Stuff that isn’t blog-post-worthy, but may be helpful to think out loud.

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on after-hours work email

 April 29, 2014  |  1 minutes  |  173 words

The results were immediate and powerful. The employees exhibited significantly lower stress levels. Time off actually rejuvenated them: More than half said they were excited to get to work in the morning, nearly double the number who said so before the policy change. And the proportion of consultants who said they were satisfied with their jobs leaped from 49 percent to 72 percent. Most remarkably, their weekly work hours actually shrank by 11 percent—without any loss in productivity. Read More
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email  work  downtime 

UofC budget

 March 20, 2013  |  1 minutes  |  118 words

I haven't seen an official breakdown of the impact of provincial budget cuts on the UofC itself. Saw this mention in a related article on executive salary freeze: In its 2013 budget released two weeks ago, the province cut the University of Calgary's operational budget by about $32 million, or seven percent. The university states that is equal to a nine percent difference in funding when it includes a two per cent increase which was promised in the 2012 budget. Read More
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Gehl, R.W. (2013). What's on your mind? Social media monopolies and noopower

 March 11, 2013  |  3 minutes  |  483 words

Gehl, R.W. (2013). What’s on your mind? Social media monopolies and noopower. First Monday. 18(3). On noopower1 through marketing and repetition extended into ubiquitous social media: Operating within the larger political economy of advertising-supported media, it is not surprising that Facebook, Google, and Twitter mirror marketing’s penchant for experimentation and repetition. Software engineers working for these firms pore over data about what actions users most commonly take — that is, what is most often repeated within the architectures of the sites. Read More
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notes  social media  first monday  noopower 

Bassett, C. (2013). Science, delirium, lies?

 March 11, 2013  |  2 minutes  |  222 words

The potential for thinking through new re–combinations, new ways to draw up code and language into a new media politics are suggestive. But I want finally to return to the question this article began with: more or less? This text has been framed by a belief that social media monopolies ought to be disrupted — and in the name of at least two of the things they are axiomatically understood to promote (social justice, solidarity as a form of community) and do not. Read More
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notes  social media  disruption  first monday 

understatement

 March 8, 2013  |  1 minutes  |  193 words

"At the University of Calgary we have built a strong financial foundation due to the hard work of many people over the last several years," says Cannon. "We have contingency funding set aside, and we will continue to work to find operational efficiencies and grow revenue. We will continue to move toward our Eyes High goals. Nevertheless, a budget reduction of this size means that we have some difficult decisions to make in the coming months. Read More
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Post-secondary budgets cuts a surprise, U of C president says - Calgary - CBC News

 March 8, 2013  |  1 minutes  |  64 words

Operational grants for Alberta colleges and universities are being slashed by about $147 million for the next year - almost seven per cent. University of Calgary president Elizabeth Cannon told CBC News the university was expecting a two per cent increase for each of the next three years. via Post-secondary budgets cuts a surprise, U of C president says - Calgary - CBC News.
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Alberta budget 2013 marked by deficit spending, increased debt | Canadian Politics | Canada | News | National Post

 March 8, 2013  |  1 minutes  |  100 words

Although its economy is still strong, growth is high and unemployment is low, a decline in bitumen prices brought on by decreased pipeline capacity has thrown the province's finances off the rails. Alison Redford's government announced it would cut spending and borrow billions to cope with a multi-billion-dollar shortfall. via Alberta budget 2013 marked by deficit spending, increased debt | Canadian Politics | Canada | News | National Post. (also, the National Post's crazy " Read More
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Smari McCarthy on freedom

 July 4, 2012  |  1 minutes  |  158 words

From a great resource on P2P infrastructure, linked by @sleslie: @brlamb I thought you'd like that one. cf bit.ly/L0x7hO for a list of emerging p2p architected projects — Scott Leslie (@sleslie) July 4, 2012 Freedom requires infrastructure. A man who has no tools to acquire his necessities of life is a slave to his necessities. Given those tools, he becomes a slave to the labour required to fruitfully use them. Read More
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quote  personal cyberinfrastructure  reclaim  p2p 

Not Crazy Just Resentful: On Being Car Free by Choice in Cleveland

 March 20, 2012  |  2 minutes  |  298 words

Instead, here's a plea to car-having readers who do not wish to live as I do: understand that your car is a luxury. Understand that when you get in your car to run a ten-minute errand, the same errand might take someone without a car two hours on the bus. When you turn your key in the ignition, please feel the same sense of wonder and good fortune that I feel every time I take my dirty clothes down to the basement instead of hauling them to the laundromat: what a lucky person I am to not only live in a world where someone was smart enough to invent this thing that makes my life easier, but that I, by some additional happenstance of good fortune, can have one. Read More
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so much for avoiding spammers...

 March 18, 2012  |  1 minutes  |  18 words

got this awesome spam comment overnight, in response to my brief post describing why I'm trying comments again.

aside