FOSS and Crafts

A podcast about free software, free culture, and making things together.

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63 episodes
Updated Mar 3, 2024
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Episodes63

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Mar 6, 2022
42: Learning the Sewing Machine
Christine finally overcomes her fear of the sewing machine and we talk about Christine and Morgan's respective experiences learning it, and how you can pick it up too! Links: Morgan's article on Basic Sewing Patterns. Includes pictures of the dicebag and skirt! (More tutorials coming soon!) You probably know what a sewing machine is, but isn't there always more to learn? A Cultural Perspective on Gender Diversity in Computing and Building an Effective Computer Science Student Organization: The Carnegie Mellon Women@SCSAction Plan (On that note, when Christine was in college she attended a presentation by Lenore Blum about women in CS, which is where the potluck anecdote comes from.)
Feb 5, 2022
41: Learning Emacs
Morgan finally overcomes her fear of Emacs and we talk about Morgan and Christine's respective experiences learning it, and how you can pick it up too! Our talks tomorrow at FOSDEM's Declarative and Minimalistic Computing room: Lisp but Beautiful; Lisp for Everyone Spritely Goblins Comes to Guile Switching capslock and ctrl stuff: (it's a great idea even if you don't use Emacs; many keyboards used to have ctrl key where capslock now is, and much advanced program use benefits from keyboard shortcuts): Switching on GNU/Linux Switching on Windows 10 & 11 Switching on OSX On Guix: (keyboard-layout "us" #:options '("caps:ctrl_modifier" "shift:both_capslock")) in your system configuration both makes capslock a ctrl and allows you to press both shift keys at once to enable capslock behavior (should you want such a thing) And actually there's a whole EmacsWiki page about it Links: Emacs! Git and Magit Org-Mode Spacemacs Mousemacs Emacs Themes… find one that's right for you! The Emacs lisp reference manual emacsconf Org-mode and Org-Roam for Scholars and Researchers Sacha Chua, whose blog is full of awesome emacs and emacs news posts, and who also releases lots of great videos about Emacs! Emacs Rocks! Episode 14: Digital Humanities Workshops Episode 15: Scribble and the Open Document Format mu4e, ERC, crdt.el (video)… many more emacs tools mentioned, not all linked! Trying to be comprehensive would result in a trip to the M-x doctor for sure… wireworld-el, Christine's (minimalist) implementation of the wireworld cellular automata (cellular automata circuits!) And yes, it turns out you CAN annotate PDFs in emacs, using the pdf-tools package!
Jan 10, 2022
40: Interdisciplinarity and FOSS (SeaGL Keynote)
Morgan and Christine talk about the skills they’ve learned in their humanities backgrounds and how those have translated into their work within FOSS communities and projects. They’ll then discuss the benefits of seeking out varied skillsets within your communities, the value of looking at problems from multiple lenses, and how to use all of the tools we’ve got to promote our projects. (This episode is the audio from our SeaGL keynote of the same name!) Oh yeah, and as we said in the intro, the TinyNES campaign is going strong (see our last episode)! We met the minimum goal which means it's happening! Still a couple of weeks left (at time of writing) to get yourself an open hardware NES, but over half of the "genuine chip" ones are now sold out, so get yours while you can! Links: SeaGL, and a video of our keynote of the same name Spritely Okay here's Christine's old comic Lingo from nearly two decades ago, don't judge too harshly pls Emacs LaTeX Racket and Racket's picture language MediaGoblin Digital Humanities Workshops episode Music Production on Guix System Jessica Tallon and Spritely interview FOSS Stitch episode of F&C, and ih! The Liberated Pixel Cup Deb Nicholson Urchn Studios
Dec 17, 2021
39: The TinyNES: An Open Hardware "Tiny Nostalgia Evocation Square"
Dan Gilbert of Tall Dog joins us to talk about the Tiny Nostalgia Evocation Square (or TinyNES for short)! The TinyNES is an open hardware system compatible with the compatible with original Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom cartridges and controllers. Instead of being just an emulator or FPGA-based implementation, the TinyNES uses the original 6502-derived chips and a custom circuit board, preserving and carrying forward computing history! Oh yeah, and it's also running a crowdfunding campaign, so you can order your own and support open hardware in the best way possible: by playing video games! By the way, we mentioned that FOSS & Crafts Studios would be launching its first collaboration... we're helping to run the crowdfunding campaign on this one (and couldn't be more excited about it)! Links: TinyNES crowdfunding campaign (launch announcement, sources will be on tinynes.com when campaign succeeds) Tall Dog, Dan's company (they do some other cool open hardware stuff too, check 'em out!) Tall Dog's statement on supporting open source The 6502 chip and its specially modified version for the Nintendo Enetertainment System, the Ricoh 2A03 FreeCAD and KiCAD Visual6502 Nova the Squirrel Everdrive (proprietary hardware, but lets you run custom ROMs, including Nova) Robot Finds Kitten on the c64! Written in Racket!
