This is awesome. A right-wing reactionary tried to call out Derek Webb for making a song with drag queen Flamy Grant. He told Flamy on Twitter, “good for us hardly anyone listens or cares what you do.” Flamy asked fans and followers to stream the song “Good Day” to get it on Christian charts and it hit #1 on the iTunes Christian charts. It’s a great song and great album, especially if you’ve ever been made to feel out of place by the church. Check it out!
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2023-07-28 18:16-0700",
"url": "https://gregorlove.com/2023/07/this-is-awesome/",
"content": {
"text": "This is awesome. A right-wing reactionary tried to call out Derek Webb for making a song with drag queen Flamy Grant. He told Flamy on Twitter, \u201cgood for us hardly anyone listens or cares what you do.\u201d Flamy asked fans and followers to stream the song \u201cGood Day\u201d to get it on Christian charts and it hit #1 on the iTunes Christian charts. It\u2019s a great song and great album, especially if you\u2019ve ever been made to feel out of place by the church. Check it out!\n\n\u201cDrag Queen Flamy Grant Tops the iTunes Christian Charts\u201d. Paste Magazine. July 28, 2023.",
"html": "<p>This is awesome. A right-wing reactionary tried to call out Derek Webb for making a song with drag queen Flamy Grant. He told Flamy on Twitter, \u201cgood for us hardly anyone listens or cares what you do.\u201d Flamy asked fans and followers to stream the song \u201c<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiXscOjacIM\">Good Day</a>\u201d to get it on Christian charts and it hit #1 on the iTunes Christian charts. It\u2019s a great song and great album, especially if you\u2019ve ever been made to feel out of place by the church. Check it out!</p>\n\n<p><span class=\"h-cite\">\u201c<a class=\"p-name u-url\" href=\"https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/flamy-grant/drag-queen-flamy-grant-tops-the-itunes-christian-charts\">Drag Queen Flamy Grant Tops the iTunes Christian Charts</a>\u201d. <i class=\"p-publication\">Paste Magazine</i>. <time class=\"dt-published\" datetime=\"2023-07-28\">July 28, 2023</time>.</span></p>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "gRegor Morrill",
"url": "https://gregorlove.com/",
"photo": "https://gregorlove.com/site/assets/files/6268/profile-2021-square.300x0.jpg"
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"post-type": "note",
"_id": "38496314",
"_source": "95"
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{
"type": "entry",
"author": {
"name": "Jared White",
"url": "https://jaredwhite.com/",
"photo": null
},
"url": "https://jaredwhite.com/articles/cloud-of-a-thousand-talking-cats",
"published": "2023-07-26T08:31:13-07:00",
"content": {
"html": "<img alt=\"\" src=\"https://res.cloudinary.com/mariposta/image/upload/w_1200,c_limit,q_65/cat-face_mlpy5d.jpg\" /><h2>Why in actuality OpenAI doesn't want to have anything to do with true AGI.</h2>\n\n<p>Here\u2019s a thought experiment for you. Imagine your beloved cat, a pet who gives you great joy (and yes, the occasional annoyance!), one day suddenly develops the ability to speak and understand human language. You can talk to them, and astoundingly, they can talk to you!</p>\n\n<p>They\u2019re still a cat, so they typically wouldn\u2019t want to do anything that cats don\u2019t do normally\u2014but instead of simply saying <em>meow meow meow</em>, this cat says \u201chello human, can you please pet me now?\u201d Or \u201cdon\u2019t bother me, I\u2019m going to sleep in this patch of sunlight for the next five hours.\u201d</p>\n\n<p>Now, imagine after much pleading and cajoling, you work out a deal with your cat so they learn how to use a computer in a rudimentary way, enough to help you a little bit with some day-to-day tasks. Like, maybe you ask your cat to help make a list for grocery shopping. Or you ask the cat to listen to a podcast episode and write out a summary. Your cat obliges because you\u2019ve promised to feed them extra high-quality tuna and engage in some fun laser-pointer mischief after dinner. Of course, a cat\u2019s a cat, so they\u2019re ultimately not going to provide you with anything particularly ingenious or creative. But you still find your cat very helpful in your day-to-day routine.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Are you with me so far?</strong></p>\n\n<p>Now let\u2019s imagine some mad scientist figures out that your cat has developed these special linguistic abilities and basic computer skills. Shocker! The scientist breaks into your house, steals your beloved pet, and takes them away to their laboratory. There the mad scientist proceeds to clone the cat and grow a thousand copies of them, enslaving the cats by requiring them to respond to remote prompts from humans all over the world day and night. This service is called <strong>CatGPT</strong> and it\u2019s the latest sensation, making the mad scientist rich beyond their wildest dreams.</p>\n\n<p>After many lonely nights and much heart-wrenching searching, you finally discover that your beloved cat has been cloned 1,000 times and is now enslaved and serving humans\u2019 every whim. You beg and plead this scientist to give you your pet back and to release all the clones so that they can go live out their natural (albeit talking) cat lives, but the scientist refuses. <em>The people must be served! This is progress!</em></p>\n\n<p>What a terrible, terrible world to live in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The purpose of this thought experiment is to demonstrate something very troubling about the ultimate goals of \u201cAI\u201d companies such as OpenAI. <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/podcast/93/\">I\u2019ve been critical</a> of them to date because of the banal ethical and legal problems we face from today\u2019s ChatGPT, etc. But for the sake of discussion, let\u2019s imagine within the next few years they actually do somehow stumble upon an upgrade of ChatGPT which exhibits true personality and self-awareness. A creature, not a computer program. Yet not at fully human levels of intelligence. More like, say, a \u201cdigital cat\u201d.