Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1951, and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.  She earned her BA from the University of New Mexico and MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.  Harjo draws on First Nation storytelling and histories, as well as feminist and social justice poetic traditions, and frequently incorporates indigenous myths, symbols, and values into her writing.  Her poetry inhabits landscapes—the Southwest, Southeast, but also Alaska and Hawaii—and centers around the need for remembrance and transcendence.  Her work is often autobiographical, informed by the natural world, and above all preoccupied with survival and the limitations of language.  She was named U.S. poet laureate in June 2019.  In addition to writing poetry, Harjo is a noted teacher, saxophonist, and vocalist.  She performed for many years with her band, Poetic Justice, and currently tours with Arrow Dynamics.  She has released four albums of original music, including Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears (2010), and won a Native American Music Award for Best Female Artist of the Year in 2009.  She has taught creative writing at the University of New Mexico and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana and is currently Professor and Chair of Excellence in Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Harjo is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/joy-harjo



What are writers reading?  See http://whatarewritersreading.blogspot.com/

gist vs. jist  A gist is the main part of something, usually used with a direct object.  It can also be the ground for legal action.  Gist comes from the French word gist.  Often misspelled as jist. 

https://grammarist.com/spelling/gist-vs-jist/



E.V. Odle's 1923 novel The Clockwork Man may be the first cyborg story ever published.  The Clockwork Man, a cyborg, suffers from a glitch that causes a "fall into" the year 1923, from the distant future.  He accidentally lands pretty much directly in the middle of a cricket match, which gives you a sense of the weird satirical tone that Odle employs throughout.  Annalee Newitz  https://io9.gizmodo.com/now-you-can-read-the-very-first-cyborg-novel-ever-1367701899



A cyborg, short for "cybernetic organism", is a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts.  The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline.  While cyborgs are commonly thought of as mammals, including humans, they might also conceivably be any kind of organism.  D. S. Halacy's Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman in 1965 featured an introduction which spoke of a "new frontier" that was "not merely space, but more profoundly the relationship between 'inner space' to 'outer space'--a bridge . . . between mind and matter."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg



If you have Netflix on your Android phone, watch out:  The streaming service might be watching your every move.  In late July 2019, a security researcher noticed that Netflix’s Android app wanted access to his physical activity data, prompting The Next Web‘s Ivan Mehta to conduct a quick investigation.  Not only did Mehta confirm that Netflix was accessing the activity data on his Pixel 3 XL, but found that the app was doing so without asking for permission first.  But why?  In a statement, Netflix confirmed that it was conducting a test “to see how we can improve video playback quality when a member is on the go,” and claimed that physical activity data was only being tracked for a small number of users.  “Only some accounts are in the test, and we don’t currently have plans to roll it out,” Netflix said.  The common consensus seems to be that Netflix is using a feature introduced in Android Q, the newest Android operating system, to improve streaming and buffering for users while they’re traveling.  Ostensibly, Android Q’s new physical activity recognition hook is designed to track step counts or “classify the user’s physical activity” to figure out if someone is using an app while walking, biking, or riding in a vehicle, but testing it to provide better video for users outside of the home seems to be a legitimate use, too.  Still, tracking a customer’s physical activity without letting them know feels shady, and with good reason.  Just a few weeks ago, the Federal Trade Commission published a study that found over 1,000 Android apps, including big names like Shutterfly, were logging geolocation data and other sensitive information without permission.  Google does it, too.  Chris Gates 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/netflix-tracking-android-activity-data/



May 21, 2019  Fashion brands of all sizes and specialties are using technology to understand customers better than ever before.  As those data collection efforts grow more sophisticated, artificial intelligence will reshape brands’ approach to product design and development, with a focus on predicting what customers will want to wear next.  Google has already tested the waters of user-driven AI fashion design with Project Muze, an experiment it deployed in partnership with German fashion platform Zalando.  The project trained a neural network to understand colors, textures, style preferences, and other “aesthetic parameters,” derived from Google’s Fashion Trends Report as well as design and trend data sourced by Zalando.  From there, Project Muze used an algorithm to create designs based on users’ interests and alignment with the style preferences recognized by the network.  Amazon is innovating in this area as well.  One Amazon project, led by Israel-based researchers, would use machine learning to assess whether an item is “stylish” or not.  Read much more and see graphics at https://www.cbinsights.com/research/fashion-tech-future-trends/



ostracize  verb  To exclude (a person) from society or from a community, by not communicating with (them) or by refusing to acknowledge (their) presence; to refuse to talk to or associate with; to shun.  quotations ▼ (historical) To ban a person from the city of Athens for ten years.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ostracize



Would you like your birth certificate to state you were born in Google, Kansas?  What about Dish, Texas?  Joe, Montana?  Or, perhaps:  Oregon, Ohio Buckeyes on the Bay, City of Duck Hunters?.  And like the other two cities (and many more), Oregon, Ohio had a temporary name change--just until 12 January 12. 2015--when the Oregon Ducks (not from Ohio) played the Ohio Buckeyes in the College Football Playoff National Championship.  Urbana, Ohio also adopted a temporary moniker in a nod to Buckeyes’ coach Urban Meyer, the town dropped the a for the game on the 12th.  https://btn.com/2015/01/06/ohio-city-changes-name-to-urban-for-national-title-game/   Google, Kansas (AKA Topeka) adopted its new name for a month, in an attempt to woo the web giant to establish superfast internet connections in random American cities through its Fibre for Communities scheme.  And Clark, Texas renamed itself Dish, Texas in a deal with Dish Network in 2005.  As part of the deal, the company hooked up 55 homes in the town with basic cable for free for a decade; in return, they got a bunch of free advertising.  Hot Springs, New Mexico in 1950 changed its name to Truth or Consequences to win a radio contest and have that popular radio game show broadcast from the tiny community once a year for the next half-century.  Some names have been totally sold off.  Half.com, a site that in 1999 was a successful online store (subsequently acquired by eBay in 2008, it still exists), paid Halfway, Oregon to change its name for a year to Half.com.  And in 1989, actor Kim Basinger bought the town of Braselton, Georgia for $20m and renamed it after herself.  (She eventually had to sell it off for $1m a few years later when she got into unrelated legal trouble.)  Colin Horgan  https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/07/when-cities-change-their-names-to-stupid-things-for-stupid-reasons 



THOUGHT FOR TODAY  Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree. - Ezra Pound, poet (30 Oct 1885-1972)



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2175  October 30, 2019