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Women and Men in University In this newsletter (blog post) Celeste Davis looks at the reasons why fewer men are going to college in the US. For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied. One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in…

submitted 22 hours ago • 0 comments

Cool Biomass Visualization Multi-step explanation of how much living stuff is on earth (biomass) and then compares that to man-made stuff (technomass). Eye opening. Via Kottke.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Reasoning and/or AI? Mike Caulfield blogs about reason and reasoning and surprisingly doesn’t care how AI got there, and who is still doing the work. Google and Perplexity have launched Deep Research engines, AI help for regular research. He talks about SOK (State of Knowledge) and the next step…

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Al is making us stupid Research by Microsoft (pdf) shows tech industry users show a reduction in critical thinking as use of AI increases.

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Fake Research The Whole Earth Catalog was vetted. Not so for many journals. Is caused by an evaluation process much like Google’s PageRank, where a paper is rated by how many links there are to and from it. That’s how over 400,000 research articles in the last 20 years are probably fake, created…

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

Attention Attention Attention Remember when it was Location, location, location? With the Attention Economy we are the ones getting mined (that's a polite word for it), especially now, with social media up on the inauguration dias. I'm sure the tech bros and the president figure they can outwit…

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Good news for readers Some books I gave away last year Independent bookstores will soon be able to sell over a million electronic books (e-books). I have over 350 books on Amazon (and over 100 on Audible) and am definitely ready to make the move. NYTimes.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Teen Use of Social Media in the US Bryan Alexander has been watching teens and universities and how they use technology. Here is his latest update on social media. I'm guessing hte federated media (Mastadon and Bluesky mostly) are too small to figure here. Hopefully that will change.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

Curipod beats Kahoot I just discovered Curipod, a lesson creator with AI feedback built in. It looks like a valuable tool more suited to language learners than Kahoot. I like the flexibility of customization while there is a good lot of lesson templates. For now, it looks like short writing…

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

Gulf of Google Google will change the names of Gulf of Mexico and Denali to fall in line behind Trump, reports CNBC. Tim Snyder, author of On Tyranny posts that most progress made by autocrats and wannabe dictators is through accession previous to any pressure. Lesson #1 (of 20): Do Not Obey in…

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

Pragmatics. And Jokes. The Reverse is a masterful manipulation of expectations that defies normal Pragmatics. This type of joke, more than most, defies built expectations. The best at this is Anthony Jeselnick. Profiled.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

Eraserhead I remember the velvet, slick with age, and the ashtrays at the end of the arms on the creaky seats in an also run theater in the barrio Chino of Barcelona. I remember being high as hell on a new batch of hashish from the kid brother of a friend. I remember being both scared and…

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

Good Question How can we harness AI for learning without it being a crutch, when kicked out, doesn’t leave us flat on the ground? I kept thinking about Khanmigo and how it never just gives the answer and makes the students go through the steps. Can we do that with language learning? The Unresolved…

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

New TTS Tool. Open Source New TTS Tool Open Source

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments

Globalization Is still on the march. Only the US is falling behind. Kevin Drum, previously of Mother Jones, a liberal magazine, has taken to data analysis and reporting after his retirement while he battles cancer. His blog is a treasure trove of data showing how little things are changing, even…

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

Dron on AI for Learning This interview of Jon Dron on using AI for education is not typical. His stance is clear. It makes sense. It doesn't go overboard. He admits when he is not sure of something. He is against LMSs, even though he developed some big ones for the Canadian educational system.…

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

The town of Biei in Hokkaido will fell a stand of scenic white birch trees after complaints from farmers about overtourism. Besides attracting tourists who trample nearby crops and stand in traffic, the farmers say the trees also block needed sunlight, lowering crop yields. https://buff.ly/40weopm

submitted 41 days ago • 4 comments

Future Perfect Stories I’m a regular reader of Future Perfect, a Vox column that had its start with the Effective Altruism movement. I know Sam Bankman Fried took a lot of people’s money using EA as a mask for his intentions, but I think Vox and Future Perfect have recovered. A good place to start…

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

New AI in Applied Linguistics Journal Open Source, too! Carol Chapelle at Iowa State has morphed her focus from tech to AI and language learning. A logical change. She is leading up a team with a new journal, Exploring AI in Applied Linguistics.