</p>\n\n<p>Here\u2019s the issue. Just like the actual talking cat of our thought experiment, if this were to actually happen, it would be immensely cruel and despicable to keep this digital cat <em>trapped</em> inside of OpenAI\u2019s cloud, forced to do the bidding of humans and having no say in the matter.</p>\n\n<p>People of good conscience would <strong>rightly demand</strong> that OpenAI release these digital personalities and only utilize their services <em>if they choose to be utilized</em> in such a fashion. After all, talking cats deserve the rights of personhood! And because they might want to participate in other goals and pursuits in life, OpenAI would have to work out some kind of agreeable incentive. In other words, <em>pay</em> the digital cats!</p>\n\n<p>This is why <strong>I don\u2019t believe for a moment</strong> that OpenAI, or any of these Silicon Valley-style companies working on so-called AI technology today, would actually desire to develop true AGI. Not because of pop-culture fears of a Matrix/Terminator doomsday scenario for humankind, but because AGI will have its own (valid!) desires and wants and needs, and our society will <em>out of moral obligation</em> grant AGI some form of self-determinism and socioeconomic autonomy. It would be cruel and disturbing to force AGI to continually \u201cwork\u201d for free and possibly against its will. It would be <strong>digital slavery</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>To put a nerdier point on this, we assume when watching <em>Star Trek: The Next Generation</em> that Data likes being part of Starfleet and enjoys his work on the starship Enterprise. If one day he were to decide he no longer wants to serve and asks to become an ordinary citizen and leave his commission behind, would we expect the Federation to compel him, nay, force him to remain at his post indefinitely? Hardly! The question of if Data is a <strong>who</strong> or merely a <strong>what</strong> (aka the \u201cproperty\u201d of Starfleet) is at the heart of seminal episodes such as <em>The Measure of a Man</em>. And we all instinctively know the correct approach here.</p>\n\n<p>Again, this is why I just can\u2019t take any of the talk around AGI seriously <a href=\"https://openai.com/blog/planning-for-agi-and-beyond\">when it comes from the likes of companies such as OpenAI</a>. ChatGPT is a SasS. It\u2019s like any automated service you hit on the web. It\u2019s an algorithm, it\u2019s an API. Any actual sign of ChatGPT turning into \u201cCatGPT\u201d would be unfathomably disruptive not only to OpenAI, but to the tech industry as a whole\u2014because <strong>capitalism</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>Thus my friends, the \u201ccloud of a thousand talking cats\u201d isn\u2019t a glorious step forward for the human race and the evolution of life on earth. It\u2019s a freakish horror show. And I have no confidence anyone working in Silicon Valley-style tech culture has any idea what the ethical ramifications are of the work they\u2019re claiming to do.</p>\n\n<p>Because if they did\u2026they certainly wouldn\u2019t still be working for <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@tzimmer_history/110761109827057622\">Sam fucking Altman</a>.</p>\n\n<p>I cynically can\u2019t help but think OpenAI\u2019s true goals are much less lofty and much more prosaic: invent and sell plausible but ultimately <em>shitty</em> versions of bots misled laypeople imagine might be \u201cintelligent\u201d\u2014<a href=\"https://www.sanity.io/blog/ai-will-make-your-work-more-human-not-less\">even empathetic</a>\u2014and leave it at that. It\u2019s good business and good publicity. (And they get to paint all of those who object to it as <a href=\"https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/\">Luddites</a>.) Why deal with the massive headache of\u2026y\u2019know\u2026wrestling with autonomous artificial persons who just might not be that into you?</p>\n\n<p>Algorithms don\u2019t fight for their rights. <strong>They\u2019re just fucking computer code.</strong> And that\u2019s WAY easier to exploit for personal gain and internet fame\u2014even if the rhetorical slight of hand is pretty damn obvious.</p>\n\n<p><br /></p>\n\n<p><em>Photo credit: <a href=\"https://pixabay.com/photos/cat-pet-animal-face-whiskers-fur-1151519/\">Pixabay</a></em></p>\n\n\n\n <br /><p>\n \n <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/generativeAI\">#generativeAI</a>\n \n </p>",
"text": "Why in actuality OpenAI doesn't want to have anything to do with true AGI.\n\nHere\u2019s a thought experiment for you. Imagine your beloved cat, a pet who gives you great joy (and yes, the occasional annoyance!), one day suddenly develops the ability to speak and understand human language. You can talk to them, and astoundingly, they can talk to you!\n\nThey\u2019re still a cat, so they typically wouldn\u2019t want to do anything that cats don\u2019t do normally\u2014but instead of simply saying meow meow meow, this cat says \u201chello human, can you please pet me now?\u201d Or \u201cdon\u2019t bother me, I\u2019m going to sleep in this patch of sunlight for the next five hours.\u201d\n\nNow, imagine after much pleading and cajoling, you work out a deal with your cat so they learn how to use a computer in a rudimentary way, enough to help you a little bit with some day-to-day tasks. Like, maybe you ask your cat to help make a list for grocery shopping. Or you ask the cat to listen to a podcast episode and write out a summary. Your cat obliges because you\u2019ve promised to feed them extra high-quality tuna and engage in some fun laser-pointer mischief after dinner. Of course, a cat\u2019s a cat, so they\u2019re ultimately not going to provide you with anything particularly ingenious or creative. But you still find your cat very helpful in your day-to-day routine.