Murmel's Digest
March 05, 2026 · View on web
These are the most widely shared links from across Mastodon and the Fediverse today — surfaced by Murmel from thousands of posts in the open social web. This is the Fediverse-wide view. Sign up to get a digest tailored to the people you actually follow.
Nobody Gets Promoted for Simplicity
terriblesoftware.org · 36 people Worth reading
We reward complexity and ignore simplicity. In interviews, design reviews, and promotions. Here’s how to fix it.
Nobody Gets Promoted for Simplicity
“Simplicity is a great virtue, but it requires hard work to achieve and education to appreciate. And to make matters worse, complexity sells better.” — Edsger Dijkstra
— @lproven · Mar 05
Read these words from 100 years ago about immigrants in Britain – and see how history is chillingly repeating itself | George Monbiot
theguardian.com · 32 people Worth reading
Shabana Mahmood’s new rights clampdown looks outlandish until we remember that this kind of hardline action is part of our country’s fabric, says George Monbiot
. "A poll last month found that #Muslims in both the UK & the US are more likely than non-Muslims to believe that 'democracy is the best system of government' & to express loyalty to the country. So why all the hatred? Well, the primary source is the same as it was a century ago: the media... Last week both Keir Starmer & Nigel Farage... accus[ed] the #Green party of 'sectarianism', which appears to mean that it attracted Muslim votes. Is 'sectarian' now code for Muslim?"
— @rmblaber1956 · Mar 05
As Arkansas weighs a prison book ban, formerly incarcerated readers share how books reshaped their lives - Arkansas Times
arktimes.com · 31 people
Arkansas is considering the strictest book ban in the country, which would forbid all outside books, magazine and newspapers from being sent directly to people in prison. To understand what’s at stake, we spoke with formerly incarcerated Arkansans about how books helped them free their minds, f...
"I read a lot of #books over my time incarcerated, and some of the things that I learned in the books helped me along my journey since I’ve been out... I would never have known how to start a food truck business or even have an idea about it unless I was able to read up on it. Another book that I read was a book about how to talk to children and communicate with them." - Korelli Loyalty Woods, in an excellent #Arkansas Times article
— @DCBookstoPrisons · Mar 04
RE#: how we built the world's fastest regex engine in F# | ian erik varatalu
iev.ee · 20 people Worth reading
around a year ago, we built a regex engine in F# that not only outperformed the ones in dotnet, but went above and beyond competing with every other industrial regex engine on a large set of industry-standard benchmarks. additionally, it supports the full set of boolean operators (union, intersec...
The View From RSS
carolinecrampton.com · 15 people
What the web looks like when you subscribe to 2,000 RSS feeds.
No Further Action
kristiedegaris.substack.com · 12 people Worth reading
What four years of being stalked has taught me about the system.
An inquest in Queensland this week heard that Kelly Wilkinson was told to 'cool off, give Brian a break' four days before her husband Brian killed her. I read it and felt like it was time to share my own experience. Four years of stalking, harassment, and police failure. Because I had no idea men could get away with so much, and I wish someone had told me sooner.
#Scotland #UK #Law #Women #Police #Writing #WritingCommunity #Books #Book #News #Australia
— @kristiedegaris · Mar 05
Speaking Freely: Shin Yang
eff.org · 7 people Worth reading
Shin Yang builds the kind of online space most platforms say is impossible: a sex-positive community that protects anonymity without turning users into data. She is the steward of Lezismore, an independent, self-hosted community for sexual minorities in Taiwan. It is built on open-source software...
"Speech is freaking messy. Once you turn messy human speech into rules that scale, nuance gets flattened. And minority communities usually pay first." From Taiwanese writer and open-source platform builder Shin Yang in new Speaking Freely interview:
— @eff · Mar 05
Prediction markets are playing a dangerous game
theverge.com · 5 people
The fast rise of Kalshi, Polymarket, and other prediction markets is running headlong into gambling regulations, and now the industry is using the news media as its shield.
Prediction markets in the news are a dangerous gamble
— @verge · Mar 05
Standing up for Science rally, Physics Girl is back, and we need to find more asteroids
badastronomy.beehiiv.com · 9 people
I’m angry about anti-science attacks, Dianna Cowern has made a new video, and a graph shows why we need to look for near-Earth asteroids
Great news! Physics Girl is making videos again!
Bad news: Attacks on science are so bad I need to talk at a rally on Saturday.
Interesting news: We need to find more near-Earth asteroids.
And it's all here!
— @badastro · Mar 05
Thoughts and Observations on the MacBook Neo
daringfireball.net · 6 people
The MacBook Neo is the first major new Mac aimed at the consumer market in the Apple Silicon era. It’s meant to make a dent — perhaps a minuscule dent in the universe, but a big dent in the Mac’s share of the overall PC market.
★ Thoughts and Observations on the MacBook Neo
— @daringfireball · Mar 04
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