Winning Slowly

Show Notes Links The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman New Rustacean, Chris’ other podcast “Kickstarter Lesson #65: How to Get US Backers if You’re Running a Non-US-Based Kickstarter Campaign” “Hong Kong has probably lost HSBC’s headquarters for good—and Beijing is to blame” “The Facebook-loving Farmers of Myanmar” Previously on the Show 4.03: The Podcast Awakens—in which we talked about global fandoms specifically in the context of Star Wars 3.12: Hungarian Folk Music—in which we talked about musical (sub)cultures not especially well-served by the current music market, but also how the internet is helping subcultures thrive Music “Solitude” by Alpenglow. Used by permission. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Still Creative Commons Attribution licensed. Sponsors Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors: Andrew Fallows Jeremy W. Sherman Jeremy Cherfas If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give dire

Show Notes We dive back into the deep end with a discussion of the necessity and challenge of compromise in the political realm. How do we work steadily but slowly toward the things we value? How do decide what we can compromise on and what we can’t? Can we “trade favors” in a good way? What about people working at totally cross purposes on a given issue? Corrigenda The Myanmar military party no longer has a majority, but retains a substantial fraction of the parliamentary seats. Links “Myanmar opens new parliament session after military rule” “Myanmar speculation mounts over Suu Kyi ‘president move’” Keystone-XL One site for it One site against it “Theological triage” Music “Curtain Call” by Takénobu. Used by permission. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho, who still thinks that when he grows up he’d like to be a composer like John Williams. Sponsors Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors: Andrew Fallows Jeremy W. Sherman Jere

Following up on our previous conversation about The Force Awakens, this week we look at what makes art good, especially in the context of film. Was the latest Star Wars actually a good movie? Links Theodore Adorno XKCD 915: Connoiseur “I Want to be Well” from The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens, on Genius The Force Awakens soundtrack on iTunes Music “Rey’s Theme” from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, by John Williams. Fair use. Utterly lovely. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho, who still thinks that when he grows up he’d like to be a composer like John Williams. Sponsors Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors: Andrew Fallows Jeremy W. Sherman Jeremy Cherfas If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash. Respond We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

We say a few serious things about the nature of global fandom, the relationship between art and brand awareness in large media properties, and the future of as large a property as Star Wars. But let’s be honest: mostly, we geek out. Links TheForce.net Literature Forum, where Chris was Master_Keralys “How Disney Plans To Sell ‘Star Wars’ In China, A Box Office Far, Far Away” “‘Star Wars’ China Box Office: Lukewarm Presales Could Signal Trouble For Disney Juggernaut” The Force Awakens soundtrack on iTunes Music “Main Title” from Star Wars, by John Williams. Fair use. And amazing. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho, who started composing in no small part because of the “Twin Suns” cue from A New Hope, which rocked his world when he was just a little kid, and nothing was ever the same. Sponsors Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors: Andrew Fallows Jeremy W. Sherman Jeremy Cherfas If you’d like to support the show, you can make a

We pick up from our discussion of Facebook and Internet.org last week to look at the broader questions we raised then: how do you help people well? It’s not enough to have good intentions—so how do you pick good charities to give to? How do you choose where to dedicate your own time and money? How should we think about foreign aid, and foreign intervention, and foreign policy in general? Links When Helping Hurts Microcredit Toms Corporate Responsibility “Some Bad News about TOMS Shoes” Music “Hero”, by Starlight Girls. Used by permission. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho, who still dreams of doing a dance kit version of this, and a rock version of it, and a massive orchestra version of it. Someday, maybe. Sponsors Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors: Andrew Fallows Jeremy W. Sherman Jeremy Cherfas If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash. Respond We love to

