New Kindle Helps Readers Show Off By Shouting Title Of Book Loudly And Repeatedly

New Kindle Helps Readers Show Off By Shouting Title Of Book Loudly And Repeatedly Similar:Princess of Wales photo furore underlines sensitivity around image doctoring Catherine’s attempts to adjust a famil…CultureHow’s newsgathering during COVID-19 at the state level? Depends on the governor.Journalists covering state responses to …CultureAlmost Flat DesignApple, Google and Microsoft have very di…AestheticsBeing a…

How We Read

I feel a little nerdier than usual when I blog something related to typography, but A List Apart had a good one. Type and typography wouldn’t exist without our need to express and record information. Sure, we have other ways to do those things, like speech or imagery, but type is efficient, flexible, portable, and…

The Most Disastrous Typos In Western History

The Most Disastrous Typos In Western History. Similar:Things I will tell my kids if they become entrepreneursLots of good live advice in these slides…AcademiaFacebook Has Seized the Media, and That’s Bad News for Everyone But FacebookFacebook has no financial incentive to c…BusinessWhy ‘Cats’ the Movie Fails So FlamboyantlyI can’t seem to get into superhero movie…AestheticsA…

Operation War Diary

One hundred years ago today, Britain declared war on Germany, and the world found itself sucked into a vortex of conflict which centred for many on the battlefields of the Western Front. Every unit which slogged its way through the awful years which followed kept a war diary describing their experiences. Official accounts of movements,…

I accidentally started a Wikipedia hoax

Hoaxes roam the Information Superhighway, camouflaged as factoids. Consider this one: “Amelia Bedelia was a maid in Cameroon.” The “Amelia Bedelia was a maid in Cameroon” factoid had been cited in a lesson plan by a Taiwanese English professor. It was cited in a book about Jews and Jesus. It was cited in innumerable blog posts and…

That’s not an argument. (Yes it is.)

I spent some time this afternoon sifting through lecture notes to create a new handout: Academic Argument: Evidence-based Defense of a Non-obvious Position In everyday language, we may use the word “argument” to mean very different things. In the living room, siblings Charles and Petra argue about what movie to watch. The two groups of protestors chanted slogans and waved signs, arguing about…

Tips to Improve Happiness

King says many simple and effective techniques exist for managing stress. He suggests a few immediate and long-term methods for soothing frayed nerves. IMMEDIATE ACTIONS Stop, pause, and breathe. See the bigger picture. Contact a friend. LONG-TERM ACTIONS Diet and exercise. Daily “me time”. Remember to H.A.L.T.: “Make sure you’re not Hungry, you’re not Angry,…

The Cost of Defining Yourself as an Introvert or Extrovert

In a nutshell, introversion is not about a preference to be alone. It not about being anxious around other people. It is not about being overwhelmed by cortical activity in the absence of stimulation. At its core, introversion is about deriving less reward from being the center of social attention. Getting the spotlight is not…

The Key To Better Work? E-mail Less, Flow More

What the researchers found was that the typical diversion caused by an e-mail was nine minutes and 30 seconds in length. Now that was just the time spent on the e-mail itself. After that, it still took the participants of the study another 16 minutes to resume their primary task. That’s a lot of lost…

Why Creative Side Projects Are Good for You

San Francisco State psychology professor Dr. Kevin Eschleman and his colleagues measured the effect of creative hobbies on over 400 employees. In two separate groups—one rated by coworkers and one self-rated—those with a creative hobby were more likely to be helpful, collaborative, and creative with their job performance. | As an added bonus, outside of…

Meet the 12-year-old boy who makes games instead of going to school

Turning on the anti-clickbait filter: Homeschooler builds apps. Sam has been making games from his home in the south of England for “about a year.” He started out playing around with a programming language called Small Basic, a simplified version of Visual Basic, mostly making text-based adventures that are all words and no graphics. |…

Marketers package female empowerment to sell products

This article makes an excellent point. The essential connection between the positive message that makes the pro-girl ad worth sharing and the product being sold is tentative at best. In a recent ad for Always feminine hygiene products, women and men are asked to demonstrate how it looks to “run, throw and fight like a…

Get ready for Generation Z

Students continue to change… I’m doing a lot of thinking, about how I can adjusting my teaching strategies, so that I can still rely on my own strengths but also make use of the things my incoming students are really good at (not just what they say they want, and not just what they can…

And the People of the Book of Face Were Deceived

“And I looked up and saw a sign, and my words were in the sign, and the sign was in a meme, and the people of the Book of Face were deceived.” Go read a book, for God’s sake. Similar:Students must learn how to get things wrong. Only one subject does that. [English.]I invest a…

Seriously, Fuck You, “Kindle Unlimited”

I’m just quoting the f-bomb in the link, but I do agree with the sentiment behind it. Last week, Amazon informed us that for ten dollars per month, Kindle users can have unlimited access to over six hundred thousand books in its library. But it shouldn’t cost a thing to borrow a book, Amazon, you…

Russia Conspiracy Theories Trap Putin Malaysia Airlines MH17

An old journalism joke suggests that, during the Cold War, the USSR state-run news agency reported the results of a two-car race this way: “Soviet car finishes second; Americans next-to-last.” In a culture without a free press, the official story is the only story. Did you know that the crash of MH17 was all part…

Buzz Aldrin: It’s Time to Put a Man on Mars

There are eight U.S. astronauts left out of the 12 who walked on the moon. All of us are in the eighth decade of our lives. Each of us can attest to the importance of continuing human exploration of space and the tremendous impact it has had on so many facets of our society. The…

Apple faces threat of legal action over ‘in app’ payments

I haven’t taken the plunge and installed a new iOS app on a whim in quite some time, because so many of them require in-app purchases in order to be useful. Now I carefully read the reviews first. Among the issues regulators have highlighted is a default setting within Apple’s app store where, after a…

The Surprisingly Savvy Weird Al Internet Machine

When he talks about his business being threatened by YouTube parody video-makers, he’s talking about the fact that the public’s yen for parodies is being met by amateurs. Earlier this week, a young woman turned an infamous recording of a Comcast customer service call into a belty ballad. Between the release of that recording and…

Stop Using ‘Poet Voice’

This article analyzes (and skewers) that lilting steamroller tone of voice that so many poets use when reciting their work. During this banter the poet uses a slightly performative but mostly natural voice. It’s the voice they’d use to introduce you to their grandmother. Then they read the title of their first poem and launch…