cheatsheet:

lostreib:

I’ve been doing lists — big magazine package lists and little one-hit-wonder online lists — for nearly six years. It’s a weird niche to have, certainly.

Anyways, this list is undoubtedly the one into which I have put the most personal time and effort. I’m very proud of it for many reasons. I realize most of Tumblr may not be intensely interested in high school rankings, so I won’t bore with the details.

Yesterday, I finished reading “Fiction Ruined My Family” by Jeanne Darst. Towards the end of the memoir, Darst recalls how when she finally became a published writer, people assumed she must be a good writer. I, too, once figured that if publications (esteemed publications with readers across the nation and the world) were willing to employ me, pay me and publish my stuff, I must be a good writer. I must have talent. Of course, the obvious truth is, lots of fantastic writers never get published. Lots of terrible writers get published consistently. If you get published, your asshole quotient very likely exceeds your talent quotient.

I am certain that, though this list will not be winning any pulitzers and though it didn’t involve any writing for me (i mean it’s a fucking click-bait list), I could not have put this together last year. It’s a remarkable feeling to be able to see something in print that’s the culmination of years of work, to some degree, and to know it’s a personal/professional landmark of a sort. 

Many kudos to our listicle team for producing this massive project. Now show some appreciation by clicking like mad!

nevver:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

Brain Pickings

Can a computer score touchdowns? No. Case closed.

shortformblog:

Coursera joins a raft of ambitious online projects aimed at making higher education more accessible and affordable. Many of these ventures, however, simply post entire lectures on the web, with no interactive component. Others strive to create brand-new universities from scratch.

Founders Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng say Coursera will be different because professors from top schools will teach under their university’s name and will adapt their most popular courses for the web, embedding assignments and exams into video lectures, answering questions from students on online forums — even, perhaps, hosting office hours via videoconference.

This sounds like worth keeping an eye on. It seems like it could go a long way towards disrupting the traditional educational model. In case you were wondering which schools, here you go: Stanford, Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan. Not a bad list.