Kind: Replies

a reply to content typically on another site
Replied to Technology in education – friend or foe? by Gill (macgirl19.wordpress.com)

I can absolutely appreciate the validity of the arguments the authors raised particularly the big one – for young people (and actually, many adults as well) the primary function of technology is entertainment so attempting to change this to a learning focus (and expecting it to easily translate) is far from ideal. Technology provides an endless menu of distractions. Even as I’m writing this blog post, there are other tabs in my browser tempting me and my attention does flit from time to time. And that’s on a task that was self-initiated.

I find this such an intriguing topic Gill, especially in a post-COVID world. Your discussion of technology and distractions has me thinking about the challenge to justify the impact many years ago. I feel that the biggest challenge is actually being mindful about the choices, too often if feels like choices are made out of convenience, rather than some deliberate consideration.
Replied to Why I Haven’t Embraced WordPress Blocks by David ShanskeDavid Shanske (david.shanske.com)

Indieweb Post Kinds actually does a few different things. It creates a taxonomy to classify posts, similar to the old post formats options. This just allows for automatic creation of archives. I also use the selector to change the interface, but this could be done differently. It also uses Parse This to create rich embeds of linked content. But it adds the microformats for different types of Indieweb posts outside of the traditional content block using WordPress filters. That is something I never particularly liked, and wouldn’t mind replacing with something integrated into content.

I have long been intrigued by this David, so thank you for sharing. I have tinkered with blocks in my long form site, but still see it as overkill most things.

For my two cents worth, I really like the idea of integrating the response box into the content.

Replied to The Downsides of Generalism by Wouter GroeneveldWouter Groeneveld (brainbaking.com)

The path to generalism is indeed more challenging, yet the reward at the end of the rainbow is genuine satisfaction. Generalists are much more creative. Generalists are more curious. Generalists as system-thinkers are better at solving high-level problems.

I am not sure if I am really a generalist with various pokers in the fire as you seem to have Wouter, but I am always willing to dive into new areas of learning. I wonder if the biggest challenge with this is the narrative, something you touch upon. This week I was asked to step into a different position, one more technical. It is not necessarily my background, but it is what is needed for the project I am a part of. I plough on, connecting the dots, making new pictures, remaking old ones.
Replied to

Ben, I love the use of grouping columns, but found it problematic when sharing a Google Sheet as it is not unique to the user.
Replied to https://johnjohnston.info/blog/dave-winer-rss-is-federation/ (johnjohnston.info)
John, I somewhat agree with your preference for RSS over the social feed. Personally, I use Granary to actually bring Mastodon into my feed. For me, this allows me to become less of a slave to the ever current stream. I sometimes wonder though if this is bad faith as I assume I am not nessecarily following the rules on the packet, this can mean engaging in conversations out of time.
Replied to bavachromatosis by ReverendReverend (bavatuesdays.com)

We’ll see how much I can reflect on 2022 in the next few days, I still feel like I have to blog about what’s happening now so thinking about 12 months of time might have to happen after the new … Continue reading →

Jim, you might be interested in Tony Martin’s reflection ‘Any Old Iron’ included in his book Lolly Scramble. He discusses his own experience of hemochromatosis with wit and humour.
Replied to Posting a Message Nobody Reads by Kin Lane (Kin Lane)

Why do we post messages with text, images, and video online? Do we do it for attention? Do we do it to help educate and inform others? There are many positive and not so positive reasons we post messages online. I do not think many people publish text, images, or video online without intending to influence and communicate with one or many other human beings. I do it to get my ideas out of my head. I do it because I like crafting stories, and having a real or perceived audience helps with this process.

My choice to change my habits in regards to social media and sharing has really led me to reflect why I do what I do. What I have come to realise is that at the heart of it, I share in my own space for me. With this in mind, I like your point about ‘getting things out of your head’.
Replied to Considering the Post-COVID Classroom by wiobyrnewiobyrne (wiobyrne.com)

Each week I write a love letter to the Internet. You can subscribe here. Spoiler alert!!! It’s not all good.

I really like your description of your newsletters as a ‘love letter to the internet’. I am not exactly sure what description I would give to mine. It sometimes feels like a habit without purpose at times.
Replied to #FeedReaderFriday: A Suggestion for Changing our Social Media Patterns by Chris AldrichChris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)

In the recent Twitter Migration, in addition to trying out Mastodon, I’ve been seeing some people go back to blogs or platforms like Micro.blog, WordPress, Tumblr, WriteFreely (like Mastodon it’s a part of the Fediverse, but built for blogging instead of short posts) and variety of others. They?…

Sorry, late to getting to this piece Chris, as I get to my feeds in my own time. I have long lived a feed first existence. Even when engaging with Twitter, I have been consuming via my feed reader. I just realised that I can also produce a feed for Mastodon too using Granary.io. I sometimes feel like I am late to the conversation, however on the flip side I feel that the conversation is more in hand. I feel that if it is worth having then waiting is fine.
Replied to https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/11/herzog-and-zizek-become-uncanny-ai-bots-trapped-in-endless-conversation/ (arstechnica.com)

Upon visiting the site—which is unaffiliated with either person—you’ll see AI-generated charcoal portraits of the two men in profile. Between them, a transcript of AI-generated text is highlighted in yellow as AI-generated voices simulating those of Herzog or Žižek read through it. The conversation goes back and forth between them, complete with distinct accents, and you can skip between each segment by clicking the arrows beneath the portraits.

