New posts from thoughtshrapnel.com
Thought Shrapnel
Digital Badging Commission
I'm reserving judgement on this initiative until I find out more, but it seems to be in the same ball park as work done as part of initiatives in the US and Europe. Hopefully, it's a UK-focused way of getting badges more mainstream, although I'm always a little wary when I see the word 'microcredential' as it's a very supply-side term.
The RSA and Ufi VocTech Trust are leading work in this area. I'm hopefully talking with Rosie Clayton soon, who's part of the team.
Building a movement towards greater understanding, development, and adoption of digital badges by accrediting bodies, policymakers, and employers, including other micro-credentialling providers outside of our mutual networks
Exploring the quality and interoperability of digital badges used by key awarding and accrediting organisations Making the case for a lifelong digital record of learning using digital badges and micro-credentials
Examining the feasibility of applying QA frameworks to digital badges so that they could be used to reward flexible learning pathways (e.g. in line with the lifelong learning entitlement)
Source: Digital Badging Commission
A Jazz-soaked Philosophy for our Catastrophic Times: From Socrates to Coltrane’
These Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinbugh look pretty awesome. I don't think Cornel West uses any slides, either, so perfect to rip to MP3 and listen to while I'm out for a run! Although I guess I'll miss some of his very expressive gestures :)
- Lecture One: Philosophic Prelude
- Lecture Two: Metaphilosophic Andante
- Lecture Three: Folly Presto
- Lecture Four: History Adagio
- Lecture Five: American Allegro Molto Vivace
- Lecture Six: A Love Supreme (A Way Through)
Prof. Cornel West delivers the 2024 Gifford Lecture Series at the University of Edinburgh, titled ‘A Jazz-soaked Philosophy for our Catastrophic Times: From Socrates to Coltrane’.
Source: Bella Caledonia
Shark skin aircraft FTW
We need all kinds of innovations, large and small, to help address the climate emergency. I'm not sure how much 2,200 tonnes of kerosene being saved means in the big scheme of the things, but the technology evidently works, and learning from nature is pretty cool.
The Swiss national airline has now incorporated the shark skin onto all of its long-haul 777 aircraft, with the final example to adorn the technology receiving it at the start of May... Last year, the airline saved nearly 2,200 tonnes of kerosene despite its 777 fleet not being fully fitted at the time.
Rather than being completely smooth, shark skin is unique in its ability to minimize drag through specific grooves, which, in aviation terms, allows for a smoother and more efficient flight.
AeroSHARK replicates this hydrodynamic property on aircraft. It is a "special film" made up of "tiny 50-micrometre riblets that reduce aerodynamic drag during flight."
Source: Simple Flying
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives
Although things are pretty quiet at the moment, I usually average around 20 hours of paid work per week. When I tell them, people seem surprised at this, but when you strip away the pointless meetings, bureaucracy, and frustration that can come with regular employment, it's entirely possible to (in normal times) earn a decent salary working half the number of hours.
This article shares the case of Josh Epperson, who works 10-15 hours per week and earns ~$100k/year after starting what he calls 'The Experiment'. On a side note, I'm also sharing the image that comes with the article to comment how lazy it is: who uses a briefcase in 2024? Also, as the article mentions explicitly, Epperson is spending the time he's not working doing community stuff, not lazing on the beach.
For me, I spend a lot of time on the side of football pitches and basketball courts. I'm almost always around for my kids, because I work from home and try and get most of my work done while they're at school. This, to my mind, is the way it should be. Apart from school, but that's a whole other post...
Epperson began The Experiment by scaling back the obligations on his time and money. He resigned from his role on the board of a Black film festival. He moved out of his swanky apartment to a cheaper part of Richmond and traded in his Land Rover for a Honda CR-V. Despite these downgrades, his new path came with advantages. Epperson prepared his meals and ate more healthily. He spent unhurried afternoons with friends in the garden. And he got into regular meditation and exercise.
Epperson also saw how the added time benefited his professional life. He started working on projects for the Smithsonian and an urban-farming nonprofit called Happily Natural. With more space around his work, his work got better. “In the old industrial model of employment, the more hours you put in, the more products come out,” he explained. But if the product is an idea for a marketing campaign or a headline for a website, Epperson found that there wasn’t a positive correlation between how many hours he put in and the quality of the output. With more room to seek inspiration and develop his ideas, Epperson was doing more work that made him proud.
What impressed me most from my time with Epperson is that he doesn’t treat leisure only as grist for the mill. He doesn’t unplug so that he can be more productive when he sits back down at his computer. Nor does he, like so many of us, exist in a perpetual state of half-work, swiping down at dinner to see if any new emails have come in.
For Epperson, reducing his working hours gives him the space to invest in other facets of his life. He is involved in his community. He is a generous friend. He takes care of his body. Walking the streets of Richmond with Epperson is like walking next to the mayor—he seemed to know every shopkeeper and skateboarder we passed.
