Chief Nerd @ Northwestern University Knight Lab • Project lead @ Census Reporter • Board Member @ City Bureau • Information Design • Digital Journalism • Civic Technology
"the quest for the general solution can distract us from a thousand specific solutions that we could have with today’s capabilities – solutions whose funding remains limited due to their very specificity."
mssv.net/2024/07/06/a...
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Product people! City Bureau is hiring a Director of Product. Read it, apply, pass it on...
www.citybureau.org/hiring-direc...
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It’s a time for UX experiments! I’m mostly long on the no-personality paths but I’d try this one out
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I think that's more my angle than just chat... But really the AI reading tools I'm most interested in are more like librarian-scribes
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My vague sense is that Kipnis is a cynic so
"will radically transform the entire way booklovers read books" is striking.
Has anyone tried Rebind?
www.wired.com/story/i-am-l...
Ah, wait-list.
Fine I'll do it
www.rebind.ai/?ref=FKjOUr
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yet another reason to love Skokie Library—they are currently hosting an exhibition of work by the members of the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild (including one by my spouse!)
Of course I'm a bit biased, but it's a really cool show
skokielibrary.info/events/exhib...
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"Whatever AI is capable of in music – even if it never gets more than pretty good – it is supremely well suited to making music in a culture that does not reward labor."
dadadrummer.substack.com/p/i-spoke-wi...
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Look, I'm not one to say much about publications taking some sort of controversy and turning it into merch (we've done it a bunch), but generally speaking, if the message of your merch is "we support fascist insurrection," you might just be the fucking problem.
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I really believe it would be possible to build broad support for policies, removing federal judges, including SCOTUS judges, who receive this kind of largesse, from office. The public understands judges being bribed and understands it’s wrong.
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from "Is it OK to love a dog?" by Eryk Selvaggio
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"So much of this popular conversation around data-driven generative AI is focused on dismantling the value of relationships to a core, machinic set of criteria. The goal of this reduction seems hostile to the experience of love and empathy altogether."
cyberneticforests.substack.com/p/is-it-ok-t...
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30 years ago this month the first issue of Punk Planet came out. It's incredible that we did one issue let alone 80 over the following 13 years. In honor of the 30 year mark, I'm writing 13 essays, one of each year of the magazine, starting with Year One. dansinker.com/posts/2024-0...
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Imagine running for president and a former coworker publicly attests to you using the n-word, and by evening that's only the day's second-worst story for you. slate.com/culture/2024...
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They knew. In 1969.
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I don’t think we’re actually going to get actual cicadas in my neighborhood, but I did my part.
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Omg that is amazing
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I like how this piece leans in to the Jersey Shore location of Alito's beach house
‘“How far do we go before we normalize a lot of abnormal behavior?” asked “Stan,” a longtime South Jersey resident. “I’d say there are no words, but there are words.”’
www.thedailybeast.com/justice-alit...
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I say this as a mostly not journalist who has received extremely hair-raising information via Twitter DMs over the years. Don’t do that! Exchange Signal info and gtfo
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I’m sure this makes me an ancient one but I don’t think you should send detailed tips to reporters using unencrypted DMs on Bluesky or anywhere else and I don’t think reporters should suggest that :|
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"Two things can be true: first, that the online spaces where young people spend so much time require massive reform, and second, that social media is not rewiring our children’s brains or causing an epidemic of mental illness."
www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...
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Press Forward Chicago is hiring a program director.
www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/39...
(I am not involved in any way; just passing along to my Chicago journalism network)
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So impressed by @laurenfklein.bsky.social et al's Data by Design: An Interactive History of Data Visualization dataxdesign.io - ft Beothuk maps, W.E.B. Du Bois's "data portraits," Wm Playfair's time-series charts, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's chronological grids, etc. It's been 🤩 to watch this emerge!
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…and we loved working with spooler.fm and the designers at iDib group to bring this to life.
