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There is a crisis in technical education. The golden road to a career has always been through a college education. However, this “golden road” has developed deep cracks and is badly in need of maintenance. Postsecondary education is rapidly becoming unaffordable, even at public colleges and universities. Tuition has risen at a rate 50% greater than inflation. But there’s a deeper issue. Beyond the out-of-control cost, there is evidence that …

Okay, I lied. I will tell you about some deals—all software—that are afoot that might interest photographers. Unlike the other sites, though, none of this is via affiliate links or any kickback scheme (bold indicates the company has one or more products that are in my recommended software list): Adobe Creative Cloud (full suite) — It's a first year savings only, but at US$29.98/month represents a good value if you …

A fantastic Mail Call Tuesday today! I got my copies of Thirteen Parsecs.I am very pleased with how these turned out. The leathers look great and great with NIGHT SHIFT and Wasted Lands.I even grabbed a new dice bag!Can't wait to share more of this with you all.

One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the same coin — the currency of life that is attention — he was suddenly wonder-smitten by the exquisite elegance …

Rains of blood and frogs, mysterious disappearances, baffling objects in the sky: these were the anomalies that fascinated Charles Fort in his Book of the Damned. “For every five people who read this book“, wrote one reviewer, “four will go insane”. Joshua Blu Buhs recounts Fort’s early life, unfinished manuscripts (“X”, “Y”), and the philosophical monism that informed his research.

Buy the book! Sheidlower, Jesse. The F-Word, 4th edition. Oxford University Press, 2024. 449 pages. US$22.99. Back when I was a teen, c. 1980, some friends and I were cruising the streets of Seaside Heights, New Jersey on an off-season night. With us was a friend-of-a-friend, someone I did not know. He got into a verbal altercation with some other teens we had met on the street, and afterward as …

I recently had the pleasure of participating in Digital Promise‘s inaugural AI Education Exchange “Ask Me Anything” series, hosted by Kelly McNeil. This was my first LinkedIn AMA and was great fun, in large part due to the team that helped set it up and the broader community that raised a wide array of critical […]

Ownership and control of social media platforms is a first-order concern for both domestic politics and international conflict. The most important battleground in the Russia-Ukraine war is elections in NATO member states. And there, Russia is clearly winning. Trump, obviously, but yesterday saw the stunning success of formerly fringe right-wing candidate C?lin Georgescu. In an unimaginably large polling error, CG won 22% of the first-round vote (and thus made it …

A few years ago, I went to an exhibition of art by Karla Knight, but for some reason have never gotten around to posting about it til now. Her work is very interesting, full of strange symbols and spacey-looking shapes. But of course I was especially intrigued since some of the exhibition included notebooks! I … Continue reading Karla Knight’s Notebooks →

In the fall of 2021, Malors Espinosa set out to devise a special type of math problem. As with any good research question, it would have to be thought-provoking, its solution nontrivial — something others would want to study. But an additional constraint stumped him. Malors, then a graduate student in mathematics at the University of Toronto, wanted high school students to be able to prove it. Source

If you look at Jason Dyer’s blog, he’s been at 1982 for three years with no signs of finishing it yet, and he seems to show no signs of reaching 1983. — MorpheusKitami in a comment on The Adventure Gamer blog Believe it or not, we are getting close to the end of 1982. This is my final list. If any games show up after this point they can go …

It was once a ubiquitous cliché in your own home or on your favorite TV sitcom: Beleaguered Dad, in the middle of a pile of bills, yells, “You’re sending me to the poorhouse!”Do fathers still yell that? Does anyone even remember poorhouses? It is long forgotten now, but Cincinnati maintained a poorhouse for more than a century out in Hartwell where today stands the UC Health Daniel Drake Center for …

This year, I am thankful for all of my supportive friends and followers. Whether I am squirreling from one idea to the next and the next, I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of research, or I am slipped into a depressive mud hole, you are there. Sometimes, you even squirrel or rabbit hole with me. […]

A Circumzenithal Arc We have all met – or have been – someone who is very quiet and seemingly withdrawn in a social situation. It can be easy to dismiss, forget, or ignore these quiet people. But I’ve found that some of the quietest people I know have the strongest opinions, observations, and forces of will. Judith is such a person. She’s easily misunderstood and cast as unaware, boring, and …

Amazing. Here’s how it’s made.