We open our fourth season with a discussion of Facebook’s Internet.org platform, open access vs. power plays by large companies, and the ethical questions at the intersection of business and philanthropy. Chris and Stephen disagree about how to read Facebook’s move, and set the stage for a season-long discussion of globalization and its ramifications for technology, religion, ethics, and art. Just some light discussion to start things off, in other words. Links Quartz: “Mark Zuckerberg can’t believe India isn’t grateful for Facebook’s free internet” “Zuckerberg says the internet lifts people out of poverty, but is giving them subpar access” Alternatives to Internet.org: Medianama: “Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker offers alternatives to zero-rating for Internet services” Jana Gigato Huffington Post: “Is Net Neutrality More Important Than Internet Access? Why Babajob’s On Internet.org” “Internet.org VP: We used the Facebook platform to lobby TRAI just like the people on the other side” Music “Oh Boy”, by Haz

We wrap up our third full season with another “lightning round”, talking about the structure/agency and tech accessibility, globalization, and owning your own content online. Links Structure/agency problem (Wikipedia) Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Web accessibility Globalization Code for the Kingdom The World is Flat “Albuquerque” Owning your own content: Indie web WordPress backups Medium Craig Mod essays Previously on the show: 3.12: Hungarian Folk Music Music “Broken” by Featurette. Used by permission. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Still. Always. Forever. Sponsors Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors: Andrew Fallows Jeremy W. Sherman Jeremy Cherfas If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash. Respond We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up on Twitter, App.net, Facebook, or via email!

We start wrapping up Season 3, tackling five topics that one or the other of us wanted to talk about but couldn’t get the other one all that excited about, or which we didn’t feel like we had enough to say yet: venture capitalism (both of us) online classes (Stephen) the ethics of algorithms (Chris) tracking people at work (Stephen) transparency in business (Chris) Links Venture capitalism article on Wikipedia Insightful piece by Ben Thompson at Stratechery: “Venture Capital and the Internet’s Impact” “Democratizing celebrity styling: Uber for your hair has arrived” Algorithms failing: “Keep Calm and Rape a Lot” Amazon worker treatment: “Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon’s sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers” (from Salon, with a bit more acerbic a take than we might offer) “They’re Watching You at Work” (The Atlantic) 3.07: One Size Does Not Fit All Music “Run With Me” by Heather LaRose. Used by permission. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho, who is plotting ways to

Talking about self-driving cars and the tensions between public safety and personal responsibility, and between technological possibility and cultural norms. Corrigenda Stephen meant “Black Beauty” rather than “Black Betsy”. Mat Honan’s piece we referred to was on BuzzFeed, not Wired. Links Google’s Cute Cars And The Ugly End Of Driving: The main thing you should know about autonomous vehicles is that they are utterly inevitable. Chrysler hack Before You Go JetBrains gets subscription pricing right! Original post: “Introducing JetBrains Toolbox, easier access to your coding tools, more control and flexibility, and a lower entry price” Follow-up: “We are listening” Announcement of updated model: “Final update on the JetBrains Toolbox announcement” Music “Spring” by Sam Birchfield. Used by permission. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho, who still wants to find a Steinway and a good piano microphone to get a non-synthesized version of the theme. Sponsors Many thanks to the people who help us make t

If you listen to Hungarian folk music, or classical music, or recordings of live shows, or obscure bands, then the (otherwise pretty decent) GraceNotes CD database and the many apps that rely on it might not really work for you. We talk about why that might be and how we might think about fixing it. Links “The Enhanced Experience So Far: It’s the Indies Who Support the Fledgling [Enhanced CD] Format” “The Invention of Compact Discs” Hungarian Folk Music Ryan Adams, 1989 Dart Music Creative Commons Lawrence Lessig Remix campaign Max Richter Ingrid Michaelson Murray Gold Wikipedia IMDB iTunes Catalog Amanda Petrusich’s Do Not Sell At Any Price Before You Go The Atlantic Notes—still absolutely killing it. Good work, guys. Adoption stories series Incredibly thoughtful discussion on rape and empowering women Music “Psychrocker” by Honeymilk featuring De Montevert. Used by permission. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho, who is getting that composing itch again… Sponsors Many thanks to the people w