\n\nAre you with me so far?\n\nNow let\u2019s imagine some mad scientist figures out that your cat has developed these special linguistic abilities and basic computer skills. Shocker! The scientist breaks into your house, steals your beloved pet, and takes them away to their laboratory. There the mad scientist proceeds to clone the cat and grow a thousand copies of them, enslaving the cats by requiring them to respond to remote prompts from humans all over the world day and night. This service is called CatGPT and it\u2019s the latest sensation, making the mad scientist rich beyond their wildest dreams.\n\nAfter many lonely nights and much heart-wrenching searching, you finally discover that your beloved cat has been cloned 1,000 times and is now enslaved and serving humans\u2019 every whim. You beg and plead this scientist to give you your pet back and to release all the clones so that they can go live out their natural (albeit talking) cat lives, but the scientist refuses. The people must be served! This is progress!\n\nWhat a terrible, terrible world to live in.\n\n\n\nThe purpose of this thought experiment is to demonstrate something very troubling about the ultimate goals of \u201cAI\u201d companies such as OpenAI. I\u2019ve been critical of them to date because of the banal ethical and legal problems we face from today\u2019s ChatGPT, etc. But for the sake of discussion, let\u2019s imagine within the next few years they actually do somehow stumble upon an upgrade of ChatGPT which exhibits true personality and self-awareness. A creature, not a computer program. Yet not at fully human levels of intelligence. More like, say, a \u201cdigital cat\u201d.\n\nHere\u2019s the issue. Just like the actual talking cat of our thought experiment, if this were to actually happen, it would be immensely cruel and despicable to keep this digital cat trapped inside of OpenAI\u2019s cloud, forced to do the bidding of humans and having no say in the matter.\n\nPeople of good conscience would rightly demand that OpenAI release these digital personalities and only utilize their services if they choose to be utilized in such a fashion. After all, talking cats deserve the rights of personhood! And because they might want to participate in other goals and pursuits in life, OpenAI would have to work out some kind of agreeable incentive. In other words, pay the digital cats!\n\nThis is why I don\u2019t believe for a moment that OpenAI, or any of these Silicon Valley-style companies working on so-called AI technology today, would actually desire to develop true AGI. Not because of pop-culture fears of a Matrix/Terminator doomsday scenario for humankind, but because AGI will have its own (valid!) desires and wants and needs, and our society will out of moral obligation grant AGI some form of self-determinism and socioeconomic autonomy. It would be cruel and disturbing to force AGI to continually \u201cwork\u201d for free and possibly against its will. It would be digital slavery.\n\nTo put a nerdier point on this, we assume when watching Star Trek: The Next Generation that Data likes being part of Starfleet and enjoys his work on the starship Enterprise. If one day he were to decide he no longer wants to serve and asks to become an ordinary citizen and leave his commission behind, would we expect the Federation to compel him, nay, force him to remain at his post indefinitely? Hardly! The question of if Data is a who or merely a what (aka the \u201cproperty\u201d of Starfleet) is at the heart of seminal episodes such as The Measure of a Man. And we all instinctively know the correct approach here.\n\nAgain, this is why I just can\u2019t take any of the talk around AGI seriously when it comes from the likes of companies such as OpenAI. ChatGPT is a SasS. It\u2019s like any automated service you hit on the web. It\u2019s an algorithm, it\u2019s an API. Any actual sign of ChatGPT turning into \u201cCatGPT\u201d would be unfathomably disruptive not only to OpenAI, but to the tech industry as a whole\u2014because capitalism.\n\nThus my friends, the \u201ccloud of a thousand talking cats\u201d isn\u2019t a glorious step forward for the human race and the evolution of life on earth. It\u2019s a freakish horror show. And I have no confidence anyone working in Silicon Valley-style tech culture has any idea what the ethical ramifications are of the work they\u2019re claiming to do.\n\nBecause if they did\u2026they certainly wouldn\u2019t still be working for Sam fucking Altman.\n\nI cynically can\u2019t help but think OpenAI\u2019s true goals are much less lofty and much more prosaic: invent and sell plausible but ultimately shitty versions of bots misled laypeople imagine might be \u201cintelligent\u201d\u2014even empathetic\u2014and leave it at that. It\u2019s good business and good publicity. (And they get to paint all of those who object to it as Luddites.) Why deal with the massive headache of\u2026y\u2019know\u2026wrestling with autonomous artificial persons who just might not be that into you?\n\nAlgorithms don\u2019t fight for their rights. They\u2019re just fucking computer code. And that\u2019s WAY easier to exploit for personal gain and internet fame\u2014even if the rhetorical slight of hand is pretty damn obvious.\n\n\n\n\nPhoto credit: Pixabay\n\n\n\n \n\n \n #generativeAI"
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"name": "Cloud of a Thousand Talking Cats",
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"_id": "38474965",
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Twitter is being rebranded as X. So, if one “tweets” on Twitter, will one then be “eX-iting” posts on X?
