645 private links
It's funny 'cause it's true.
45 subscriber YouTube channel. I was view nr. 2 on this video. Be nr. more! Come for this tragic character of a brush. Click though to the channel for 'Sharpener'. And 'TSCHK V.0.5'. Like Simone Giertz' crappy robots but art.
It's fascinating to me how some of the machines that modern technology relies on are so few in number. And how they can be in operation for more than half a century and still be critically important after all that time.
As I head back to work in a bullshit-infested university, this analysis serves as a valuable reminder and a practical inventory of everything to look out for in its statements and policies.
“It’s time to move beyond the debate between passive and active voice in favor of something more responsive to the fluid nature of contemporary political language.”
“The bureaucratic voice makes use of both active and passive constructions, but its purpose is uniform: to erase and efface any active agent on the part of the bureaucracy.”
“While the bureaucratic voice works to present governments and corporations as placid, apologetic, and unmovable, it also works to make their victims as active and vital as possible.”
“The bureaucratic state never acts of its own volition; it is always reactionary, and it always acts because the victim leaves it no choice.”
In contrast to the abuses of language that Orwell was concerned with, “the purpose of the bureaucratic voice is less to shape our thoughts or how we see the external world, but to reward incuriosity.”
I already knew carbon credits were fraudulent and neocolonial bullshit. But this is a stark reminder. And I was not aware that it's specifically the Dubai, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia were going all-in on this.
A bit obvious. As the author himself admits. But still. There’s something here. The core piece of advice is to not write for publication. Just write. Anything.
"River is a visual connection engine." Mesmerizing to browse. (Parts are NSWF.)
I continue to be amazed by how (what appear to me as) such basic cognitive functions can apparently differ so radically between people.
This captivating personal essay manages to convincingly describe the reality and debilitating potential of autism, while at the same time describing the individual diversity behind ‘neurodiversity’ that sometimes makes me doubtful how helpful these DSM-defined labels are:
ASD is a spectrum, but there is often a presumption that the spectrum is a linear gradient from mild to severe. In fact, the disorder is not a spectrum but spectra, a solar system of sprawling constellations in 3-D that differs from one person to the next. Within autistic communities, they say, “If you’ve met one person with ASD, you’ve met one person with ASD.”
Witold Rybczynski, author of The Story of Architecture, sings the praises of ornamentation in architecture.
Witold Rybczynski argues in favor of classical/traditional architecture, and against continuously pursuing 'the next new thing'. Similar vibe to The Architectural Uprising.
Free fonts from the Indian Type Foundry (ITF). A nice mix of clean type options with some fun and characterful ones as well.
Super simple qualitative assessment scheme with only four levels, based on two steps of yes/no judgements.
Classic talk on public speaking and lecturing by Patrick Winston at MIT. Combines general principles with super practical examples.
Critical history of Powerpoint and "the rise of presentation culture".
Newsletter about alternative grading. Some good posts:
Susan Blum discusses the response to her seminal edited volume Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) and points to different approaches.
An insane story of evil corporate gaslighting – of one scientist in particular at the same time as society in general. Just like with climate change, they knew perfectly well what they were doing but did everything they could to keep it secret.
If we cannot come up with ways for A.I. to reduce the concentration of wealth, then I’d say it’s hard to argue that A.I. is a neutral technology, let alone a beneficial one.
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We should all strive to be Luddites, because we should all be more concerned with economic justice than with increasing the private accumulation of capital.
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Imagine an idealized future, a hundred years from now, in which no one is forced to work at any job they dislike, and everyone can spend their time on whatever they find most personally fulfilling. Obviously it’s hard to see how we’d get there from here. But now consider two possible scenarios for the next few decades. In one, management and the forces of capital are even more powerful than they are now. In the other, labor is more powerful than it is now. Which one of these seems more likely to get us closer to that idealized future? And, as it’s currently deployed, which one is A.I. pushing us toward?
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The tendency to think of A.I. as a magical problem solver is indicative of a desire to avoid the hard work that building a better world requires. That hard work will involve things like addressing wealth inequality and taming capitalism. For technologists, the hardest work of all—the task that they most want to avoid—will be questioning the assumption that more technology is always better, and the belief that they can continue with business as usual and everything will simply work itself out. No one enjoys thinking about their complicity in the injustices of the world, but it is imperative that the people who are building world-shaking technologies engage in this kind of critical self-examination.
Pretty. This is the font used in https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/.