My world on the web
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)It’s too painful to quickly get frequent notes into note taking and related platforms. Hypothes.is has an open API and a great UI that can be leveraged to simplify note taking processes.
This exploratory course in the SOLO Taxonomy will better equip you to find, classify and act upon signals of learning growth.
In their new versions, all three songs take on shades of early-’90s house music, as well as the early-’90s pop that carried that influence.
So I’m considering this time as a gestation period, as a time when I’m still in the chrysalis, waiting to emerge. I’m not sure what that’s going to look like in practice, but instead of looking back to being a caterpillar, I’m instead going to focus on turning into a butterfly.
Unlike the physical transformation that the caterpillar undergoes, my metamorphosis might be less obvious to those around me. Shifts in worldview and outlook sometimes are. But it’s an important thing to note for me: to give myself permission to let go of my pre-pandemic self.
Educationist who argued that children’s creativity is stifled by school systems that prioritise academic achievement
Understandably, this was much more enticing to the education profession than it was to government ministers, but it was based not on a single speech but Robinson’s whole career in academic education, which culminated in a professorship at Warwick University (1989-2001), before he became a senior adviser to the J Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles.
In his own reflection, Justin Bathon talks about the way in which Robinson ‘pollinated a shift in paradigm’:
For me, and I think a great many others, Sir Ken pollinated a shift in paradigm. For the millions who watched his videos, read his books, or listened to speeches, he prepared the soil and created the conditions for us to grow our own new notions of how we might help learning flourish. The task of growing the complex, organic ecosystems in which all children might flourish then is left to us. Happily, Sir Ken, and many others, have helped to pollinate these ideas so widely that a global effort to grow these more organic models of school has inspired models of Creative Schools to bloom all across the planet.
It is interesting the think about his legacy as a mental reference.
Alan Thwaites approaches point of view and personality with the question, are you Sir Ken Robinson, Professor Brian Cox or Rupert Murdoch to your students? This question stemmed from the growing tendency of schools to ask such questions during job interviews to learn more about the applicant. In his post, he discusses what each would do in the position of curriculum coordinator. He then closes with the question as to who your students see you as?
I always felt challenged. However, i was also a little bit sceptical about a call for revolution presented in fifteen minutes.
Provoked, Will Richardson wrote a passionate post wondering if in worrying about feelings we have lost the ability to truly listen and debate. This was then followed by a post from Dean Shareski who suggested that a strength-based approach was a better answer, where instead of giving our attention to what is wrong, we stop and celebrate what is right, reflecting on what works. Although, like Shareski, I see a place for a critique of the system from those compass barers like Will Richardson, Ken Robinson and Seth Godin, I wonder if we highlight those good things enough.
I think that the reality is that I have never read any of his books. Maybe I should.
Operating systems went from a product that we buy to a fundamental capability that’s bundled with the entire tech ecosystems where we live our lives. We don’t pay for operating systems directly anymore by purchasing them, but instead we pay with surveillance of our data or by being sold connected cloud services or by the cost being bundled into our devices. Operating systems are both ubiquitous and invisible, and there are now people for whom their allegiance to the operating system of their phone or video game console or even personal computer is part of their identity.
Ethan Hauser writes humorous descriptions of different parts of the Internet, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and Google, and why they are terrible.
What does this mean for Thought Shrapnel? I’m not sure. I want to keep something there, perhaps in a similar format to Aaron Davis’ Read Write Collect, or Tom Armitage’s Infovore. We’ll see.
Just when I thought I had enough sites, I decided to create another one. A feed that could be used in a platform like Micro.blog. My intent this time was to create a space where I could reclaim my pieces on the web. In part I was inspired by Tom Woodward’s API driven portfolio, as well as Alan Levine’s concept of co-claiming.
I was also interested in exploring the possibility of WordPress beyond the standard post format and the implications that this has with the choice of themes. Associated with this, I wondered if there was a possibility of automating the sharing of content created elsewhere, such as videos and images.
I have documented my workflow before, however this focused more on my long form writing. Here then is my attempt to summarise my workflow.
Clearly I collect pieces from around the web, including various newsletters. However, the majority of my content comes from Inoreader through which I have subscribed to my feeds. From there, I either respond or save posts to Pocket to read and respond later.
If I am responding on my phone, I use URL Forwarder to populate the Post Kinds field. On the laptop, I just create a new post in WordPress.
Although I have tinkered with Micropub clients, I have not found one that fits with what I want in a post. For example, I like have titles with emojis, therefore I actually populate the slug. John Johnston has some code to strip this out, but I am yet to tinker with this.
I really like the possibility using IFTTT and webhooks to generate posts from Pocket and Inoreader, which Chris Aldrich has documented here and here. However, that is still an itch.
In regards to writing my actual posts, I use Post Editor Button to add HTML snippets, such as embedding audio and adding in Microformats where required.
I also use a range of sites to capture quotes and evidence. Whether it be Hypothes.is, Diigo and Quotebacks. I know I should be more structured with this, but I am not.
In regards to POSSE, I use a range of methods, including SNAP, Bridgy for Micro.Blog. However, more often than note I manually write responses and add the corresponding link to my list of syndication links.
