Many years ago I endowed an award given annually at my university to a journalism student “recognized for active involvement with production of student publications as a writer and/or editor.”
I trust these machinations, no matter who is behind them, will not be successful. My life is already too full of dismay (thank you very much).
[The editor of The Runner, the student newspaper, is interviewed here. – 1 October ’24]
The marvellous Talia Lavin discusses “the collapse of consensus reality.” I love how Lavin lets loose her scorn.
Increased raw milk consumption has already led to a rise in foodborne illness—including stillbirths, miscarriages and deaths, albeit in very small numbers. The point is, do you want your morning latte to become a game of Russian roulette? I would hope not! I hope we can want better things for ourselves and our country! I’ve seen the misinformation about raw milk floating around like sour curd—recently, racist far-right asshole and self-proclaimed “theocratic fascist” Matt Walsh felt the need to dress down his three million Twitter followers about it (“Pasteurization is not some evil sorcery. It just kills the dangerous bacteria you morons”), leading to nuclear levels of indignation and betrayal among his dirty-dairy-demanding disciples. It’s “better for you!” Getting diphtheria will trigger the libs! It’s got super special vitamins! Pasteurization is a Communist plot!
It’s not. It was invented by a guy who wanted to make French booze more awesome, and was then transposed to the dairy-sphere by Germans who wanted fewer children to die, and who succeeded in ways that bring tears to my eyes when I consider how many babies were saved because of their relentless efforts. It’s unambiguously a good thing. The fact that this “debate,” such as it is, even exists speaks to the kind of yawning gulf between realities that puts us at this grim precipice of an election. If we can’t even agree that boiling milk for ten seconds or so to kill germs and save kids is a good thing—what the fuck is consensus reality even about anymore?
Back in the 1800s, Louis Pasteur was busy bending light around crystals no one else had bothered to examine; he made good beer, cured chicken cholera and cattle anthrax, and is a national hero buried in a magnificent crypt in a Paris institute that bears his name. I’d go with Louis on this one. Don’t listen to reflexive contrarians and people who are more than willing to see you die for a dollar. Drink clear wine and healthy milk, keep your kids safe, and remember there is better food than anger. The best revenge beer is living well.
My Kwantlen Polytechnic University colleague Seanna Takacs, PhD, has coauthored “Storying Universal Design for Learning” (with coauathors Lilach Marom, Alex Vanderveen, and the late Arley Cruthers Mcneney). It is a terrific book that “compiles post-secondary student voices on accessible teaching practices and universal design for learning (UDL) components that have been integrated into their classes. Students reflect on meaningfulness and engagement, accommodation plans, course design, and instructor supportiveness. This guide offers suggestions for teaching to support instructors in building more accessible classrooms.”
No Contest has been following the UDL movement for a long time, establishing a real-time newsfeed on the topic a year or so ago.
From the book’s introduction:
The traditional core of education is that the curriculum is at the centre of learning. UDL turns this assumption around and puts the learner at the centre. Instead of labelling the learner as disabled, underachieving, or in need of special services, we define the curriculum in terms of how adequately it can accommodate and support the diversity of learners.
This is from Arley’s marvellous Preface:
This resource aggressively centres the experiences and voices of disabled, neurodivergent, and chronically ill students. It takes the stance that even if UDL did not offer a single benefit to typical and abled students, it would still be worth doing. Disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent students deserve access to education. The world needs their knowledge. Our universities are better for their presence.
And yet, often instructors see accommodation as a special privilege rather than a right. Many universities require a formal diagnosis (and a lot of hoop jumping) to even access accommodations. Accommodations are for disabled people, many believe.
However, there is no clear line between “disabled” and “abled.” People can slide in and out of that category throughout their life. Having a diagnosis is also a privilege. Some diagnoses cost thousands of dollars to be assessed. Others are considered rare, and doctors are reluctant to look for them. Many neurodivergent people go through their whole lives not knowing that their struggles are because of neurodivergence.
In our study we found that many of the students who we interviewed received an ADHD diagnosis early into their university career when the workarounds and “hacks” that allowed them to thrive in high school no longer work. What if they didn’t have to fail before getting a diagnosis?
Dr. Kate Starbird and her colleagues at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) have launched a Substack newsletter devoted to tracking rumours and misinformation concerning the upcoming United States Presidential election. This newsletter is part of the group’s “rapid research” initiative.
We will write our rapid research analyses in “posts” here, while also cross posting to our website, where you can see the rest of the 2024 U.S. Election Rumor Research. The “notes” function of Substack will allow us to quickly share and send observations about election rumors that may not merit a full article. …
This first post covers the background of the CIP, our approach to election rumor research, and some of the anticipated outputs for this cycle. It is an updated version of an earlier article and reflects some changes due to evolving data access, methods of analysis and communication, and personnel.
I first got to know about Kate Starbird when she was a basketball star for Stanford University in the mid-nineties. After a stint in the WNBA, she returned to university (University of Colorado) to earn a PhD in Technology, Media, and Society. Now she’s teaching and doing research at the University of Washington. Earlier posts her described her work on Crisis Informatics and Election Delegitimization.
