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Notes

  • 🔖 Black Tent – "Managed Retreat" –

    she’s here. orders are officially shipping for the Black Tent “Managed Retreat” lathe cut 10", with posters & digital downloads available

    in addition, 100% of digital sales, and any profits past the minimum price on physical merch (posters, zines, records/tapes) will be donated to the National Network of Abortion Funds through May 15.

    front cover artwork for Black Tent - Managed Retreat 10". maroon image of a giant frog tower with a wizard peering out of the mouth, and a crab carrying a glaive. the background is pink paper and the print is in two colors - burgundy and blue
    unfolded full cover artwork for Black Tent's managed retreat. to the left, a bat wearing a scarf flies above a ship on an ocean through the starry, moon filled sky. the frogtower, crab, and wizard from the front are to the right of the frame.
    inside view of the record. presents white plexi variation and insert, with white paper sleeve.
    inside view of the record. presents clear plexi variation and insert, with white paper sleeve.
    Publish date:
    by M.A. Matienzo

  • 🔖 Yang et al., "Are You Really Muted?: A Privacy Analysis of Mute Buttons in Video Conferencing Apps" –

    Using network traffic that we intercept en route to the telemetry server, we implement a proof-of-concept background activity classifier and demonstrate the feasibility of inferring the ongoing background activity during a meeting — cooking, cleaning, typing, etc. We achieved 81.9% macro accuracy on identifying six common background activities using intercepted outgoing telemetry packets when a user is muted.

    Publish date:
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    by M.A. Matienzo

  • 🔖 Gomes and Barros, "The Bias in Ontologies: An Analysis of the FOAF Ontology" –

    For the analysis, the theoretical framework of Discursive Semiotics is used, which studies the formation of meaning as a phenomenon from a model called Generative Trajectory of Meaning (GTM). From this perspective, we can understand bias as a product of semiotic processes – figurativization, thematization, and discursivization (Greimas and Courtés 2013) – involving the KOS developer social-cultural contexts (Gomes and Barros 2019a, 2019b). From this theoretical understanding, all the elements that constitute the FOAF ontology – classes and properties – are analyzed, as well as its documentation available online. We concluded that bias is an inherent feature of a KOS and that Knowledge Organization could focus on conducting studies on technologies that enable information retrieval, taking into account this aspect of its tools.

    Publish date:
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    by M.A. Matienzo

  • I absolutely love working with ⁦Acid Lich⁩. Color comp of the risograph sleeve/poster art for my upcoming EP.

    A color mockup of the cover art for the Black Tent - Managed Retreat EP. Image has a pink background with maroon and dark teal artwork.
    Publish date:
    by M.A. Matienzo

  • 🔖 S.I. Rosenbaum: "His software sang the words of God. Then it went silent." –

    For two decades, Jewish clergy across the country had come to depend on TropeTrainer to help prepare kids for their bar and bat mitzvahs, rites of passage in which young adults chant aloud from the Torah for the first time. But the software wasn’t just a study aid — it was a deep archive of sacred text and music, comprising dozens of different traditions, made easily searchable and infinitely customizable.

    Publish date:
    by M.A. Matienzo

  • My partner let me take her 10-year-old MacBook Air after getting a newer laptop for herself. I’ve refurbished it for some basic use (email, web browsing, conference calls, writing/development) by installing a new battery and SSD.

    An image of a MacBook Air on the MacOS X Lion install screen

    I had to install MacOS from internet recovery, and because of the age of the laptop, it started with Lion.

    I admit some of the decision to do this was idle curiosity. My eight-year-old personal laptop, a 15" Retina MacBook Pro, doesn’t have a battery that’s easily user-replaceable without using solvents, so it’s nice to have a lightweight secondary machine that now has over eight hours of battery life under light usage.

    I also admit I had the desire to reduce e-waste, so Kris De Decker’s Low Tech Magazine article on avoiding buying new laptops also inspired me. I’m curious to see how usable Mac OS 10.15 will be before I possibly partition the drive and install Linux to be able to dual-boot the machine.

    Publish date:
    by M.A. Matienzo

  • 🔖 Paris Marx, "False Futurism" –

    The metaverse is a branding term with a similar aim as Web 2.0 — to make tech companies’ efforts to reinvigorate existing business models and carve out new ones seem forward-looking and new, while repackaging their leverage over people to compel them to adopt new products as a kind of benevolent leadership, if not a humility in the face of what people “really want.”

    Publish date:
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    by M.A. Matienzo

  • 🔖 Media Websites: 70% of the Carbon Footprint Caused by Ads and Stats –

    The results are insightful: up to 70% of the electricity consumption (and therefore carbon emissions) caused by visiting a French media site is triggered by advertisements and stats. Therefore, using an ad blocker even becomes an ecological gesture.

    Publish date:
    by M.A. Matienzo

  • 🔖 Ayanna Dozier, "Surveilling Bodies: Archives and Sex Work" –

    Tourmaline’s film Salacia is a departure point for considering the interlocking forces of race, gender, and criminality in representations of sex work.

    Publish date:
    by M.A. Matienzo

  • 🎵 Joel RL Phelps & The Downer Trio - "Pilot"

    JRLP + D3 covering the song that got me into Silkworm.

    Publish date:
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    by M.A. Matienzo