Recently updated blogs

Ashley Redd, a teacher in a New Orleans elementary school, described her experience of going through a school day shadowing a 4th grader. This article appeared in Education Week, January 22, 2020. Shortly afterwards, Redd became a director of a micro-school in New Orleans schools. If you think you’re tired after a day of teaching, you should try being a 4th grader. I recently spent a day shadowing a 4th …

On Saturday we went to the British Art Fair, which was huge, filled with wonders and horrors, and extremely crowded. At first I thought we wouldn’t be able to move or see anything, but the crowds thinned as we progressed. About 70 galleries were exhibiting, most of them multiple works, so you could emerge from the scrum overwhelmed and remembering nothing. But I did see things that excited me, and …

Two upcoming events that may be of interest to you (please pass on to others who may like them): The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State Presents: A non-technical, 6-week class with Professor Andrew Fraknoi Einstein without Tears Tuesdays from 12:30 to 2:30 pm via Zoom (Oct. 8 – Nov. 12, 2024) This non-technical, non-mathematical introduction to some of the most awe-inspiring ideas from the work of Albert …

We’re signing up to PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Since 2004, PACBI has been advocating for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions. This is based on the fact that these institutions are complicit in the Israeli system of oppression that has denied Palestinians their basic rights guaranteed by international law. Cultural institutions are one part of the ideological and institutional framework …

Zigg made mention of how much he liked the rocket ship pictured in my MB 16th birthday greeting.The bank is from the 1950s and stands 10"H and is a variation on the 'pointy tube with fins' rocket design with the fins being quite long.From Vegas BaseEd*PS. From Arto: As an addendum to my comment on Ed's fabulous post about the Foster Grant Rocket Bank, here's a snapshot of my Fosta …

This week: Amazon’s return to office mandate; and local LLMs are getting good thanks to Meta. You must be a member to read the rest of this article. (Already a member? Log In.)

I like to keep an eye out for cool shapes during my walks and use them as inspiration for my #SidewalkFriends drawings. It’s like my version of hunting for Pokémon. We just got back from a fun vacation in Hawaii. While we were checking out the awesome murals in Kaka’ako (near Honolulu), I spotted these interesting cracks in the sidewalk. I started this sketch by drawing a face, but then …

September was such a bad reading month for me. I had so many books that were 2 stars or lower; I don’t remember smashing any mirrors… So I’m super excited to draw a line under September and move onto October reading. It surely can’t be worse! Please! I am hoping to flip between spooky, creepy… Continue reading October Reading Goals

The immigration officer looked up at me sternly, “Your student visa has expired June 10, 2024!” What!? There must be some misunderstanding. I applied last October for a one-year extension. It has been granted. Look here under visa expiry date. It says 10/6/2024. “In India, the month is the second digit. That’s June 10th. I then realized what happened. 10/6/2024 was the expiry date of my passport when I entered …

What dawned as a lazy and rainy Friday heading into what was to be an uneventful weekend, suddenly turned upside-down. It all started when I was on a mundane Zoom call at work to discuss budgets. While some bean-counter had shared his screen filled with a spreadsheet that was giving me a headache, I looked […]

The latest in Mister Stormy's Monday Selection (Occasional Series - Acts of Random Archive Rummaging) is Eyes Wide Open recorded at The Tracking Room in Nashville, on July 22, 2002. Click here to download. Eyes Wide Open is one of those KC ballads that moves gently enough and yet still gets under the skin. In this specially created rendition, Alex ‘Stormy’ Mundy has taken an early rehearsal run-through and aligned …

Black Ends - Pretend 2 Be (Protect Me) Seattle scene stalwarts, Black Ends describe themselves as "gunk-pop" which does quite well to pigeonhole a sound that pulls the rug out from under post-grunge (hey, Seattle, we were bound to fall into that one) and watches it fall into a menacing, vaguely jointed heap leading into an "anthem for the paranoid and the hopeless". Psychotic Spew by Black Ends Dayflower - …

GO GET THAT The post No Bells, Issue 1 is available for pre-order now appeared first on No Bells.

Punk Planet issues 25-31. 2024 marks 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years. Writing a single essay to summarize 80 issues—thousands of pages, hundreds of interviews, infinite amounts of hope and effort—is impossible, so I am writing 13 posts over 13 months, each one about a single year of the magazine. Each one dedicated to a year of learning, a year of …

Your brain, fueled by books and augmented with simple tools, is your best resource for preparing and running awesome tabletop roleplaying games. Many GMs and players say they find a lot of value out of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and other generative AI tools like Midjourney or Dall-E. Who am I to tell them they’re not finding them as useful as they say they are? But there's a …