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.
Kind: Likes
a way to pay compliments to the original post/poster of external content
Audrey 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/
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
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
Doug 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
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
Web developer tools. Contribute to mathiasbynens/mothereff.in development by creating an account on GitHub.
An encoder to use for presenting HTML in Classic
The New York Academy of Medicine Library
Tim Harford (timharford.com)Donald Norman argues that a well-designed product should make functions visible and intuitive: users should be able to grasp how it works, what their options are and get feedback about the results of their actions. That is all very wise, but our modern devices have managed to become so intuitive and versatile by concealing from us how they really operate. Laying bare the true complexity of the supercomputers in our pockets would boggle the mind. We cannot be exposed to how these things really work, lest we lose our grasp on reality. (See also: ChatGPT.)
Unlearning Exercises shares a set of collective “unlearning exercises” to make way for a culture of equality, difference and fairness in art organizations; and aims to inspire active critical investigation of normative structures and practices in order to become aware and get rid of taken-for-granted “truths” and values.
This incident instructed me on the fragile and capricious nature of the creative spirit and reminded me of the necessity of constant daily work. I think of it when I struggle with my own vacillating creativity. Because deep in my heart, I know there is always something to write about, but there is also always nothing – and terrifyingly little air between.
Nick Cave ISSUE #286 / MAY 2024
Enhance the accessibility of your course images with our intuitive tool. Designed to effortlessly generate alt text and detailed descriptions, as well as extract text from slides and images that are not accessible, our tool simplifies the creation of inclusive content. Just upload your image and hit ‘Create Image Details.’ Within seconds, you’ll see the generated content appear on the right side of the screen. Need to tailor the descriptions further? Easily add more specifics with the ‘Add Details’ option and generate updated descriptions to perfectly meet your needs.
Source: Image Accessibility Creator
ᔥ in How to easily generate image descriptions and alt text | Thought Shrapnel ()
38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later
When Online Content Disappears
by Athena Chapekis, Samuel Bestvater, Emma Remy and Gonzalo Rivero
ᔥ in Pluralistic: Linkrot (21 May 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow ()
Cultivate Empathy: Empathy is the cornerstone of turning towards each other. It allows us to understand the feelings and experiences of others without judgment or defensiveness. To cultivate empathy, we must be willing to sit with discomfort and open ourselves up to the experiences of others. Practice Active Listening: Active listening involves fully focusing on, understanding, responding to, and then remembering what is being said by another person. This means putting aside our own agendas or preconceived notions in order to truly hear what someone else is saying. Embrace Vulnerability: Vulnerability can be scary because it involves exposing parts of ourselves that we often hide for fear of rejection or judgment. However, it’s through vulnerability that we create genuine connections with others. Acknowledge and Validate Feelings: Validating someone’s feelings doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing with them. It simply means acknowledging their feelings and letting them know that their feelings make sense. Prioritize Connection Over Being Right: One of the key elements of turning towards each other is choosing connection over being right. This entails putting aside our need to win arguments or prove points, and instead focus on understanding the other person’s perspective.
Transitioning from Turning on Each Other to Turning Towards Each Other by Ian O’Byrne
A site for testing email.
Cory Doctorow (pluralistic.net)As a society, we have vested an alarming amount of power in the hands of tech billionaires who profess to be embittered science fiction fans who merely want to realize the “promises” of our Golden Age stfnal dreams. These bros insist that they can overcome both the technical hurdles and the absolutely insurmountable privation involved in space colonization:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead
They have somehow mistaken Neal Stephenson’s dystopian satirical “metaverse” for a roadmap:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/18/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video/
As Charlie Stross writes, it’s not just that these weirdos can’t tell the difference between imaginative parables about the future and predictions about the future – it’s also that they keep mistaking dystopias for business plans:
Cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion. Please, I beg you, stop building the fucking torment nexus:
Pluralistic: You were promised a jetpack by liars (17 May 2024) by Cory Doctorow
You can assign reading to students; but if you don’t develop strategies for holding them accountable, then it doesn’t really matter what you assign. They’re Self-Deceived Rational Utility Maximizers after all, and if there’s one thing you can never change about them it’s that.
If the web is now a metaphorical barren wasteland, pillaged by commercial interests and growth-at-all-costs management consultants, then I’m all the more motivated to keep my little patch of land lush, and green, and filled with rainbow flowers.
So, feel free to stop by any time and stay as long as you like. I won’t track you, make you look at ads, ask you to download my app, harass you with popups, suggest you sign up for my newsletter or push you through a sales funnel. Enjoy the garden, and the peace 💐.
Rach Smith https://rachsmith.com/my-own-little-patch/