In our new recurring series, we look at the good, the bad, and the straight-up bizarre songs spreading across TikTok via dances and memes. --- TikTok’s trend-setting prowess has given famous people an even greater incentive to dip their toes into the mortal world. A little song and dance comes with the possibility of a handsome reward, at least for the musicians: hits that soundtrack TikTok memes clobber their way to the top of Spotify’s Viral 50 with the rapaciousness of King Kong scaling the Empire State Building. It usually works like this: some impossibly cool teenager with above-average rhythm choreographs a dance; said dance must be rudimentary enough for anyone to learn—give or take a few hours and several YouTube tutorials—but dynamic enough for you to look impressive if you put in the work. Like a fast-casual burrito, TikTok dances are customized from the same basic ingredients, but adding something new and spicy to the mix can work wonders. Particularly fresh choreo—or at least moves backed by the right influencer—can single-handedly rocket a song to the top of the viral charts.

We're a playlist platform that directly supports independent music, built on our streaming integrations and powerful curation tools. The closest analogy for what we are would be Patreon for music or Substack for playlists. We enable artists to create a space to elevate the music and artists that they enjoy for their fans and accept tips from supporters. You can think of it as a newsletter of music, featuring thoughts alongside selections for fans to listen to. We enable fans to have a closer connection to their favorite artists via curated playlists, personal thoughts, and early previews of their work.

Use these instructions to get up and running with helping your community! Kick off your city's relief efforts as we all learn to cope with COVID-19 with this starter powered by Gatsby, Airtable, and community efforts. This project is aims to make it as easy as possible to launch and manage an index of resources in your city during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stay up to date on tools, resources, and supports made necessary during this time. #WhileAtHome is a clearinghouse for credible information and action steps.

In cases of emergency, many organizations need a quick way to publish critical information. But existing (CMS) websites are often unable to handle sudden spikes in traffic. Like so many others, I’m currently in voluntary quarantine at home - and I used some time this weekend to put a small boilerplate together for this exact usecase. Here’s the main idea: • generate a static site with Eleventy • minimal markup, inlined CSS • aim to transmit everything in the first connection roundtrip (~14KB) • progressively enable offline-support w/ Service Worker • set up Netlify CMS for easy content editing • one-click deployment via Netlify The site contains only the bare minimum - no webfonts, no tracking, no unnecessary images. The entire thing should fit in a single HTTP request. It’s basically just a small, ultra-lean blog focused on maximum resilience and accessibility. The Service Worker takes it a step further from there so if you’ve visited the site once, the information is still accessible even if you lose network coverage. The end result is just a set of static files that can be easily hosted on cloud infrastructure and put on a CDN. Netlify does this out of the box, but other providers or privately owned servers are possible as well.

Pretending to be black on social media, even without the face paint, is a form of blackface. --- Access to other cultural groups can be found online, of course. However, the access is limited and usually not a direct educational exchange, often inhibiting, rather than cultivating, a deeper understanding of other groups. Many teens learn about other cultures from the media they’re constantly consuming, rather than having real-life relationships and friendships with people who belong to the cultures they’re tapping into. As a result of their real-life segregation paired with their access to social media, not only are young people unconsciously perpetuating racist stereotypes, they’re appearing foolish to millions of people online in the process. For example, in these two videos (one and two) that have gone viral on social media, several young white people are seen throwing up gang signs, seemingly unknowingly, as a funny trend. It can be assumed that they saw these signs somewhere online, thought they were cool, and taught them to their friends. They may very well know nothing of the meaning or connotation of these signals—context that probably would be provided in a more diverse circle. But who is available to let them know the actual meaning of what they’re doing, if their schools, neighborhoods, and social circles are not diverse?

Historical precedents and doomsday projections serve their purpose, but focusing on the worst-case scenario is a great way to make yourself sick with anxiety right now. --- Reading about the worst-case scenarios at a time like this is about as helpful as licking the handle of a shopping cart. […] I’m not saying that we should not be concerned about coronavirus. We most undoubtedly should be. But at a time like this, worst-case scenarios are not your friend, unless you like being friends with things that give you nightmares. It can be easy to catastrophize, to let your mind wander into doom and gloom, to feel like you have no control over events shaping your life, when you’re stuck inside seemingly watching the world crumble around you. It’s important to remember, though, that just as the coronavirus has enjoyed such a rapid spread because we live in such a physically connected world, our digitally connected world may just mitigate it. […] Just stay inside, stay safe, and stay away from that really scary coronavirus story, and the next one, and the one after that.

