1. Chat GPT and Academia
If you are unfamiliar with Chat GPT, the podcast This American Life had an entertaining episode segment on the subject. Apart from its novelty, I'm especially interested in the impact these LLMs are having in academic life, both from the students' and teachers’ perspectives. A recent episode on The Daily focused on this, and a professor named Andrew Reeves, upon discovering his students were using Chat GPT in their assignments mused,
I think it’s a betrayal of the purpose of a university class. We’re on this journey together, is my feeling about a class. (...) And so I suspect one reason it hit so hard for me is that a great many students never saw themselves on a voyage of discovery along with me. They saw themselves en route to a credential. And to some extent, the upset is my realizing that not everyone is going to see this as a magnificent voyage of discovery.
I wonder if this comment, laden with disappointment, isn't a realization, enabled by this technology, of how, for many students, education is an obligation rather than a pursuit.
On Conversations with Tyler, Reid Hoffman offers examples of how a teacher could encourage their students to use Chat GPT:
...say I was wanting to teach a class on Jane Austen and her influence on English painting. What I could do as a teacher — go to ChatGPT, other AI bots, construct 10 essays with my own prompts, hand them out to the students and say, “These are D pluses. Go use the tools and make it better” as a way of doing it.
That’s the way that you could still have homework. They’re using ChatGPT, and it causes them to be much better at thinking about what makes a great essay, as opposed to just the mechanics of all the writing. What could I innovate on the structure? Could I have a bold or new contrarian point and argue it in an interesting way? That kind of provocation is a way that we get, again, human applications.
I think it is easy to fear the arrival of new technology and easier still to suspect only negative interference, so I appreciate hearing how it can be harnessed in new and creative ways.
2. Clocks from props
If I remember correctly, my grandpa was a mechanic in the second World War. At its end, he saw these unused helicopter propellers and had four cut and made into clocks, one for each of his children. I inherited one from an uncle - my own unusual "grandfather clock".
Recently, when visiting an antique store, I saw this one, which looks like a different spin on the same idea.
3. An app that we like
Christian does the shopping in our house and Any List makes it easy for me to write the list, and him to cross off the items. We've been taking its simplicity for granted for years!
4. Luxury vs premium
Until listening to an episode from Acquired, (thanks to a tip gleaned from Kottke media diet post) I could not have told you the difference between luxury and premium consumer goods. But at around the 1:46 minute mark, hosts Ben and David make this distinction [transcription lightly edited] :
There are premium goods, which means, you pay more and you get more utility, like objective value... (This nuance is so illuminating once you understand [it]. You start seeing it everywhere once you think about things this way.) Premium is pay for value, luxury is literally paying because something offers no more value. And other people will know that, so they know that 1) you have the wealth to spend on things even though they are no more utilitarian to you and 2) that you have taste, and you have chosen this item as the item that you want to throw your wealth at because it says something about you, not what you need it to do productively. [From Coco Chanel]: "Luxury is a necessity that begins where necessity ends."
5. Scenery here
I like how Henteleff Park volunteers make nice signs around the park:
