Occasionally, when I don’t know exactly what to search for, I have found it somewhat useful to describe a problem to Bing and see what topics it searches for as it assembles its answer. But decades of experience with search engines means I don’t usually need a bot to tell me what to search for.…
Rewatching ST:DS9 During his usual lunch with Bashir, Garak dismisses as farcical the notion that Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar would be surprised that his best friend betrayed him, in a literary reference that is definitely random and will certainly have nothing at all to do with this week’s plot. Garak departs with a promise to deliver…
When I’m stressed, or I feel life is spinning out of control, I buy lights. I’m sure there’s something symbolic in that action. Over the years I’ve picked up a half dozen photography lights with umbrella reflectors, and as the cool-white spiral fluorescent bulbs fail — one every two years or so — I’ve been…
Rather than wanting to make a film about Tetris the video game as such, Baird was fascinated by this human story that pushed the game into existence. “The original title of the film was actually Falling Blocs, just like the Eastern blocs that dissolved when the Soviet Union collapsed. I thought it was a really…
I’m still grappling with exactly how the rise of AI writing apps will affect my teaching. I don’t think it’s reasonable to ban technology from the classroom. While I will likely assign more in-class, hand-written activities, that strategy won’t work for online classes — and I am just not interested in requiring students to use…
“That was easy!” Today three different students made some variation of that statement. In that class, we are gearing up to write a research paper. I have broken the project up into multiple tasks, that I can grade quickly and generously. Today’s assignment asks students to submit a paragraph that argues the…
this frog and their band pic.twitter.com/bVo6xuakuv — non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) March 26, 2023
An in-person casino opened up a few years ago in the shopping mall near my house. I haven’t been inside, but I hope the rent helps the rest of the mall stay open. Just as the in-person shopping has to compete with online retailers, the in-person casino offers a restaurant and entertainment, to establish it…
Some people out there will never like you, no matter what you do. Some hurting and traumatized people will latch onto you as the symbol of their insecurities, and treat all your imperfections as personal attacks. It’s important not to pay that negativity forward, or to punch down, or to take it out on yourself.…
A dedication in the script of a 1603 Ben Jonson play (Sejanus: His Fall) may have been written by Shakespeare, who appeared in that play as an actor. “It’s tantalising. There are so many parallels with Shakespeare’s style that it must surely make even the most hardened sceptic pause and think.” Initially intrigued, he had…
My grandmother shaped them a little differently, more like segments of a sphere… the name I must have given them in my childhood is just “powdered sugar crescent cookies.” She packed them in a tin with chocolate chip , oatmeal raisin, fork-impressed peanut butter, and maybe sugar cookies? I would have made a beeline for her…
My family thoroughly enjoyed this performance at Greensburg’s Palace.
We are assigning more societal decision-making power to systems that we don’t fully understand and can’t always audit, and that lawmakers don’t know nearly well enough to effectively regulate. As impressive as modern artificial intelligence can seem, right now those AI systems are, in a sense, “stupid.” They tend to have very narrow scope and limited computing…