We talk about how we present ourselves on social media: what happens as we present different aspects of ourselves over time? How do we manage those changes? How does the flattening out effect of social media and searchability intersect (or conflict) with the way we think about our social circles in “real” (that is, embodied, non-virtual) life? Links Geocities Tripod Friendster Xanga Augustine’s Retractions First Friday in Raleigh “Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg thinks telepathy tech is on its way” – The Guardian Google Buzz Google Plus Circles Configuring the Networked Self, Julie Coen Before You Go “Ahmed Mohamed swept up, ‘hoax bomb’ charges swept away as Irving teen’s story floods social media” – The Dallas Morning News “We Stand with Ahmed (and We Hope He’ll Join Us for Astronomy Night)” – WhiteHouse.gov #standwithahmed Music “Modern Language” by Postcards from Jeff. Used by permission. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Sponsors Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by

We start talking about phones again, and this time manage not to veer off into talking about robots. On the other hand, we do end up talking about a broad Christian ethic of technology, life in communities, and the pull toward social constructivism or technological substantivism. Links Sap.py – Chris’ podcast with his wife about her experience learning Python Experience economy Post-scarcity economy Social constructivism Substantivism Previously on the show: 3.08: Juice Up the Weird Edges of the Ecosystem Before You Go Two good bits from The Atlantic: “Almost Half of Syria’s Population Has Been Uprooted” “A Map That Dramatizes (and Helps Explain) the Refugee Crisis” Music “Song of the Sun” by Fell Runner. Used by permission. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho, who thinks you should check out the theme for Sap.py, too. Bells are fun! Sponsors Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors: Jeremy W. Sherman Jeremy Cherfas If you

In which we spend some time talking with Ryan O’Neal of Sleeping at Last about his soundtrack for the film Many Beautiful Things, and then branch out to discuss business and distribution models for artists in the 21st century. Links Many Beautiful Things: The score Stream it The documentary about Lilias Trotter trailer Sleeping at Last on television Kid President Notes on making “Mercury” Yearbook Box set iTunes Atlas: Year One Atlas: Year Two subscription Hans Zimmer The Buggles Rotten Tomatoes Previously on the show: 2.11: Encoding Quality: Potato 0.11: Only Acceptable Cream Cheese Before You Go Charity water: Overview Ryan’s campaign Narcos Music All music from Many Beautiful Things by Sleeping at Last. Used by permission. Go buy this fantastic album! Intro: “Overture (Instrumental)” 5:38–6:58: “Almost Idyllic” 17:07–18:58: “Seeing” 27:10–28:28: “Ill Equipped” “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho, who wishes he were cool enough to write 36 songs in a year. Sponsors Many

In which we start by looking at how to think about buying new phones… And then pivot into a discussion of major economic transitions. Like robots. Links Carriers dropping subsidies: “T-Mobile faces war of words after killing subsidies, contracts” (CNET) “Verizon Wireless moving away from contracts and phone subsidies” (Ars Technica) “Sprint to end two-year contracts - now here come the deals” (CNN) Motorola Razr “Pre to postmortem: the inside story of the death of Palm and webOS” (The Verge) How Blackberry Fell (The New Yorker) MMS (multimedia messaging hack) on iOS: “iOS bug lets anyone crash your iPhone with a text message” (The Guardian) on Android: “950 million Android phones can be hijacked by malicious text messages” (Ars Technica) Xiaomi Windows Phone From the Garden to the City Previously on the show: 1.18: Keep on Keepin’ On Before You GoThe Atlantic’s new Notes (blogging) section, with “comments” via email. Perhaps particularly relevant to our listeners is their response to Chris’ email.