Nov 28, 2021
38: Spritely Updates! (November 2021)
It's time for some updates on Spritely, the project Christine founded to advance decentralized networking technology! A lot has happened since our episode about Spritely from last year (which is really where Spritely got its main public announcement)! Most notably, Jessica Tallon has joined the project thanks to a generous grant from NLNet and NGI Zero! But there's a lot more that has happened too, so listen in! ALSO! As mentioned at the end of this episode, starting with the NEXT episode, we'll begin signing off every episode by thanking donors to FOSS & Crafts Studios' Patreon! By donating you both support this podcast AND Christine's work on Spritely! Links: The Spritely Project FOSS & Crafts Studios' Patreon! Donate to show up in the thank-yous for upcoming episodes! The previous "What is Spritely?" of this podcast Jessica Tallon joins with a grant from NLNet/NGI Zero! Plus an interview! Spritely Brux, Spritely's identity and trust management framework, which Jessica is working on (and Morgan dressed as for the costume contest) Goblin-Chat (mostly a prototype to demonstrate the underlying networking tech) Spritely Goblins, Spritely's distributed programming environment framework (and which Christine dressed as for the costume contest) (code, documentation) Work in progress port of Goblins on Guile! It's getting close! Spritely Aurie, Spritely's security-preserving runtime serialization and upgrade framework Safe Serialization Under Mutual Suspicion by Mark S. Miller Pickling, Uneval, Unapply by Jonathan Rees OCapN, the new generation of CapTP and friends (see also What is CapTP, and what does it enable?) Coroutines, Goblins' scoped suport for them. As for why they aren't prioritized in Goblins, read up on re-entrancy attacks, including this ancient e-lang email thread Goblins' integration with Racket's asynchronous programming stuff via sync/pr (will be documented in the next tutorial version) SeaGL, where Morgan and Christine keynoted... and performed in the costume contest as the Spritely Brux and Goblins mascots!
Nov 3, 2021
37: Salt on Resilience in FOSS
Wm Salt Hale joins us to talk about his dissertation on resilience in FOSS communities (especially after crisis events), the kind of impacts founder decisions can have on long-term community development, especially as seen through reactions to software vulnerabilities and license decisions. Also! Salt mentions that we're keynoting at SeaGL this weekend! It's an online conference, so maybe we'll see you there! Links: Wm Salt Hale Salt's master's thesis: Resilience in Free/Libre/Open Source Software Community Data Science Collective Benjamin Mako Hill Wikipedia article on Heartbleed Debian Champion, Kaylea. 2019. “Production Misalignment: A Threat to Public Knowledge.” Master of Arts Thesis, Seattle, Washington: University of Washington. Pandas Scrapy Harvard Dataverse Snowdrift SeaGL
Sep 11, 2021
36: Topics of interest!
