👓 The History of the Future of Learning Objects and Intelligent Machines | Audrey Watters

Read The History of the Future of Learning Objects and Intelligent Machines by Audrey WattersAudrey Watters (Hack Education)
This talk was delivered at MIT for Justin Reich’s Comparative Media Studies class “Learning, Media, and Technology.” The full slide deck is available here.

👓 Ex-C.I.A. Official Resigns After Harvard Courts Chelsea Manning | New York Times

Read Harvard Disinvites Chelsea Manning, and the Feeling Is Mutual by (New York Times)
The dean of the Kennedy School said the selection of Ms. Manning for a fellowship had been a mistake, after protests from current and former C.I.A. officials.

👓 Is Tribalism a Natural Malfunction? | Nautilus

Read Is Tribalism a Natural Malfunction? by Simon DeDeo (Nautilus)
What computers teach us about getting along. From an office at Carnegie Mellon, my colleague John Miller and I had evolved a computer program with a taste for genocide.
Is Tribalism a Natural Malfunction?

This article reminds me that I need to go back to reading Fukuyama’s two volume series (Origins of Political Order) and apply more math to it as a model. I can see some interesting evolution of political structures spread throughout the modern world and still want a more concrete answer for the jumps between them. I suspect that some of our world problems are between more advanced political economies and less advanced (more tribalistic ones — read Middle Eastern as well as some third world nations) which are working on different life-ways. Are there punctuated equilibrium between the political structures of economies like the graph in this paper? What becomes the tipping point that pushes one from one region to the next?

I also feel a bit like our current political climate has changed so significantly in the past 20 years that it’s possible we (America) may be regressing.

Check out this referenced paper:
🔖 Barasz, M., et al. Robust cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Program equilibrium via provability logic. arXiv 1401.5577 (2014).

👓 The First Species to Have Every Individual’s Genome Sequenced | The Atlantic

Read The First Species to Have Every Individual’s Genome Sequenced by Ed Yong (The Atlantic)
It’s an endearing, giant, flightless, New Zealand parrot, and it’s a poster child for the quantified-self movement.
Kakapo

👓 Is there any value in people who cannot write JavaScript? | Medium

Read Is there any value in people who cannot write JavaScript? by Mandy Michael (Medium)
I recently had the opportunity to speak at Web Directions Code 2017 over in Melbourne. While there, I was part of a panel with Mark Dalgleish and Glen Maddern (who gave spectacular talks I might add). We’d just finished a set of talks about CSS, and during the panel we got a question along the lines of (paraphrasing): “Is there a place in the industry for people who just write css and html” To me, this could easily be interpreted as, “Is there any value in people who cannot write JavaScript?”, based on some comments from the audience after, this seemed to be how many understood question. So, we asked the audience if they hire people who just write CSS and HTML. No-one put their hand up. And I, for one, was disappointed.

👓 Wyck Godfrey Is Named Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group President | Deadline Hollywood

Read Wyck Godfrey Named Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group President (Deadline Hollywood)
BREAKING 10:49 AM with updated details, noon: After working in the business for 20 years both as a producer and creative executive, Wyck Godfrey has been tapped to replace Marc Evans as Motion Picture Group President at Paramount Pictures. He will begin his job in January. Evans, as Deadline reported last night, is seguing into a producing deal. Godfrey comes to the job after a prolific run as producer and partner with Marty Bowen in Temple Hill. His producing credits include The Maze Runner and Twilight Saga franchises, the latter of which was dropped by Paramount. The move comes only six months after Jim Gianopulos stepped in as Chairman/CEO of Paramount Pictures. Godfrey will report to him and oversee creative/development, casting, phsyical production, post production and music, according to the studio.

👓 A Simple Design Flaw Makes It Astoundingly Easy To Hack Siri And Alexa | FastCo Design

Read A Simple Design Flaw Makes It Astoundingly Easy To Hack Siri And Alexa (Fast Company)
Hackers can take control of the world’s most popular voice assistants by whispering to them in frequencies humans can’t hear.
 

 

👓 One of the world’s most influential math texts is getting a beautiful, minimalist edition | The Verge

Read One of the world’s most influential math texts is getting a beautiful, minimalist edition by Andrew Liptak (The Verge)

A couple of years ago, a small publisher called Kroncker Wallis issued a handsome, minimalist take on Isaac Newton’s Principia. Now, the publisher is embarking on its next project: Euclid's Elements.

The publisher is using Kickstarter to fund this new edition. Euclid’s Elements is a mathematical text written by Greek mathematician Euclid around 300 BCE and has been called one of the most influential textbooks ever produced. The treatise contains 13 separate books, covering everything from plane geometry, the Pythagorean theorem, golden ratio, prime numbers, and quite a bit more. The books helped to influence scientists such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Sir Isaac Newton. In 1847, an English mathematician named Oliver Byrne re-wrote the first six books of Euclid's Elements, taking its concepts and illustrating them.

 

 

👓 Don’t Sell Your Soul or Students to an Edtech Brand | Rafranz Davis | Medium

Read Don’t Sell Your Soul or Students to an Edtech Brand by Rafranz Davis (Medium)
There are plenty of reasons why teachers join ambassador programs. For some, this is how they gain access to potentially great tools that…

👓 OER: The Future of Education Is Open | Educause Review

Read OER: The Future of Education Is Open by Lisa Young, Una Daly and Jason Stone (er.educause.edu)
The OER movement continues to have a significant impact on students, faculty, and the way teaching is occurring. OER can overcome barriers to students

🎧 Episode 41: Danger (Seeing White, Part 11) | Scene on Radio

Listened to Episode 41: Danger (Seeing White, Part 11) by John Biewen and Chenjerai Kumanyika from Scene on Radio

For hundreds of years, the white-dominated American culture has raised the specter of the dangerous, violent black man. Host John Biewen tells the story of a confrontation with an African American teenager. Then he and recurring guest Chenjerai Kumanyika discuss that longstanding image – and its neglected flipside: white-on-black violence.

🎧 Episode 40: Citizen Thind (Seeing White, Part 10) | Scene on Radio

Listened to Episode 40: Citizen Thind (Seeing White, Part 10) by John Biewen and Chenjerai Kumanyika from Scene on Radio

The story of Bhagat Singh Thind, and also of Takao Ozawa – Asian immigrants who, in the 1920s, sought to convince the U.S. Supreme Court that they were white in order to gain American citizenship. Thind’s “bargain with white supremacy,” and the deeply revealing results.

I’m embarrassed to say that I’d never heard these stories or known about any of these laws and their history. Or worse, I’m embarrassed to say that the education system has failed me and millions of others. This sort of history should be broadly known in America.

🎧 Episode 39: A Racial Cleansing in America (Seeing White Part 9) | Scene on Radio

Listened to Episode 39: A Racial Cleansing in America (Seeing White Part 9) by John Biewen and Chenjerai Kumanyika from Scene on Radio

In 1919, a white mob forced the entire black population of Corbin, Kentucky, to leave, at gunpoint. It was one of many racial expulsions in the United States. What happened, and how such racial cleansings became “America’s family secret.”

Download a transcript of the episode.

The history of Corbin as presented by the Corbin city government, with no mention of the 1919 racial expulsion.

Elliot Jaspin’s book, Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansings in America

Another in a long line of stories and history I wished I had learned in US History. I knew things were bad having grown up in the American South. I had no idea that they were this painfully bad. Holy shit.