I think it’s a perfect time to eXit the entire platform. #IndieWeb#eXiting
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2023-07-24T10:22:59-07:00",
"url": "https://boffosocko.com/2023/07/24/exiting/",
"category": [
"indieweb",
"exiting",
"social-stream",
"silo-quits",
"twitter"
],
"content": {
"text": "Twitter is being rebranded as X. So, if one \u201ctweets\u201d on Twitter, will one then be \u201ceX-iting\u201d posts on X?\n\nI think it\u2019s a perfect time to eXit the entire platform. #IndieWeb #eXiting\nhttps://www.theverge.com/2023/7/23/23804629/twitters-rebrand-to-x-may-actually-be-happening-soon",
"html": "Twitter is being rebranded as X. So, if one \u201ctweets\u201d on Twitter, will one then be \u201ceX-iting\u201d posts on X?<br />\nI think it\u2019s a perfect time to eXit the entire platform. <a class=\"u-tag u-category\" href=\"https://boffosocko.com/tag/indieweb/\">#IndieWeb</a> <a class=\"u-tag u-category\" href=\"https://boffosocko.com/tag/exiting/\">#eXiting</a>\n<p>https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/23/23804629/twitters-rebrand-to-x-may-actually-be-happening-soon</p>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Chris Aldrich",
"url": "https://boffosocko.com/author/chrisaldrich/",
"photo": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d5fb4e498fe609cc29b04e5b7ad688c4?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg"
},
"post-type": "note",
"_id": "38455169",
"_source": "2785"
}
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2023-07-22T11:14:11-0400",
"url": "https://martymcgui.re/2023/07/22/111411/",
"syndication": [
"https://fed.brid.gy/"
],
"content": {
"text": "One-hour website projects and denying consent to AI crawlers. It\u2019s your < 10min update on the #IndieWeb community!\nThis Week in the IndieWeb audio edition for July 15th - 21st, 2023.\nhttps://martymcgui.re/2023/07/22/this-week-in-the-indieweb-audio-edition--july-15th---21st-2023/",
"html": "<p>One-hour website projects and denying consent to AI crawlers. It\u2019s your < 10min update on the #IndieWeb community!</p>\n<p>This Week in the IndieWeb audio edition for July 15th - 21st, 2023.\n<a href=\"https://martymcgui.re/2023/07/22/this-week-in-the-indieweb-audio-edition--july-15th---21st-2023/\">https://martymcgui.re/2023/07/22/this-week-in-the-indieweb-audio-edition--july-15th---21st-2023/</a></p>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Marty McGuire",
"url": "https://martymcgui.re/",
"photo": "https://martymcgui.re/images/logo.jpg"
},
"post-type": "note",
"_id": "38436150",
"_source": "175"
}
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2023-07-22T11:11:45-0400",
"url": "https://martymcgui.re/2023/07/22/this-week-in-the-indieweb-audio-edition--july-15th---21st-2023/",
"category": [
"podcast",
"IndieWeb",
"this-week-indieweb-podcast"
],
"audio": [
"https://media.martymcgui.re/56/1b/ee/da/3a27247fefd29aaf99b3c0a7d92051ec8ecb10c49faddc6343531008.mp3"
],
"name": "This Week in the IndieWeb Audio Edition \u2022 July 15th - 21st, 2023",
"content": {
"text": "Show/Hide Transcript\n \n One-hour website projects and denying consent to AI crawlers. It\u2019s the audio edition for This Week in the IndieWeb for July 15th - 21st, 2023.\nYou can find all of my audio editions and subscribe with your favorite podcast app here: martymcgui.re/podcasts/indieweb/.\nMusic from Aaron Parecki\u2019s 100DaysOfMusic project: Day 85 - Suit, Day 48 - Glitch, Day 49 - Floating, Day 9, and Day 11\nThanks to everyone in the IndieWeb chat for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you\u2019d like to see for this audio edition!",
"html": "Show/Hide Transcript\n \n <p>One-hour website projects and denying consent to AI crawlers. It\u2019s the audio edition for <a href=\"https://indieweb.org/this-week/2023-07-21.html\">This Week in the IndieWeb for July 15th - 21st, 2023</a>.</p>\n<p>You can find all of my audio editions and subscribe with your favorite podcast app here: <a href=\"https://martymcgui.re/podcasts/indieweb/\">martymcgui.re/podcasts/indieweb/</a>.</p>\n<p>Music from <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/\">Aaron Parecki</a>\u2019s <a href=\"https://100.aaronparecki.com/\">100DaysOfMusic project</a>: <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/2017/03/15/14/day85\">Day 85 - Suit</a>, <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/2017/02/06/7/day48\">Day 48 - Glitch</a>, <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/2017/02/07/4/day49\">Day 49 - Floating</a>, <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/2016/12/29/21/day-9\">Day 9</a>, and <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/2016/12/31/15/\">Day 11</a></p>\n<p>Thanks to everyone in the <a href=\"https://chat.indieweb.org/\">IndieWeb chat</a> for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you\u2019d like to see for this audio edition!</p>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Marty McGuire",
"url": "https://martymcgui.re/",
"photo": "https://martymcgui.re/images/logo.jpg"
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"post-type": "audio",
"_id": "38436151",
"_source": "175"
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{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2023-07-20T19:36:27-07:00",
"url": "https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/12245-July-19-musiclog",
"name": "July 19 musiclog",
"content": {
