My piano teacher’s been having me practice pentascales + major chords in every key, and I just learned “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (from the Adult Piano Adventures book) which is in D and just switches between a major chord and a 6th in the left hand, so I decided to try playing it in every key tonight and I DID IT! Still such a piano newbie, but it’s exciting to be able to figure stuff like that out!!
My left hand is still not a fan of piano…it just feels backwards, and no matter how many times my teachers says piano provides a “more natural” position for the hand (& she’s objectively right, violin left hand position is weird), 31 years of violin muscle memory says “NOPE!”
My left hand pinky wants to be the highest note, not to lowest, and my hand wants to be facing me, not facing away!!
It’s a book! And I helped write it! With some of my favorite people! (And while it’s cool to have a physical copy, we also made sure it was published as an Open Access book, so anyone can read it!)
If y’all need something that isn’t depressing as much as I do right now, here you go: these three babies still love each other so much and it’s so very sweet! #CatsOfMastodon
Re: the #eclipse, I'm seeing so much stuff from folks in my region calling us foolish for the all the preparation that was done in anticipation of being in the path of totality, and for getting our hopes up at all. And I'm just not here for it.
It wasn't foolish. Yes, we got our hearts broken by the thick cloud cover (but y'all, 3.5 minutes of darkness was still magical even if we couldn't see the cause). But I refuse to live from a place of cynicism just to protect myself against heartbreak.
So excited for TOTAL ECLIPSE THAT I DON’T HAVE TO TRAVEL TO SEE tomorrow!!! (Seriously, I’ve been looking forward to this since I learned about it during the partial eclipse we had in 2017! It is the one and only thing I’ve been looking forward to in 2024.)
@seachanger I feel so stupendous lucky that my city is just smack-dab in the center of the path of totality for this one. Hope you get a chance to see one someday!!
Hey folks, does anyone know of any work so far about (or people working on) neurodivergence and AI detectors? There's been some great writing with anecdotal evidence, but it seems like really low hanging fruit that I'd love to see more on. (I'm not asking because I'm thinking of doing it - I just want to see someone else's work. :) )
@Alien_Sunset@cfiesler that’s right! Currently in final stages of IRB approval process for the study, but we’re going to be looking at whether folks who score high on AQ are also more likely to get falsely flagged as “AI generated” by detection tools.
@FractalEcho@cfiesler@Alien_Sunset yeah, that’s absolutely a concern I have, and I’m trying to be really careful about it. (As a writing prof my biggest concern is protecting students from professors using these detection tools, and I’ve seen people in my field take the research showing bias against L2 writers seriously, in terms of how they think about detection tools, but not taking the anecdotal evidence I’ve shared about myself and other ND writers seriously.)
A student just emailed to let me know that they'll be missing class because there's a power outage in their apartment and they keep tarantulas, which can't handle the cold temps, so they've got to stay home and figure out how to keep them warm and that is quite possibly the best reason I've ever heard for missing class. Keep those tarantulas as toasty as you can, dear student!
Something weird I’ve been noticing: for the last month or so, my Kindle (which is ad-supported) has been showing me ads for what I think must be AI-generated books. The format of the titles is always like “<noun> of the <adj> <noun>: [Fantasy|Bedtime] Story for Adults and Kids” and the cover art looks like bad AI generated cartoon-style art. I’ve seen dozens upon dozens of different ones. So weird.
Cat Defense: our girl kitties are obsessed with getting up on the counter and trying to eat food that we’re prepping, but they find oranges to be terrifying (we think they hate the smell?), hence the line of oranges defending the pot of soup. (Plus a spray bottle - we are PREPARED!)
I’ve now put the following text into a Note that I can copy and paste from every time there’s a new takedown notice about one of the violin practice videos I’ve shared on Instagram for #100DaysOfPractice
“This is me, playing my own violin (not especially well), playing music that is in the public domain. You don’t own my practice videos and you don’t own Bach!”
Sitting here in a Zoom meeting and just finished weaving in the final ends on kiddo’s kitty sweater, and it turns out it kindasorta fits me (which is good because she’s not THAT much smaller than me these days!)
I am getting so, so sick of submitting disputes with fucking Sony Music on FB. I swear, every day a new one of the Bach practice videos I shared on FB during the early pandemic gets flagged and it’s both flattering that their detection algorithm thinks I sound like Hahn and Heifetz and utterly maddening to have to file dispute after dispute saying “this is me, an amateur violinist, playing public domain music on my own violin. You don’t own my practice videos!!”
@LG5Films I haven’t been sharing videos of me practicing Bach recently (I was sharing them on FB in the early pandemic for friends who wanted to cheer me on as I learned new pieces while we were all physically distancing) but good to know if I ever go back to doing that.
All these notifications are coming about videos that are nearly 4 years old now. It’s so weird!
