Jonathan he/him/his

Doom’s Harris vote is all down to edpol.

Those curtains would cost a small fortune.

I’m going to have to check it out! That was the killer app for OS X beta, and I’ve never felt the same way about another browser since.

You know what I miss? OmniWeb. That is still my favorite browser of all time.

A picture of a lawn with trees behind it. I’m front of the trees is part of a rainbow, which is visible all the way to the end. Sadly, it terminates in a patch of tree debris, not a pot of gold.

There is a rainbow localized to my lawn right now, and I’m sorry to report that there is no pot of gold at its end.

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Perhaps a tweak of the algorithm is in order.

Do you find Google Scholar to be more useful than discovery services provided by your library? I’m curious because LLM integration with library databases is being rolled out across the library automation industry, and I’m interested to hear about real-world user experiences.

Green onions, sriracha sauce, and anchovies.

Seeing this reported in other countries’ news media highlights just how absurd this seems.

must learn to use, because if we misuse it-and "misuse" includes treating it as a sort of oracle, asking it to "tell me the answer to the world's questions; explain to me why I exist" — then we lose our ability to think. We become stupid. Nam June Paik, a great artist of the 1990s, said: "I use technology in order to hate it properly." And that is what we must do: understand it, because if we don't, it will use us. Al will become the tool that big tech uses to control us and manipulate us. We must learn to use these tools correctly; otherwise, we'll be facing a serious problem.

I don’t know what I think about the way the philosopher being interviewed here is using AI, but I love his use of this quote from Nam June Paik.

www.wired.com/story/an-acc...

Sue Storm-Richards makes the cut, but the rest of the FF do not, sadly.

Can't fool me. That's a grill brush!

"it was a person who thought up that game, and a person who played that game. people think. machines don't think, no sir. and people love- machines don't love. people are much more important than machines. much more! fish are even more important than machines! anything that lives!" - mr rogers

I’ve assumed it’s an intentional inversion of “peacekeepers,” but now that I think of it, I’m not sure.

I’m really intrigued by the idea of augmented natures! I’m looking forward to taking the time to read this carefully.

Faithful Witness Wednesday vigils Wednesdays in April, 12 p.m. ET Join with Sojourners and the Washington Interfaith Staff Community for Faithful Witness Wednesday vigils at the U.S. Capitol and streaming online. These multifaith vigils will call on Congress to exercise greater moral courage in upholding its Article 1 powers and preventing executive overreach. The Episcopal Church is a cosponsor of this event series. Learn more and register.

No joke, this is an excerpt from the Episcopal Church Press Release Digest I received in my email today.

Before, when I would turn in an assignment, I could set it aside. Now I am always checking for grades, looking to see if there is activity in the discussion board, seeing if there are new assignments, etc. It’s like I can’t actually leave the classroom.

I’ve finally put my finger on what I don’t like about classroom management systems like Blackboard. At least the way I use it, it turns class into social media. 1/

BYU grad student from Japan has visa revoked Attorney for computer science Ph.D. candidate believes a fishing license incident from years ago may have triggered visa revocation.

The Trump administration has revoked the visa of a BYU student, potentially because he organized a church fishing trip that included a fishing license violation that was later dismissed. www.deseret.com/utah/2025/04...

Grabbed at his appointment to become a citizen. Is this who we are? 😕🇺🇸

It would be perfect for my family as a replacement for our last ICE vehicle.

Person holding a cardboard sign which reads "Hand off working COBOL code"

Now there's a protest sign you don't see often.

I don’t know much about Jagmeet Singh’s politics, but I love what he has to say here.

So TikTok is still technically illegal in the US, right? Aren’t we getting close to the end of the enforcement delay? Are we going to wake up one morning and it will just be turned off?

Is this a politically-coded opinion? I can’t tell. I’m going to call it conservative because it harkens back to an imagined past.

My most crank opinion is that we need to return to 55mph speed limits on interstate highways. It’s much safer, more fuel efficient, and easier to drive. It also would lead to less wear on vehicles and roads. Way better in every way except for the “getting there quickly” part.

REFLECTIONS ON AI IN THE CLASSROOM: How We are Not Using Al in the Classroom By Sonja Drimmer & Christopher J. Nygren Premise Prompt engineering is a term that has become commonplace since the widespread availability of generative Al applications like ChatGPT. The idea is that the outputs of the large language models (LLMs) on which these applications are based are only as good as the prompts that are input: vague prompts result in equally vague outputs. And thus was born the race to train for careers in prompt engineering. Unfortunately, the bubble seems to have burst before even the first generation of students was trained for this career outcome. We were given a prompt as an invitation to participate in this newsletter: "How are you using Al in the classroom?" While we have accepted this invitation, we are engaging in the most humanistic act we can imagine—refusing the prompt.”

Love to refuse a prompt. static1.squarespace.com/static/53a4b...

I just saw my first ID.Buzz in North America, and it had a custom Pikachu paint job. Extremely excited to finally see these on the road.

“Books are technology.”

I’m not saying parliamentary democracies are necessarily better than the US system (although if pressed I probably would). I certainly don’t understand why they would be worse, though.