People have argued that there should be new versions with a certain frequency. But not too often, because people don’t have time to read too many announcements. And people will want to write books about the new version, or develop talks and courses about it, which takes time. As Jen Simmons wrote, quoting Chris Coyier, ‘a tremendous number of books, courses, and conferences were dedicated to CSS3’ even though there is no definition of what CSS3 is. The working group certainly never defined it.

Substation DIY is a free, open, and secure way to set up simple recurring payments and member messaging — as easily as pressing a remix button and adding credentials for Braintree and Mailgun. Try the demo, learn more, then remix your own!

A big Google Document full of helpful tips for online meetings, classes, and events. Friends, as we scramble to move our offline interactions online, this is an emerging initial place to share, curate and organize resources. It could really use the loving attention of a great curator!

The caricature of Sanders’ vitriolic online supporters has driven political conversations for nearly four years, but at what cost? --- And within mainstream American politics, Bernie Sanders is nearly singular in his sustained resistance to the establishment logic that motivates these disastrous decisions. So the thinking goes: For his entire time as an observable figure, he has been right, and nearly everyone else has been wrong. He has never needed to evolve; his positions were fully formed from the start. This is not exclusively true, but whatever; a record of leftist foresight and nuance that has, on balance, turned out to be mostly correct in comparison to his peers is unbelievably seductive to people cursed with paying attention in a country that broadly does not. If I can pick out a genuinely identifying characteristic among all my friends who support Bernie, from the very online to the very not, it’s that they prioritize this quality. In the context of American politics, he feels like a revolutionary, though of course he is an elected politician. That his congressional record appears middling can be hand waved off with an acknowledgment of his prevailing milieu; it’s not so easy to dismantle institutional power when almost all of your colleagues are dedicated to propping it up. But as president, when public rhetoric and private whipping can force the chains of bureaucracy? Then maybe, just maybe… And with climate change and the endless wars and the brewing pandemics and shoddy health care and all of the myriad afflictions making life hell for a plurality of Americans, the necessity of electing the one candidate who seems to understand the urgency of wrenching back control feels paralyzingly clear to those who’ve done the reading and allowed themselves to feel one flicker of empathy. Hence the Bernie Bro affect: a righteous and logic-driven correctness about the trajectories and realities of American society, because haven’t you been paying attention, coupled with the combativeness inherent to the internet, where everyone likes to believe they are right, all of the time. Social media and all its related platforms offer an incredible opportunity to be correct, in public, and that Bernie’s overall argument looks so good on paper makes it easily repeatable when faced with the truly astonishing amount of stupid, banal bullshit repeated everyday on the internet. There is always someone to argue with. […] That is what I detect most within these collective spasms of Bernie-driven passion: the disbelief at how dumb all of this is, how the evidence for what we need is right there and yet the forces that be (and their followers) believe otherwise. […] But that such a niche phenomenon has captivated political discourse for so long reveals fundamental ideological disagreements about how the internet should be used, cutting across generation and gender and race and so forth with no fixed understanding. It is a real issue that sprawls far beyond Bernie, and can’t be as simply waved off as “old people don’t get the internet” — evidence shows it’s plenty of young people, too. One person’s ingrained harassment is another’s victimless shit-talking is another’s revolutionary action is another’s technically right, but being an asshole about it, and in a world where everyone expresses their opinion all at once, there is no easy way to gain consensus.

Featuring Patricia Wolf’s new project that turns any device with a web browser and speakers into a piece of a larger sound art. Every time you invoke the Cellular Chorus page, a random audio file will be set as the browser’s default. (There are currently 64 different audio files in all.) Then let them play, all of them at once. Move the devices around the room. Don’t let any single device take prominence. Adjust the volume accordingly. Use the pulldown menu or the forward/back buttons to alternate between tracks. Note how the same file will sound different on your rattly old tablet than it does on your brand new laptop, how your humble kitchen speaker can’t hold a candle to your bleeding-edge smartphone.

