Had a blast watching all the amazing entries in Pittsburgh's 48 Hour Film Festival, but I do have a favorite!

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Students must learn how to get things wrong. Only one subject does that. [English.]

I invest a lot of energy asking my college students to unlearn the pattern of summary and personal reflection that was enough to to earn a good grade in high school. I emphasize repeatedly that their high school teachers didn’t do anything wrong by teaching them what they needed to do in order to get…

In October, 2002, I was blogging about stupid space explosions, the superiority complex, why whitespace matters, usability testing, and Krispy Kreme

In October, 2002, I was blogging about The stupidity of explosions in space movies The Chronicle of Higher Education rescues the briefly defunct Arts & Letters Daily The superiority complex An anti-telemarketing script An “I Love Lucy: bible study Why whitespace matters when creating a sign The coming air age of 1955 (as envisioned in…

Weird History offers a good debunking of this persistent myth.

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My mother has taught me so much. I'm delighted I get to sit in her living room and teach her how to text.

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The AI revolution is powered by these contractors making $15 an hour

Students who cheat with ChatGPT can look forward to these $15/hr jobs training the AI that they relied upon to get them their degrees. The students who actually did the work themselves should be much be better prepared to demonstrate how their work differs from the mediocre stream of bot-produced content. Savreux is part of…

Spring 2023 Grades: Submitted! (I only had 3 last-minute submissions to mark today.)

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Headlines matter. Were they migrants, people who happened to be at a migrant center, pedestrians, or manslaughter victims?

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RIP Metaverse, we hardly knew ye

I am curious enough about cockatoos that I might click a link to read an article about people who own a cockatoos. I feel the same about British royalty, or “van life,” or VR. Other than remembering a cool exhibit that stacked up various NASA and other historical rockets so you could see the scale,…

Star Trek TOS Main Theme but it never gets to the Main Theme

Arrgh! This is sooo stressful! (Some great visual gags as the intro drags on.) No, it is not worth it to watch the whole thing. But that’s the point. Similar:Another square of #steampunk control panel eye candy. #blender3d #blender3dart #design #a…AestheticsThe Best Word Book Ever, 1963 and 1991.As a child, I obsessed over many Richard…BooksThe…

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Today’s unexpected but welcome moments of grace

She waived a fee. He accepted a slightly expired coupon. Someone bent a rule in my favor. (I may or may not have deserved it.) I bent rules for five different people. (They may or may not have deserved it.) That 1/4 inch post that was too big popped off and under it was a…

They grew up in a mostly analog/paper world and squirmed with joy the first time they clicked a hyperlink that they created

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Requiem for the Newsroom

When I worked at a radio news station in the late 80s, when I was about 20, I would often saunter into the newsroom a half hour before my shift started, so that I could sit down with a sandwich and a bottle of apple juice, and page through the newsroom’s copies of The Washington…

AP Style tips on “neurodiversity”

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National Mall site approved for memorial to fallen journalists

Federal officials have approved a site on the National Mall for the capital’s first memorial dedicated to journalists who have died while reporting the news and to the role of the free press in a democracy, the foundation planning the project announced Monday. The Fallen Journalists Memorial will be located on a third-of-an-acre parcel in…

The Struggle to Save Ballet From Itself

A former dancer reckons with the rigors and ordeals of life in ballet. If ballet was all self-effacing torture, there would be no need to wrestle with it. But despite the inhumanity of its current training methods, Robb also makes it clear that it gave her so much. “At ballet, I had learned not only…

Family Business (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 3, Episode 23) Quark feuds with his mother (Andrea Martin); Jake introduces his father to a freighter captain

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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.

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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…