Benj Edwards talks about the AI generated Infinite Conversation site which involves an ongoing conversation between German director Werner Herzog and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek.
Replied to The Week in Review: What’s Good (Audrey Watters)

It’s time to pull out Tools for Conviviality, perhaps, for a re-read, because I’m loathe to make the argument that email is, in fact, where we find technological conviviality these days. But that’s the direction I’m considering taking the argument. If I were to write about it and think about it more, that is.

Maybe I’ll just go for a run instead.

Audrey on the money again. I think I found my problem, I really need to run more.
Replied to What IndieBlocks Does, and Why by Jan BoddezJan Boddez (jan.boddez.net)

I want my microformats “baked into” my posts, so that if I were to ever disable this plugin, all of my existing content stays untouched. Current microformats plugins rely on PHP “front-end” hooks and such, which I wanted to avoid.

Jan, this looks interesting. I am intrigued in an alternative to Post Kinds. I fear that I am going to hit a wall at some point if or when the classic plugin is no longer supported. I like what it does, but agree with your concern about it being outside of the post. One of the things that I am coming to realise though is that unless I were to roll out my own solution (which seems well beyond me) that I am always at the whim of somebody else’s design principles.
Replied to Creating a Catalogue in Google Sheets by Aaron DavisAaron Davis (readwriterespond.com)

To create the SWITCH, I created a UNIQUE list of all the folders and then pasted them as values so that I could delete those not required to be displayed in the directory. After culling the list, I then added the area in the cell next to each folder. Once I had these two columns complete, I used this formula to add quotation marks to them all:

=ArrayFormula(“”””&Sheet1!A:D&””””)

I then copied this list into the SWITCH formula and added in the commas

I have found a cleaner method for adding in the commas and quotations required for the SWITCH formula:

=char(34)&join(“””,”””,ARRAYFORMULA(QUERY(A1:A,”SELECT A WHERE A IS NOT NULL”)&”””,”””&QUERY(B1:B,”SELECT B WHERE B IS NOT NULL”)))&char(34)

Replied to

We recently purchased an air fryer and have not looked back. Soak the potatoes in water before.  Can do spuds, wedges, fries … all awesome.
Replied to Tangle Logic by Venkatesh RaoVenkatesh Rao (ribbonfarm.com)

Millennia of human building have convinced us that orderliness (with or without greebles) is somehow efficient and tangles are “messy and inefficient.” And it’s not a modern or even medieval phenomenon. I recall my high-school history teacher instructing us that the streets of Indus Valley cities were “efficient” because they intersected at right angles and were “well-laid out” in an obviously planned way, compared to other Bronze Age peer civilizations. She taught us the usual textbook justification: that this somehow made them self-cleaning because the wind swept the streets naturally. More modern thought typically treats straight lines anywhere (roads from capitals to airports, and colonial-era boundaries being the classic examples) as a mark of an authoritarian presence. There may be some accidental benefits for narrow use cases, such as street-sweeping by prevailing winds, but that’s not the reason they exist. They exist because an authoritarian has carved out an island of surplus resources for himself and his buddies, and decided to lay it out as a neat, untangled zone.

Complex answers, how else to describe a complex world? This reminds me of Dave Cormier’s discuss of complicated and complex in education.
Replied to so what’s the deal with teaching after lockdown? by Tania ShekoTania Sheko (taniasheko.com)

I’m torn. I’m aware that teachers need to balance the amount of assistance they provide to students with a certain amount of room for them to work through things on their own so that they learn from that process, otherwise they are so used to us feeding them what they need that they are under the impression that learning is consumption of skills on a platter, whereby they learn things they are given by rote and follow a formula to the end result. Even if that were the case, how engaged would they be? And without engagement they won’t have a source to draw from – a source of interest and self-confidence, a thirst to understand and learn more. Isn’t that the point of teaching and learning, that balance?

Tania, reflecting upon your thoughts and reflections on scaffolding, I am left wondering how much the issue is something missed during the COVID years or a general lack of engagement with learning in general?
Replied to The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s by Pitchfork (Pitchfork)

The tracks that defined the ’90s, including Björk, Biggie, Mariah, Bikini Kill, Aaliyah, 2Pac, and many, many more.

I am always a sucker for these sorts of listicles. Looking back, I feel that it will always be somewhat subjective to where you are or were. For example, there are no Australian artists. Maybe the music does not match up, but I feel that this maybe a reflection of something else.
Replied to The Mysteries of Mondrian by Peter Schjeldahl (The New Yorker)

Peter Schjeldahl reviews “Piet Mondrian: A Life,” by Hans Janssen, a new biography that excavates the genius of the Dutch modernist painter.

I enjoyed Peter Schjeldahl’s overview of the life and works of Piet Mondrian. The quote I liked the most was the importance of religion when it comes to atheism:

Mondrian was caught up for much of his life in Theosophy, the anti-materialist mythos that was initiated in 1875, in New York, by the much travelled Russian occultist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Its pantheistic mysticism seemed to resonate with everything he craved in both art and life. Theosophy’s tenet of an ascent from the natural by way of the spiritual toward a union with the divine was right up Mondrian’s temperamental alley. He was most immersed from about 1908 to 1912, when he painted metaphysically supercharged flowers and frankly weird totemic figures. In the years that followed, he shrugged off the aspects of the movement that seemed pedantic and nebulous rather than liberating and practical, not to mention its mediumistic hocus-pocus, but he never regretted the influence. He remarked later, “One cannot call oneself an atheist without really having experienced some form of religion.” He kept painting flowers, however, with unfailing virtuosity but waning enthusiasm, as a stock-in-trade to support his experimentation with frontal, vibrant geometric patterning.