@NearerAndFarther@techhub.social
@NearerAndFarther@techhub.social avatar

NearerAndFarther

@NearerAndFarther@techhub.social

Digital Initiatives Coordinator w/Booth Library & History Instructor @ Eastern Illinois University. Music & humanities junkie. Cautiously (optimistic?) technologist. Opinions shared here are my own.

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NearerAndFarther, to animals
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A post-fetch lay in the grass is even better on a Friday. Happy Friday!

markwyner, to vegan
@markwyner@mas.to avatar

I love me some veggie burgers. But I’m really interested in one that’s bright green. There’s lots of good stuff in this thing, though.

NearerAndFarther,
@NearerAndFarther@techhub.social avatar

@markwyner
The original Dr praegers were fairly green. They didn't hold together great but I liked their flavor a lot. Was best to think of them as a veggie patty less than a burger.

These look interesting!

NearerAndFarther, to history
@NearerAndFarther@techhub.social avatar

Are there any good, digitally accessible primary source collections re: Cherokee removal/Trail of Tears that features or focuses on sources created by Cherokee individuals?

Some initial searching leads me to the WPA-era Indian-Pioneer collection, for memories of removal.

https://ualrexhibits.org/tribalwriters/artifacts/Family-Stories-Trail-of-Tears.html

https://digital.libraries.ou.edu/whc/pioneer/

But I am having trouble finding much beyond that. Asking for a student!

NearerAndFarther, to animals
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I don't post pics often (at all?) but couldn't resist sharing this perfect photo of our cat Theseus.

And in the interest of equal distribution of likes, our dog Winchester, who brings a very different energy to the household, lol, complete with spittle.

A brown dog with bits of black and grey looking slightly away from the camera. He is sitting in the backseat of a car with his mouth half open and his tongue hanging out.

NearerAndFarther,
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@thepoliticalcat Oh, he judges us for everything, really.

NearerAndFarther, to random
@NearerAndFarther@techhub.social avatar

"april" by Lucille Clifton

bird and bird
over the thawing river
circling parker
waving his horn
in the air above the osprey’s
nest my child
smiling her I know something
smile their birthday
is coming they are trying
to be forty they will fail
they will fall
each from a different year
into the river into the bay
into an ocean of marvelous things

NearerAndFarther, to random
@NearerAndFarther@techhub.social avatar

My super smart, super awesome partner took one for the team last night by wading through some mortgage application paperwork.

But she did not click the appropriate "opt-out" button on the application regarding sharing information with third-party mortgage providers (or something like that)...

RIP my phone. In the last hour, 8 calls. At least they're being identified as spam, so easy to ignore!

NearerAndFarther, to history
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Any or folks know of a fairly comprehensive list of digitally accessible projects? Particularly interested in soldiers oral histories, but not exclusively.

There's a lot out there!

NearerAndFarther,
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@RPBook
Thanks for this!

NearerAndFarther,
@NearerAndFarther@techhub.social avatar

@RPBook This is exactly the sort of index I was looking for, just for oral history resources specifically -- great inspiration here. Perhaps I'll take some time to get a list started since I haven't found something similar yet. Thanks again!

NearerAndFarther, to Teachers
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Question for the out there, esp. in : anyone have a favorite digital tool for research projects that I could share with my Historical and students?

I am teaching this course for the second time this spring and would like to require storyboarding, as described in the Turabian manual, as part of the process. I am doing this as part of an effort to give a bit more structure to the process of finding a topic, developing a question, developing hypotheses, fleshing out an argument, etc. beyond having them complete a worksheet or write a paragraph every step of the way. Something that is genuinely useful as part of the project's development.

Something like but maybe more approachable, less corporate?

NearerAndFarther, to random

Trevor Burrows started reading https://books.theunseen.city/book/449299

NearerAndFarther,
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Although I like the idea of being sort of subterranean-ly connected to Mastodon via the Fediverse, still unclear about best way to use it. But one of my goals for 2024 is to read more openly...

So I am planning to:

  • import books into my bookwyrm when I start reading them
  • boost that starting status on my profile, like I did here
  • Then add comments and reading notes from Mastodon to Bookwyrm along the way

Does that make any sense at all? How do other folks connect reading notes to their reading activity?

NearerAndFarther, to mastodon
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So... if I'm wanting to get started with --- how much does the instance I choose matter?

