Marianne Gabriel 🔆

The beauty of the world is the mouth of a labyrinth. The unwary individual who on entering takes a few steps is soon unable to find the opening. Worn out, with nothing to eat or drink, in the dark, separated from his dear ones, and from everything he loves and is accustomed to, he walks on without knowing anything or hoping anything, incapable even of discovering whether he is really going forward or merely turning round on the same spot. But this affliction is as nothing compared with the danger threatening him. For if he does not lose courage, if he goes on walking, it is absolutely certain that he will finally arrive at the center of the labyrinth. And there God is waiting to eat him. Later he will go out again, but he will be changed, he will have become different, after being eaten and digested by God. Afterward he will stay near the entrance so that he can gently push all those who come near into the opening.

I have now listened to/read enough @christianityon.bsky.social that my response to this Simone Weil paragraph was, “Jon is right, give this woman a Gundam.”

Again, I'm so chuffed for you, Joey. You truly deserved this.

Image from the sleeve for the book "Das Gespenst von Canterville : eine materialistisch-idealistische Erzählung", a German edition of the Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Rüdiger Stoye. A black and white drawing of a cloaked figure with white hair is surrounded by clouds and black birds in the sky.

Cover of the book "Das Gespenst von Canterville : eine materialistisch-idealistische Erzählung", a German edition of the Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Rüdiger Stoye. It is entirely plain, aside from the author and title written in red ink.

Title page the book "Das Gespenst von Canterville : eine materialistisch-idealistische Erzählung", a German edition of the Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Rüdiger Stoye.

Illustration of a ghostly figure floating next to a tapestry in a large room. It is from "Das Gespenst von Canterville : eine materialistisch-idealistische Erzählung", a German edition of the Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Rüdiger Stoye.

In the story, an American family, the Otises, move into an old English mansion which is haunted by the ghost of Sir Simon de Canterville. Fortunately for the Otis family, they don't find the ghost scary at all and eventually help him find peace. 👻🎃👻

Are you a cataloguer or interested in cataloguing and have a view on whether LCSH is fit for purpose in a UK context? CILIP MDG @cilipmdg.bsky.social are hosting a Worldcafe event (a big meeting basically!) to discuss ideas at Wellcome Library in London Wed 26th Nov www.cilip.org.uk/events/Event...

Nobody Knows What UK Law on Toilet Access Is The lawlessness of the government's response to For Women Scotland v. the Scottish Ministers.

www.liberalcurrents.com/nobody-know...

Working at UCL continues to inspire me to be my best.

Jurassic Pork

Please save some of your hotness for those of us who haven’t had years of practice in sliding augers into our drainpipe.

Logo of the Open Visualization Academy, which looks like a data-generated wave

Big news: The archive of my old weblog, The Functional Art, is back online: www.thefunctionalart.com

The blog won't be updated anymore, though. In the next 2-3 weeks I'll share some news about resuming the newsletter of my upcoming big project: openvisualizationacademy.org

#dataViz #dataVis 📊

Where are you streaming this from? 💜

I updated my "Complete guide to Bluesky" post again 🙂

I added some new things that happened since November, e.g.: trends, verifications, new photo & video apps, and new settings

mackuba.eu/2024/02/21/b...

What would you use to build something like that? I've been brushing up on webdev and data viz again, and I'd love to pick your brain sometime — if you'd be up for it, of course!

Ah, gotcha, that makes sense now. Sort of like the choreography of a post as it ripples outward, engagement by engagement? (I'd love to see it in motion even if you definitely don't have the time and it has to live in the "gloriously unbuildable" folder. 😄)

So, you want to make a beautiful, OTT (wild) visualisation (using a force-directed layout) that shows the structure of how ideas are shared and relate to one another... using ATProto's semantic data/structured vocabulary (lexicon) for repost-like interactions (probably quotes, mentions, citations)??

Cool blog of how @aendra.com built @xblock.aendra.dev her automoderation tuned screenshot classifier AI model and pipeline, including all the manual work behind it.
www.aendra.com/xblock-summe...

Again I ALWAYS advise to use group and algorithmic moderation with GREAT caution and usually only in warn mode as I do, but @xblock.aendra.dev as a screenshot labeler is working pretty well.

It rolled-up screenshots you can click to view if you want. Works great and very safe.

Growth narratives on the new social networks The narratives that networks like the fediverse and Bluesky have about themselves how their network grows are a snapshot of a specific moments in time. How do these narratives evolve as the circumstan...

Bluesky and the fediverse have constructed a narrative of how growth of the networks happen: when Musk does something particularly evil or stupid, people migrate in a wave looking for an ethical alternative. But what happens when that pattern breaks down?

connectedplaces.online/growth-narra...

July ATProto London · Luma More details tktk

Our next event has been announced!

We'll be returning to Newspeak House on Wednesday, 23 July from 7 pm to 10 pm. RSVP here!

lu.ma/15mefous?tk=...

We're currently looking for shorter (5-15 minutes) and longer (15-30 minute) talks. Cool new project? Big new idea? We want to hear about it! DM us!

Cool places to work when London is hot Air-conditioned pubs, cafes and libraries (mostly) with architectural flair and where you can hear yourself think

Where to work in London when it's too hot to think? My top 10 pitch-ups with WiFi, air con and relative peace in my Substack this week.

open.substack.com/pub/helenbar...

Words don't come close to describing just how profoundly bad an idea this is.

One last selfie before I head back to the hotel and then the airport.

Thank you Oslo, it's been brill. 💚🏳️‍🌈

(I cannot believe it's this light out at 2:45 am)

😂

I'm sure that bathing suit deserves a proper debut, though. Surely you'll find an excuse to break it out soon? Don't keep us waiting too long, darling. 😉

Overdressed in a sauna... always trying to be the hottest person in the room, come hell or high water. 😄😉

I love you calling yourself "overdressed" in the alt text when you're simply setting the standard. You look incredible. 😮‍💨💚

Selfie sitting on a rainbow bench, Oslo Pride parade in background

Pride parade! There's a float that I think is a traditional boat with rainbows on it

Pride Parade! Big rainbow parachute

More Pride parade! The marchers are wearing a traditional outfit of some kind

Happy Pride Oslo! #oslopride

Project Vend: Can Claude run a small shop? (And why does that matter?) We let Claude run a small shop in the Anthropic office. Here's what happened.

Anthropic let Claude run a vending machine business at their HQ.

People tricked it into buying a bunch of tungsten steel cubes that it sold at a loss.

www.anthropic.com/research/pro...

ig has finally figured me out. im getting combined skateboarding and bowling content, and whatever the hell this is (perfection is what it is)