Link tags: race

There Has Never Been a Better Time to Read Ursula Le Guin’s “Earthsea” Books - Electric Literature

Well, this is timely! Cassie mentioned recently that she was reading—and enjoying—the Earthsea books, which I had never got around to reading. So I’m reading them now. Then Craig mentioned in one of his newsletters that he’s also reading them. Now there’s this article…

To white protestors and accomplices, who say that they want to listen but are fearful of giving up some power so that we can all heal, I suggest you read the Earthsea cycle. You will need to learn to step away from the center to build a new world, and the Black majority in this fantasy series offers a better model than any white history.

In defence of graceful degradation and where progressive enhancement comes in by Adam Silver

This does a really good job of describing the difference between progressive enhancement and graceful degradation …but I don’t buy the conclusion: I don’t think that feature detection equates to graceful degradation. I do agree though that, when it comes to JavaScript, the result of progressive enhancement is that the language degrades gracefully.

This is progressive enhancement. An approach to making interfaces that ensures JavaScript degrades gracefully—something that HTML and CSS do automatically.

But there’s a difference between something degrading gracefully (the result) and graceful degradation (the approach).

VOCAL

Each typeface highlights a piece of history from a specific underrepresented race, ethnicity, or gender—from the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Argentina to the Civil Rights Movement in America.

The First Women Trained To Conquer Space - Supercluster

The cosmonaut counterparts of the Mercury women astronauts: Zhanna Yorkina, Irina Solovyova, Tatyana Kuznetsova, Valentina Ponomareva, and Valentina Tereshkova.

Ponomareva recalled there being no envy between the women in the squad. According to her, it was a healthy spirit of competition. Everyone did their best to be number one, but also supported each other’s efforts.

One of those cosmonauts went to space: none of the women training for the Mercury missions did. There would be a shockingly gap of twenty years between the launch of Valentina Tereshkova and the launch of Sally Ride.

Feet on the Ground, Eyes on the Stars: The True Story of a Real Rocket Man with G.A. “Jim” Ogle

I listen to a lot of podcast episodes. The latest episode of the User Defenders podcast (which is very different from the usual fare) is one of my favourites—the life and times of a NASA engineer working on everything from Apollo to the space shuttle.

You know how they say it doesn’t take a rocket scientist? Well, my Dad is one. On a recent vacation to Florida to celebrate his 80th birthday, he spent nearly three hours telling me his compelling story.

FriendChip Beacons - With support of Eddystone and Physical Web

I quite like the idea of broadcasting my URL from a friendchip bracelet.

Performance Calendar » Reducing Single Point of Failure using Service Workers

This is a nifty use of Service Workers—using a cache to mitigate unresponsive Content Delivery Networks.

The stuff in here about Promise.race is particularly useful for “lie-fi” scenarios: instead of thinking about the network connection in a binary way (either it’s available or it isn’t), considering the scenario of a crappy network connection seems more realistic.

The Queen Of Code

A short documentary on the wonderful Grace Hopper.

How to see through the cloud

This is a great explanatory piece from James Bridle in conjunction with Mozilla’s Webmaker. It’s intended for a younger audience, but its clear description of how web requests are resolved is pitch-perfect primer for anyone.

The web isn’t magic. It’s not some faraway place we just ‘connect’ to, but a vast and complex system of computers, connected by actual wires under the ground and the oceans. Every time you open a website, you’re visiting a place where that data is stored.

Cosmonaut Crashed Into Earth ‘Crying In Rage’ : Krulwich Wonders… : NPR

An astonishing story from the Soviet side of the space race that is equal parts stupidity and sacrifice.

The REAL ‘Stuff White People Like’ « OkTrends

They're going to get into so much trouble for this, but this data analysis is pretty great.

ironfeathers.ca » Home

Watch the adventures of Derek and Kathryn Featherstone in the run up to IronMan Lake Placid 2007. Check out the route maps: very slick.

For Many AJAX is Not Degrading, But it Must :: Off the Top :: vanderwal.net

"...it must degrade well. It must still be accessible. It must be usable. If not, it is a cool useless piece of rubbish for some or many people."