Lecture 33: Language Death—The Problem
Just as there is an extinction crisis among many of the world's animals and plants, it is estimated that 5,500 of the world's languages will no longer be spoken in 2100.Lecture 34: Language Death—Prognosis
There are many movements to revive dying languages. We explore the reasons that success is so elusive. For one, people often see their unwritten native language as less "legitimate" than written ones used in popular media.
👓 poniewozik tweetstorm: Response to Axios op ed
BE SMART: This is dumb and treats Axios readers as if they're dumb. 1/ https://t.co/usibB2G952 pic.twitter.com/WbCYkXc12e
— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) October 21, 2018Does Axios believe that, as long as their staff never share opinions, its readers will assume they have none? 2/
— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) October 21, 2018Of course not! So this sort of policy says: Yes, we have opinions and attitudes and sensibilities, like any intelligent person, but we will *conceal them from you.* And therefore you should trust us more! 3/
— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) October 21, 2018What idiot would believe that? In what other aspect of journalism do we believe that hiding information from the public serves the public? 4/
— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) October 21, 2018People don’t want you to be a robot. They want you to be FAIR. That applies to straight news and opinion alike. If you show that you are a human being, capable of feeling and analysis, and yet you will pursue a story where it goes regardless, that makes you more trustworthy. 5/
— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) October 21, 2018If you covered the tech industry and you never formed an opinion, based on your years of research, on the issues facing that field, you would be a got-damn idiot I would not want to get my news from. Same with politics. Same with ANYTHING. 6/
— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) October 21, 2018If I could change one thing in media, it would be: no news outlet, ever again, would base its policy on perception and “How will this make us look?” It serves no one, we get too cute by half, we look phony—because it IS phony—and bad-faith critics will attack us regardless. 7/7
— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) October 21, 2018
📺 "The Great British Baking Show" The Final | Netflix
Directed by Scott Tankard. With Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins, Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood. This week, our contestants bake in the final.
I was shocked that Ruby ultimately made it so far given her dismal performance in the first episode. If she’s as good as she ultimately ended up in the series, she should work on her confidence as that would help tip her over to being truly outstanding. It was nice to see how she grew a bit over the series however.
I really missed having rain on the show.
📺 "The Great British Baking Show" French Week | Netflix
Directed by Scott Tankard. With Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins, Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood. This week, our contestants bake for french week.
📺 "The Great British Baking Show" Quarter Final | Netflix
Directed by Scott Tankard. With Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins, Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood. This week, our contestants bake in the quarter final.
📺 "The Great British Baking Show" Pastry | Netflix
Directed by Scott Tankard. With Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins, Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood. This week, our contestants bake pastry.
📺 "The Great British Baking Show" Sweet Dough | Netflix
Directed by Scott Tankard. With Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins, Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood. This week, our contestants bake sweet dough.
🔖 davidgchristian tweet: We humans have reduced the biomass of life on earth by 50%
We humans have reduced the biomass of life on earth by 50% #bighistory pic.twitter.com/dlDypTlU1l
— David Christian (@davidgchristian) October 21, 2018
📺 "The Great British Baking Show" Biscuits and Traybakes | Netflix
Directed by Scott Tankard. With Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins, Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood. This week, our contestants bake biscuits and traybakes.
📺 "The Great British Baking Show" Pies and Tarts | Netflix
Directed by Scott Tankard. With Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins, Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood. This week, our contestants bake pies and tarts.
📺 “The Great British Baking Show” Desserts | Netflix
Directed by Scott Tankard. With Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins, Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood. This week, our contestants bake desserts.
📺 “The Great British Baking Show” Bread | Netflix
Directed by Scott Tankard. With Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins, Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood. This week, our contestants bake bread.
👓 4 ways we all can work to fix "fake news" | Axios
Quit sharing stories without even reading them. Quit tweeting your every outrage. Quit clicking on garbage.
🎧 Lectures 31-32 of The Story of Human Language by John McWhorter
Lecture 31: Language Starts Over—The Creole Continuum
Just as one dialect shades into another, "creoleness" is a continuum concept. Once we know this, we are in a position to put the finishing touches on our conception of how speech varieties are distributed across the globe.Lecture 32: What Is Black English?
Using insights developed in the course to this point, Professor McWhorter takes a fresh look at Black English, tracing its roots to regional English spoken in Britain and Ireland several centuries ago.
👓 Michael Nielsen On Volitional Philanthropy | Facebook
T. E. Lawrence, the English soldier, diplomat and writer, possessed what one of his biographers called a capacity for enablement: he enabled others to make use of abilities they had always possessed but, until their acquaintance with him, had failed to realize. People would come into contact with Lawrence, sometimes for just a few minutes, and their lives would change, often dramatically, as they activated talents they did not know they had.
Most of us have had similar experiences. A wise friend or acquaintance will look deeply into us, and see some latent aspiration, perhaps more clearly than we do ourselves. And they will see that we are capable of taking action to achieve that aspiration, and hold up a mirror showing us that capability in crystalline form. The usual self-doubts are silenced, and we realize with conviction: “yes, I can do this”.
This is an instance of volitional philanthropy: helping expand the range of ways people can act on the world.
I am fascinated by institutions which scale up this act of volitional philanthropy.
Y Combinator is known as a startup incubator. When friends began participating in early batches, I noticed they often came back changed. Even if their company failed, they were more themselves, more confident, more capable of acting on the world. This was a gift of the program to participants [1]. And so I think of Y Combinator as volitional philanthropists.
For a year I worked as a Research Fellow at the Recurse Center. It's a three-month long “writer's retreat for programmers”. It's unstructured: participants are not told what to do. Rather, they must pick projects for themselves, and structure their own path. This is challenging. But the floundering around and difficulty in picking a path is essential for growing one's sense of choice, and of responsibility for choice. And so creating that space is, again, a form of volitional philanthropy.
There are institutions which think they're in the volitional philanthropy game, but which are not. Many educators believe they are. In non-compulsory education that's often true. But compulsory education is built around fundamental denials of volition: the student is denied choice about where they are, what they are doing, and who they are doing it with. With these choices denied, compulsory education shrinks and constrains a student's sense of volition, no matter how progressive it may appear in other ways.
There is something paradoxical in the notion of helping someone develop their volition. By its nature, volition is not something which can be given; it must be taken. Nor do I think “rah-rah” encouragement helps much, since it does nothing to permanently expand the recipient's sense of self. Rather, I suspect the key lies in a kind of listening-for-enablement, as a way of helping people discover what they perhaps do not already know is in themselves. And then explaining honestly and realistically (and with an understanding that one may be in error) what it is one sees. It is interesting to ask both how to develop that ability in ourselves, and in institutions which can scale it up.
[1] It is a median effect. I know people who start companies who become first consumed and then eventually diminished by the role. But most people I've known have been enlarged.
Note, by the way, that I work at Y Combinator Research, which perhaps colours my impression. On the other hand, I've used YC as an example of volitional philanthropy since (I think) 2010, years before I started working for YCR.