Kind: Likes

a way to pay compliments to the original post/poster of external content
Liked Automated austerity schooling (code acts in education)

It is understandable that teachers may be using AI in the preparation of materials, and to automate-away administrative tasks under current conditions. But the risks of automated austerity schooling — eroding pedogagic autonomy, garbling information, privacy and data protection threats, enhancing classroom surveillance, and far more — remain significant and underaddressed. Letting AI in unobstructed now will likely lead to layering further automation on to pedagogic and administrative practices, and locking in schools to technological processes that will be hard and costly to undo.

Rather than seeing AI as a public problem that requires deliberation and democratic oversight, it is now being pushed as a magical public-private partnership solution, while both old problems with school structures and the many new problems AI raises in public service provision remain neglected. The DfE’s AI content store project is a first concrete sign of the solutionism that looks set to characterize automated austerity schooling in England under the new government.

Source: Automated%20austerity%20schooling by Ben Williamson

Liked The most independent generation of all is largely denying their kids the same experience by Virginia Trioli (ABC News)

There are two important questions confronting any parents with young kids: are you giving them autonomy and have you equipped them with the competence to be truly and safely independent?

Traffic accidents have decreased compared to the years when I played on the road, and street surveillance has proliferated — CCTV cameras are everywhere — so why has our mistrust and anxiety increased along with it? Random but rare kidnapping attempts and knife attacks like the recent one in London don’t help: they feed into a primal fear about the lost child, the child taken by wolves, by witches — and it seems our fears beat back the logic of our own experiences and also the deep, abiding wish that our kids get to have some of the fun of our own childhoods.

A mum being reported to social services for letting her teen travel Europe is a sad sign of today’s risk-averse parenting by Virginia Trioli

Liked The Strange Heat Island Lurking Beneath Minneapolis (Atlas Obscura)

On that return trip, “I measured the temperature of seeps all over, wherever I could,” he says. The closer to the surface he measured, the warmer the water was. In 2008, a separate team from the University of Minnesota had [predicted](https://conservancy.umn.edu/items/a9ae3228-1d09-4dd9-8bd2-8f63e23e000c) that heat from Minneapolis’s urban surface was conducting itself deep underground, heating the groundwater there like a metropolitan microwave. Brick’s subsequent research proved them right—but also showed that they had significantly underestimated the extent of the warming.

Brick published his results in 2022, as a chapter in [_Threats to Springs in a Changing World_](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119818625), published by the American Geophysical Union. His findings aren’t unique to Minneapolis. From Japan to Italy, Canada to Switzerland, scientists have found other “subsurface urban heat islands” where pavement and basements warm up what’s below them.

The Strange Heat Island Lurking Beneath Minneapolis by Sarah Scoles

Liked https://www.theredhandfiles.com/are-songs-from-god/ (theredhandfiles.com)

‘_Outstanding!’_ you may say, Fletch. ‘_That’s for me!’_ ‘_I’m gonna quit my fucking job!’_ ‘_I’m gonna tell my boss to shove it!’_ But, before you rush into anything, remember that creating art, like many things of value, comes at a cost – and confronting one’s own self can be the most challenging and fearful thing you’ll ever do. Fletch, I wish you luck in whatever you choose to do.

The Red Hand Files – Issue #297 – Are songs from God? by Nick Cave

Liked I founded a pioneering tech magazine. Tech killed it off by Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)

I majored in magazines at Syracuse’s journalism school. Every magazine I’ve worked for over the decades has joined the dustbin of history; I guess what I really majored in was obituary writing.