Source: The Atlantic
A learnt practice that placates idle hands and leaves our thoughts free
One of the many things that I've learned from Laura is that people need things to do with their hands. That's true with virtual workshops where emails are only a click away, but it's also true in-person as well.
This post talks about this as an 'ancient need' which might explain stone knapping. The author, Matt Webb, suggests that we could lift this 'evolutionary burden' somewhat by, instead of teaching kids to better tolerate boredom, teach them a skill which involves using their hands. It's not a bad idea, you know. I was giving kids blu-tack to fiddle with 15 years ago when I was a teacher, and not just the neurodivergent ones!
If I were to try something revolutionary, I mean truly revolutionary on a generational scale, here’s what it would be:
I would sneak a new fiddle urge fulfiller into the national school curriculum.
I wouldn’t plan on teaching kids how to tolerate boredom as they get older, or how to be more comfortable than previous generations inside their own heads. Those are unstable solutions.
I mean instead I would work to come up with something in the family of pen flipping or polyrhythm finger tapping or rolling a coin over the knuckles. Or I’d invent secular rosary beads or make child-safe whittling knives.
Something like that. Self-contained, not networked. Automatic, with room for skill, dextrous.
And I’d make sure this new skill was taught and drilled before these kids even have much conscious awareness, like right when they start pre-school, so it’s there for them throughout their lives.
Source: Matt Webb
Related: Museum of Stone Tools (which is where the image is from)
Electronic spider silk
This looks promising! As with everything like this, though, the more data we capture about the body, the more we need robust privacy legislation and security protocols.
Also, I'm pretty sure this could be printed as a form of tattoo on the surface of the human skin, so it could be art as well as science.
Researchers have developed a method to make adaptive and eco-friendly sensors that can be directly and imperceptibly printed onto a wide range of biological surfaces, whether that’s a finger or a flower petal.
The method, developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, takes its inspiration from spider silk, which can conform and stick to a range of surfaces. These ‘spider silks’ also incorporate bioelectronics, so that different sensing capabilities can be added to the ‘web’.
The fibres, at least 50 times smaller than a human hair, are so lightweight that the researchers printed them directly onto the fluffy seedhead of a dandelion without collapsing its structure. When printed on human skin, the fibre sensors conform to the skin and expose the sweat pores, so the wearer doesn’t detect their presence. Tests of the fibres printed onto a human finger suggest they could be used as continuous health monitors.
[...]
The researchers say their devices could be used in applications from health monitoring and virtual reality, to precision agriculture and environmental monitoring. In future, other functional materials could be incorporated into this fibre printing method, to build integrated fibre sensors for augmenting the living systems with display, computation, and energy conversion functions.
AI is infecting everything
Imagine how absolutely terrified of competition Google must be to be to put the output from the current crop of LLMs front-and-centre in their search engine, which dominates the market.
This post collates some of the examples of the 'hallucinations' that have been produced. Thankfully, AFAIK it's only available in North America at the moment. It's all fun and games, I guess, until someone seeking medical advice dies.
Also, this is how misinformation is likely to even worse - not necessarily by people being fed conspiracy theories through social media, but by being encouraged to use an LLM-powered search engine trained on them.
Google tested out AI overviews for months before releasing them nationwide last week, but clearly, that wasn’t enough time. The AI is hallucinating answers to several user queries, creating a less-than-trustworthy experience across Google’s flagship product. In the last week, Gizmodo received AI overviews from Google that reference glue-topped pizza and suggest Barack Obama was Muslim.
The hallucinations are concerning, but not entirely surprising. Like we’ve seen before with AI chatbots, this technology seems to confuse satire with journalism – several of the incorrect AI overviews we found seem to reference The Onion. The problem is that this AI offers an authoritative answer to millions of people who turn to Google Search daily to just look something up. Now, at least some of these people will be presented with hallucinated answers.
Source: Gizmodo
Man or bear IRL
This article by Laura Killingbeck is definitely worth reading in its entirety. Not only is it extremely well-written, it gives a real-world example to a hypothetical internet discussion. Killingbeck is a long-term 'bikepacker' and therefore the "man or bear" question is one she grapples with on a regular basis.
The central reason why fewer women travel alone is our fear of male violence and sexual assault. Actually, the most common question I get about my travels is some version of, “Aren’t you afraid to bike/hike/travel alone as a woman?” By naming my gender, the implication is clear. What people really mean is, “Aren’t you afraid of men?”
This leads us straight back to the original conversation about “Man or Bear,” which has nothing to do with bears. (Sorry, bears!) “Would you rather be stuck in a forest with a man or a bear?” is just another way of asking, “Are you afraid of men?” It’s the same question I’ve been fielding for the entirety of my life as a solo female traveler. It’s the same question that hovers over women all the time as we move through the world.
And it’s a question that’s always been difficult for me to answer. I’m not afraid of all men. But I am afraid of some men. The real problem is the gray area in between and what it takes to manage the murkiness of that unknown.
Source: Bikepacking