"The most notable “discovery” in the dataset was that if you simply plotted the number of steps versus the BMI, you would see an image of a gorilla waving at you (Fig. 1b). While we teach our students the benefits of visualization, answering the specific hypothesis-driven questions did not require plotting the data. We found that very often, the students driven by specific hypotheses skipped this simple step towards a broader exploration of the data. In fact, overall, students without a specific hypothesis were almost five times more likely to discover the gorilla when analyzing this dataset (odds ratio = 4.8, P = 0.034, N = 33, Fisher’s exact test; Fig. 1c). At least in this setting, the hypothesis indeed turned out to be a significant liability."

February 1940. "Black cat in snow. Ross County, Ohio." Medium format acetate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration.

“What we need as a nation, more than anything else I can think of, is a recommitment to basic competence, and, especially, a refusal to accept ideological justifications for plain old ineptitude. Too often Americans give a free pass to bunglers and bozos who belong to their tribe. We have for decades now operated under the assumption that our world will just function perfectly well on its own even if we cease to attend to it. It won’t.” And, also, in the UK.

"Separating the controls from the device does something interesting. It makes you listen. An unmarked, arbitrary control has to influence the sound somehow to make any sense. Otherwise it’s just moving a bit of plastic." Yes that. Not just linking for self-aggrandisement; more fodder for the "thinking about interfaces / spacing controls / control layout as instrument design" pile of documents.

"This site contains the original source code for Elite on the BBC Micro, with every single line documented and (for the most part) explained."

Assembly is, it turns out, dark, dark magic. This is a very impressive thing to pore over – like Lions' Guide, but for Elite.

I enjoyed this, in part as analysis of the unique role of masterclasses as opposed to lessons or crits. Also, useful to think about the _many_ ways feedback can exist, and how 'changing it up' can sometimes just be useful.

"The truth is that if you say you want more children from deprived areas to be able to go to university, then don’t faff around with entry tariffs: invest in Sure Start centres, preschool groups, subsidised childcare and properly resourced primary schools. Make benefits genuinely accessible and life-supporting. Better still, stop whole sections of society being condemned to underpaid, vulnerable, soul-destroying labour while others cream off inordinate wealth from the profits of that labour." Stefan Collini talking a lot of sense about what universities are, and what the lurch towards consumerising them more than ever in the past ten years has led to. It is not pretty.

Highly valuable for all affected, and yet still completely absurd to think about. Technology Is People (and is also a complete nuisance).

Simon Katan on teaching peripheral skills around computing, computation, and code. I agree wholeheartedly with his description of tools that shield users from complexities to the extent of hiding how things actually work. I also loved his idea of "flour babies for looking after code properly".

Filed away as a nice introduction to computational sensing, vision, and how computers don't see.

"That struggle story — Man against company, or Man against Billionaire — is a crowd-pleaser. The actual struggle that interests me is against the current horrifying imbalance in global power and wealth, which is kind of abstract, doesn’t have a chiseled cartoon-villain billionaire in the cast, and is frighteningly large in scale.

Seriously; basically every reporter I’ve talked to has tried to get me to say awful things about Amazon and in particular about Jeff Bezos. But at my last job they taught me to think big and, with all his billions, Jeff is rounding error in the big picture. He’s not the problem; the legal/regulatory power structures that enable him and his peers is."

Tim Bray on monopolies and multi-millionaires, but really, on capitalism. Symptoms, causes.

I actually write READMEs a bit like Sam describes – onwards, never erased, first-person diary accounts of what I'm trying, where I'm typing it, and what happened. But the case for pen is a good one. (Also: I enjoy Sam's writing).