Years ago I spent some time in Second Life, taking my young son to visit a display of NASA rockets and historical sites from classical history, and for my own amusement wandering through a few Star Trek exhibits, and exploring the mostly empty landscapes. My university bought an island, and I was briefly excited at…
I rather miss teaching HTML and doing my own web design on the side. These days, when my students propose to make a web page, they have already decided to use Google Sites or Wix. Sometimes I can talk them into using WordPress, but there just isn’t room in my curriculum to teach them everything…
A good article about kids and dopamine. Apps and sweets can hijack the neural pathways we need to survive, triggering tantrums and aggression. The problem describes plenty of adults, too! It’s not actually happiness we feel when we fulfill that craving. While she’s staring into the technicolor images, her brain experiences spikes in dopamine, over and…
Great story about the art of photographing theatre performances. Given that the choreographers and lighting designers and set designer and costume, hair and make-up people have already done a lot of work, not to mention the contributions of performers themselves, I just love grabbing 1000 or more shots during a show, and culling them down…
As Mike Edwards notes, “AI doomers will eagerly tweet this article, unaware that it’s not about the dangers of LLMs: it’s about *information literacy*”
In a cringe-inducing court hearing, a lawyer who relied on A.I. to craft a motion full of made-up case law said he “did not comprehend” that the chat bot could lead him astray.
It was time to download Google Chrome on a new Windows 11 computer. I typed “Chrome” into the Microsoft Edge search bar. I was greeted with a full-screen Microsoft Bing AI chatbot window, which promptly told me it was searching for… Bing features. Source: Microsoft has no shame: Bing spit on my ‘Chrome’ search with a…
As part of a journalism lesson about brand names, I just wrote this sentence: The term “Winnebago Vista” is a rollicking road trip for the ear, and no oath was ever minced with more tangy intensity than we find in the fricative phonemes of “Cheez-It.” I’ll probably murder that darling tomorrow, but right now I’m…
What would you do? Today I wrote 192 lines of ChoiceScript code to address this journalism lesson.
Me: (Making a journalism game to teach myself ChoiceScript.)
Nobody:
Me: Maybe I should add a “current time” display.
Nobody:
Me: And I should code up all the special cases for a.m., p.m., noon and midnight, to match AP Style.
Nobody:
Me: How long could it take?
(Six hours later….)
“In every previous automation threat, the automation was about automating the hard, dirty, repetitive jobs,” said Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. “This time, the automation threat is aimed squarely at the highest-earning, most creative jobs that … require the most educational background.” In March, Goldman Sachs…
Carolyn was in this short movie, conceived and produced in 48 hours, executed in a single unbroken take (with mesmerizing camera motion). If you can spare about 8 minutes, I think you’ll enjoy what you see!
The very useful “media bias chart” is one of several useful ways to classify sources of journalism. While individual items published by any of these sources can vary considerably from the general location depicted in this chart, the takeaway message is that journalism can still be valid and useful even if it has a slant,…
Bit-Sized Productions was nominated for something like 12 awards for “Long Live the LARPers” and won the audience choice, best acting ensemble, best song, tied for best choreography… I lost track of the rest. What a fun night! I’ll post a link to the film as soon as I can!