CIVIC Platform is a technology environment that makes institutional data more accessible, enabling creative applications and analysis. We connect resources and a nationwide network of collaborators with complex information challenges in the public interest to build projects on CIVIC’s open technology frameworks. Our vision is for public data to be available as a vital resource for collaboration and group problem solving -- accessible programatically, in common formats, with excellent documentation, using secure and reliable technology. The technology is only part of the challenge. Custodians of this data in government, nonprofit, and academia face barriers of limited funding, access to talent, and unique compliance. We’re building the teams and systems to make it happen.

Since starting development on the Electric Zine Maker I’ve been hoarding links to interesting, unusual, strange, small, or just cute tools. This has grown to be a strong area of interest as I’ve been diving into what even makes a tool approachable… How much experimental UI or humor is too much? Do people even want tools that are goofy? What else is out there from creators making small and interesting tools that solve a variety of creative problems?

It's clear upon inspection that the media narrative about an influx of Russian or otherwise foreign bots influencing politics in America is built on flimsy data and enormous leaps of logic. Further, the narrative empowers conspiracy theorists to make essentially whatever claims they want about anyone. The bots that do exist are drops of water in the ocean of social media, but I believe that the effect of constant front-page news stirring up fear about foreign influence can have far-reaching negative effects on any democracy.

Create light-weight, mobile-friendly sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social networks -- it's all completely free!

This guide covers what’s available in the console object of Firefox and Chrome as they are often the most popular browsers for development and they do have a few differences in various aspects of the console. The new Chromium-based Edge is essentially the same as Chrome in many ways so, in most cases, the console commands will operate much the same.

Boucher has recently seemed at a loss to regain control over her career, and naive about her role in its dissolution. But Miss Anthropocene reveals an astute understanding – evidently well honed – of humanity’s worst impulses and how to appeal to them. […] Against all odds, Miss Anthropocene is a beautiful and emotionally complex album: Boucher’s continuing personal testament to creativity as resistance against destruction, and an unlikely optimistic gesture that still believes art can be a powerful force for social good. It also finally finds Boucher reconciled to her relationship with the public. On Miss Anthropocene, she is a mirror, inviting us to examine the source of our bad faith.

It’s easier than ever before to mistakenly buy a counterfeit or knockoff product online. Here’s what to do when it happens to you. --- 1. Stop using the thing 2. Write to the seller 3. File an 'A-to-z Guarantee' claim 4. Contact your credit card company 5. Write to the brand 6. Leave feedback for the seller 7. Replace what you have by finding an authorized seller See also: https://thewirecutter.com/blog/myths-about-counterfeit-products-debunked/ https://thewirecutter.com/blog/amazon-counterfeit-fake-products/

Sonic exists right on the edge of “family-friendly” and “edgy as heck,” making him a potent figure for Christian youth. --- Sonic the Hedgehog is the most perfectly crafted piece of pop culture to pull into the Christian youth demographic. In the ’90s, Sonic the Hedgehog was legitimately cool. There is also nothing immediately objectionable about his existence. He’s made of bright colors and a family-friendly design with poppy music with no lyrics to be misconstrued as corrupting. […] More than even Mario, more than Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, more than Bubsy and dozens of others, Sonic is perfectly made for the whole of the internet and all the groups milling about on it. The blue blur is a smirking spiny mammal who somehow looks just as comfortable next to a quote from the Book of Revelations as he does in an Impact-font meme declaring “KISS MY ASS, DUANE.” And God bless that hedgehog for it.

A fascinating story! Rupa’s Disco Jazz is nearly 40 years old and more relevant than ever.

