I just learned what vibe coding is, and how people are using AI to create great new simple tools without coding. I think to myself: I want to put the power of the internet using information gap activities literally into the hands of my students (well, their mobile devices, but close enough). NYTimes Hard Fork podcast segment 3 (gift). What is vibe coding. examples include making games online, Ethan Mollick also writes about his experience VibeCoding on Claude 3.7. What I want. Create A/B info gap activities on the fly. Input a topic and an interaction, (dialogue, interview) and some kind of information gap.

by Laozi, about 2,500 years ago. New translation by Ken Liu. Do by not doing, and there is nothing that cannot be done. The text is short, and contains enigmatic phrases that have been interpreted over the millennia. Ken Liu writes mostly science fiction, and very well at that. Over the pandemic he found himself unable to write and looked back. His will to write returned but he held off to finish a new translation with notes, along with stories from contemporaries to fill out the understanding. It’s helping me too. Thanks to Kottke for the recommendation.

Calque vs loanword. Cool blog. These two are very similar but subtly different. Flea Market and Skyscraper are examples.

I’ve been basing grades in my classes on what I call Attention Units (AU=gold, get it?). Since studying 37.5 hours over a semester (15 weeks, 90 min class and 45 homework) is not measurable for proficiency, and because I run a class with a lot of individualization (personalized, differentiated), I can’t measure them on a specific set of language points or skills. I also find I can’t accurately measure how hard they work, which is a common fallback for language teaching. That leaves me with Attention, a more specific aspect of the “working hard” school of grading.

You can now buy a nuclear reactor for your home. From America’s favorite company. What could go wrong? From Slashdot. Spoiler, this is a SATIRE. It's a fun fake. Had you going, though, right?

Mr. Beast of YouTube fame is expanding his empire with a new game show. This is a review of the show, complete with a short history of how Mr. Beast got there. A good lesson for where are attention is being guided. Take back control, folks.

Kottke points us to a new video (20 minutes) about hot sauces and the YouTube channel …. Besides talking about food, this is a good exploration into critical thinking. Bonus, this channel HowTown is going to be on my regular rotation of shows that are replacing my addiction (and dirty little secret) to reality TV with TV about Reality (I just made that up. A quick list of shows I check regularly: Cleo Abram with optimistic science, Dami Lee on architecture, Greens

In this newsletter (blog post) Celeste Davis looks at the reasons why fewer men are going to college in the US. For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied. One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition! This is also reflected in certain "Male" jobs and "Women's" jobs. With the new political weather in the US, it will be interesting to see if this trend slows or accelerates. I'm guessing on the second. I'm hoping women will not give up and continue to "take over" more universities and departments and whole careers and career paths.

Multi-step explanation of how much living stuff is on earth (biomass) and then compares that to man-made stuff (technomass). Eye opening. Via Kottke.

Mike Caulfield blogs about reason and reasoning and surprisingly doesn’t care how AI got there, and who is still doing the work. Google and Perplexity have launched Deep Research engines, AI help for regular research. He talks about SOK (State of Knowledge) and the next step up SSOK (Statements about SOK), which often include references to the knowledge (links or quotes from other work). “A question sometimes comes up at this point — well, look at all the work you had to do when you verified this. Isn’t it actually you who is doing the reasoning?

Research by Microsoft (pdf) shows tech industry users show a reduction in critical thinking as use of AI increases.

The Whole Earth Catalog was vetted. Not so for many journals. Is caused by an evaluation process much like Google’s PageRank, where a paper is rated by how many links there are to and from it. That’s how over 400,000 research articles in the last 20 years are probably fake, created by Paper Mills. From Nature.

Remember when it was Location, location, location? With the Attention Economy we are the ones getting mined (that's a polite word for it), especially now, with social media up on the inauguration dias. I'm sure the tech bros and the president figure they can outwit each other, but us users are going to pay either way. Chris Hayes, legacy media (MSNBC) newscaster, has a new book out about attention. It's on my list. Here is an interview at another legacy media outlet, the NYTimes. I am now basing my grades and interactions in my classes on what I call Attention Units; 20 minutes, a previously normal maximum for "attention span" measured for university lectures.

Some books I gave away last year Independent bookstores will soon be able to sell over a million electronic books (e-books). I have over 350 books on Amazon (and over 100 on Audible) and am definitely ready to make the move. NYTimes.

Bryan Alexander has been watching teens and universities and how they use technology. Here is his latest update on social media. I'm guessing hte federated media (Mastadon and Bluesky mostly) are too small to figure here. Hopefully that will change.

I just discovered Curipod, a lesson creator with AI feedback built in. It looks like a valuable tool more suited to language learners than Kahoot. I like the flexibility of customization while there is a good lot of lesson templates. For now, it looks like short writing sessions can set a scene for discussion. Oh, and most of the functions are available for free.

Google will change the names of Gulf of Mexico and Denali to fall in line behind Trump, reports CNBC. Tim Snyder, author of On Tyranny posts that most progress made by autocrats and wannabe dictators is through accession previous to any pressure. Lesson #1 (of 20): Do Not Obey in Advance. Time for me to move away from Google, increase my gulf. What happened to "Don't do Evil"?

The Reverse is a masterful manipulation of expectations that defies normal Pragmatics. This type of joke, more than most, defies built expectations. The best at this is Anthony Jeselnick. Profiled.

I remember the velvet, slick with age, and the ashtrays at the end of the arms on the creaky seats in an also run theater in the barrio Chino of Barcelona. I remember being high as hell on a new batch of hashish from the kid brother of a friend. I remember being both scared and fascinated at the same time.

How can we harness AI for learning without it being a crutch, when kicked out, doesn’t leave us flat on the ground? I kept thinking about Khanmigo and how it never just gives the answer and makes the students go through the steps. Can we do that with language learning? The Unresolved Tension Between AI and Learning.

New TTS Tool Open Source

Is still on the march. Only the US is falling behind. Kevin Drum, previously of Mother Jones, a liberal magazine, has taken to data analysis and reporting after his retirement while he battles cancer. His blog is a treasure trove of data showing how little things are changing, even as the rhetoric around change is going haywire. In any case, those afraid of a decline in globalization should not be worried, unless you are in the US.

This interview of Jon Dron on using AI for education is not typical. His stance is clear. It makes sense. It doesn't go overboard. He admits when he is not sure of something. He is against LMSs, even though he developed some big ones for the Canadian educational system. (Via Stephen Downes, of course)