kaleidoscope's recent activity

  1. Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative

    kaleidoscope
    Link
    A friend is trying out a few different things that need websites, so I helped her build them. Along the way, I decided to make one for myself — a blog, but really just a little space for my whims....

    A friend is trying out a few different things that need websites, so I helped her build them.

    Along the way, I decided to make one for myself — a blog, but really just a little space for my whims. Don’t Make a Blog, Make a Brain Dump inspired me to make one.

    It's been fun playing with CSS and doing a bit of writing again.

    3 votes

  2. Comment on Advice for dealing with racist/pro-Donald Trump family? in ~health.mental

    kaleidoscope
    Link Parent
    It truly does. I wasn't sure if I should share it — I started and discarded my comment several times. It doesn't provide any answers, but I felt, at the very least, reading a shared experience...

    It truly does.

    I wasn't sure if I should share it — I started and discarded my comment several times. It doesn't provide any answers, but I felt, at the very least, reading a shared experience might help a little bit.

    A new kind of loss, the moment where you begin to recognize the people you love aren't who you thought they were. It’s a unique betrayal.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on Advice for dealing with racist/pro-Donald Trump family? in ~health.mental

    kaleidoscope
    (edited )
    Link
    Hi @Tynted, I read this today and thought of you: I've missed Sam for a long time (or: Pick Your Battles). It doesn't answer your question for resources, but the author does speak to: In the...

    Hi @Tynted, I read this today and thought of you: I've missed Sam for a long time (or: Pick Your Battles).

    It doesn't answer your question for resources, but the author does speak to:

    It's weighing on me, because I miss having some sort of good connection with them like I used to. Their health is starting to decline, but I've gotten to the point that I don't really like them that much, and I haven't been going to see them. These two parts of me are kind of at odds with each other, and I'm struggling to find a balance.

    In the essay, the author shares about their lifelong love for their cousin Sam and how political polarization wedged itself into their once-close relationship. It's a heartfelt reflection about love and loss and grappling with the conflict of differing worldviews.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on In need of new bedding in ~life.style

    kaleidoscope
    Link
    We have been using sheets from The Company Store and have been quite happy with them. We have 2 sets that we have been rotating for more than 2 years. They're still in good shape after weekly...

    We have been using sheets from The Company Store and have been quite happy with them. We have 2 sets that we have been rotating for more than 2 years. They're still in good shape after weekly washing.

    They're on the pricier side, but I gave them a try because a colleague recommended them. She said that they don't get nubby. This has been our experience as well.

    3 votes

  5. Comment on I quit teaching because of ChatGPT in ~creative

    kaleidoscope
    Link Parent
    I'm mulling over this relationship between writing and thinking. She comments that her students were not "developed enough" to recognize the nuances between their original writing vs. the...

    I'm mulling over this relationship between writing and thinking.

    She comments that her students were not "developed enough" to recognize the nuances between their original writing vs. the generated writing:

    In one activity, my students drafted a paragraph in class, fed their work to ChatGPT with a revision prompt, and then compared the output with their original writing. However, these types of comparative analyses failed because most of my students were not developed enough as writers to analyze the subtleties of meaning or evaluate style. “It makes my writing look fancy,” one PhD student protested when I pointed to weaknesses in AI-revised text.

    author Ted Chiang put it this way: “Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.” Chiang also notes that the hundreds of small choices we make as writers are just as important as the initial conception.

    What are the implications here for the subtleties in our thinking? 1984 warned us about the dangers of limiting our words. Here, we are allowing gen AI to choose our words for us.

    Gen AI completing a sentence for me is innocuous. Gen AI completing a thought for me is... troubling.

    (But maybe some subtleties don't matter, as in this xkcd: Connoisseur)

    12 votes

  6. Comment on I quit teaching because of ChatGPT in ~creative

    kaleidoscope
    Link
    Sometimes, I see headlines like this and I am not interested in them because I think, there's so much said on this topic already, what more can be said? Ho hum, another story about students using...

    Sometimes, I see headlines like this and I am not interested in them because I think, there's so much said on this topic already, what more can be said? Ho hum, another story about students using ChatGPT to write papers.

    And then I'm pleasantly surprised because there's so much soul in the story. It turns out more can be said, can be learned. I especially enjoy when the stories are told from the lens of writers and artists. (I felt this way about this recent headline: The collapse of self-worth in the digital age.)

    I like how this author opened with how writing isn't just putting thoughts we already have on paper—it's the uncomfortable process of coagulating nebulous thoughts over time:

    Virtually all experienced scholars know that writing, as historian Lynn Hunt has argued, is “not the transcription of thoughts already consciously present in [the writer’s] mind.” Rather, writing is a process closely tied to thinking. In graduate school, I spent months trying to fit pieces of my dissertation together in my mind and eventually found I could solve the puzzle only through writing. Writing is hard work. It is sometimes frightening. With the easy temptation of AI, many—possibly most—of my students were no longer willing to push through discomfort.

    Yes, I made an effort to paraphrase after reading this part 🙃:

    Paraphrasing well, like drafting original research, is a process of deepening understanding.

    53 votes

  8. Comment on The collapse of self-worth in the digital age in ~health.mental

    kaleidoscope
    Link
    This was a good read. Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed this bit about buff little ants: I can already see future me thinking: "How can I add muscles to this ant?" or "It's okay for this ant to have...

    This was a good read. Thanks for sharing.