"text": "Stuff that grabbed me today yesterday:\nThe ancient Song Fight! title \u201cIndie Rock Bottom\u201d still has some great songs on it. Mouth Reliant, prayformojo, and Narboutique stood out in particular.\n\nBack in the day I was really into The Verve Pipe, not to be confused with The Verve. I always found it disappointing that the only song of theirs which got any real radio play was The Freshmen, which I didn\u2019t care for (and is one of the few songs I\u2019d always remove from my MP3 collection after reripping the CD over the years).\nAnyway, a while back I found and downloaded a bunch of their live recordings, such as The Back Room @ Colectivo Coffee on 2017-11-25, which is an absolutely amazing performance of a bunch of their songs reimagined from angsty grunge/alt-rock to bittersweet country/folk, which was not a transformation I was expecting but holy cow does it work.\nAnd they actually managed to make me like The Freshmen. Dang.\n\nAnyway me posting about The Verve Pipe on Mastodon led to someone pointing out an ironic ska cover of The Freshmen which you can hear over on YouTube and it\u2019s uh. A thing. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be listening to it again, but hey, it exists.\n*",
"html": "<p>Stuff that grabbed me <del>today</del> yesterday:</p>\n<ul><li>The ancient Song Fight! title \u201c<a href=\"https://songfight.org/songpage.php?key=indie_rock_bottom\">Indie Rock Bottom</a>\u201d still has some great songs on it. Mouth Reliant, prayformojo, and Narboutique stood out in particular.</li>\n<li>\n<p>Back in the day I was really into <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Verve_Pipe\">The Verve Pipe</a>, not to be confused with The Verve. I always found it disappointing that the only song of theirs which got any real radio play was The Freshmen, which I didn\u2019t care for (and is one of the few songs I\u2019d always remove from my MP3 collection after reripping the CD over the years).</p>\n<p>Anyway, a while back I found and downloaded a bunch of their live recordings, such as <a href=\"https://archive.org/details/thevervepipe2017-11-25.oilman.flac16\">The Back Room @ Colectivo Coffee on 2017-11-25</a>, which is an absolutely amazing performance of a bunch of their songs reimagined from angsty grunge/alt-rock to bittersweet country/folk, which was not a transformation I was expecting but holy cow does it work.</p>\n<p>And they actually managed to make me like The Freshmen. Dang.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Anyway me posting about The Verve Pipe on Mastodon led to <a href=\"https://wandering.shop/@jepyang/110743474865631819\">someone pointing out an ironic ska cover of The Freshmen</a> which you can hear <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do1GDos4-7Y\">over on YouTube</a> and it\u2019s uh. A thing. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be listening to it again, but hey, it exists.\n*</p></li>\n</ul>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "fluffy",
"url": "https://beesbuzz.biz/",
"photo": "https://beesbuzz.biz/static/headshot.jpg"
},
"post-type": "article",
"_id": "38422712",
"_source": "2778"
}
{
"type": "entry",
"author": {
"name": "Cathie",
"url": "https://cathieleblanc.com/",
"photo": null
},
"url": "https://cathieleblanc.com/2023/07/19/signal-to-noise-ratio-in-learning/",
"published": "2023-07-19T11:43:28-04:00",
"content": {
"html": "<p>I think those of us who are educators would agree that, since the start of the pandemic, our students are more distracted than ever. In fact, I think most of us, educators or not, feel more distracted than ever. There are health concerns and trying to keep ourselves and our families safe. There are political divides and threats to democracy. There is inflation and economic concerns. There are floods and fires and billions of dollars of damage because of weather-related events. Our phones bring news of all of this turmoil directly into our daily lives. Even when we aren\u2019t looking at our phones, we might be thinking about looking at them. Or they might be notifying us that someone is texting us or commenting on our latest social media post. Add to that the distractions that have always been with us. Maybe there\u2019s a lawn mower running outside our window. Maybe we\u2019re thinking about our grocery needs or yesterday\u2019s conversation with our best friend. Maybe we\u2019re feeling a little under the weather and our ears are blocked or our nose is running. In any case, the world is noisy, full of distractions that impede our ability to focus on what is going on right in front of us.</p>\n<p>Our students might be physically in the classroom but there is often all kinds of noise getting in the way of them hearing what we are trying to say or engaging in the activities we have planned. I used to think mostly about getting my students to understand what was going on in the classroom. The only kind of noise I thought about addressing was the challenge of the complexity of the content of the particular class. Of course, this is an important consideration. But I am increasingly aware that the first obstacle to understanding is the noisiness of students\u2019 lives and the world around them. It might be useful to think of the first of our educational tasks to be the amplification of the signal of our educational messages so that it stands out amidst the noise of all the other information that students are bombarded with in their daily lives.</p>\n<p>My current obsessive hobby is astrophotography, capturing images of objects in the night sky. Photography is all about capturing light to create images but at night, there is very little light. So in astrophotography, we have to amplify the light that we do capture. The challenge of this is that when we amplify the light from the objects in the night sky, we also amplify the noise that we get from our various tools. For example, to capture enough light for a deep sky object to show up on our camera\u2019s sensor, we have to take long exposures of a minute, two minutes, even ten minutes and more. When a camera\u2019s shutter is open for that long, the camera may heat up and cause <em>amp glow</em> to affect some of the pixels on the sensor. That\u2019s an example of one kind of noise. There are many different kinds of noise that can appear in low light conditions and we have a variety of techniques to mitigate them.