SOCIAL MEDIA FROM THE QUIET CORNER OF THE ROOM
When I was in college, I worked as a student assistant to a philosophy professor. It was a good gig for me – I was majoring in philosophy and hoped to teach it in college myself some day. It was good to get an inside look at things. One of the more striking memories of this professor wasn’t from the classroom or the department office. It was from a holiday party.
Read moreRIGGING THE ALGORITHM ON TIKTOK
I wrote in my Getting started post that I still have facebook and instagram accounts. I no longer post there, but I’ve not yet deleted them (as much as meta would let me delete them, that is). But I’ve avoided other, more recent, platforms – most notably, TikTok. Still, it’s interesting to learn that TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has its own way of controlling the flow of things to maximize their profits. TikTok’s secret ‘heating’ button can make anything go viral.
Read moreACADEMIC DEPARTMENTALIZATION AND TEACHING MENTALITY
Alfred North Whitehead:
…the increasing departmentalization of universities during the last hundred years, however necessary for administrative purposes, tends to trivialize the mentality of the teaching profession.
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LIVED LIFE AND STORIES
Claire Messud:
Each of us is made up of our lived experiences, of course; but also, both consciously and unconsciously, of all the stories that we have heard, read, or watched. Without realizing it, we come to understand what a story is and how it means by the accretion of narratives in our heads.
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ISN’T IT NICE TO BE HOME AGAIN?
Yesterday we returned home after just over two weeks away, doing things we enjoy doing, in a city we enjoy visiting. It was a good trip, and I’m glad that we went. But, to recall a line from an old James Taylor tune, it’s surely nice to be home again. It’s nice to settle in.
Read moreWRITING WHEN EMPTY
One of the big blogging challenges I face is the challenge of settling on a topic to write about. I don’t have to be writing for any sort of public (even the public of the two or three people who might stumble on this blog in a given year) in order to face this challenge.
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