It is ONE MONTH til the publication of my new book THE SMALL STUFF: HOW TO LEAD A MORE GRATIFYING LIFE. If you follow me on this account, I think you will enjoy reading it.
I am beginning a monthlong process of badgering you to PREORDER the book, so why not just do so now? ❤️
smallstuffbook.com
Where does the “it’s not x, it’s y” come from? It’s not only training data: LLMs are trained to use language to arrive at “answers.” Whatever we’re incentivizing and disincentivizing in our use of language when we resist “sounding like AI” has big implications for students, and for human thought.
Against the Quantification of Integrity
When the measure of language becomes its target, it ceases to be good language.
💡Nerd Rating: 1/5. I discuss the origins of certain linguistic tics in LLMs a...
My new book The Small Stuff is out July 7. Look how adorable and orange it is!
Please pre-order one? You can do it here: smallstuffbook.com
Since I wrote about the Ferrari Luce Friday, I've seen lots of (funny!) jokes about how it looks like a Nissan, a port-a-potty, or a ride-on mower.
But what I see is a risky, earnest, sad, bold attempt to reconcile old automotive aspirations with a world taken over by Apple smoothness. (Gift link)
Ian Bogost
"This is hardly Armageddon for higher education. But the future does kind of suck."
Except it’s a Ferrari
www.theatlantic.com
More living texture of professoring these days. The meaning of this inscrutable message is that the accreditors want to construe final-exam period "contact time," and so now you need to have an exam, or a final assignment that is due during the exam period (rather than the last week of class, say).
HCI gave up usability years ago in favor of manipulation. But apart from duplicitous manipulation's unconcern for intended use, what explanation for the interfaces that appear, then you touch or press something, but in the interval between it has been moved and you press something else instead?
The MacBook Air is a lot lighter than the MacBook Pro, so I want to use it as an actual laptop, out in the world. (The Pro mostly seems sits on the desk.) But the lower glare, "nano-texture" screen, which would be great using in for that world away from the desk, is only available on the Pro.
