October 13, 2023

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for Oct 13 2023

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Here are long-form blog posts I published this week:

• upcoming research talk on DezNat for Bainbridge Latter-day Saint fireside series

• Alma the priesthood counter-example

Here are microblog posts that I published this week:

• Hyper sympa, quand on branche tous ses appareils le soir et puis se rend compte le matin que la prise ne fonctionnait pas.

• J’ai lu sur la RTS que c’est aujourd’hui la journée mondiale du sourire, mais moi, j’ai tout de suite pensé au fameux « rire, c’est bon pour la santé » de Johann Schneider-Ammann.

• Une fois en enseignant le FLE, une étudiante a écrit la phrase « Je me suis blessée, mais j’étais d’accord ». Elle savait que « d’accord » voulait dire « okay », et en anglais « okay » peut signifier aussi « pas mal » ou « assez bien », et elle a donc fait un lien de trop.

• I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Nothing reminds me as much of teaching French as does teaching programming. It takes a lot of the same metacognition to learn both, and it’s really hard to teach that metacognition.

• I think academia undervalues teaching and that teaching-focused faculty deserve more status, recognition, and compensation. Yet, I’m still suspicious of the new BYU-Idaho president’s comments on the need for “a faculty free of the obligations of research.”

• Just had a student explain that such-and-such a file wasn’t in a specific folder, it was just on their computer, in case anyone was wondering how digital native rhetoric is holding up. Need to bookmark that 2021 article from The Verge.

• You know, I think the combination of research training in ed tech and currently teaching ICT classes makes me particularly critical of the “digital native” idea.

• Don’t tell my students, but half the reason I have them work with Hugo in my web content management class is because I enjoy working with it so much. Over the past week, I’ve hacked together an author taxonomy for our class site, and I’m super pleased with it.

• When my sister was in town last week, kiddo insisted on drawing her a surprisingly accurate diagram of how data gets transferred over the internet, so I brought it into the office for the next time I have to teach it.

Here are news articles and podcasts I commented on this week:

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on '4chan users manipulate AI tools to unleash torrent of racist images | Ars Technica'

• 🔗 linkblog: mes pensées sur 'Un extra-terrestre dans le château du train qui sent des pieds! (Gruyères, FR) - rts.ch - Portail Audio'

• 🔗 linkblog: mes pensées sur 'Les deepfakes pornographiques comme nouvelle arme de harcèlement scolaire - rts.ch - Technologies'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Indigenous TTRPG Coyote & Crow is free for today only - Polygon'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Anarchist Chess - Existential Comics'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Israel-Hamas War Is Drowning X in Disinformation | WIRED'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Church Marks Indigenous Peoples' Day | News | Community of Christ International Headquarters'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Why a search engine that scans your face is dangerous : NPR'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Sellers say Amazon undercuts their prices, charges high fees : NPR'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Amazon’s ‘Neighborhood Watch’ Might Be Turning Police Officers Into ‘Reddit Moderators’ – The Markup'

Here are my reviews of books and other media I consumed this week:

If you have thoughts about anything I've posted, feel free to comment directly on my website through Hypothesis or to reply to this email with what you have to say.

Thanks for reading!

Spencer