Slow flyby of a scout shop. Starfield backdrop; particle-based engine exhaust; hull uses a Boolean modifier to cut out portholes; cockpit frame and text labels use shrinkwrap. #Blender3D

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Synchronous Online Classes: 10 Tips for Engaging Students

Every time I have taught an online class, I have made it asynchronous. I’m blogging these synchronous teaching tips so I can find them again when I’m prepping my fall classes (which will likely be HyFlex). The tips offered here won’t miraculously eliminate the initial awkwardness of virtual class sessions, but they’ll help. And over…

Carolyn Gombell Is Not a Real Person: #JusticeforCarolyn Is a Campaign Against Twitter Refusing to Delete Trump’s Tweets Accusing Joe Scarborough of Murdering Lori Klausutis

Fascinating use of social media. To be clear, this story about “Carolyn Gombell” is a fabrication, intended to spark Twitter to take action against people (such as Donald Trump) who use Twitter to publicize unfounded accusations. Will that matter to people who share it? It’s parody accounts, not journalists, who are retweeting this story as…

New York Times runs just 1000 names of the nearly 100,000 Americans who have already died from COVID-19

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Looking forward to Part 2 of #PPTPlaytime’s production “The Rivals” (live… now!)

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Dogmeat and I may yet win this game.

Yes, this was the decisive moment. I ended up cleaning my son out when he landed here later in the game. Similar:Star Trek: "Wink Of An Eye"/"The Empath"Amusing, if cynical, reaction to some of…AmusingPreview of "The Fantasticks" (thanks, Tribune-Review, for covering the arts community)For Luisa, Jerz’s character, “the world …CultureI’m not making a serious attempt…

Leveling up my skills in #blender3D.

Using invisible shapes to cut holes in the hull, and a shrinkwrap modifier to align the cockpit frame and the glass. Similar:Don't call it "social distancing" or you just might get a polite correction from the admin…Academia'History has treated her badly': Hamnet and the 400-year-old mystery around Shakespeare's …Anyone seen “Hamnet”? I was not too…

I just bought Diamond City.

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The Rivals #PPTPlaytime

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The High Ground (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 12) Sensitive, Artistic Terrorist Is Also a Terrorist

(Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break) Crusher finds herself sympathizing with the charming terrorist who kidnapped her. After last week’s “The Hunted” and the week before’s “The Defector,” it seems the writers are very interested in humanizing perceived enemies. An unusually exposition-heavy captain’s log establishes the Enterprise is visiting a non-aligned world shaken by terrorists.…

On a little afternoon walk with my son.

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Every few years, I Google the name of the kid who saw “The Empire Strikes Back” the night it opened, and blurted out the big spoiler during gym class.

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And you thought your last teleconference was rough!

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Researchers: Nearly Half Of Accounts Tweeting About Coronavirus Are Likely Bots

Researchers identified more than 100 false narratives about COVID-19 that are proliferating on Twitter by accounts controlled by bots. Among the misinformation disseminated by bot accounts were tweets that conspiracy theories about hospitals being filled with mannequins, or tweets connected the spread of the coronavirus to 5G wireless towers, a notion that is patently untrue.…

The Hunted (ST: TNG Rewatch; Season Three, Episode 11) Honorable soldier exiled by the peaceful society he defended

(Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break.) A great Trek morality drama, most obviously inspired by the challenges faced by US troops returning from Vietnam, but light on preachiness and heavy on action. Impressed by the cultured and intellectual Angosians, Picard offers to help them recapture a violent prisoner who escaped a penal colony. The prisoner’s…

Here I am sketching spaceships like I’m 12 again. I feel like re-reading the novelization of “The Black Hole” and watching Johnny Quest. #lockdown #blender3D

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The Defector (ST:TNG Rewatch; Season Three, Episode 10) Cold War Brinksmanship, via Shakespeare

(Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break.) A Romulan defector exposes a planned incursion against the Federation, in a slow but gripping character study that comments on the Cold War. As I kid, I remember being transfixed by the 1983 TV movie The Day After, which depicts a nuclear attack on America. I doodled mushroom clouds…