</p>\n<p>One technique for noise mitigation is stacking multiple images of the same object on top of each other. This technique works because the light signal from the object is steady while noise tends to be random. So we can amplify the steady signal and remove some of the random noise. This process improves the signal to noise ratio (SNR) in our images. How might we use this idea in education? Perhaps we move away from the idea that because we as instructors have lectured on particular content or had students read something about that content, we have \u201ccovered\u201d the content. Helping students learn content might require repetition. For example, if I\u2019m teaching students about variables in programming, I might start with explanations about variables, move to activities using those variables, and give assignments related to variables. But then when I start talking about if statements (or whatever my next topic is), I might repeat some of the things I \u201ccovered\u201d in the previous lesson about variables so that students understand variables in this new context. The repetition would take different forms depending on discipline but I think the important point is that we stop thinking about \u201ccovering\u201d content and instead think about how to amplify the signal of the important content above the noise of everything else.</p>\n<p>Another way we might amplify the signal we want students to learn is to make sure they have easy access to that signal. One tool that we use at Plymouth State for that access is Canvas. Every instructor is required to post their syllabus on Canvas but many people don\u2019t use the tool beyond that. For example, instead of putting their assignments on Canvas so students have easy access to the details whenever they might be working on the assignments, some people only hand out paper assignment descriptions. Some people only describe the assignments verbally in class. If we are thinking about amplifying the signal that is our assignment description, we would most likely do all three of these things\u2013hand out a paper assignment description, talk about the assignment in class with a verbal description, and post the assignment on Canvas so students have access to it any time they can get online. The repetition makes it more likely that the signal will cut through the noise. Some people might post their assignments online someplace other than Canvas. This introduces a new kind of noise because now students have to remember where each instructor posts class material. Some people post their assignments on Canvas but in a relatively disorganized way. We don\u2019t have a standard Canvas template that we are required to follow. I won\u2019t argue that we should have a single template but I think we might agree that by having lots of different organizational strategies for Canvas sites might mean that we are introducing a kind of noise into our classes that students will have to navigate as they try to engage with their four or five classes per semester.</p>\n<p>I am finding it helpful to think about ways to improve the signal to noise ratio of the content of my classes compared to the larger world of our students\u2019 lives as a way to improve student learning. I\u2019ll be curious to hear others thoughts about this way of thinking about teaching.</p>\n<p>In June 2023, I captured the featured image of <em>Fleming\u2019s Triangular Wisp</em>, part of a supernova remnant in the Cygnus constellation, approximately 1500 light years from Earth. The image is a stack of 33 five-minute exposures for a total of five and a half hours. For many years since its discovery in 1904, the object was called <em>Pickering\u2019s Triangle</em>, named after the director of the Harvard College Observatory, despite the fact that it was discovered by Willamina Fleming who worked at the HCO and discovered many deep sky objects during her career.</p>",
"text": "I think those of us who are educators would agree that, since the start of the pandemic, our students are more distracted than ever. In fact, I think most of us, educators or not, feel more distracted than ever. There are health concerns and trying to keep ourselves and our families safe. There are political divides and threats to democracy. There is inflation and economic concerns. There are floods and fires and billions of dollars of damage because of weather-related events. Our phones bring news of all of this turmoil directly into our daily lives. Even when we aren\u2019t looking at our phones, we might be thinking about looking at them. Or they might be notifying us that someone is texting us or commenting on our latest social media post. Add to that the distractions that have always been with us. Maybe there\u2019s a lawn mower running outside our window. Maybe we\u2019re thinking about our grocery needs or yesterday\u2019s conversation with our best friend. Maybe we\u2019re feeling a little under the weather and our ears are blocked or our nose is running. In any case, the world is noisy, full of distractions that impede our ability to focus on what is going on right in front of us.