Lightning round! Morgan and Christine blast through a bunch of snack-sized topics they're currently interested in, ranging from an actual FOSS video game made for the NES, to "Free Soft Wear" clothing, to compiler towers! above image from Morgan's blogpost on "free soft wear" Links: This episode's title was inspired by Ian Bicking's 2009 PyCon talk, "Topics of Interest", but it's bitrotted off the internet so we can't link you to that one. Boooooo! Nova the Squirel by... Nova the Squirrel Source code! upcoming SNES sequel! You might need an NES emulator... Mednafen is good and can play games on a lot of systems Mark Bitman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" First edition and no I'm not linking you to the second edition which is good but not as deeply instructive Elena "of Valhalla"'s blogpost about tie-on pockets see also see also (see also) Episode 17: Gardening, from seedling to seasoned Guile's compiler tower Kat Walsh's awesome necklace she made during Hack & Craft Jim's Big Ego's song Mix Tape from the album They're Everywhere! If you like this song, you might really like the album free* which Christine would argue tells a collective narrative very relevant to this podcast Robo Rally! Program robots! Morgan's blogpost on "free soft wear" (term coined by the great Kat Walsh!) Morgan's tablet weaving pattern for the "html strap" (Partly inspired by this pattern, but honestly mostly different. Bonus question for the reader: what constitutes a derivative work for weaving patterns?) Eat the Weeds is a great resource to learn about what kinds of weeds you can eat, and which ones you can't, but even then, be careful. Really, seriously, be careful. Poison hemlock looks almost just like its more innocent cousin Queen Anne's lace except that it will kill you quickly and painfully. There's lots of great wild stuff out there, but be careful, and maybe take a class or instructions or help from someone who knows what they're talking about, or only eat the stuff that's generally agreed upon as "there's nothing dangerous you could mistake this for". And even then, be sure!
Aug 30, 2021
35: Women and Wool Working in the Ancient Roman Empire, Part 2
In Part 1 of Women and Wool Working in the Ancient Roman Empire, we discussed the practical matters of textile production in domestic and commercial contexts. In this second episode, we look at the performative ways that textile production was used to construct women's identities. This includes the incorporation of textile tools and production into rites of passage such as marriage, childbirth, and death as a symbol of the virtuous matron. We further discuss religious use and association of textile production through the stories of the Fates, Arachne, and the Virgin Mary. We then come around to weave the rest of the narrative together: could the piece that fits in the women-shaped hole of textile production in ancient Rome be... women? This episode is dedicated in loving memory of Laura Callahan-Hazard and Sigrid Steinbock, both enthusiastic supporters of Morgan's dissertation, themselves both textile artists, and who both had wanted to read Morgan's dissertation but left this world too soon. Links: Morgan's dissertation Episode 34: Women and Wool Working in the Ancient Roman Empire, Part 1 Trinkl, Elisabeth. 2004. "Zum Wirkungskreis einer kleinasiatischen Matrona anhand ausgewählter Funde aus dem Hanghaus 2 in Ephesos." In Jahreshefte des Österreichischen archäologischen Instituts in Wien. 73:281-303 Roman version of the Arachne Myth by Ovid, The Metamorphoses VI Content Warning: suicide, oblique mentions to rape, gods being jerks to mortals Roman description of the three fates or Parcae by Catullus, 64, scroll down to line 305. Roman version of the Europa Myth by Ovid, The Metamorphoses, II, 833-875 Content Warning: abduction, gods taking other forms to seduce women, gods being jerks to mortals A summary of the mythology of Leda and the Swan, very brief Roman summary in Hyginus, Fabulae 77, scroll down to § 77. Content Warning: rape, gods taking other forms to seduce women, gods being jerks to mortals Roman version of the Danae Myth by Hyginus, Fabulae 63, scroll down to § 63. Content Warning: rape, gods taking other forms to seduce women, gods being jerks to mortals
Aug 19, 2021
34: Women and Wool Working in the Ancient Roman Empire, Part 1
In the first of two episodes on Morgan's dissertation we introduce the topic of women and textile production in the Roman Empire. Scholars have often viewed the domestic and commercial divide in textile production along gendered lines, associating domestic production with women in the context of the ideal of feminine virtue and commercial production with men working in centralized production centers. Here we use the cottage industry model to contextualize the role of women’s labor in the Roman textile industry, exploring the links between domestic production and commercial distribution. Links: Morgan's dissertation Episode 26: Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber, an academic journey talks about the process of getting a PhD (from Morgan's personal experiences, your mileage may vary) Episode 3: Textile production and a nostalgic past discusses Augustan propaganda and textile production and gives a summary of the stages of textile production from sheep to sweater. The two Augustan versions of the Lucretia myth by Ovid, Fasti 2.722-751 and Livy, History of Rome 1.57.9 (Content Warning: rape, suicide, revolution) Another instance of a woman's labor from Ovid, this time a more modest country woman who must weave cloaks etc before winter to protect her family from the cold: Ovid, Fasti 4.687-714. Hitchner, Robert Bruce. 2012. "Olive Production and the Roman Economy: The Case for Intensive Growth in the Roman Empire." In The Ancient Economy, Taylor and Francis. Partial text available on Google Scholar. Barber, Elizabeth. 1994. Women’s Work: the First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times. New York : Norton. Lena Larsson Lovén has written extensively on both the iconography of textile production and the performative relationships between women and wool work in the Roman Empire.