I founded a pioneering tech magazine. Tech killed it off by Michael Antonoff

ᔥ “Charles Arthur” in Start Up No.2273: Harris v Trump online, the car park solar solution, Medium makes a profit, self-driving taxi night ballet, and more | The Overspill: when there’s more that I want to say ()

Liked https://blog.ayjay.org/the-game/ (blog.ayjay.org)

Academic literary criticism doesn’t do fun these days. It rarely has, of course, but now it has descended fully into an apparently permanent, and permanently dour, secular-Calvinist recitation about structures of oppression — and, when critics lift their heads long enough to notice that students are utterly bored by all this, have no better response than to say Neoliberalism made me do it. I am not sure academic literary criticism can ever come back from its moribund state, but its best chance of doing so would be to try to have some fun. Surprise itself. Play the Game. 

The Game by Alan Jacobs

Liked Pluralistic: MIT libraries are thriving without Elsevier (16 Aug 2024) by Cory DoctorowCory Doctorow (pluralistic.net)

Any time you encounter a shitty, outrageous racket that’s stable over long timescales, chances are you’re looking at a collective action problem. Certainly, that’s the underlying pathology that preserves the scholarly publishing scam, which is one of the most grotesque, wasteful, disgusting frauds in our modern world (and that’s saying something, because the field is crowded with many contenders).

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/16/the-public-sphere/

Liked BARRETT: The mantra that’s been driving ‘Danger’ for 17 years by Damian Barrett (AFL)

“That (the miss from the goalsquare) is my whole philosophy on sport – it is not that I don’t care enough – I care, a lot – but once that is done, it just doesn’t matter,” he said. “There are blokes who live in the space of, ‘I’ve just f***ed this up for the game, that was our opportunity to win’. No, it was an opportunity, and now I’ve got to look for the next one, and how I can impact that next one for us.

“The game is far from perfection on a weekend, but you need to have the will to give the next moment a crack, and eventually you will break them. I am such a believer in that.”

The mantra that’s been driving ‘Danger’ for 17 years by Damian Barrett

Liked https://blog.ayjay.org/changes-ahead/ (blog.ayjay.org)

I have always disliked Substack, but I’m beginning to see why people move to Substack, which handles all these problems for them. I would just say to the proponents of the open web: If you want more people to move onto the open web, you have to be more patient with them than you’ve been with me, and you have to be willing to provide more basic instruction than, so far, you’ve been willing to provide to me.

Changes Ahead by Alan Jacobs

Alan Jacob’s reflections on living on the open web reminds me of Doug Belshaw’s recent remark about enshittification:

@mrkrndvs If there *is* a post-2023 AI era I’d wager there’s also one before it from about 2017-2022 which has something to do with enclosure, authoritarianism, and what Doctorow eventually identified as enshittification.

TL;DR: the time when it became all but impossible impossible to avoid cloud services and Big Tech

Liked https://www.theredhandfiles.com/thoughts-about-loneliness/ (theredhandfiles.com)

Philosopher, neuroscientist and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist says we require three things to attain a meaningful life. The first is feeling part of a wider community – family, friends, and society in general. Second is an understanding of nature and a connection to the natural order of things, which McGilchrist feels we have largely lost. Finally, we need to form a relationship with the sacred or divine – this can be found in art, music, poetry and religion, where we acknowledge the ineffable and all-encompassing force that holds the world together.

Nick Cave https://www.theredhandfiles.com/thoughts-about-loneliness/

Liked Four Tet on making music by Austin KleonAustin Kleon (austinkleon.com)

Four Tet’s Three is one of my favorite albums of the year, so I was delighted to come across an interview with Kieran Hebden on the Tape Notes podcast discussing its making. He rarely gives interviews, so before listening, I really knew nothing about him or how he works. It was a delight to hear […]

Austin Kleon shares his key take-away from the TapeNotes podcast episode in which Kieran Hebden dives into several tracks from Three+.

You’ve got to love records so much, he says, that you want to make something that can sit on a shelf alongside the records you love.

It’s a lesson that is true for all creative people: Your output depends on your input.

If you want to be a great musician, you need to listen to more great music. If you want to write great books, you need to read more great books.

https://austinkleon.com/2024/07/22/four-tet-on-making-music/

This was something that he touched on in his conversation with Jamie Lidell on the Hanging Out with Audiophiles podcast. He spoke about listening to a full album each day.

