Allow me to share a dirty secret: More often than not, at midnight I can’t repress the impulse — I have to take a bike out. Out the bike comes and together we head into the empty streets of my town and hum our way all over, visiting temples in total silence. There are no cars. Often no people. It feels illicit — this slipping around town, this sliding into temple parking lots in the shroud of the night, looking at their old beams, feeling ten years old and grateful for both the ability and awareness to be doing just this very thing at this very moment.
This is certainly a contrast to Ian Bogust’s uncanny eBike:
The e-bike rolls into an uncanny valley, the chasm between a bicycle under my human power and a motorbike piloted directly by a throttle.
It will be interesting to look back and see where we get to with electric bikes.
Another month and another change to the team at work. Why is it that everyone seems to have had such amazing lives? The new manager at work ran a 10 hour charity music conference in his spare time. I am often happy if I have done the washing and got food on the table, I clearly need to work harder on my pitch.
On the family front, we went on our first holiday post-COVID to country Victoria. It was interesting returning to various places with children. I think it is fair to say wine tasting and children do not always match.
Personally, I finally got around to loading Linux on my old Macbook Pro and Chromebook. Other than the ability to run music applications, I am pretty happy and not missing a think. I continued my dive back into books listening to Thomas More’s Utopia, Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. I also nostalgically binged The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. (Was this really made for children?) In regards to music, Montaigne’s Making It has been on repeat.
Here then are some of the other dots that have had me thinking:
Education
The Tricky Ethics of Being a Teacher on TikTok
Amelia Tate considers the place of TikTok in the classroom. She discusses the trend of content created about and even with students.
The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure Books
Leslie Jamison dives back into the world of the Choose Your Own Adventure book series.
Unbeaching the whale – The education revolution failed — and so did its way of thinking
Dean Ashenden reflects on the failure of Gonski and the education revolution.
Timetable Absurdity
Cameron Paterson discusses the way in which schools are still held hostage by the timetable.
I want, I wish, I hope, I dream
David Truss shares an activity where he creates a portrait wall with a want, a wish, a hope or a dream underneath it.
Technology
After Self-Hosting My Email for Twenty-Three Years, I have Thrown In the Towel. The Oligopoloy has Won.
Carlos Fenollosa reflects on the demise of self-hosted email. One of the main reasons he argues for the failure is the crude blacklisting of large swaths of email, rather than a penalty process.
We Spoke With the Last Person Standing in the Floppy Disk Business
Niek Hilkmann and Thomas Walskaar interview Tom Persky about the dying art of maintaining floppy disks.
Interoperable Facebook
Cory Doctorow unpacks how an interoperable Facebook might work.
Tech Fear-Mongering Isn’t New—But It’s Time to Break the Cycle
Jason Feifer provides insight into Amy Orben’s four-step Sisyphean cycle of technology panics.
We need to deal with data privacy in our classrooms
Bonnie Stewart reflects upon the online learning with the return to the classroom in a post-COVID world.
AI’s dark arts come into their own
Alex Hern discusses the dark-side to the magic of artificial intelligence.
General
Electric Bike, Stupid Love of My Life
Craig Mod shares his passion for electric bikes.
After Queen Elizabeth II’s death, Indigenous Australia can’t be expected to shut up. Our sorry business is without end
With the passing of Queen Elizabeth, Stan Grant considers legacy of colonisation for indigenous people around the world.
Music on the brain: Listening can influence our brain’s activity
Abdullah Iqbal unpacks some of the research into the benefits of music on the brain.
Ark Head
In order to survived the battered psyche, Venkatesh Rao explains that way have resorted to the ‘ark head’ mental model. This involves giving up on solving the world’s ills and simply hiding in our ark.
The credibility of science is damaged when universities brag about themselves
Adrian Lenardic and Johnny Seales argue that the rewarding of attention economy has corrupted scientific research.
Florence Nightingale Was Born 197 Years Ago, and Her Infographics Were Better Than Most of the Internet’s
Celebrating the birth of , Cara Giaimo discusses Florence Nightingale’s impact in regards to the spread of ideas, not just as the ‘Lady with the Lamp’.
Read Write Respond #080
So that was September for me, how about you? As always, hope you are safe and well.
Image by Bryan Mathers