Aug 1, 2021
33: Which Color Should We Paint This Episode?
In this episode, we discuss "bikeshedding" (also known as the Law of Triviality), the famous proposition that complex contributions and ideas (such as plans to build a nuclear power plant), often of high impact and importance, move forward with relatively little interference, whereas simple contributions and conversations (such as which color to paint a bikeshed) get caught up in committee and high-volume debate, and how this tends to impact FOSS communities. We do a (slightly dramatic) reading of the original email, hold a conversation about it, and then come back to the topic with a twist right after everyone (including ourselves) thought the episode was over. Links: The original bikeshed email hosted at shed.bike But wait! Use bikeshed.org instead! Wait! You should link to the white background page! No, the green one! No, blue! No, purple! Poul-Henning Kamp's page on the subject But wait! Brett Glass (and others) respond! yourlogicalfallacyis.com, but be sure to read about The Fallacy Fallacy before you start linking to these to try to win an argument on the internet
Jul 20, 2021
32: Happy FOSS & Crafts anniversary!
Chris and Morgan reflect on one year of FOSS & Crafts, as well as announcing... FOSS & Crafts Studios! Links: FOSS & Crafts Studios on Patreon (still also the right place to support Chris Lemmer-Webber's FOSS work) Thank you to our guests: Nick and LP, Zack, Kate and Frankie, Sebastian, Bassam, Tristan, Sumana, Mallory, Vicky, Steve, Elana and Katie, and Steel. 3: Textile production and a nostalgic past 28: FOSS Stitch w/ Elana Hashman and Katie McLaughlin 5: Milkytracker, chiptunes, and that intro music 22: Crafting the past… or trying to 9: What is Spritely? 11: An Ethics of Agency 20: Hygiene for a computing pandemic 26: Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber, an academic journey 1: Collaborative Storytelling with Dice 6: What Escaped from the Demonic Z.O.O.O.O. (part 1) and (part 2) 10: The What Goblins Saga, Chapter 1: What Are Goblins? and Chapter 2: Trees, Friends, and Static 25: Governance, Leadership, and Founder's Syndrome 30: Gender and Sexuality, A Personal Perspective 23: Nerdout! Fuzzy and crisp systems and 27: Nerdout! Game Design and Social Systems Shrini's toots about the Hack and Craft:Post1 Post 2 *We did extrapolate a lot more than the posts say ;)
Jul 11, 2021
31: Talking Pressbooks and OER with Steel Wagstaff
Steel Wagstaff joins us to talk about their work at Pressbooks, a FOSS based book publishing suite particularly focused on Open Educational Resources (OER), as well as talking about OER generally, open access, and education as a fundamental human right! Pressbooks (git repos) Pressbooks Directory Steel Wagstaff's website, Twitter account 5Rs of open content UN Sustainable development goals [Cape Town Declaration (September 2007)](https://www.capetowndeclaration.org/read-the-declaration + https://www.capetowndeclaration.org/cpt10/) Charles Reznikoff, First There is the Need (Santa Barbara, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1977) Achieving the Dream's Art History I, by Associate Professor Emeritus Bruce Schwabach of Herkimer Community College. (CC BY!) Open Music Theory (which was also mentioned in Episode 5: Milkytracker, chiptunes, and that intro music) (CC BY-SA!) Fundamentals, Function, and Form SMuFL: Standard Music Font Layout Inclusive Spectrums ("This exhibition presents the preliminary major research project ideas of OCAD University’s Inclusive Design 2019/2021 cohort.") (CC BY!) White Jaw by Laurel Bastian Rebus Foundation ScholarLed Radical Open Access Manifeold (GPLv3!) editoria Knowledge Futures Group PubPub Scalar
Jun 28, 2021
30: Gender and Sexuality, A Personal Perspective
On this episode, Chris talks about being nonbinary trans-femme and Morgan talks about being demisexual (and briefly about both being pansexual) and how they have both navigated these experiences in their lives and relationship. Links: There are a lot of resources on the internet about being transgender and nonbinary, and opinions about most of them tend to run strong. That said, Transgender Map has good resources explaining many concerns for those who are transgender or nonbinary, are trying to figure out if they are transgender or nonbinary, and support materials for family and friends. demisexuality.org WebMD article on demisexuality. Note that despite what Chris says on the episode, the page itself does not mention narrative components of demisexual attraction, but rather emotional ones. The extrapolation of application to narrative aspects came more from Morgan and Chris talking through Morgan's manifestation of those aspects. Chris's "Alpha Release" post about being nonbinary trans-femme with pictures, on the fediverse and on Twitter (and later update). (These were the first pictures Chris took in a more directly "femme" gender expression and do not reflect the current state of the development branch.) Morgan's coming out thread about being demisexual, on the fediverse and on Twitter. That sketchover self-portrait that Chris mentioned (overlaid over photo)
