My world on the web
His advice for climate proofing your garden?
“Really look at designing the garden for extreme heat” – and begin with carefully considering your choice of plants.
“A garden is not a hospital, it’s not there to plant plants that need to be tended or are delicate or need to be mothered along.”
They fought for decades to retake Afghanistan, but promises of a new start are already colliding with internal divisions and external opposition, Jon Lee Anderson writes.
Shfl is a random sampler of album recommendations from musicians and music critics.
ᔥ in No yelling! – Austin Kleon ()
I, like Luhmann, see writing as integral to complex thinking.4 Therefor, my goal in keeping a zettelkasten is to link ideas and turn these links into essays, blog posts, books, and content for my newsletter. Writing is, to use Karl Weick’s term, an act of sensemaking. A generic note storing system—were it sentient enough to have feelings—would not care if you made sense of the way your notes interacted or if you turned that sense into a book. But, a zettelkasten—with equal sentience—does. A zettelkasten “cares” that you connect your ideas and find ways to express them, because doing brings life to you, your creative work, and the zettelkasten itself.
Schools need to follow the practical examples outlined in this book (including elementary classrooms) and embrace complexity with a comfort that you can’t be wrong because no answer is absolutely right. We need the next generation to understand themselves, their role, their community, and how the elements and actors within complex systems relate to and impact each other.
To avoid another generation leaving school with no understanding of how the world really operates and full of anxiety about the speed of change and unpredictable events, every teacher needs to introduce and refer more often to anything’s “bigger picture” and enjoy it’s complexity.
When it comes to online casino games and slots, Kim Lund feels that something less cunning is going on: that firms are simply watching what makes money and repeating it in a robotic process of trial and error. “My main gripe with the industry is that it has, to a large degree, been run by people who don’t love it, who treat gamblers as dumb sheep. They see gambling like petrol: ‘We have a commodity – how do we sell it? What else can we sell them while they’re at the gas station?’”
The result is an evolutionary mechanism that rewards the development of addictive content while absolving anyone from the responsibility for its impact.
Regardless of whether Spotify succeeds or fails in its efforts, the push feels like the beginning of the end for one of the last sections of the internet to exist independently of the major technology platforms. Just as the rise of social media usurped blogging, the success of YouTube centralised video creation, and, yes, the creation of Spotify itself upended the MP3-based era of online music fandom, podcasts in their current form feel on the edge of an existential change. It’s hard to see how Spotify’s efforts can be successfully fought except through others, like the BBC, retrenching to their own walled gardens, and while a world with twenty podcasting apps is probably better than a world with just one, it would be the end of an era.
Alex Hern discusses Spotify’s acquisition of Chartable and Podsights. He explains their significance in being able to target ads within podcasts on Spotify. This is a part of Spotify’s goal to become the YouTube for podcasts.
What the company is bringing to the table for advertisers is obvious enough. When you listen to a podcast on Spotify, you’re not just downloading an MP3 from a server and playing it on a generic app of your choice – you’re streaming straight from Spotify’s servers, with your listening linked directly to your account and all the commensurate profiling that brings with it. Spotify can sell ads on behalf of podcasters, target those ads in a far more granular way than most podcasting apps, and easily roll out technical features – “tap here to buy”, for instance – as advertisers see fit.
The catch with this is that users do not have to listen to many podcasts on Spotify. Personally, I listen through an app, AntennaPod. However, this is the reason that Spotify is also purchasing and producing podcasts to play exclusive on their platform, such as the Who is Danial Johns?. It is also for this reason that BBC is changing the way it distributes its podcasts, having a focus on the BBC Sounds app. With all this in mind, it spells the end to another open format/platform on the web.
I guess this is still better than what has happened with the music industry:
Unlike a record label, publisher, or most anyone else in the music industry, Spotify devotes none of its profits to the development of new recordings.
It’s easy for Organisations to tell us that it’s ok to take risks and even to fail, but our lived experience is counter to that, and lived experience tends to outweigh optimistic narratives and promises that may be hollow.
Typically what those Organisations mean is that it’s ok to fail in very specific ways, it’s ok to learn, but broadly to learn those things we want you to learn.
As Vikings: Valhalla premieres on Netflix, Luke Walpole explores how images of marauding pagans are misleading – despite being part of the popular imagination since the 8th Century.
Politics aside, the basis of Western culture’s understanding of the Vikings is predicated on a male-dominated focus on the Viking’s Western expansion, and less of a glance East. This is perhaps surprising, given some of our key reflections of the Vikings come from Middle Eastern historical sources, and the increasing number of Islamic artefacts which are being found across Scandinavia and indeed Britain. For example, Ahmad ibn Fadlan was a 10th-Century chronicler from the Abbasid Caliphate, who encountered a group of Rus’. Fascinated, he noted that while “they are the filthiest of God’s creatures… I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blonde and ruddy… Each man has an axe, a sword, and a knife and keeps each by him at all times.” In just a handful of clauses, Fadlan painted an indelible image of the Vikings.
I remember reading Julian D. Richards’ The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction. He explained that our idea of the Vikings as a unified group of people is actual a modern invention used to capture a particular point in time.
The concept of the Vikings is relatively new. Originally, it referred to pirate activity. It came to mean a whole people, and then a chronological label: the Viking Age. Who were the Vikings? Where did they come from? Ethnic groups used to be seen as cultural and biological isolates, but now we understand that cultures only exist in relation to other culture.
We still trust some stories sometimes. Importantly, we trust what confirms our pre-existing beliefs. Perhaps we can call this the Michael Crichton Ego Effect. We have designated ourselves as experts-of-sorts whenever we confront the news. We know better than journalists, because of course we do. (This effect applies most readily to men.)
Even well-meaning attempts to participate in the news can play into bad actors’ campaigns.
Before you share, ask yourself: Can you personally translate the language being spoken? Are you equipped to research and analyze videos and photos from sources you’ve never encountered before? Although citizen journalism is often deeply valuable, it requires real skill and training to do well. Be realistic about what you’re able to do, and why.
In addition to this, Ohlheiser talks about the importance of being willing to clean up after yourself.
Both Mitchell and Caulfield outlined similar best practices here: If you share bad information on Twitter, screenshot your mistake, post a correction by replying to or quote-tweeting the incorrect information, and then delete the tweet that contains the misinformation.
It has been interesting to see the prevalence of information, such as the ability to follow the Russian convoy. However, it is the ease of sharing which I imagine can also have detrimental effects.
Learning Creates is a new alliance bringing together a range of stakeholders to focus on personalized, passion-based learning as the key to modernizing education and preparing young people for successful futures. There is now an Australian hub for the Mastery Transcript Consortium, an expanding network of schools who are introducing a digital high school transcript for students to have their unique strengths, abilities, interests, and histories nurtured and recognized. Big Picture Learning Australia is transforming education by retiring the traditional ‘appointment learning’ where everyone learns the same things according to a fixed timetable inside the walls of a school.
There is a useful analogy with Pearl Harbor. In the late 1930s, Japan had invaded Manchuria and was engaged in a war with China. And the U.S., which was supporting China at the time, imposed an oil embargo on Japan. We squeezed the Japanese government until they realized they only had about a year and a half of resources left. They were desperate to stop the oil embargo. So they took the gamble of Pearl Harbor and paid for it with a costly war in the Pacific. I think we have to consider a question: If we apply similar economic pressure to Russia, could Putin make a similar decision to what Japan did in 1941?
There are now five ways that the aggression in Ukraine can end, according to Paul Poast, a professor of foreign policy and war at the University of Chicago. They are: a disastrous quagmire or retreat for Russia; violent regime change in Kyiv; the full conquest of Ukraine; the beginning of a new Russian empire; or a chaotic stumble into something like World War III.
Bryan Alexander also provides his own collection of simulations and scenarios.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the various missteps, impediments, and mindsets that might stand in the way of both individual and school wide progress in making thinking visible. I this process, my thoughts returned to an article my colleague Jal Mehta wrote back in 2016 entitled: Deeper Learn…
When it first appeared in 1997, Google was wildly better than the competition. You young’uns don’t remember this — shakes cane — but back in the ‘90s, search engines were a hot mess. You’d type your…
I’m not using the main search of any engine. Instead, I’m using services designed specifically to find academic info, like Semantic Scholar or JSTOR. For historical research, I might use the scans of public-domain info on the Internet Archive or at Google Books.