By Robin Carnahan, Randy Hart, and Waldo Jaquith. Only 13% of large government software projects are successful.1 State IT projects, in particular, are often challenged because states lack basic knowledge about modern software development, relying on outdated procurement processes. Every year, the federal government matches billions of dollars in funding to state and local governments to maintain and modernize IT systems used to implement federal programs such as Medicaid, child welfare benefits, housing, and unemployment insurance. Efforts to modernize those legacy systems fail at an alarmingly high rate and at great cost to the federal budget. […] This handbook is designed for executives, budget specialists, legislators, and other "non-technical" decision-makers who fund or oversee state government technology projects that receive federal funding and implement the necessary technology to support federal programs. It can help you set these projects up for success by asking the right questions, identifying the right outcomes, and equally important, empowering you with a basic knowledge of the fundamental principles of modern software design.

The internet is built to highlight the dumb stuff famous people say. --- But when no part of our context-collapsing feedback loop is built to accommodate stakes, and considering the speed and vitriol with which Eilish was attacked, I can further understand why artists choose to distance themselves from the press in favor of doing their own. There is almost no upside to being ensnared into a controversy like this, even if it’s manufactured.

Darius Kazemi believes social networks should be run like small communities rather than massive businesses --- After speaking at a conference recently, Kazemi was approached by a group of Twitter designers who asked him how they could apply his principles to the platform. He said he didn’t think it was possible. “As long as [big social media companies] are operating in the same way—harvesting eyeballs, working on advertising revenue, and needing venture capital investment—I don’t have a lot of advice for them,” he says. What Kazemi’s proposing is something structurally different than how social media giants operate. They can scramble to change their privacy policies and try to combat hate speech, but really, they’re just too big. “I feel like they’re doing what they can at this point, but they’re almost at a dead end,” he says.

I made this blog. The irreverent “Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog Dot Com” is underwritten by a password-security company and features not-so-subtle digs at Deadspin’s bosses.

yap is an ephemeral, real-time chat room with up to six participants. your messages appear and disappear as quickly as you type them, which means unless you pay attention to what everyone says (for once), you’ll miss it. after creating a room, you can embed a piece of media (a video, a website, or something else) for your group to discuss or just shoot the sh*t.

Reverse image search engines have progressed dramatically over the past decade, with no end in sight. Along with the ever-growing amount of indexed material, a number of search giants have enticed their users to sign up for image hosting services, such as Google Photos, giving these search algorithms an endless amount of material for machine learning. On top of this, facial recognition AI is entering the consumer space with products like FindClone and may already be used in some search algorithms, namely with Yandex. There are no publicly available facial recognition programs that use any Western social network, such as Facebook or Instagram, but perhaps it is only a matter of time until something like this emerges, dealing a major blow to online privacy while also (at that great cost) increasing digital research functionality. If you skipped most of the article and are just looking for the bottom line, here are some easy-to-digest tips for reverse image searching: • Use Yandex first, second, and third, and then try Bing and Google if you still can’t find your desired result. • If you are working with source imagery that is not from a Western or former Soviet country, then you may not have much luck. These search engines are hyper-focused on these areas, and struggle for photographs taken in South America, Central America/Caribbean, Africa, and much of Asia. • Increase the resolution of your source image, even if it just means doubling or tripling the resolution until it’s a pixelated mess. None of these search engines can do much with an image that is under 200×200. • Try cropping out elements of the image, or pixelating them if it trips up your results. Most of these search engines will focus on people and their faces like a heat-seeking missile, so pixelate them to focus on the background elements. • If all else fails, get really creative: mirror your image horizontally, add some color filters, or use the clone tool on your image editor to fill in elements on your image that are disrupting searches.

Welcome to the most lovingly curated selection of Amazon and Prime alternatives anywhere. We aim to make giving up Amazon easy and to encourage more people While Amazon's monopolistic stranglehold on our economy has made it increasingly difficult to completely avoid supporting them, we've discovered that—contrary to conventional wisdom—it’s often possible to find lower prices, sometimes substantially, by shopping elsewhere. You just have to know where to look...

A free, open-source analytics tool. Use this instead of Google Analytics. GoAccess is an open source real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal in *nix systems or through your browser. It provides fast and valuable HTTP statistics for system administrators that require a visual server report on the fly.

A fast, privacy-focused commenting platform. Commento has not, does not, and will not gather your personal information to sell to advertisers, third-party trackers, or other organisations. Pay what you want. Regardless of how much you pay for Commento, you'll get access to all the features. It's that simple.