    I enjoyed this bit about buff little ants:

    When my eldest child was in kindergarten, she loved to make art, but she detested the assignments that tried to make math fun by asking kids to draw. If I sat her down to complete one, she would stare rebelliously at her pencil or a strand of her hair rather than submit. Then one day, while drawing a group of five ants and a group of eight ants, my kindergartener started to sketch fast. She drew ants with bulbous limbs growing out of their bodies, like chains of sausages. “Bombombom!” she cried, flapping her arms up and down. “These are their muscles.” She continued to draw and mime pumping iron, giggling to herself, delighted to have planted something in her homework that couldn’t be accounted for in the metric of correct or incorrect. She had taken drawing back.

    I can already see future me thinking: "How can I add muscles to this ant?" or "It's okay for this ant to have muscles."

    8 votes

  9. Comment on The rise of the multi-hyphenate in ~creative

    kaleidoscope
    Link
    I recently learned the term "multi-hyphenate" after seeing it in a friend's professional bio.

    I recently learned the term "multi-hyphenate" after seeing it in a friend's professional bio.

    In case you hadn’t heard: the side hustle is over, and the multi-hyphenate has taken its place.

    “This is about choosing a lifestyle. This is about taking some power back into our own hands,” writes Emma Gannon in the introduction to her new book, The Multi-Hyphen Method. She goes on to explain that, despite the lament of the gig economy and the exploitation of contract workers, with a “plan of attack” we can find a “mishmash” of “different income streams” and become “a career chameleon.”

    The multi-hyphenate, an individual with so many skills they need multiple hyphens to list them, might seem like a revolutionary form of labor agency within a prescriptive job market, especially when it presents as Gannon’s writer-broadcaster-podcast host dream career. But the term inherently privileges certain skills over others, particularly those of knowledge workers who often hold secondary degrees, and idealizes a form of labor that becomes absorbed into personal identity, diminishing work-life balance and generating further barriers to worker solidarity.

    3 votes

  11. Comment on Portable monitor recommendation? in ~tech

    kaleidoscope
    Link
    I cannot work without a second monitor! I've traveled and worked remotely with the following setup: ASUS - ZenScreen 15.6” IPS FHD 1080P USB Type-C Portable Monitor with Foldable Smart Case - Dark...

    I cannot work without a second monitor! I've traveled and worked remotely with the following setup:

    These items + my 15" work laptop + my 13" personal laptop all fit into my carry-on backpack quite easily. I did not use any fancy sleeves for my laptops or monitor — I just slipped them into bubble mailers.

  12. Comment on What vegetable are you? in ~food

    kaleidoscope
    Link Parent
    Hi there, fellow green bean! Incidentally, the em dash is my favorite punctuation.

    Hi there, fellow green bean! Incidentally, the em dash is my favorite punctuation.

    4 votes

  13. Comment on What vegetable are you? in ~food

    kaleidoscope
    Link Parent
    My favorite description so far is the onion's: "Faked it too hard and is facing the consequences of making it"

    My favorite description so far is the onion's: "Faked it too hard and is facing the consequences of making it"

    3 votes

  14. Comment on What vegetable are you? in ~food

    kaleidoscope
    Link
    I'm a green bean. This thing thinks I'm more fun than I actually am.

    I'm a green bean. This thing thinks I'm more fun than I actually am.

    4 votes

  15. Comment on How to monetize a blog in ~tech

    kaleidoscope
    Link Parent
    I was skeptical but decided to suspend my judgment based on your comment. It is indeed more interesting than I expected. Thanks for sharing.

    I was skeptical but decided to suspend my judgment based on your comment. It is indeed more interesting than I expected. Thanks for sharing.

    12 votes

  16. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of September 9 in ~news

    kaleidoscope
    Link
    The mainstream press is failing America – and people are understandably upset 'The ramblings of an absolute lunatic': Trump's incoherent behavior on display for the world to see TIL the term...

    The mainstream press is failing America – and people are understandably upset

    They pursue the appearance of fairness and balance by treating the true and the false, the normal and the outrageous, as equally valid and by normalizing Republicans, especially Donald Trump, whose gibberish gets translated into English and whose past crimes and present-day lies and threats get glossed over. They neglect, again and again, important stories with real consequences.

    'The ramblings of an absolute lunatic': Trump's incoherent behavior on display for the world to see

    So once again, he's lost the room, but if you didn't watch that with your own eyes and instead relied on legacy media outlets for the interpretation, for the story, you might have been left with a totally different perspective. Instead of focusing on Trump's nonanswer, outlets like The New York Times, Politico, The Associated Press, all presented the bizarre spectacle as if it was a normal policy-driven speech focused on tariffs, low taxes, and supposed explosive economic growth.

    We are now nearly 10 years into covering Donald Trump and the media is still choosing to sanitize Trump's nonsensical ramblings to make them more palatable for the voter — the same media that rightfully did not shy away from covering President Biden's age and mental acuity at every turn. I mean there cannot be a pass for the man exhibiting the same obvious decline and be given a free pass — the stakes are simply too high.

    TIL the term "sane-washing."

    30 votes

  18. Comment on Science fiction or fantasy recommendations for children in ~books

    kaleidoscope
    Link
    When I was in elementary school, a local librarian recommended The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron to me. She said she recommended it to kids who liked Harry Potter. It’s been a long time so I...

    When I was in elementary school, a local librarian recommended The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron to me. She said she recommended it to kids who liked Harry Potter.

    It’s been a long time so I don’t recall the details, but I remember enjoying the series. There’s definitely magic, dragons, and witches and wizards.

    3 votes