Jun 12, 2021
29: Building Blocks for User Freedom
Any skillset has basic foundational elements or building blocks. In this recording of Chris and Morgan's talk at ÖzgürKon, we discuss the way that access to those basic elements is limited in modern society. This can be seen in any number of fields from actual building blocks increasingly being sold in sets to make specific toys as opposed to generic buckets of blocks that allow kids to develop their creativity to the way that access to the source code and hardware in our technology is increasingly restricted. Also! In this episode we announce Hack and Craft, a new companion "stitch and bitch" style usergroup to FOSS & Crafts. (Any crafting is welcome... including computer programming, as long as it's a fun project!) Feel free to bring your own project and hang out at inagural meeting on June 19th! Links: ÖzgürKon 2021
May 23, 2021
28: FOSS Stitch w/ Elana Hashman and Katie McLaughlin
Elana Hashman (Python Software Foundation Fellow and open source hacker) and Katie McLaughlin (Python Software Foundation Fellow and crafter) join us to talk about F(L)OSS meets embroidery and cross stitching (FOSS stitching?) including a significant conversation about FLOSS vs embroidery floss. Much is also conversed about ih, a project started by Katie with contributions from Elana, a python project which helps generate embroidery patterns from images. Links: ih! ih presented at PyCon 2019: Katie McLaughlin - A Right Stitch-up: Creating embroidery patterns with Pillow ih, as a service DMC (Dollfus-Mieg et Compagnie), the textile company mentioned several times Python Pillow (continuation of PIL, the Python Imaging Library) Linux Conf AU, which has had a lot of "stitch and bitch" type events: 2018 art & tech miniconf, 2019 knit, crochet, sew BoF, 2020 creative arts miniconf Cross Stitch Carpentry ginger coons' open color standard work freieFarbe Open Color initiative, appears to be CC BY 4.0 Stitching patterns really are a kind of domain specific visual programming language (see the response, "What is this, assembler?") Core rope memory was usually hand-woven by women in early computing days (more) Still here? How about some extra images? Morgan's needlework of an alpaca, made with alpaca fiber: Kirby quilt that Morgan did for a babby:
May 6, 2021
27: Nerdout! Game Design and Social Systems
Steve is back, talking with Chris about viewing social systems through the lens of game design. How do game mechanics, uncertainty, and narrative map onto governance, society, and citizen participation? Thanks to Kate and Ricky for participating in a pre-show discussion which generated many of the ideas explored in this episode. Links: The first F&C Nerdout episode on "Fuzzy and crisp systems", in case you wanted to hear more of the Chris & Steve conversation dynamic F&C Episode 4: The Eight Kinds of Fun, and the paper it was inspired from, MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research Veil of Ignorance thought experiment by philosopher John Rawls Comeback Mechanic Power Grid The Ludology podcast... if you like this episode, you'll probably like Ludology. Ludology does a "Biography of a Board Game" on Candyland Ludology Episode 3 - Catch the Leader which includes the first critique of Power Grid Ludology Episode 3A - The Defense of Power Grid Conway's Game of Life Emergence (the broad umbrella which includes "emergent behavior") How cats get drunk in Dwarf Fortress, and why its creators haven't figured out time travel (yet) (Note that we cut off the story before it got sad in the episode... the following link tells the full story, including the sad end to this particular form of emergent behavior) Game Analysis: Love Letter Apparently the game about the soldiers gaining PTSD and getting drunk was called "Clockwork Empires" (note, another proprietary game and we haven't played it; it's an empire-colonialist-expansion game, but maybe a bit more consciously so... we don't know really though). This is the closest article we could find about the behavior but it doesn't seem to be the full interview Steve remembered. Note that Steve had a followup email saying: "Also, a detail I apparently forgot is that the alcohol helped them forget (temporarily?) their lost friends, which feels important..."
