Sunday, November 20, 2022

Collection of quotes about decentralization

This post is a collection of quotes about decentralization. There are 6 quotes listed below. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

1. "Decentralization... is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group." (Wikipedia: Decentralization, 11.16.22 UTC 06:41)

2. "The internet is an example an extremely decentralized network, having no owners at all (although some have argued that this is less the case in recent years)." (Wikipedia: Decentralization, 11.16.22 UTC 06:41)

3. "Wikipedia has been described as decentralized." (Wikipedia: Decentralization, 11.16.22 UTC 06:41)

4. "Political decentralization signifies a reduction in the authority of national governments over policy-making. This process is accomplished by the institution of reforms that either delegate a certain degree of meaningful decision-making autonomy to sub-national tiers of government, or grant citizens the right to elect lower-level officials..." (Wikipedia: Decentralization, 11.16.22 UTC 06:41)

5. "Austrian School economist Friedrich von Hayek argued that free markets themselves are decentralized systems where outcomes are produced without explicit agreement or coordination by individuals who use prices as their guide." (Wikipedia: Decentralization, 11.16.22 UTC 06:41)

6. "Decentralization can make national policy coordination too complex; it may allow local elites to capture functions; local cooperation may be undermined by any distrust between private and public sectors..." (Wikipedia: Decentralization, 11.16.22 UTC 06:41)

Saturday, November 19, 2022

Collection of quotes about the Cambrian explosion

This post is a collection of quotes about the Cambrian explosion. There are 2 quotes listed below. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

1."The Cambrian explosion... refers to an interval of time approximately 538.8 million years ago in the Cambrian Period when practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record." (Wikipedia: Cambrian explosion, 11.11.22 UTC 02:39)

2. "Before early Cambrian diversification, most organisms were relatively simple, composed of individual cells, or small multicellular organisms, occasionally organized into colonies." (Wikipedia: Cambrian explosion, 11.11.22 UTC 02:39)

Collection of quotes about chunking

This post is a collection of quotes about chunking. There are 2 quotes listed below. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

1. "In cognitive psychology, chunking is a process by which individual pieces of an information set are bound together into a meaningful whole." (Wikipedia: Chunking, 9.5.22 UTC 23:59)

2. "It is believed that individuals create higher-order cognitive representations of the items within the chunk. The items are more easily remembered as a group than as they individual items themselves." (Wikipedia: Chunking, 9.5.22 UTC 23:59)

Top 4 largest galaxies in the Local Group

This post is a list of the top 4 largest galaxies in the Local Group. Source: Wikipedia
  1. Andromeda Galaxy
  2. Milky Way Galaxy
  3. Triangulum Galaxy
  4. Large Magellanic Cloud

Feedback for the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan Working Group

This post is the feedback I provided to the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan Working Group on October 27th, 2022.

Hi everyone. My name is Alex Peek and I have a blog at Econ Analysis Tools.

I want to suggest that the federal government should release short blog posts to display key information from each publication. A given publication could have 1 blog post or multiple blog posts. Each blog post would have its own URL and this would allow people to share information with greater ease. Instead of sharing a large document, a person could send their friend a URL that provides quick access to the information.

I also want to suggest that the government use the information blogging protocol* (or IBP for short) to create these blog posts. IBP is a list of 5 templates for displaying information on a blog post. Instead of having to scroll around on a webpage and read through paragraphs, I believe that information is best displayed when its at the top of the page. IBP ensures that information is displayed in a consistent and simple format.

I will share a link to the information blogging protocol in the Zoom chat and a directory of my blog posts to provide examples. Thank you for listening.

* 'Information blogging protocol' was later renamed to 'information blogging guidelines'

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Collection of quotes about misinformation and disinformation

This post is a collection of quotes about misinformation and disinformation. There are 7 quotes listed below. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

1. "Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information." (Wikipedia: Misinformation, 11.1.22 UTC 17:09)

2. "Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people." (Wikipedia: Disinformation,11.17.22 UTC 10:35)

3. "Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue." (Wikipedia: Fake news, 11.16.22 UTC 00:53)

4. "Because information is distributed by various means, it is often hard for users to ask questions of credibility. Many online sources of misinformation use techniques to fool users into thinking their sites are legitimate and the information they generate is factual." (Wikipedia: Misinformation, 11.1.22 UTC 17:09)

5. "Misinformation on social media spreads quickly in comparison to traditional media because of the lack of regulation and examination required before posting." (Wikipedia: Misinformation, 11.1.22 UTC 17:09)

6. "Echo chambers and filter bubbles come from the inclination of people to follow or support like-minded individuals. With no differing information to counter the untruths or the general agreement within isolated social clusters, some argue the outcome is an absence of a collective reality." (Wikipedia: Misinformation, 11.1.22 UTC 17:09)

7. "Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have found themselves defending accusations of censorship for removing posts they have deemed to be misinformation. Social media censorship policies relying on government agency-issued guidance to determine information validity have garnered criticism that such policies have unintended effects of stifling dissent and criticism of government positions and policies." (Wikipedia: Misinformation, 11.1.22 UTC 17:09)

Thursday, November 17, 2022

Collection of quotes about blogs

This post is a collection of quotes about blogs. There are 6 quotes listed below. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

1. "A blog... is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts)." (Wikipedia: Blog, 11.1.22 UTC 07:25)

2. "The emergence and growth of blogs in the late 1990s coincided with the advent of web publishing tools that facilitated the posting of content by non-technical users who did not have much experience with HTML or computer programming." (Wikipedia: Blog, 11.1.22 UTC 07:25)

3. "The collective community of all blogs and blog authors, particularly notable and widely read blogs, is known as the blogosphere." (Wikipedia: Blog, 11.1.22 UTC 07:25)

4. "Several online communities exist that connect people to blogs and bloggers to other bloggers. Interest-specific blogging platforms are also available." (Wikipedia: Blog, 11.1.22 UTC 07:25)

5. "Many bloggers, particularly those engaged in participatory journalism, are amateur journalists, and thus they differentiate themselves from the professional reporters and editors who work in mainstream media organizations." (Wikipedia: Blog, 11.1.22 UTC 07:25)

6. "A micro-blog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregated file size... Twitter, Facebook and other micro-blogging services have become platforms for marketing and public relations, with a sharp growth in the number of social media marketers." (Wikipedia: Microblogging, 4.11.22 UTC 05:17)

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Collection of Frank Ocean songs

This post is a collection of songs by Frank Ocean. There are 8 songs listed below alphabetically.

  • Biking
  • Crack Rock
  • Lost
  • Nights
  • Nikes
  • Pink + White
  • Pyramids
  • Solo

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Collection of creativity quotes

This post is a collection of quotes about creativity. There are 8 quotes listed below alphabetically by last name.

Francis Bacon (1909-1992, artist):
1. "The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness." (Art-quotes.com)

Walter Bagehot (1826-1877, journalist):
2."We must not let daylight in upon the magic." (AZQuotes.com)

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989, artist):
3. "Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity. You know, Dalí spent two months in jail in Spain, and these two months were the most enjoyable and happy in my life." (Interview with Victor Bockris, 1974)

Giles Deleuze (1925-1995, philosopher):
4."Creation takes place in bottlenecks... it's by banging your head on the wall that you find a way through... You have to open up words, break things open, to free earth's vectors." (Goodreads.com)

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004, philosopher):
5. "I was wondering myself if I know where I am going. So I would answer you by saying, first, that I am trying precisely, to put myself at a point so that I do not know any longer where I am going." (Quoted in The Structuralist Controversy by Richard Macksey and Eugene Donato, 2007)

Paul Klee (1879-1940, artist):
6. "In my productive activity, every time a type grows beyond the stage of its genesis, and I have about reached the goal, the intensity gets lost very quickly, and I have to look for new ways. It is precisely the way which is productive - this is the essential thing: becoming is more important than being." (Diary, 1912)

Gerhard Richter (1932 - now, artist):
7. "I pursue no objectives, no systems, no tendency; I have no program, no style, no direction. I have no time for specialized concerns, working themes, or variations that lead to mastery. I steer clear of definitions. I don't know what I want. I am inconsistent, non-committal, passive; I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty." (Doubt and belief in painting, 2003)

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943, inventor):
8. "The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born." (Quoted in Nikola Tesla's Life & Work by Istvan G. Kocsis)

Collection of quotes about GNU and Linux

This post is a collection of quotes about GNU and Linux. There are 7 quotes listed below. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

1."GNU is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popularly known as Linux. Most of GNU is licensed under the GNU Project's own General Public License (GPL)." (Wikipedia: GNU, 10.7.22 UTC 23:37)

2. "Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works... Notable copyleft licenses include the GNU Public License..." (Wikipedia: Copyleft, 11.11.22 UTC 00:46)

3. "GNU is a recursive acronym for 'GNU's Not Unix!', chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code." (Wikipedia: GNU, 10.7.22 UTC 23:37)

4. "Development of the GNU operating system was initiated by Richard Stallman while he worked at MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It was called the GNU Project, and was publicly announced on September 27, 1983..." (Wikipedia: GNU, 10.7.22 UTC 23:37)

5. "[The GNU Project's] goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaboratively developing and publishing software that gives everyone the rights to freely run the software, copy and distribute it, study it, and modify it." (Wikipedia: GNU Project, 11.11.22 UTC 14:50)

6. "The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds..." (Wikipedia: Linux kernel, 11.9.22 UTC 23:59)

7. "Reasons to change from other operating systems to Linux include better system stability, better malware protection, low or no cost, that most distributions come complete with application software and hardware drivers, simplified updates for all installed software, free software licensing, availability of application repositories and access to the source code." (Wikipedia: Linux adoption, 11.4.22 UTC 18:33)

Saturday, November 12, 2022

Collection of Fitz Henry Lane paintings

This post is a collection of paintings by Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865). There are 5 paintings listed below chronologically.

Boston Harbor, Sunset (1850-1855)



Brig Off the Maine Coast (1851)



New York Harbor (1852)



Becalmed of Halfway Rock (1860)



Lumber Schooners at Evening on Penosbscot Bay (1863)

Collection of Honoré Daumier paintings

This post is a collection of paintings by Honoré Daumier (1808-1879). There are 2 paintings listed below chronologically.

Don Quixote in the Mountains (~1850)



Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa (1866-1868)

List of paintings in the Marriage A-la-Mode series by William Hogarth

This post is a list of paintings in the Marriage A-la-Mode series by William Hogarth (1697-1764). The series was produced between 1743-1745. There are 6 paintings listed below.

1. The Marriage Settlement



2. The Tête à Tête



3. The Inspection



4. The Toilette



5. The Bagnio



6. The Lady's Death

Collection of Frederic Remington paintings

This post is a collection of paintings by Frederic Remington (1861-1909). There are 8 paintings listed below chronologically.

A Dash for the Timber (1889)



A Mexican Major (1889)



An Indian Trapper (1889)



A Mexican Vaquero (1890)



The Advance-Guard (1890)



The Fall of the Cowboy (1895)



A New Year on the Cimarron (1903)



Fight for the Waterhole (1903)