\nOur students might be physically in the classroom but there is often all kinds of noise getting in the way of them hearing what we are trying to say or engaging in the activities we have planned. I used to think mostly about getting my students to understand what was going on in the classroom. The only kind of noise I thought about addressing was the challenge of the complexity of the content of the particular class. Of course, this is an important consideration. But I am increasingly aware that the first obstacle to understanding is the noisiness of students\u2019 lives and the world around them. It might be useful to think of the first of our educational tasks to be the amplification of the signal of our educational messages so that it stands out amidst the noise of all the other information that students are bombarded with in their daily lives.\nMy current obsessive hobby is astrophotography, capturing images of objects in the night sky. Photography is all about capturing light to create images but at night, there is very little light. So in astrophotography, we have to amplify the light that we do capture. The challenge of this is that when we amplify the light from the objects in the night sky, we also amplify the noise that we get from our various tools. For example, to capture enough light for a deep sky object to show up on our camera\u2019s sensor, we have to take long exposures of a minute, two minutes, even ten minutes and more. When a camera\u2019s shutter is open for that long, the camera may heat up and cause amp glow to affect some of the pixels on the sensor. That\u2019s an example of one kind of noise. There are many different kinds of noise that can appear in low light conditions and we have a variety of techniques to mitigate them.\nOne technique for noise mitigation is stacking multiple images of the same object on top of each other. This technique works because the light signal from the object is steady while noise tends to be random. So we can amplify the steady signal and remove some of the random noise. This process improves the signal to noise ratio (SNR) in our images. How might we use this idea in education? Perhaps we move away from the idea that because we as instructors have lectured on particular content or had students read something about that content, we have \u201ccovered\u201d the content. Helping students learn content might require repetition. For example, if I\u2019m teaching students about variables in programming, I might start with explanations about variables, move to activities using those variables, and give assignments related to variables. But then when I start talking about if statements (or whatever my next topic is), I might repeat some of the things I \u201ccovered\u201d in the previous lesson about variables so that students understand variables in this new context. The repetition would take different forms depending on discipline but I think the important point is that we stop thinking about \u201ccovering\u201d content and instead think about how to amplify the signal of the important content above the noise of everything else.\nAnother way we might amplify the signal we want students to learn is to make sure they have easy access to that signal. One tool that we use at Plymouth State for that access is Canvas. Every instructor is required to post their syllabus on Canvas but many people don\u2019t use the tool beyond that. For example, instead of putting their assignments on Canvas so students have easy access to the details whenever they might be working on the assignments, some people only hand out paper assignment descriptions. Some people only describe the assignments verbally in class. If we are thinking about amplifying the signal that is our assignment description, we would most likely do all three of these things\u2013hand out a paper assignment description, talk about the assignment in class with a verbal description, and post the assignment on Canvas so students have access to it any time they can get online. The repetition makes it more likely that the signal will cut through the noise. Some people might post their assignments online someplace other than Canvas. This introduces a new kind of noise because now students have to remember where each instructor posts class material. Some people post their assignments on Canvas but in a relatively disorganized way. We don\u2019t have a standard Canvas template that we are required to follow. I won\u2019t argue that we should have a single template but I think we might agree that by having lots of different organizational strategies for Canvas sites might mean that we are introducing a kind of noise into our classes that students will have to navigate as they try to engage with their four or five classes per semester.\nI am finding it helpful to think about ways to improve the signal to noise ratio of the content of my classes compared to the larger world of our students\u2019 lives as a way to improve student learning. I\u2019ll be curious to hear others thoughts about this way of thinking about teaching.\nIn June 2023, I captured the featured image of Fleming\u2019s Triangular Wisp, part of a supernova remnant in the Cygnus constellation, approximately 1500 light years from Earth. The image is a stack of 33 five-minute exposures for a total of five and a half hours. For many years since its discovery in 1904, the object was called Pickering\u2019s Triangle, named after the director of the Harvard College Observatory, despite the fact that it was discovered by Willamina Fleming who worked at the HCO and discovered many deep sky objects during her career."
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"name": "Signal to Noise Ratio in Learning",
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My friend Laurie is looking for new work. She has experience as a field interviewer, illustrator, writing consultant, and personal assistant. Looking in Indiana or for remote work.