This sentiment, published in The Economist by Gabriel Crossley, has made my Sunday. Crossley notes that in China VPNs (“software which makes it appear as if a computer or mobile phone is located in another country”) have been “getting slower” and “less reliable” this summer.
Foreigners who live here are complaining. So are many Chinese. On Weibo, a social-media site, netizens said their “ladders” over the great firewall (as VPNs are known) seemed to have broken. … It is probably the Chinese government disrupting the networks.
Technically it is illegal to use a VPN in China without official permission. But things are usually less strict in practice because the government finds VPNs useful too. Without them foreigners would be less likely to visit and local businesses would struggle to find overseas customers. So in the past officials struck a balance. They only throttled VPNs during important events, such as the meeting of China’s legislature every spring.
Language Log writer Victor Mair points out:
This is a significant phenomenon. It reminds me of the years after the Tiananmen Massacre before the internet was widely used and people relied on fax machines to spread urgent news, all the fax machines were required to be turned off in the weeks before and after 6/4 [the anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square].
I have had truly unpleasant interactions with people I’ve known for years – including with those in academia – during these Olympics. Their loathsome disdain for transgenderism made them attack a non-transgendered woman, a boxer from Algeria, in giddy displays of ignorance and hatred. I will be interested in how this complaint against X (formerly Twitter) develops. From Aljazeera:
Imane Khelif … Algeria’s flag bearer in the closing ceremony, won gold Friday in the women’s welterweight division, becoming a new hero in her native Algeria and bringing global attention to women’s boxing. …
Khalif was unwittingly thrust into a worldwide clash over gender identity and regulation in sports after her first fight, when Italian opponent Angela Carini pulled out just seconds into the match, citing pain from opening punches. False claims that Khelif was transgender or a man erupted online, and the International Olympic Committee defended her and denounced those peddling misinformation. Khelif said that the spread of misconceptions about her “harms human dignity.” …
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The complaint was filed Friday with a special unit in the Paris prosecutor’s office for combating online hate speech, alleging “aggravated cyber-harassment” targeting Khelif, lawyer Nabil Boudi said. In a statement, he described it as a “misogynist, racist and sexist campaign” against the boxer.
It is now up to prosecutors to decide whether to open an investigation. As is common in French law, the complaint doesn’t name an alleged perpetrator but leaves it to investigators to determine who could be at fault.
Additional context here. And more of Khelif’s own, honestly powerful words here.
One cannot even point to misinformation as the cause for the attacks I witnessed first-hand. People were chomping at the bit. I was dismayed.
There has always been an oral-communication component in my upper-level business communications classes. I used to justify this to my students this way: In my own professional life, no matter how beautifully clear and researched the documents my clients pay me for are, they still want me to come into their office and explain my work to them. There is no way around it.
Now that AI platforms have made it very easy to generate text for student work, I have another rationale for the oral-communication requirement. It is not only a handy way for students to demonstrate that they know and really understand what they wrote, it might also be the best way.
Knowledge exists in the body and in the pulse of time, three things that come together in the human voice speaking to others. This knowledge blooms through conversation.
This story is from the online news publication “Jolt: The Journal of Olympia, Lacey, and Tumwater” [in Washington State]:
Starting Monday, June 17, Intercity Transit will cease posting rider alerts on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). This decision comes in response to changes in the algorithms of these platforms, which prioritize content based on user interest rather than chronological order. As a result, real-time updates have become ineffective and often cause confusion when delivered late.
A decade or so ago, both Twitter and Facebook were praised for their utility in disseminating important information regarding urgent situations in real time. Indeed, back then their success in this was matchless when compared to traditional news organizations and municipal and other governmental public-communications arms. These platforms relinquished their salutary roles, though; in other words, they stopped giving a shit about helping people.
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Addendum: Into this online-media environment “Jolt News” arrived in 2020. It is a vibrant and intelligent citizen-journalism platform that makes me smile in my heart. Anti-information behemoths are swallowing the old local journalism outlets. Long live the new alternatives. Olympia, Washington is my second hometown. This platform is how I keep up to date when I’m away.
As a university prof, I both teach and, to some extent, accommodate AI platforms in the classroom. This has been a daunting, trying, and humbling experience that requires continual adjustment and correction. But there is no way around it.
The hardest thing for me to adjust to: receiving AI-generated emails from students. The tone of these emails is usually “off”: too solicitous, or formal, or expansive. Sometimes they just seem bizarre. What really startles me, though, is this: I cannot hear a human being saying the words.
I estimate that since puberty I have spent approximately a third of my waking hours reading. I have a very fine ear for reading. And for me, the ground zero of reading is reading correspondence addressed to me. This is more fundamental to me, in terms of human interaction, than conversation.
When I receive an AI-generated email, even when it has been carefully fine-tuned, I see only a disguise, not the person – and I cannot hear a thing. This is profoundly unnerving to me. I need to get over this painful reaction.
Universal Design for Learning Education and AI Social Media Policy Kwantlen
