Standardization is an amazing and terrible thing. Standards are easy to appreciate when they benefit you, and when standards aren't present, things get pretty awful, both immediately and enduringly.

1/
Think of Australia's "mixed gauge muddle" - a continent-wide standardization fail in which rail gauges abruptly shift, meaning that cargo and passengers have to be transferred from one car/engine to another.

nrm.org.au/assets/pdfdocs…

2/
A century and a half on, the muddle still isn't resolved (though there's finally real progress in the form of tearing up and replacing thousands of kilometers of rail) (yowch).

3/
My whole career in tech, first as a founder, and then as an activist, has been spent fighting fuckery in standards orgs, as giant companies seek to enshrine a permanent advantage, at public expense, by subverting standardizaiton.

4/
In fact, as far as I can tell, today may be the 20th anniversary of my first foray into standards-based fuckery!

web.archive.org/web/2000010100…

5/
Twenty years of standards-body meetings has given me a healthy respect for the good work of standardization, and a deep and abiding trauma from standards processes that go awry due to greed, personal hubris, or dysfunctional personalities.

6/
Which is why I laughed aloud and then wept a little when I happened upon this nugget today: Oct 14 is World Standards Day, according to the @IECStandards, @isostandards and @ITU.

gmb.21x2.net/archive/202010…

7/
But not according to @ansidotorg, which observes World Standards WEEK, Oct 19-23, along with @nist.

ansi.org/news-and-event…

Oy.

eof/

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More from @doctorow

20 Oct
John Astin and Carolyn Jones as Gomez and Morticia Addams in The Addams Family S1E10: “Wednesday Leaves Home” bonniegrrl.tumblr.com/post/632487163…
John Astin and Carolyn Jones as Gomez and Morticia Addams in The Addams Family S1E10: “Wednesday Leaves Home” bonniegrrl.tumblr.com/post/632487163…
John Astin and Carolyn Jones as Gomez and Morticia Addams in The Addams Family S1E10: “Wednesday Leaves Home” bonniegrrl.tumblr.com/post/632487163…
Read 5 tweets
19 Oct
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Turning plastics into carbon nanotubes; Kids reason, adults rationalize; Someone Comes to Town Part 19; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2020/10/19/nan…

#Pluralistic

1/ Image
Today's Attack Surface Lecture: Cyberpunk and Post-Cyberpunk with Bruce Sterling and Christopher Brown eventcombo.com/e/Virtual-even…

Full schedule: attacksurface.com

2/ Image
Turning plastics into carbon nanotubes: Promising new research!



3/ Image
Read 18 tweets
19 Oct
Today on my podcast, part 19 of my serial reading of my 2006 novel SOMEONE COMES TO TOWN, SOMEONE LEAVES TOWN, a book Gene Wolfe called "a glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read."

craphound.com/news/2020/10/1…

1/ Image
Here's where to get the other parts in the series:

craphound.com/podcast/?s=%22…

And here's a feed link for the whole podcast:

feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podca…

2/
If you need a direct MP3 link, I've got you covered (hosting courtesy of the @internetarchive, they'll host your stuff for free forever!):

archive.org/download/Cory_…

3/
Read 4 tweets
19 Oct
This is the second and final week of "The Attack Surface lectures," a series of 8 bookstore hosted virtual events exploring themes in the third Little Brother book, Attack Surface.

read.macmillan.com/torforge/cory-…

1/ Image
On Weds, Oct 21, the theme is "Little Revolutions," AKA writing radical fiction for kids, with guests @TochiTrueStory and @BCMorrow; you see, Little Brother and its sequel, Homeland, were young adult novels, while Attack Surface is a novel for adults.

2/
That fact, and the upcoming event, have me thinking about the difference between fiction for teens and for adults. @Litquake were kind enough to publish my working-through of this thinking in a new essay called "Kids Use Reason, Adults Rationalize."

lithub.com/cory-doctorow-…

3/
Read 18 tweets
19 Oct
Between research about microplastics in the environment, China ceasing plastic recycling, and revelations about Big Oil's decades of disinformation about the recyclability of plastic overall, I've been feeling a sense of impending, plasticky doom.

pluralistic.net/2020/09/14/the…

1/ Image
But every now and again, I'll get a little cause for hope, some news story about an enzyme or catalytic process that can turn waste plastic into something useful without creating untold environmental wreckage.

2/
Scientific papers like "Microwave-initiated catalytic deconstruction of plastic waste into hydrogen and high-value carbons" in @nature are incredibly promising!

nature.com/articles/s4192…

3/
Read 8 tweets
19 Oct
Batman (1966), “The Bookworm Turns” gameraboy1.tumblr.com/post/632405537…
Batman (1966), “The Bookworm Turns” gameraboy1.tumblr.com/post/632405537…
Batman (1966), “The Bookworm Turns” gameraboy1.tumblr.com/post/632405537…
Read 4 tweets

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