Facebook makes editorial decisions that affect its presentation of news through its “news” (?) feed. But Facebook is in the business to make money for Facebook, and the trending topics feed is just a tool to keep people on Facebook. Someone needs to assign Facebook a faculty adviser. In the space of a single day,…
Similar:Fake Kitsch! Not Really the 80s! There is a part of me that misses …AestheticsAnother delightful caricature by Rebecca ScassellatiAestheticsThe barbican at Mickelgate was pulled down in the 1800s but I made a rough approximation f…AestheticsThe New American Man Doesn't Look Like His FatherNPR has a story that should probably hav…CultureRossum's Universal Robots (Act 2)https://youtu.be/XfOONrGsf2I…
Number of times one of my $9.99 headphones fell out of my ears while I was mowing the lawn this morning: 3. Likelihood I might spend $159 on AirPods: 0%. Likelihood I might spend $15.90 on AirPods: 0%. Similar:Gen Z Never Learned to Read CursiveWhen I used to teach a “Media and Cultur…AcademiaTwitter was locked…
When you plug an audio cable into a smartphone, it just works. It doesn’t matter whether the headphones were made by the same manufacturer as the phone. It doesn’t even matter what you’re trying to do with the audio signal—it works whether the cable is going into a speaker, a mixing board, or a recording…
Fascinating theory. The hard work of raising helpless babies is part of the natural selection process that made us as a species so intelligent. Natural selection favors humans with large brains, because those humans tend to be smarter. This may create evolutionary incentives for babies that are born at an even earlier developmental stage, which…
Update: Here’s a clip of the whole breakfast scene (recorded during a performance). A few weeks ago, my 14yo played Helen Keller in the Latrobe Cabaret Theatre’s production of The Miracle Worker. This clip is from a rehearsal of the epic breakfast scene, a wordless battle of wills between young Helen (who has been blind…
All ITT Tech campuses will be shut down, its parent company announced today. — Inside Higher Ed Similar:One of the Sadder Lost and Found Messages You'll Probably See TodayNot my item, but the pathos caught my ey…DesignNo, this photo of people wearing coats standing in front of bare trees was not a fake news…It’s distressing and…
Will Crowther, an RPG-er, created the first text-based adventure game for computers Colossal Cave Adventure in 1975.6 When Don Woods developed it into Adventure in 1976-1977 he added the Tolkienian elements of trolls and elves. —Helen Young, Journal of Tolkien Research Well, yes, but Crowther had already started with the Tolkenian elements of underground dwarves,…
I just saw the following clickbait for an ongoing non-story in the technology world: “All the latest speculation about [topic X] in one place.” That’s less like a news headline and more like the punchline to a New Yorker cartoon. No, I did not click the link. Similar:Okay, a lot of the world is pretty…
Great reporting from Christopher Goffard of the LA Times. Now she watched as her ruin seemed to unfold before her. It was enough to send her to jail, and more than enough to destroy her name. Source: She was the PTA mom everyone knew. Who would want to harm her? Similar:What You Get When 30…
Similar:How are you holding up? What difficult choices have you made? How can we all help each oth…Carolyn and were recently cast in a hist…CultureThe daughter missed her graduation ceremony because she was performing in Kinetic Theatre'…The daughter missed her graduation cerem…AcademiaWhat kids do when Dad won't hand over the iPod So I’m not being…
In situations of change, it is natural for human beings to look for touchstones. As a human being, I had always sought a center to my life, an example to follow. What I hadn’t realized was that I was already following a path into the future. It was pointed out to me at a business…
Don’t trust your Facebook feed. All Facebook wants is for you to spend time on Facebook, so that they can sell your attention to the highest bidder. Facebook recently fired 18 employees whose job was to write headlines for and monitor the “Trending Topics” list. When that list fell under scrutiny for an alleged…
Saving this for the next time I teach Shakespeare. All well and good, you say, but my parents are worried about what I’m going to do after I graduate. There, too, Shakespeare can be a model. When he was born, there wasn’t yet a professional theater in London. In other words, his education had prepared him…
Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles, and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children…
Today, Facebook announced that human curators will no longer write short descriptions that accompany trending topics on the site. Instead, the company will rely on an algorithmic process to “pull excerpts directly from stories.” The company also said it will stop using human curators to sort through the news…. It’s important to note that Facebook originally…
Our future robot overlords never looked so squishy. A team of Harvard University scientists has built an entirely soft robot — one that’s inspired by an octopus. The octobot, described this week in the journal Nature, could pave the way toward more effective soft robots that could be used in search and rescue, exploration and…
Similar:Research Poetry (communicating research results and expressing their significance through …For an article on communicating research…AcademiaAdvent of Digital Humanities Will Make English Departments Pointless — New RepublicDon’t overreact to the headline, which i…AcademiaEverybody Dies (Shakespearean Tragedy Infographic) The image (by Magee and Griffin) is an…AestheticsA Conversation with Dennis Jerz, Actor — WAOB Audio Theatrehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU6vs0ZB…DramaEvolution (ST:TNG…
This short film documents an early attempt to use hypertext to help students study poetry. A fascinating early collaboration between computer science and the humanities. Similar:The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down for no good reasonStunning. The Stars and Stripes is much …CultureStory Pitch: How writers present an article idea to a…
Similar:Meet the 12-year-old boy who makes games instead of going to schoolTurning on the anti-clickbait filter: Ho…CultureI had to act like I knew something about golf. There I am on the right at about :15.PersonalSo glad to be attending another live theatrical production. @quantumtheatre never disappoi…Projections, live music, sounds, props, …BusinessIt's Science! Carolyn Uses Anastasia's…