In which we quite aggressively tackle Amazon’s corporate treatment of its workers, and launch into a discussion of corporate ethics and responsibility. We also note that though we critique Amazon’s practices, we recognize that it has good effects in the world, some of them significant. The question is: at what point to the externalities associated with those benefits make dealing with any given company morally unjustifiable? Links The original piece which sparked this discussion: “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace” “Why the New York Times’s Amazon story is so controversial, explained” (Vox) – with a scathing and accurate comment on blue-collar workers as the real problem for Amazon: The real workplace scandal at Amazon — and in the economy writ large — isn’t the treatment of white-collar workers with plenty of options. It’s the treatment of blue-collar workers with none. Most of Amazon’s workers, after all, aren’t highly paid engineers or marketers sitting in a Seattle office. Th

We geek, we gush, and we even manage to say a few serious things about the future of humanity while talking about New Horizons, Rosetta, science fiction, nation-state rivalries, and how we would love to go visit other places in the solar system (or galaxy). Errata: Chris said New Frontiers was an ESA probe; it was in fact a NASA probe. He was thinking of Rosetta, an ESA project to land on a comet—which they did, after the greatest gravity boost sequence in history: Slingshot this!Note: yep, those are children fussing in the background at one point in the show. Chris has a 3-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old daughter, and the 1-year-old happened to lose her mind mid-recording. This is one of the many times a better microphone might be nice! Links New Horizons XKCD What if?: New Horizons – on how incredibly fast New Horizons is traveling. Wikipedia Active solar system probes The Expanse – a delightful romp of a space opera Chris and his wife have read. SpaceX Sued the Air Force Virgin Galactic Mil

Things were… messy this episode.

Blogging is not what it was in 2008. It has changed in some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse, and in a few ways that it’s hard to tell. Picking up from an Iranian blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, who was jailed for his political views in 2008, we take a look at hyperlinking, the stream, and personal agency. How can we keep the good of the blog world of 2008 and the good of the stream? Links “The Web We Have to Save” (Hossein Derakhshan) His follow-up on the response “The End of Surfing” (Chris Krycho) “79 These on Technology. For Disputation” (Alan Jacobs) Previously on the show: 3.04: Mom Memes 3.03: Look in Your Soul On Alan Jacobs’ theses: 2.13: A Disputation of Theses 1.01: Massive Emotional Contagion – on Facebook, social responsibility Before You Go TUCOWS, parent company of Hover and Ting nailed its response to an intrusion on their servers. Note that Chris uses both Hover and Ting, and in fact winningslowly.org is registered at Hover—but we’re not getting anything from them (rather

In which we look at how moms took over the internet, and how the shift from 18–34-year-old white males to not only middle-aged moms but also many other demographics is good for the web—even when it might seem a little strange to those who came of age on the internet in the years before Facebook was taken over by mommy bloggers. Spoilers: we only made one “your mom” joke the whole episode! Links “God-Tier: Facebook Moms Run the Meme Game” Mommy bloggers: “The Rise of the Mommy Bloggers” (Mashable) “How moms won the internet – and what that means for the rest of us” meme Badgers (requires Flash!) Wikipedia article Scumbag Steve “Black Twitter” Previously on the show: 2.13: A Disputation of Theses 3.03: Look in Your Soul Before You Go “Charles Koch Urgest Conservatives to Skip ‘Corporate Welfare’” (TIME) “Cecil The Lion Update: Yelp Users Outraged After Thousands Of River Bluff Dental Reviews Vanish” (International Business Times) Music “The Fog”, by Beach Moon, Peach Moon “Winning Slowly Theme

Ashley Madison got hacked and blackmailed by people who hate Ashley Madison’s adultery-as-a-business-model, erm, business model. We also hate adultery, but we’re not so sure that hacking and blackmail is the right solution to this particular problem. Links Ashley Madison hacked The DMCA Lives being ruined: “Married Man Whose Name Was Leaked In Ashley Madison Hack By The Impact Team Speaks: 20-Year Marriage, $19 Paid Delete” Very human reactions: “Ashley Madison hack: ‘Out of all the data breaches, this is probably the funniest’—It’s hard not to feel sorry for the site’s adulterous users, but when I think of how betrayed they must feel…” Doxxing Rule of law Just one example of another contentious issue: “Undercover video shows Planned Parenthood official discussing fetal organs used for research” Previously on the show: 2.10: So You’ve Been Hacked 1.06: Rebuke Me