Nine Theses on Wikipedia: A Special Feature
I submit these nine theses to Wikipedia’s community and to the world. I do this, as Martin Luther said when he posted his famous 95 theses, “Out of love for the truth and the desire to elucidate it.”
My Blog
-
Are we becoming indifferent to freedom and democracy?
Originally posted December 19, 2015. Reposting. More relevant than ever. I know, I know: That title sounds ridiculously click-baity. But if you’ll look at my blog, you’ll see that I don’t really go in for click-bait titles. Unfortunately, I mean it quite literally. It’s an enormous problem that we aren’t talking about enough. And I…
5 comments on Are we becoming indifferent to freedom and democracy?6 minutes -
Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
Update (May 15, 2019): This post was linked and its author quoted as a source in this Fast Company article on the same subject. Where’s my webcam’s off switch? Have you ever noticed that your webcam doesn’t have an “off” switch? I looked on Amazon, and I couldn’t find any webcams for sale that had…
6 minutes -
How I chose a NAS
A network-attached storage (NAS) device is your own Internet server—your very own “cloud”! I decided to get one for my own reasons. But which, and configured how, exactly? Here’s what I came up with for myself. After dropping Dropbox, and then ditching Resilio Sync, I decided to get a NAS. To pull this off, it…
19 minutes -
BBC claims my career illustrates the value of a humanities degree
I was quoted by the BBC explaining the purpose of the liberal arts: The BBC article quotes this 5-year-old post from the very blog you are now reading. A few days earlier, I was on the BBC’s list of “star performers” with humanities degrees, a sidebar of their article explaining “Why ‘worthless’ humanities degrees may…
1 minute -
-
Cloud smackdown: NAS vs. Resilio Sync vs. Zero-Knowledge Cloud!
In my ongoing effort to lock down my cyber-life, I jettisoned Dropbox three weeks ago, and I’m quite happy I did. But I’m not done with the reconfiguration. So, if you have the patience and credulity, you may listen in while an amateur deliberates about the choices… People more expert about this stuff than I…
8 minutes -
The Meaning of Life
…just in case you haven’t figured it out yet. In this old answer, which I still believe and endorse wholeheartedly, I integrate many of popular answers—happiness or flourishing, meaningful work, benefiting mankind, love and family, and integrity—into a single narrative. Three parts below:
1 minute -
Gay activists and Hollywood liberals vs. traditional Muslims vs. free speech liberals
Here’s a richly ironic slice of our strange, sad old world in 2019. Ellen Degeneres is (quite rightly) protesting the Sultan of Brunei for introducing the death penalty (stoning to death) for gay sex. He’s also executing people for adultery, but Ellen doesn’t mention that: To this, a reply was posted by an account, “Jihyo”…
5 minutes
Support the Knowledge Standards Foundation:
/larrysanger- An open reply to Jimmy Wales. He's wrong: Grokipedia won't necessarily be biased; and, obviously, the Trump article is badly biased. First of a series of replies to Jimmy's remarks in this Reason exposé: https://reason.com/video/2026/02/23/can-you-trust-wikipedia/
- I invited my X peeps to ask me questions and then "like" the various questions, and I would upload the answers in video form. Here it is! Christian identity – 1:10 "Call no man teacher" – 9:25 Role of government – 15:45 Authority & resistance – 19:15 Wikipedia labor – 24:20 Net value of Wikipedia […]