little surfer

This made me spend some time with glue and blank cards. I've had my sights on some Prince Valiant Knight Tokens for a while.

I do really like they way these turned out. A nice thing to spend an evening on.

I moved more than a month ago. Spent a lot of time losing books, sorting and putting away. Bringing them to the little free libraries around the place. Now I went to St. Georges in Berlin and brought home two new books. One because it is beautiful and one because it is one I've always wanted to read.

And the greatest sin of all might be a tech industry that’s exploiting your loneliness by offering you friends that don’t exist. If a tech company can pull the plug on your relationship with a software update, it’s not a relationship. And if you are promising broken, lonely people that you can deliver software solace that doesn’t require them to leave their house, you’ve jettisoned your own humanity. If you are lonely inside, go outside. People are interesting. And most of them are outside.

and

“Wanna do dinner tomorrow?” is better than scheduling something far off in the future, which gives you both too much time to flake on. “I’m going to see Backrooms tomorrow. Wanna come?” is better than a vague plan about seeing a movie sometime in the future. “Been missing you. Wanna catch up?” is a wonderful thing to text a friend.

via mike monteiro

Or maybe rather than talking about screen free classrooms (or weekends or whatever) – a phrase that emphasizes the absence of devices but is easily twisted into some sort of lack – we talk about all the things that we are doing instead of staring and scrolling and clicking. This does mean, of course – and this is truly paramount – that we plan for those things, that we reclaim public space for kids, that we fund activities and resources for them and with them. And not because we think they’re broken without their phones, but because we believe that they are whole people, worthy people regardless.

via second breakfast

I did pitch the head of my school on banning AI in school and she was not interested. Gonna keep at it.

Diese KI, die für mich Romane schreiben will, ist wie eine KI, die für mich tanzt, wie eine KI, die für mich isst, die für mich lacht, die für mich Sex hat, die für mich draußen Fotos macht, die sich für mich mit Freund:innen trifft, die sich für mich verliebt. Das, was mir Freude macht, nimmt sie mir ab. Wenn künstliche Intelligenzen unsere Bücher schreiben, wenn sie unsere Kunst kreieren und unsere Lieder singen: Was machen wir dann? Führen wir dann nur noch diese Zivilisationsaktivitäten aus, die unseren Alltag bestimmen? Leeren wir dann nur noch den Briefkasten, gehen zur Arbeit (und weisen da schlimmstenfalls auch eine KI an), putzen, waschen Wäsche und kaufen Sachen?

via Jasmin Schreiber

This sounds worse than it is. Anika Pyle used to sing and write in Chumped a rad punk band from a while ago. It is good to check in with artists whom one has fallen out of touch with once in a while. So:

Beautiful stuff!

---

And then there is a band from BErlin that has released on EP to date called Sterben as in “Dying”. The EP is called “Bleibende Schäden” which translates to “permanent damage”. Heavy music and well worth taking a listen if you like intricate tunes and shouts.

Very clean and great for a first EP!

Trae Stephens & Gwyneth Paltrow on the GOOP Podcast. Stephens is co-founder of a military tech company that stole a fine name from Tolkien.

Things got particularly odd when the two dug into religion. Stephens, a devout Christian, brought up the Pope’s Palm Sunday homily, in which Leo XIV declared that “Jesus does not listen to the prayers of those that wage war.”

and then

Stephens liked that. Warmongering can be good, he seemed to interpret, if only done with a pure heart, and without against-ness. “And so if you’re approaching it with a heart of peace, I think it’s very different on a mystical level than approaching it with a heart at war.”

In school, in my work, I have come to the conclusion that being a child is hard work. Being a teacher is also hard work. And the same goes for being a parent and many other things. But all of those have a simple baseline of not being an asshole. If I can stay above that line I am not doing so bad.

Actively building and designing weapons and then profiting from war makes you an asshole. NO matter what you think you hold in your heart. Because all I can see in there is evil and piles of shit.

via Mother Jones

We were walking around this pastel colored castle, wobbling on the ice and being a bit cold, and all I could think of was “how do I turn this place into a dnd dungeon?” Hasn't happened yet. But the pictures I took have some energy I like.

The kinds of tasks that I hear teachers being encouraged to offload to “AI” — grading, lesson planning, communication with students and parents, design of handouts and other classroom material, IEPs — are actually constitutive of the very work. These tasks — and yes, some of them can be burdensome, time-consuming, annoying as hell — are how you come to know the content, the community, the classroom, yourself and others. Nothing about teaching and learning should be thoughtless or careless the way in which “AI” promises thoughtlessness and carelessness as-a-service. Education isn’t comprised of tasks that should be automated; this isn’t work that needs to be made faster and cheaper. Teaching and learning are not something to be optimized or engineered like machinery, turned into the very “factory model of education” that Silicon Valley has spent decades inventing and positioning against.

via Second Breakfast.

I am still anxious about “AI” arriving at my school in the form of tools for teachers. Students use it obviously and some teachers also do. But it is not there in an official capacity (yet).

The new Muse singles are heavy and good.

How does one get better at a job like teaching? Over time and through a bunch of struggle it seems.

Anne Will talks with Caroline von St. Ange about children and school and the general German situation. And I listen. I complain about wrongs and I look myself deep in the eyes and realize, that I am not doing that great of a job quite often. Instead I complain about the kids and the situation. I could instead prepare better. Or read and learn to then be able to prepare better. I used to have much more drive to try and do things in the classroom. Now I feel spent.