Linked List: September 7, 2017

Thursday, 7 September 2017

‘If That Worn Out Baseball Glove Tightly Gripping a Turd Can Be President, Then Amigos, Anyone Can.’ ★

Vicente Fox has Donald Trump’s number. More like this, please.

Glow, the Smart Energy Tracker for Your Home ★

From their Kickstarter campaign page:

Years of research and hundreds of studies have been done on how people use energy. One thing everyone agrees on? Simple, real-time feedback helps reduce energy waste and can save 10% - 20% or more on energy bills.

So, we set out to design a beautiful and effective home energy tracker to do just that. Meet Glow, the smart energy tracker that lets you see your energy use.

Beautifully simple design, and perhaps more importantly, a super-simple installation process. I know Ben Lachman, Glow’s founder, and he’s been hard at work on Glow for years now. (Ben’s Nice Mohawk is the company behind Ita, the list-making app I’ve touted many times over the years.)

They’ve got a week to go in their campaign and are just $11,000 short of their goal as I write this. It’s a great idea that I hope to see funded.

Gene ‘Stick’ Michael, Architect of the ’90s Yankees Dynasty, Dies at 79 ★

Joel Sherman, writing for The New York Post:

In what was to be his last act as principal owner, in late August of that season, Steinbrenner named Gene Michael general manager.

It only changed Yankees history — and baseball history — forever.

Michael died of a heart attack Thursday at age 79. His final career average as a player was .229, but he was a giant of the game, the guy who put the cornerstones in place for the last Yankees dynasty. […]

Michael was always firm that the most important organization to scout was your own, and he made scads of trades to improve those early 1990 Yankees, but he never touched Williams, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte or Jorge Posada, even at times when Steinbrenner — who returned in 1993 — would scream to do so. The Boss had a particular early fascination with wanting to get rid of Williams, and Stick would resort to lying that he had called other clubs and no one wanted Williams as a way to protect him.

He put together the best team I’ve ever seen, and everyone who knew him seems to have loved him.

A List Apart, Reimagined ★

Jeffrey Zeldman:

As A List Apart approaches its 20th anniversary — a milestone in independent, web-based publishing — we’re once again reimagining the magazine. We want your feedback. And most of all, we want you.

We’re getting rid of advertisers and digging back to our roots: community-based, community-built, and determinedly non-commercial. If you want to highlight local events or innovations, expand your skills, give back, or explore any other goal or idea, we’re here to support you with networking and backing from the community.

I have linked to articles at A List Apart many times over the years. It’s hard to imagine an indie web without them. Going with direct reader support in lieu of advertising is a bold move, and an indictment of the current state of web advertising. Their Patreon campaign is here — I’m in.