One of the surprises from the TapeNote podcast was that Hebden does not actually have a strong background in musical theory. He argues that that, compared to say Fred again.., this possible weakness provides more opportunity for serendipity and chance.

Liked https://blog.ayjay.org/the-uncanny-valley-of-blogging/ (blog.ayjay.org)

a blog is probably the least cool way to communicate with people. It doesn’t have old-school cred or state-of-the-art shine; it falls into a kind of uncanny valley. To be a blogger is sort of like being that Japanese guy who makes paintings with Excel. But that suits me.

The Uncanny Valley of Blogging

Liked Travis Barker on the Treadmill and Other Fitness Content Slop by Audrey WattersAudrey Watters (Second Breakfast)

It’s a good reminder, perhaps, that it’s not so much that AI is getting better. It’s that humans are just becoming more like robots.

Audrey Watters https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/travis-barker-on-the-treadmill-and-other-fitness-content-slop/

Liked https://danmeyer.substack.com/p/teachers-arent-your-customer-support (danmeyer.substack.com)

If you are only engaging five students in a class of 30, you are by definition not personalizing learning for the other 25 students. You are not addressing their individual needs. You’re creating more work for teachers, also, treating them like tier-two customer support representatives, asking them to handle whatever problems your technology can’t solve along with whatever problems your technology creates.

Khan and other advocates of personalized learning will frequently disclaim that they aren’t trying to replace teachers. I appreciate that, though I’m worried about that possibility like I’m worried I might medal in the decathlon in the Olympics this summer. I do not, however, appreciate the role they imagine for teachers: a coercive force in the lives of students who need much more and much better support than personalized learning offers them.

Source: Teachers Aren’t Your Customer Support Representatives by Dan Meyer

Liked Adobe’s Enterprise-First Ambitions Led To This Mess (Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet.)

To me, I think there is a firewall of trust between product and business model that needs to be maintained, and Adobe has failed to do so. It’s not that Adobe necessarily made a mistake with its terms of service. It’s that goodwill around Adobe was so low that a modest terms change was nearly enough to topple the whole damn thing over. Adobe needs to get over its focus on B2B and realize that it is a B2C company whether it likes it or not, and price and focus accordingly. Cheap education pricing will not win over the next generation of creatives forever.

Source: Adobe’s Enterprise-First Ambitions Led To This Mess by Ernie Smith

Liked Increasing your ‘serendipity surface’ by Doug BelshawDoug Belshaw (web.archive.org)

Expecting your career, social life, or significant relationship to develop in new, unexpected ways when you do the same things over and over again is, after all, how Einstein defined insanity. Increase your serendipity surface!

Source: Increasing your ‘serendipity surface’ by Doug Belshaw

Liked https://view.nl.npr.org/?qs=5534ee38af86a9e7b5aae43d166384e73063a23a58640b5e9483bcc4f7e0ed71f89084614acc019c24233e0feb71f8fa671cbcd3a1e85fa7bebafabd0f1c421fa78a48acc6ab6d0ead31237b011e22176ef0fa77d12391ea (view.nl.npr.org)

The terms of nostalgia are always defined by the present day; they reflect ideals that may seem out of reach except by going backward, but which still uphold convention. Nostalgia in 2024 for 1990s television or goth/emo music, for example, fetishizes the ways in which those pop-cultural realms fetishized weirdness and rebellion; yet it doesn’t suggest ways in which weirdness or rebellion might actually transform the world. The Hellmouth in Buffy remains at least partially closed; the black mascara of the goth is removable. I Saw the TV Glow presents these manufactured signs of difference as hints of something deeper that will require much more than a horror-movie storyline or a wailed pop chorus to fully enact. While looking fondly to these signifiers, it asks for more. That’s why, for all of its fun strangeness, this film is ultimately more serious — more political — than it might seem at first.

Source: Returning to the past to battle nostalgia (and other demons) by Ann Powers