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This project was a great collaboration. Knight Lab's Chief Nerd, @joe.germuska.com worked with Prof. Jerry Goldman to create the original oyez.org database of SCOTUS oral arguments, so when he brought this idea, we were excited to explore the possibilities…
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Today is the 70th anniversary of the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, where the US Supreme Court found school segregation unconstitutional.
Learn more about it and listen to key moments recreated with AI
brown.oyez.org
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FEEL PUNK TODAY?
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This from Ted Gioia applies to media organizations as well as "creatives". It's all about distribution.
www.honest-broker.com/p/why-creati...
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this is very good
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/next-on-th...
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(temporarily) no. 5 longest word and no. 5 fastest full clear. Nothing gold can stay.
puzzmo.com/play/spellto...
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~*~PLEASE SHARE!~*~
I'm looking for stories of girls who were accused of being boys because they were "too good" at sports. Has this happened to you? Would you be willing to talk to us about it for a series? If so, please get in touch! Ways to connect here: www.bucketofeels.com/sports/
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🎉🚀 2024 Pulitzer for Local Reporting to City Bureau and Invisible Institute for chicagomissingpersons.com/
Go Sarah! Go Trina!
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Politico: What’s Really Happening on College Campuses, According to Student Journalists
www.politico.com/news/magazin...
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White people love to make their grandparents proud.
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or this one of Milton Glaser art
theanimalarium.blogspot.com/2013/08/ecle...
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I keep finding my way to this old blog, Animaliarium, which has posts of delightful animal illustrations, usually by artist, like this one for Raymond Savignac
theanimalarium.blogspot.com/2009/11/mad-...
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The peaceful resolution of the student occupation of Northwestern's Deering Meadow hasn't gotten much coverage. Here's a balanced rundown from an NU student journalist
dailynorthwestern.com/2024/05/02/c...
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Editorial from UCLA student newspaper. At this point, I’d say you should only be reading/listening to college journalists on these stories.
dailybruin.com/2024/05/01/e...
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Thanks to @archive.org for the pointer to this excavation of Psyche Pscene, a late 60's early 70's independent zine published here in Chicago
jessejarnow.com/2024/04/psyc...
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The irony: WKCR reporting that student journalists in Pulitzer Hall are told that if they leave the hall, they'll be arrested
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At Medill’s “Reporting in a dangerous world” symposium, learned about Reporters Without Borders’ lawsuit to block Russian propaganda from a French satellite, followed by using that freed satellite capacity to distribute work of censored journalists
rsf.org/en/rsf-launc...
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this is good, and the lead photo (by Jay Janner of the Austin American-Statesman) should win an award
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/manufactur...
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The Daily Northwestern has live coverage of the Gaza solidarity encampment established this morning on the university's Deering Meadow. Police have already threatened to break it up.
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Nell Irvin Painter seems super cool. I love that she went to art school after she retired from a career as an academic historian (and she’s still writing)
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This paper also includes an AI poem prompted with the first four lines of Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise"
I'm someone who is very receptive to algorithmic art, but it's still offensive. Almost feels like blackface.
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"in this age of AI, although there are…diverse platforms to view more diverse content created, produced, and represented by more diverse talent—the effect is not necessarily a leveling of power and opening of access"
from "Poetry Will Not Optimize; or, What Is Literature to AI?"
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www.openculture.com/2024/04/dani...
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From USC to Columbia, silencing pro-Palestinian students isn't the answer. And it sure as hell isn't making Jewish people safer.
My latest:
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“The broader implication of the Belgian experiment is a recognition that there can be other modes of advice and consent in today’s troubled democracies beyond the passive citizenship of periodically voting in elections dominated by partisan strife.”
www.noemamag.com/belgium-lead...
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Another good essay from Eryk Selvaggio:
"The gather-lots-of-general-data phase isn’t necessary to produce meaningful results from machine learning. We can use these tools to guide our analysis of the world, not the modeling of it."
cyberneticforests.substack.com/p/ai-is-a-cr...
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@404media.co co is really knocking it out of the park. I love this delving into the community of Amazon delivery drivers and their abstracted shitty bosses, "Wayne" and "Jimmie"
www.404media.co/email/e2fa7a...
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