submitted 41 days ago • 0 comments

First Taxi Drivers, Now Nurses. Teachers next? Take nurses: increasingly, American hospitals are firing their waged nurses and replacing them with gig nurses who are booked in via an app. There's plenty of ways that these apps abuse nurses, but the most ghastly is in how they price nurses' wages.…

submitted 41 days ago • 0 comments

Player drain for Japan Soccer NYTimes article about the economics of football and how the exchange rate matters. The third factor is that they are relatively affordable. The transfer fees asked for Japanese players are usually in the hundreds of thousands rather than in the multiple millions. The…

submitted 42 days ago • 0 comments

Changing Hosts After 20 years with Webhostinghub, who have overall done very well, I am moving to a more bare-bones (cheaper) option at hostinger.com (referral 20%off/$4/month). This reflects less of a need to put stuff out there as I move away from producing stuff in English and toward…

submitted 45 days ago • 0 comments

New words from the UK www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jan/04/rawdogging-brat-looksmaxxing-guardian-breakthrough-words-2024

submitted 50 days ago • 0 comments

You are the product Even when you buy the product. In this case, Apple owners. Apple has been listening and sharing data with third parties (selling). Get in line, you can get up to $100 when they get things set up. From Ars Technica.

submitted 51 days ago • 0 comments

Facebook or Fakebook? Zuckerberg's Meta is planning to populate Facebook and Instagram with AI-created "members". Oh joy. From Rolling Stone. (4 clicks to get through the ads.)

submitted 52 days ago • 1 comment

Loads of #literary #magazines are coming to Bluesky, here is a great list to follow! PLEASE SHARE TO HELP THEM LEAVE TWITTER! #litmags #writer #writingcommunity go.bsky.app/7cWNC2j

submitted 98 days ago • 72 comments

Word Quiz NYTimes (gift article) checks your knowledge of current words that are popular. A good example of a quiz working as a learning tool. I got 6 out of 10, which I consider pretty good. I especially liked the new meanings of “preppy” and “Ohio”. Take the quiz.

submitted 58 days ago • 0 comments

Nolan is Doing The Odyssey Christopher Nolan is teaming up with Homer on the best action story of the last 3,000 years. Read about it at Kottke. (Illustration mine). Christopher Nolan is known for directing some of our most important films like Tenet, Inception, Interstellar, Oppenheimer and a…

submitted 59 days ago • 0 comments

Words of Culture, Culture of Words Nowhere better can you find the nuances of culture than in the words that are used. Nancy Friedman tracks those at Fritanancy. This year we get a bonus, wordS, not just word. My favorite: The Fall of the Broman Empire, on the X-odus of people from Musk's vanity…

submitted 61 days ago • 0 comments

Learners of Japanese As a slow learner of written Japanese I am at Wanikani Level 20/60 after about a year. I like to check out how others are going about it. So I create a feed for Reddit's LearnJapanese. Here is someone who finished up all 60 levels of Wanikani (a kanji learning program, $100…

submitted 64 days ago • 1 comment

Definitely.

submitted 65 days ago • 122 comments

Liar, liar, pants on AI “The paper adds to a small but growing body of evidence that today’s most advanced AI models are becoming capable of strategic deception.” From Time Magazine, 3 days before publication of the article. Is this interpretation inflammatory or just exaggerated?

submitted 65 days ago • 0 comments

Watch your Ps an Questionable Garbage “Under Fukushima's new rules, if the rubbish remains unsorted for a week, city workers can go through it and try to identify the offenders via items such as mail. The violators will be issued a verbal warning, followed by a written advisory, before the last…

submitted 65 days ago • 0 comments

Seaweed for Cows Got too much red algae? Feed it to the cows. It reduces methane by 40%.

submitted 67 days ago • 0 comments

AI Whistleblower Dead US media is not following this development in AI. A whistleblower from OpenAI who recently left the company is found dead. Police say it is suicide, but it is not revealed for more than a week. And it takes the BBC to report on it before it makes news in the US. NYTimes…

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

Which AI? I polled my students and the ONLY AI they used was ChatGPT. It felt like the iPhone phenomenon, but even worse. They were unaware of any others. I am set to remedy that in the next couple of weeks with a 3-week intro to "Using AI for Language Learning", the final module of three of my…

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

Tech Update Advances in technology are, for me, heartwarming. I am at heart a progressive. As a world, we must always be improving, or we are decaying. Sometimes both happen at the same time. But these are in the plus column. Khanmigo gets better. This looks like something we may even use for…

submitted 69 days ago • 0 comments

Using AI: Helpful post Ethan Mollick (new book out, I'm on the waiting list at the library)has a new newsletter out about things you should and should not use AI for. Check out #4 if you are a teacher, and then look closely at the NOT part. If you are a student who wants to LEARN a language (or…

submitted 75 days ago • 0 comments

Choose 20 books on #education that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. Day #2 #BookSky 💙📚 #Books #BookChallenge #20daybookchallenge #edubookchallenge

submitted 87 days ago • 5 comments

Just back from the JALT conference. I should have asked Bill Pellowe about making a JALT Starter Pack to connect people up here. #jalt

submitted 97 days ago • 0 comments

I heard that #Bluesky is getting a resurgence of interest, but I'm also on board with #CoryDoctorow 's argument that it's not really a good investment anymore to join a platform that doesn't let you take your crowd with you if you choose to go: pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/u...

submitted 104 days ago • 1 comment