Notices by nindokag (nindokag@refactorcamp.org), page 3

Anybody know any good Nintendo Switch games with online multiplayer? Looking for games to play with my sister who lives across the country. I know Smash Bros, Mario Kart and Splatoon are the big ones but how about indie recommendations?

when I'm reading her bedtime stories, my daughter is no longer satisfied with merely hearing the text as written. She now points at every background character in every illustration and asks "What she say? what SHE say?" We end up making up a whole secondary plot together, like the Extended Director's Cut version of the book.

As a strategy of dragging out bedtime it's extremely effective.

Daihachi Oguchi studied jazz in America and, in the 1950s, returned to Japan and combined it with the ceremonial Shinto music of his hometown Suwa Shrine.

Before that, taiko drumming was a very slow-paced, tradition-oriented religious music. Oguchi-sensei literally "jazzed it up". 😄

Hiryu Sandan Gaeshi (honoring Hiryu, the Dragon God of Suwa Shrine) is historically important as one of the earliest pieces in this new genre. 🐉 ⛩️

History and videos here: http://taikosource.com/articles/hiryu-san-dan-gaeshi/

#mastomusic

Today I had a really fun time at an open-mic music party at a friend's house.

There was a folk-rock duo, improvisations on Bach, middle-eastern orchestral music played on a lute-like instrument called an Oud with a woman singing in Egyptian Arabic... A ukelele player did a Weird Al song and half the room sang along with the chorus. I went last, playing the accordion, leading everybody in a call/response sea chanty and finished with the song from Legend of Zelda. Good times! #mastomusic

How electronic music pioneer Wendy Carlos created new scales, by doing away with the assumption that there must be an octave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuT6Y53LYH4&list=RDRuT6Y53LYH4&start_radio=1

You can hear these scales in "Beauty in the Beast":
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2j1gy2

if it sounds eerie and alien it's because these are notes your ears have literally never heard before. What if a painter could invent new colors?

Where else could we apply this idea of questioning what we assume to be the neutral background of our work?

#heyfeedfox

My company has worked on a lot of Department of Energy #SolarPower research projects in the past via the "Sunshot" grant program.

This year there were 3 research funding opportunities related to our work, so we spent a lot of time crafting proposals for each one. The DOE abruptly canceled the opportunities *after* everybody submitted proposals. Big waste of our time. Never seen anything so unprofessional from the DOE before.

Here's an article about what happened: https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/nixed-solar-grant-opportunity-cost-500-000-drawing-hill-scrutiny

@Elmkast @johnhenry tumblr fandoms were a friendly place for a lot of people who were women and/or LGBT and/or kinky to, like, safely explore their sexuality via creative works (fanart/fanfic), discover other people with similar interests, and build a community.

That's miles away from anything mainstream porn sites are interested in supporting.

Features of tumblr that made it good for this were easy image hosting, easy reblogging, tagging, and easy creation of multiple pseudonyms.

Remember when I said I want to help get out the vote, but I can't easily travel to volunteer since I have a toddler?

2 initiatives I found:

http://progcode.org/ open source get-out-the-vote tools, and other organizing tools that are looking for developers to fix tickets!

http://www.votefwd.org/ handwriting letters to voters who might not otherwise vote, is a shockingly effective intervention according to their trial

Going to try to do as much as possible of these in the last few weeks!

One of my favorite coworkers had to leave because of (USA) visa issues. Her student visa expired and our startup's attempts to get her an H1B ended in failure. It's really sad! She was a good friend as well as one of the smartest people I know.

Now I have:

1. a recommendation for a really good data scientist, who will be looking for a job in Canada or Europe soon

2. a job opening for a really good data scientist to work on solar power in the US

Direct message me if interested in either.

What's wrong with social media, theory 2:

On tumblr and twitter, there's no such thing as "a local community with the power to ban people", the way subreddits and livejournal groups can ban people.

Without the tools to enforce a boundary around it, you can't establish a voluntary community with higher standards of behavior than the base platform.

The "anything goes" standards of the base platform tend to drag all discussions down towards the "4-chan" level.