Apr 23, 2021
26: Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber, an academic journey
Remember how we've been saying the entire run of this show "Morgan's hard at work at finishing her PhD dissertation?" Well guess what! She finally got it handed in and defended it... Morgan is now officially Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber! (She still has to wrap up a few edits but hey it's official now!) Morgan walks us through her experiences of the graduate school process, from applying (and re-applying) to schools, to a masters program, to a PhD program, and the many fun steps, bumps, and adventures in-between. Not much in terms of show notes this episode, but here are some pictures! Congratulations again, Morgan!
Mar 28, 2021
25: Governance, Leadership, and Founder's Syndrome
What story does an institution tell about itself? To whom does a governance structure and its leadership serve? To what degree are leaders within a governing institution subject or exempt to the rules of the governed? We use this framework to discuss the unexpected announcement of Richard Stallman's re-appointment to the FSF board, by the FSF board. Content warning: depression and sexual harassment are both mentioned in this episode. Links: Founder's Syndrome (Wikipedia article) Statement on the Re-election of Richard Stallman to the FSF Board by the EFF An open letter to remove Richard M. Stallman from all leadership positions Microblog post expressing lack of foreknowledge of announcement by FSF staff and Libreplanet volunteers Not The First Time We Tried (FSF, GNU, RMS, etc.) by Sumana Harihareswara Kat Walsh's statement of making arguments in opposition to RMS's reinstatement to the board (Twitter version) and announcement of resignation (Twitter version) The Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman by Benjamin Mako Hill, longtime FOSS advocate, former member of FSF board Programming is Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker Ethic Documentation of accusations of women being harassed by RMS Political cartoon between RMS and Chris from when Chris was in college Re: Bug in emacs tetris GNU Emacs and XEmacs 2018 Letter to the board in response to RMS's behavior and the board's lack of response Marianne Corvellec’s Libre Planet 2017 talk “The GNU Philosophy: Ethics beyond ethics” where RMS says "I'm the president of the Free Software Foundation... so I don’t have to follow the rules"
Mar 12, 2021
24: Get Organized!
Morgan returns from handing in her dissertation! Very topically, Morgan and Chris talk about organizational systems which can help you stay on track... even when you're working from home or trying to finish your PhD during a global pandemic. Links: The Hipster PDA, including the original semi-satirical announcement post. Org Mode, the world's greatest organizational and outliner system (or so claims Chris), if you're an Emacs user anyway (honestly, Org Mode is a great reason to pick up Emacs) Locating purveyors of excessively priced office supplies left as an exercise for only a very particular kind of reader.
Feb 13, 2021
23: Nerdout! Fuzzy and crisp systems
Morgan is in the final crunch of finishing her dissertation draft, so Chris's brother Steve Webber joins us for a special "nerdout": analyzing the dual nature of fuzzy vs crisp systems! From physics to biology, from programming languages to human languages, the duality of fuzzy and crisp is everpresent. Yes, this really is what Chris and Steve sound like whenever they get together... Links: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (but this version looks better on the web) and the 1980s lectures (also on Internet Archive but the YouTube uploads are more recent and higher quality) Lisp and Scheme Lambda Calculus The Little Schemer The Most Beautiful Program Ever Written by William Byrd Lisp 1.5 programmer's manual, which also now has a lovely reprint for sale (see Appendix B for Lisp in Lisp, albeit in m-expression rather than s-expression format... m-expressions never took on) Javascript: The Good Parts The narcissism of small differences To Mock a Mockingbird by Raymond Smullyan. Also, presumably not the link Steve had shared with Chris back in the day (but maybe it was?) but here's a more math'y breakdown of some of the ideas, To Dissect a Mockingbird: A Graphical Notation for the Lambda Calculus with Animated Reduction Duality (mathematics) Fuzzy and crisp sets Neats and scruffies (see also our previous episode about machine learning) Alan Watts' lecture on "prickles and goo" Carcinisation (convergent evolution on "crabs") Lisp vs APL: "Mud and Diamonds" Guix Jonathan Rees's website Lojban, and here's a pretty good Lojban intro The infamous Lojban "bear goo" debate