Hope that helps.
Artificial Intelligence and other advanced technologies are now being used to make decisions about everything from family law to sporting team selection. So, what works and what still needs refinement?
Also, they’re very small, very light and very agile – they clap as they flap their wings. Biologically-inspired drones are now a reality, but how and when will they be used?
To Neguine Rezaii, it’s natural that modern psychiatrists should want to use smartphones and other available technology. Discussions about ethics and privacy are important, she says, but so is an awareness that tech firms already harvest information on our behavior and use it—without our consent—for less noble purposes, such as deciding who will pay more for identical taxi rides or wait longer to be picked up.
“We live in a digital world. Things can always be abused,” she says. “Once an algorithm is out there, then people can take it and use it on others. There’s no way to prevent that. At least in the medical world we ask for consent.”
Maybe the inclusion of a personal devise changes the debate, however I am intrigued by the open declaration of data to a third-party entity. Although such solutions bring a certain sense of ease and efficiency, I imagine they also involve handing over a lot of personal information. I wonder what checks and balances have been put in place?
Herald Sun is running this image of the beach at Ocean Grove yesterday. Looks insanely packed, right? Terrifying. Well, time for a lesson in the impact of lenses on a photo.
trump’s denials of his racism will never stop. He will continue to claim that he loves people of color, the very people his policies harm. He will continue to call himself “not racist,” and turn the descriptive term racist back on anyone who has the temerity to call out his own prejudice. Trump clearly hopes that racist ideas—paired with policies designed to suppress the vote—will lead to his reelection. But now that Trump has pushed a critical mass of Americans to a point where they can no longer explain away the nation’s sins, the question is what those Americans will do about it.
Though it was hardly his intention, no president has caused more Americans to stop denying the existence of racism than Donald Trump.
Kendhi maps Trumps actions to explain how we get to here suggesting a nation is what it does, not what it claims to do.
U.S. could just as accurately be described as a land in denial. It has been a massacring nation that said it cherished life, a slaveholding nation that claimed it valued liberty, a hierarchal nation that declared it valued equality, a disenfranchising nation that branded itself a democracy, a segregated nation that styled itself separate but equal, an excluding nation that boasted of opportunity for all. A nation is what it does, not what it originally claimed it would be. Often, a nation is precisely what it denies itself to be.
The question is what will happen next.
The abolition of slavery seemed as impossible in the 1850s as equality seems today. But just as the abolitionists of the 1850s demanded the immediate eradication of slavery, immediate equality must be the demand today. Abolish police violence. Abolish mass incarceration. Abolish the racial wealth gap and the gap in school funding. Abolish barriers to citizenship. Abolish voter suppression. Abolish health disparities. Not in 20 years. Not in 10 years. Now.
In a separate piece in GQ, ZZ Packer provides a profile of Kendhi and a discussion of his work.
One problem is that most white people think of racism as a moral failing wrapped in an identity. They want to say “I am not a racist” the way Richard Nixon insisted “I am not a crook.” But in How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi argues that policies and actions are racist, not people. You can express a racist notion in one part of a sentence, he says, and an antiracist notion in another.
“One way to think about play is an action you do that brings you a significant amount of joy without offering a specific result,” said Jeff Harry, a positive play coach who works with businesses, schools and organizations to use applied positive psychology in day-to-day routines. That means taking a bike ride because it’s fun, not because you’re trying to lose five pounds. “A lot of us do everything hoping for a result,” Mr. Harry added. “It’s always, ‘What am I getting out of this?’ Play has no result.”
We’re off to Toronto, Canada for the next volume and a man behind various ambient-jazz excursions, Joseph Shabason. It was a certain release in particular that peeked our attention here at FA HQ, and that was the beautifully packaged, and beautifully composed, ‘Anne’, from 2018. An album that oozes emotion, and one that is dedicated to Joseph’s mother. In addition, Joseph is a regular session musician and also founded synth-pop outfit, DIANA, and has contributed to bands such as Destroyer and The War On Drugs, as well as collaborating with another one of our favourites, Gigi Mason. The mix he has submitted here is as experimental as the music he produces; an eclectic journey into the (mostly) unknown.
Megan’s comments about fear and risk reminded me of something that Kevin Parker discussed in an interview with Zane Lowe. Parker spoke about intentional putting himself in challenging situations. As he stated:
I’m the most creative when I’m uncomfortable.
I was also intrigued by the conversation around versions and how the final vocal for Catherine Wheel came to be recorded on a phone. This had me thinking about something that was mentioned in the first episode of Prince: The Story of Sign O’ The Times. Lisa Coleman explained Prince’s thoughts on demos or experimenting:
Prince didn’t like the word “experiment” because he felt that it sounded like you weren’t finished if it was an experiment. So forgive me for calling them experiments, but I felt very experimental when I was playing.(source)
Because of this, everything went to tape. As Susan Rogers explains:
If he’s going to be playing and singing it’s going to go to tape and it’s going to be the canonical version as far as he is concerned. He didn’t demo things.(source)