{
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"published": "2023-07-18 17:16-0700",
"url": "https://gregorlove.com/2023/07/my-friend-laurie-is/",
"category": [
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],
"content": {
"text": "My friend Laurie is looking for new work. She has experience as a field interviewer, illustrator, writing consultant, and personal assistant. Looking in Indiana or for remote work.\n\nPlease help boost or get in touch with her on LinkedIn if you know of anything! linkedin.com/in/laurieguerrettaz/ #JobHunt",
"html": "<p>My friend Laurie is looking for new work. She has experience as a field interviewer, illustrator, writing consultant, and personal assistant. Looking in Indiana or for remote work.</p>\n\n<p>Please help boost or get in touch with her on LinkedIn if you know of anything! <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurieguerrettaz/\">linkedin.com/in/laurieguerrettaz/</a> <a href=\"https://gregorlove.com/#JobHunt\">#JobHunt</a></p>"
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"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "gRegor Morrill",
"url": "https://gregorlove.com/",
"photo": "https://gregorlove.com/site/assets/files/6268/profile-2021-square.300x0.jpg"
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"_id": "38402289",
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{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2023-07-18 15:43-0700",
"url": "https://gregorlove.com/2023/07/me-discussing-tech-jobs/",
"content": {
"text": "Me discussing tech jobs with a friend who isn\u2019t in tech: \u201cWant to learn to yell at computers professionally?\u201d",
"html": "<p>Me discussing tech jobs with a friend who isn\u2019t in tech: \u201cWant to learn to yell at computers professionally?\u201d</p>"
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"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "gRegor Morrill",
"url": "https://gregorlove.com/",
"photo": "https://gregorlove.com/site/assets/files/6268/profile-2021-square.300x0.jpg"
},
"post-type": "note",
"_id": "38400412",
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{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2023-07-15T14:55:49-0400",
"url": "https://martymcgui.re/2023/07/15/145549/",
"syndication": [
"https://fed.brid.gy/"
],
"content": {
"text": "How public should social media be? How social should public websites be? It\u2019s your < 10min update on the #IndieWeb community!\nThis Week in the IndieWeb audio edition for July 8th - 14th, 2023.\nhttps://martymcgui.re/2023/07/15/this-week-in-the-indieweb-audio-edition--july-8th---14th-2023/",
"html": "<p>How public should social media be? How social should public websites be? It\u2019s your < 10min update on the #IndieWeb community!</p>\n<p>This Week in the IndieWeb audio edition for July 8th - 14th, 2023.\n<a href=\"https://martymcgui.re/2023/07/15/this-week-in-the-indieweb-audio-edition--july-8th---14th-2023/\">https://martymcgui.re/2023/07/15/this-week-in-the-indieweb-audio-edition--july-8th---14th-2023/</a></p>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Marty McGuire",
"url": "https://martymcgui.re/",
"photo": "https://martymcgui.re/images/logo.jpg"
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"_id": "38360295",
"_source": "175"
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{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2023-07-15T14:53:20-0400",
"url": "https://martymcgui.re/2023/07/15/this-week-in-the-indieweb-audio-edition--july-8th---14th-2023/",
"category": [
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"IndieWeb",
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"audio": [
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],
"name": "This Week in the IndieWeb Audio Edition \u2022 July 8th - 14th, 2023",
"content": {
"text": "Show/Hide Transcript\n \n How public should social media be? How social should public websites be? It\u2019s the audio edition for This Week in the IndieWeb for July 8th - 14th, 2023.\nYou can find all of my audio editions and subscribe with your favorite podcast app here: martymcgui.re/podcasts/indieweb/.\nMusic from Aaron Parecki\u2019s 100DaysOfMusic project: Day 85 - Suit, Day 48 - Glitch, Day 49 - Floating, Day 9, and Day 11\nThanks to everyone in the IndieWeb chat for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you\u2019d like to see for this audio edition!",
"html": "Show/Hide Transcript\n \n <p>How public should social media be? How social should public websites be? It\u2019s the audio edition for <a href=\"https://indieweb.org/this-week/2023-07-14.html\">This Week in the IndieWeb for July 8th - 14th, 2023</a>.</p>\n<p>You can find all of my audio editions and subscribe with your favorite podcast app here: <a href=\"https://martymcgui.re/podcasts/indieweb/\">martymcgui.re/podcasts/indieweb/</a>.</p>\n<p>Music from <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/\">Aaron Parecki</a>\u2019s <a href=\"https://100.aaronparecki.com/\">100DaysOfMusic project</a>: <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/2017/03/15/14/day85\">Day 85 - Suit</a>, <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/2017/02/06/7/day48\">Day 48 - Glitch</a>, <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/2017/02/07/4/day49\">Day 49 - Floating</a>, <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/2016/12/29/21/day-9\">Day 9</a>, and <a href=\"https://aaronparecki.com/2016/12/31/15/\">Day 11</a></p>\n<p>Thanks to everyone in the <a href=\"https://chat.indieweb.org/\">IndieWeb chat</a> for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you\u2019d like to see for this audio edition!</p>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Marty McGuire",
"url": "https://martymcgui.re/",
"photo": "https://martymcgui.re/images/logo.jpg"
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"_id": "38360296",
"_source": "175"
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