I understand much better today how my instance choice has affected my experience, for both better and worse, by effectively moderating what I see.

Do the same basic rules of instances in Mastodon apply to instances in Bookwyrm?

NearerAndFarther,
@NearerAndFarther@techhub.social avatar

Or to put it another way: with something like , why choose an instance other than the largest "flagship" instance?

matt, to random

I'm getting tired of simplistic, indignant characterizations of generative AI like this one: https://social.ericwbailey.website/@eric/111584809768617532 "a spicy autocomplete powered by theft that melts the environment to amplify racism and periodically, arbitrarily lie"

It's a tool like any other; it can be used for good as well as bad. Yes, the copyright issue is real, but we can presumably overcome it by using models whose developers are more scrupulous about their sources of training data, not throwing out the whole thing.

NearerAndFarther,
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@matt This thread has been a roller-coaster! But a good one.

My own positions evolve everyday. I swing between fascination and curiosity related to potential applications, on the one hand, with a growing list of real-world uses that range from the mundane to the intriguing to the game-changing....

and on the other, a deep concern for the larger contexts of production, the conundrums raised by its misuse, obvious real-world harms, and frustration with the hype machine.

I've decided (as an educator) to double-down on teaching my students and colleagues to think about these technologies critically but to also encourage their exploration. I wager our brains are big enough to do both.

(The best part is that my colleagues can't decide if I'm "for" or "against" --- as if those are the only two positions!)

NearerAndFarther, to classicalmusic
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Nice article on , who died a few weeks ago at the age of 109.

109!!!

And played piano until the end.

This article and so many other obits of folks in the classical world these days serve as a reminder, too, that 20th century music would be incredibly different without the long influence of --- crazy how many musical lives she touched.

Article is a gift article, which means someone (anyone?) gets it free -- but otherwise behind a paywall.

@classicalmusic

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/arts/music/colette-maze-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ek0.iy2L.FGcKE7Q9Iad8&hpgrp=ar-abar&smid=url-share

NearerAndFarther, to classicalmusic
@NearerAndFarther@techhub.social avatar

Embarrassment of riches for & in Chicago over the next few weeks:

  • At the Lyric, Lise Davidsen in Jenufa; Lisette Oropesa in Daughter of the Regiment

  • At the CSO, Hilary Hahn performs Brahms violin concerto; a Jessie Montgomery program; plus programs conducted by MTT, Barenboim

  • And at the in early December, none other than Shostakovich's "The Nose" (!)

Ugh, wish I could live in the city again...

NearerAndFarther, to mastodon
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What's everyone's pros and cons list about enabling your posts to be searchable through the new full text functionality on ?

My inclination is to enable it but would like to think through possible reasons not to.

NearerAndFarther, to mastodon
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How does everyone use on ? Do you just save everything for ever and ever amen? Or do you go ever go through them and process them in some way?

I think search includes your bookmarks (?) -- if so, that makes the saving-everything approach feel less like hoarding...

On the other hand, I am looking at my bookmarks and realizing how often I say "I'll come back to that!" and then never come back to that.

(These are the things I think about when I am procrastinating on actual work, lol... although I am cleaning up my and processes a bit, so this isn't a completely random rabbit hole.)

NearerAndFarther, to random
@NearerAndFarther@techhub.social avatar

I had not touched the viewer in a while and a colleague is asking about it. Started poking around and found this nice overview of different methods for getting data beyond the viewer.

"Working with Google Ngrams: A Data-Wrangling Tale," Blair Fix, @blair_fix

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/10/19/working-with-google-ngrams-a-data-wrangling-tale/

Also shares an package - ngramr - for working with the tool. Nice.

NearerAndFarther, to random
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"To computer scientists, however, the rise of artificial intelligence is no different than the advent of the pocket calculator or the Google search engine: It’s a tool that, if used correctly, can help people learn faster and think on a deeper level." -- From https://www.chronicle.com/article/scared-of-ai-dont-be-computer-science-instructors-say

Ugh --- how to convince one's / colleagues that "AI" is not at all like the pocket calculator, functionally or pedagogically, and that it's not just a bad metaphor but a dangerous one? Or further, that we did a TERRIBLE job adapting critically to Google Search precisely because we failed, socially and culturally, to adequately challenge its assumed neutrality (even though many valiantly tried).

Who benefits from these sorts of rhetorical gestures? (Why are they frequently deployed by tech elites/CEOs?)

/rant

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