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:Washington Post Cartoonist Who Quit Over Bezos Cartoon Wins Pulitzer PrizeHad 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…

People Thought an AI Was Brilliantly Analyzing Their Personalities, But It Was Actually Giving Out Feedback Randomly

“To begin our hoax scenario, we intended to build participants’ trust in the machine by pretending that it could decode their preferences and attitudes,” the study authors wrote. “The system included a sham MRI scanner and an EEG system, that supposedly used neural decoding driven by artificial intelligence (AI).” […] In other words, participants were…

World Press Freedom Day. (Don’t take the free press for granted. Journalists are not the enemy. Unless you are tyrant whose rule depends upon feeding misinformation to the public. In which case, yes, a free press is your enemy.)

Similar:Pater Noster Passenger ElevatorsThis morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage of crowds circling a mosque in Mecca. For m…My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…Jesus Christ SuperstarMidterm Grades Spring 2025: Posted!Hey there, chaotic world in academia and beyond, could you settle down just a bit so…

These Fake Local News Sites Have Confused People For Years. (Buzzfeed) Found Out Who Created Them.

People who caught the sites plagiarizing began speculating about the motivations of whoever was running them. One person noticed that their Google Alerts for Julian Assange were flooded with results from the sites, leading them to warn that “cyber marketing tools are being used in the propaganda war against #WikiLeaks.” One researcher labeled the network of sites…

Did you share Russian fake news? Facebook, apparently unable to insert items directly in our feeds, will make you jump through hoops to find out.

Did you share fake news from Russia during the US Presidential election? Grudgingly following up on a Congressional order, Facebook will permit you to jump through hoops to find out. Because Facebook apparently does not have the technology to insert items of its choosing directly in user feeds, the social media company has helpfully provided…

Facebook Updates News Feed So Your Favorite Friends Rise to the Top

Now, News Feed, at its most basic level, is defined by secrecy. Facebook doesn’t reveal exact details of the algorithms that determine what you see (and what you don’t) based on the company’s ever-evolving, ever-more-granular analysis of your preferences. And not just the preferences you explicitly set. Your likes, comments, clicks, even how long you…

Unless Buzzfeed-style Clickbait Replaces all Forms of Human Communication, or Republicans Return to the White House, Listeners will Continue to Deal with the Smug Dread Generated by the Formulaic Endings of NPR Stories

I love some good meta. I wrote a dialogue-heavy short story about writing dialogue-driven short stories. Mark C. Marino wrote this excllent MPR-style essay about the formulaic endings of NPR stories, which are designed to leave you feeling smarter but emptier, so that you return to fill your pledge-drive mug with another dose of First World…

BuzzFeed plagiarism, deleted posts: Jonah Peretti explains.

In 2012 my former Slate colleague Farhad Manjoo revealed that several of BuzzFeed’s most popular listicles were lifted in large part from other websites, including Reddit. In the years since, the site has been hit with lawsuits and public accusations from people who feel it has exploited or flat-out stolen their work. Last month the…