Two classes will turn in final revisions at midnight Sunday, and final multimedia projects are in the middle of the week, but my most time-sensitive, intellectually demanding marking – giving detailed feedback on rough drafts – is over for the semester.

Still plenty of work to do before I finish for the summer, but not a whole lot more grading. Similar:Had a great time with AmLit students at the August Wilson block partyPater Noster Passenger ElevatorsNotes on Teaching August Wilson's Pittsburgh CycleAP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its jou…This…

Parrots learn to make video calls to chat with other parrots, then develop friendships, Northeastern University researchers say

A new study from researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with scientists from MIT and the University of Glasgow, investigated what happened when a group of domesticated birds were taught to call one another on tablets and smartphones. The results suggest that video calls could help parrots approximate birds’ communication in the wild, improving their…

Here’s to the grim-based photojournalist who saved my bacon ~35 years ago

Here’s to you, grim-faced photojournalist who waited just long enough to make sure 20-year-old me learned an important lesson, before saving me from the consequences of my own poor planning. Every day on the job, I’m trying to pay it forward. In 1989, I was an intern in a crowd of media professionals covering…

Look how the box leads your eye down to the car, then the two signs lead your eye up to the ba-boom setup, then your eye drops to the CRASH. Beautiful.

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Looking forward to what looks like an exciting evening of dance.

Explorers (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 3, Episode 22) Sisko builds an ancient Bajoran spacecraft; Julian meets a med school rival

Rewatching ST:DS9 With a come-hither glance and an obviously fake cough, the dabo girl Leeta introduces herself to Dr. Bashir. A very amused Dax interrupts with news that the valedictorian of Bashir’s medical class will be visiting the station soon. (Bashir was salutatorian, and he’s not bitter about that, no, not at all.) Sisko returns…

My Transplanted Heart and I Will Die Soon

Amy Silverstein writes a stunningly powerful guest essay in the NYTimes: Today, I will explain to my healthy transplanted heart why, in what may be a matter of days or weeks at best, she — well, we — will die. I slide my hand across my chest and speak aloud, palm to my heart’s crisp beating.…

Exodus From an Elsevier Neuroscience Journal

One of the world’s largest scientific publishers refused to reduce its $3,450 fee to publish in NeuroImage. […] On Monday, every editor at NeuroImage and the NeuroImage: Reports companion journal—over 40 people—resigned. “It’s a pretty big exodus,” said Cindy Lustig, a University of Michigan at Ann Arbor psychology professor and one of the eight now former senior editors of…

Great energy at our Comp & Culture poster paper session. So proud of these students and their instructors.

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Seeing the premiere of a play based on the life of a Holocaust survivor who ended up as a businessman in Pittsburgh. @prime_stage

Inmates in a Brazil prison shorten their sentences by writing book reviews

An amazing story of hope and dignity. That book club helped the inmates develop their analytical and communication skills. And out of that came a surprising insight: prison inmates read 9 times more books than civilians. So together with the National Justice Council, the Carambaia publishing house created a program called The Prison Reviews. The…

Netflix’s ‘The Piano Lesson’ adaptation breaks cycle by not filming in Pittsburgh

Very glad to see another of August Wilson’s plays is getting filmed. Sad to read that it won’t be filed in Pittsburgh, where Wilson grew up and where most of his plays take place. “The entire film industry of Southwest Pennsylvania is saddened to not be able to welcome August Wilson’s ‘Piano Lesson’ to Pittsburgh,…

The Die Is Cast (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 3, Episode 21) Garak’s mentor leads a presumptive strike against the Founders homeworld

Rewatching ST:DS9 After the recap of S3E20 “Improbable Cause,” we see Bashir, clearly missing Garak, holding forth on the decline of modern theatre during lunch with O’Brien, who kinda sorta pretends to listen. But this is the teaser for the second half of a two-parter, and there’s a plot to jump-start. A fleet of Romulans…

NPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as ‘state-affiliated media’

NPR will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform. In explaining its decision, NPR cited Twitter’s decision to first label the network “state-affiliated media,” the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other…

The Daughter’s 21st Birthday

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I dunno what to call this but it really hit the spot.

Out for an April stroll.

I ditched Google for Bing with ChatGPT for a month — here’s what happened | Tom’s Guide

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.…

Game night at our local library.

Improbable Cause (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 3, Episode 20) Odo investigates an attempt on Garak’s life

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…