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.
📺 “The Great British Baking Show” Cake | Netflix
Directed by Scott Tankard. With Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins, Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood. This week, our contestants bake cakes.
📺 "The Great British Baking Show" The Final | Netflix
Directed by Andy Devonshire. Just three challenges lie between the three finalists and the trophy. And what a trio of challenges they are: mastery of a classic pastry technique that normally takes a day - in just three hours; a Technical test that requires mastering the basics - with no recipe; and a Showstopper that demands delivery of perfect sponge, caramel, choux pastry and petit four in the bakers' final five hours in ...
This season had a nice amount of rain in the background, but didn’t seem to be as hot in the tent as in other seasons.
Reply to Ben Werdmller on linguistics
👓 Fritz Coleman Speaks to a Generation at the Ice House | Pasadena Now
Setting out to prove that aging isn't pretty...but it's funny! NBC weatherman and stand-up comedian Fritz Coleman will perform his show “Fritz Coleman Speaks to a Generation” at the Ice House Comedy Club on Sunday, June 22 at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $15 and are available at www.icehousecomedy.com or through the Ice House box office at (626) 577-1894. This is a Special Event show.
📺 Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) | Warner Bros.
Directed by David Yates. With Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, Dan Fogler. The adventures of writer Newt Scamander in New York's secret community of witches and wizards seventy years before Harry Potter reads his book in school.
📺 USC vs. Texas – September 15, 2018 | Fox
Ehlinger 2 touchdown passes lead Texas over No. 22 USC 37-14
Sam Ehlinger passed for two touchdowns, Anthony Wheeler returned a blocked field goal 46 yards for a score and Texas beat No. 22 Southern California 37-14 on Saturday night to give second-year coach Tom Herman his biggest win in burnt orange.
📺 "Murphy Brown" Three Shirts to the Wind | CBS
Directed by Don Scardino. With Candice Bergen, Twinkle Burke, Tyne Daly, Nik Dodani.
❤️ I ❤️ maths by Dave Richeson | Chalkdust
Tired of hearing people ask which area of maths is your favourite? Get one of these tattooed on your forehead and you’ll never be asked again…