The secret police: Cops built a shadowy surveillance machine in Minnesota after George Floyd’s murder
Many of the same people who reject masking and vaccinations on the grounds that they allegedly threaten the free will of the citizenry are perfectly OK with authoritarian police systems that harass and assault citizens who are exercising their First Amendment rights to a free press and free speech. If you’re worried that vaccines are…
Unfinished pine and not so ornamented, for the workshops and service areas of my fantasy #steampunk #blender3d project.
Green / mahogany variation of the vibe I'm working on for a fantasy #steampunk #blender3d project. Rendered in #eevee and getting a little better every time.
Getting a little bit better with each #blender3D scene I render.
If I don’t hang my own artwork on the walls of my #steampunk fantasy ship-of-the-line, who will? #blender3dart #blender3d #blender3dmodelling #eevee (flowers, picture frame, and upholstered texture and backdrops are all remixed)
A familiar performer choreographed and dances the “Canaan Days” tango in Stage Right’s Joseph (tonight and tomorrow)
This the last hour I will have a teenager in my house. (Tomorrow my youngest turns 20.)
I blogged in 2004: “The time is waning that my son will want nothing more than to play Battleship and The Magnificent Race with me all afternoon. Some day I’ll make a silly joke, and my daughter won’t giggle with glee, she will roll her eyes and say, ‘Dad, you’re embarrassing me.’” https://jerz.setonhill.edu/blog/2004/07/09/2657/ …
Opening night! So great to see live local theatre.
NASA astronaut: Russians were ‘blindsided’ by reaction to yellow suits
I posted a while back about the yellow and blue color scheme of the suits worn by Russian cosmonauts who had then just arrived at the International Space Station. This story says all three Russian had gone to a school whose colors are yellow and blue, and that they did not intend the colors to…
Stuffed planet Venus, made for me by my dear mother, around 1974.
Windows 3.1 Turns 30: Here’s How It Made Windows Essential
After watching all the episodes of the 80s/90s Star Trek: TNG, with the beautifully designed fictional LCARS computer interfaces, it’s amazing to look at what actual computer interfaces looked like in the early 90s. (OK, the Macs of that era looked prettier.) 30 years ago—on April 6, 1992—Microsoft released Windows 3.1, which brought the company…
We were a Neilsen ratings family during the pandemic
In March 2020, just as the lockdown closed down my daughter’s production of The Outsiders and the next couple of shows she had already lined up, and my school went to virtual teaching, my wife got a call from the Nielsen Ratings company. My household had been selected as one of the representative families whose…
All Good Things… (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 25) Picard faces a timey-wimey puzzle in three different timelines
Rewatching ST:TNG When we all first met the crew of the Enterprise-D, I was an undergraduate living in a dorm at the University of Virginia. Seven years later, I was a Ph.D. student in a dorm at the University of Toronto. I saw the series finale on a channel that was hosting a huge live…
Paradise Blue (so glad to be seeing more live theater lately)
In April, 2002, I was blogging about an autistic person’s guide to asking a girl on a date; The Inform 6 Beginner’s Guide; broken links;
In April, 2002, I was blogging about Instructions for “Asking a Girl on a Date” (autistics.org) The Inform Beginner’s Guide (I edited this book on programming text adventure games in Inform 6) Broken Links: Just How Rapidly do Science Education Hyperlinks Go Extinct? (yes, the link was broken but I linked to the backup on…
Please use the microphone at public events (I have an auditory processing disorder and can’t understand you — even if you shout really loudly from your seat)
Still recovering from this morning’s three-hour training session. Huge echoey room. Lots of masked people talking, some of whom were shouting their comments and questions from their seats instead of using the microphones. When we were asked to share a time we felt excluded, I went up to the mic, mentioned my auditory processing…
Preemptive Strike (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 24) Lt. Ro’s loyalties are tested during an undercover mission
Rewatching ST:TNG The newly promoted Lt. Ro, overwhelmed at a surprise “welcome back from tactical school” party, is disappointed when she sees Picard leaving. When it turns out he did so only so he could order her to report to him (and thus give her an excuse to leave the party), she’s grateful. After a…
“Wolf!”, cried the shepherd boy. (The whole thread is worth reading.)
https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1509065974367936515?t=VhY0T-a7ABXTqvO7Cz8uWw&s=09
Ungrading after 11 weeks
Mathematics professor Robert Talbot reports on his ongoing experiment with ungrading — giving feedback and emphasizing the students’ metacognition, rather than encouraging them to fixate on “marks.” (Students who are less equipped to self-evaluate might actually benefit from the clear signposting provided by grades, so in his experience, removing grading from education does not magically…