When supporting organizations in their work to design learning experiences, we ask a lot of event design questions. Here’s a few.
9 track album
The references to memories and ghosts reminded me of The Avalances’ We Will Always Love You. I am left wondering if one of the general consequences of the pandemic will be a dive into memories and the haunting past seemingly taken from us?
I also enjoyed the love performance of the album shared on Youtube.
Place between Talking Heads and Beach House.
“What I’m interested in when it comes to writing music are ideas of memory – how you split as a person and live parallel lives,” he says. “Your past, present and future selves are like ghosts of ourselves – somehow you are this already long dead person, walking through a world that you are not really materially even present in at the time.”
…
“To me, the record is this one solitary person sitting down at a piano and all of the songs are played out in this person’s head,” he says. “But I thought of all the chorus for all these songs being sung quite literally by a chorus, like in those old ancient Greek plays, [where] there is quite literally a chorus of people who are the moral compass. I tried to make most of the chorus have this ‘big group’ sound to them.”
Some tracks compel introspection, others make you prance around the room, while still others encourage intimate activities. It’s goth without the glower, and it can be spooky but never spectral. That’s a hard line to walk, especially when your art rejoices in creating emotional connections with its listeners.
But from the beginning of the album to the sweeping instrumental epics of “In a Minute, Sublime” in the album’s final moments, the message of Are You Haunted? is clear: In the face of your ghosts, dance them away.
Combining (often) dark and (always) thoughtful lyrics with unexpected instrumentation or obscure samples, Methyl Ethel’s music reflects the claustrophobic experience of our contemporary living. Notably, “Neon Cheap” sees richly textured ear-wormy melodies hint at the rife restlessness and angst of the modern, overstimulated world.
This story does not begin on a boat. Nor does it contain any wild swans or falling leaves.
In a wonderland called Footscray, a girl named Alice and her Chinese-Cambodian family pursue the Australian Dream – Asian style. Armed with an ocker accent, Alice dives head- first into schooling, romance and the getting of wisdom. Her mother becomes an Aussie battler – an outworker, that is. Her father embraces the miracle of franchising and opens an electrical-appliance store. And every day her grandmother blesses Father Government for giving old people money.
Unpolished Gem is a book rich in comedy, a loving and irreverent portrait of a family, its everyday struggles and bittersweet triumphs. With it, Australian writing gains an unforgettable new voice.
Although there are books, such as First They Killed My Father, which address life in Cambodia under Pol Pot, Pung’s book shares of life after Cambodia. It provides great insight into the clash of cultures and the challenges faced by refugees. What I enjoyed most was honest self-deprecating humour which carried throughout.
All episodes of the first season were released on Netflix on April 10, 2015, while the second season was released in its entirety on March 18, 2016. They were met with positive reviews. In July 2016, the series was renewed for a third season, which was released on October 19, 2018. A spin-off series, centered on Bernthal’s character Frank Castle / Punisher and titled The Punisher, was ordered by Netflix in April 2016. On November 29, 2018, Netflix canceled Daredevil. Daredevil, along with the other Marvel Netflix series, is set to leave Netflix on March 1, 2022, following Disney regaining the rights to the series. D’Onofrio and Cox would reprise their roles as Wilson Fisk / Kingpin and Murdock in MCU productions produced by Marvel Studios, starting with Hawkeye and Spider-Man: No Way Home (both 2021), respectively.
Daredevil excels as a moral masterpiece because of its plethora of characters, each one with a unique set of motivations, worldviews, and principles. As a devout Catholic, Matt Murdock struggles to maintain his faith in a life that pushes him deeper into a world of violence and death. Foggy Nelson is an upcoming lawyer torn apart between his devotion to his best friend Matt and serving the oppressed in his community and his own personal ambitions for his career and family. Karen Page attempts to find meaning in a life that keeps being haunted by the past she keeps running away from. The stories of these three, along with those around them, weave together in a way that keeps you thrilled for the next episode yet leaves you asking more questions.
One of the things that I liked is the way in which the series developed characters, such as Wilson Fisk. It is interesting to compare this with the portrayal of Fisk in Hawkeye. Disney’s Marvel series’ definitely have a different feel to those developed for Netflix. They are often a shorter run and do not necessarily build out the characters and plots in the same manner.
