Mermaid lets you create diagrams and visualizations using text and code. It is a Javascript based diagramming and charting tool that renders Markdown-inspired text definitions to create and modify diagrams dynamically. https://mermaid-js.github.io/mermaid/#/ (more)

aka Feature Flag, see also A/B Test. Feature Toggles (often also refered to as Feature Flags) are a powerful technique, allowing teams to modify system behavior without changing code. They fall into various usage categories, and it's important to take that categorization into account when implementing and managing toggles. Toggles introduce complexity. We can keep that complexity in check by using smart toggle implementation practices and appropriate tools to manage our toggle configuration, but we should also aim to constrain the number of toggles in our system. (more)

Collaborative Work Management software, CWM; beyond issue tracker (more)

Cory Doctorow: Anyone who trusts an AI therapist needs their head examined. There's a debate to be had about whether AI chatbots make good psychotherapists. This is not an area of my expertise, so I'm not going to weigh in on that debate. But nevertheless, I think that if you use an AI therapist, you need your head examined: (more)

aka Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_Emotive_Behavior_Therapy (more)

family of psychotherapy (Self Improvement) techniques (more)

Max Krieger on "Chatting with Glue: Cognitive Tools for Augmented Conversation" (LiveChat). Chapter 1: When we converse.... as soon as we open our mouths, we start to think.... Conversational media have accidentally compressed/linearized our thinking... There's a lot of richness in conversations. This richness is most abundance in the minds participating.... And as ideas sprout from our mind-trees, they're enriched and diversified by others...And this is no coincidence: our thoughts activate in patterns of association... What does this suggest about conversation? Not only is it more rich than our utterances alone, but it's nonlinear, and never complete. (more)

To-Do List with Task Hierarchy (OutLining) model. https://workflowy.com/ (more)

Venkatesh Rao: Lands of Lorecraft. In the last couple of years, I’ve become aware of some genuinely fresh management thinking from an emerging cohort of thinkers on the margins of the landscape of traditional institutions. (more)

spatial software thinker, currently working on PartyDAO and Area. https://darkblueheaven.com/ (more)

project management, collaborationware, issue-tracker - https://quire.io/ (more)

aka multi-user to-do list: Bug Tracker, Bug Tracking, Defect Tracker, Defect Tracking, Feature Request Tracking, Commitment tracker, Task Manager/Task List, etc. (more)

Outliner, issue-tracker https://checkvist.com/ (more)

Could an Industrial Civilization Have Predated Humans on Earth? Schmidt and Frank write that a “species as short-lived as Homo sapiens (so far) might not be represented in the existing fossil record at all.” Today, less than 1 percent of the Earth’s surface is urbanized, a tiny proportion that hardly stands a chance of being re-exposed millions of years in the future (more)

Could an Industrial Prehuman Civilization Have Existed on Earth before Ours? One of the creepier conclusions drawn by scientists studying the Anthropocene—the proposed epoch of Earth’s geologic history in which humankind’s activities dominate the globe—is how closely today’s industrially induced climate change resembles conditions seen in past periods of rapid temperature rise. (more)

C-WIN: The secret meeting that privatized public water supplies. Water policy is convoluted, difficult to parse, and usually proceeds incrementally. But sometimes things happen that dramatically alter the legal and regulatory landscapes. It can be a court ruling, such as the 1983 National Audubon v Superior Court decision, which established limits on the amount of water the City of Los Angeles can take from Mono Lake. Or it can be legislation such as the 1992 Central Valley Improvement Act, which mandated changes in the federal Central Valley Project for the protection and revitalization of fisheries and wildlife habitat. (more)

'Water czar' directed state agency for a record 15 years. David N. Kennedy, who faced the challenges of a five-year drought and three major floods during his record 15 years as director of the California Department of Water Resources in the 1980s and ‘90s, has died. He was 71. (more)

particularly-evil bottled water brand

How This Billionaire Couple Stole California's Water Supply. (more)

*The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968. Released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study, it was made public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971.[1][2] A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that Lyndon B. Johnson's administration had "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress".[3]. (more)