मंत्र इन ऊर्जाओं के सटीक प्रयोग करने के पासवर्ड हैं। जिनके जप से संबंधित ग्रह की ऊर्जा को जातक की ऊर्जा से कनेक्ट करके उन ग्रहों के दुष्प्रभाव को कम किया और शुभ प्रभाव को बढ़ाया जाता है।
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Andrew Chen
Andrew Chen
@andrewchen
👇 Thread. New deck getting published this week: "Consumer startups are awesome, and here's what I'm looking to invest in at Andreessen Horowitz." If you want to read it, subscribe to my newsletter here: https://t.co/262t8eh0wf


1/ A lot of new consumer technologies have been introduced to US households in the last 100 years. But it's taken many of them - like the telephone - more than 50 years to get to the majority of the US. Why is that?


2/ We had to literally teach people how to use phone. Which end goes to your mouth, which goes to your ear. Say "hello" when people call. The motivation of consumers to talk to their friends has always been there, but we had to teach the behavior


3/ If you compare phones to the latest technologies, there's been a huge shift. Things are being picked up much faster.


4/ Even while there's been all this innovation recently, physically speaking, we are still the same human beings from 100,000 years ago.
STARTUPS
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
1/OK, data mystery time.

This New York Times feature shows China with a Gini Index of less than 30, which would make it more equal than Canada, France, or the Netherlands. https://t.co/g3Sv6DZTDE

That's weird. Income inequality in China is legendary.

Let's check this number.

2/The New York Times cites the World Bank's recent report, "Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World".

The report is available here:

3/The World Bank report has a graph in which it appears to show the same value for China's Gini - under 0.3.

The graph cites the World Development Indicators as its source for the income inequality data.


4/The World Development Indicators are available at the World Bank's website.

Here's the Gini index: https://t.co/MvylQzpX6A

It looks as if the latest estimate for China's Gini is 42.2.

That estimate is from 2012.

5/A Gini of 42.2 would put China in the same neighborhood as the U.S., whose Gini was estimated at 41 in 2013.

I can't find the <30 number anywhere. The only other estimate in the tables for China is from 2008, when it was estimated at 42.8.
SOCIETY
Brian Cates
Brian Cates
@drawandstrike
Trump is gonna let the Mueller investigation end all on it's own. It's obvious. All the hysteria of the past 2 weeks about his supposed impending firing of Mueller was a distraction. He was never going to fire Mueller and he's not going to


Mueller's officially end his investigation all on his own and he's gonna say he found no evidence of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election.

Democrats & DNC Media are going to LITERALLY have nothing coherent to say in response to that.

Mueller's team was 100% partisan.

That's why it's brilliant. NOBODY will be able to claim this team of partisan Democrats didn't go the EXTRA 20 MILES looking for ANY evidence they could find of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election

They looked high.

They looked low.

They looked underneath every rock, behind every tree, into every bush.

And they found...NOTHING.

Those saying Mueller will file obstruction charges against Trump: laughable.

What documents did Trump tell the Mueller team it couldn't have? What witnesses were withheld and never interviewed?

THERE WEREN'T ANY.

Mueller got full 100% cooperation as the record will show.
POLITICS