Lyra Kids – I built an AI bedtime storyteller for my daughters
https://lyra.kids/
#HackerNews #LyraKids #AI #bedtime #stories #storytelling #parenting #technology
#Tag
Lyra Kids – I built an AI bedtime storyteller for my daughters
https://lyra.kids/
#HackerNews #LyraKids #AI #bedtime #stories #storytelling #parenting #technology
I Don't Like Magic
https://adactio.com/journal/22399
#HackerNews #I #Like #Magic #technology #opinion #storytelling #critique
In the winter of 1983-84, I'd dropped out of school and was a rent-free stowaway on a different college campus in a friend's on-campus housing quad. As if that weren't enough, I also survived financially by working under someone else's work-study number/contract and getting paid in cash under the table.
Ah, the good ol' days.
One weekend, Timothy Leary was booked for an evening to speak at the campus auditorium. My friend and I, we knew only superficial stuff about Leary, his involvement in the counter-culture of the 1960s -- the usual. But as my friend said, "Eh. We should go hear him talk. I mean, he's old. He'll be dead soon!"
And so, with the carefree bulletproof attitude that people in their 20s excel at, and tickets in hand, off we went.
It was a commanding performance. Leary was intelligent, funny, and very physical. His hair was silver, his skin pale, he wore all white, and a spotlight followed him as he moved and gestured expansively across the stage, clutching a mic.
The main thread of his talk -- at a school with a reputation for technology and science degrees -- was to walk us through humankind's various evolutions and revolutions.
He pantomimed drawing ourselves up out of the primordial ooze. He became a primate, leaving the trees and walking across the savannah. The Stone Age. The Bronze Age. Eventually, he talked about the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution -- all the technological revolutions, including the then-current computing/computer programming innovations that so many in the audience were striving toward making a living at. And he had equally captivating movements and quips all along the way, all the way up to the present moment of... 1984.
Now, he said, we were on the cusp of a new revolution. He wanted to distinguish it from every other technological revolution, and he called it the "Information Transfer Technology Revolution."
Yeah, it was a mouthful, not exactly catchy. It was where he lost a lot of the audience. Information? Information is obvious. Information is free. It's indisputable.
No, Leary said. You're deluding yourselves. He went on to describe how information, information ITSELF would become the new Coin of the Realm, and whoever controlled the information and the flow of information would rule. At this point, the audience was openly scoffing. What was he talking about? That was ridiculous.
Well. Not if you own and operate the means of communication. In Marxist terms, communications have become the means of production.
Of course Leary was an idealist, so he imagined and described how all that would be in the hands of the people, how liberating this revolution would be, rather than what is actually happening now.
I'm a storyteller. During Trump's first term, before the office of the presidency had even a fraction of the wealth and the apparatus that that now controls it, I was emceeing an event, and I told this story as part of a short preamble to the night's theme of psychedelics.
When I got to the quote about information becoming the new coin of the realm, people in the audience audibly gasped at the realization of what Leary has actually been saying, as they grappled with what that would mean in the hands of corrupt leadership.
And now, that "leadership" behind the curtain has not only stolen the information, the truth, the facts. They are actively working to ensure that our minds are hollowed out, that we come to depend on their version of forming ideas. We're being force-fed not just lies but a specific technology known to atrophy our cognitive abilities and be habit-forming. Designed to make critical thinking seem like an enormous effort, an inefficient waste of our oh so valuable time.
And it is precisely our time that is valuable. Our time and our attention, sucked away so that we have no resources with which to object. And now it's stealing our information-conveying jobs, so that we have no money with which to fund an alternative.
Hey y’all 👋🏽
It’s been a moment since I posted to my personal account so here’s an #Introduction post!
I’m a New Texican living in Yelamu on Ramaytush Ohline Land cultivating a heart-first world of liberation.
I am two spirit which is being #trans and #indigenous. I remember the long history of two spirit spiritual and community leaders that colonization took from us.
This is my fun Mastodon! So you’ll find me sharing sustainable #cooking, getting lost in #nature, and crafting #art and #storytelling
Follow my agency account @rootschange@federate.social for the good stuff on #activism, #organizing, #media & #tech
Hey y’all 👋🏽
It’s been a moment since I posted to my personal account so here’s an #Introduction post!
I’m a New Texican living in Yelamu on Ramaytush Ohline Land cultivating a heart-first world of liberation.
I am two spirit which is being #trans and #indigenous. I remember the long history of two spirit spiritual and community leaders that colonization took from us.
This is my fun Mastodon! So you’ll find me sharing sustainable #cooking, getting lost in #nature, and crafting #art and #storytelling
Follow my agency account @rootschange@federate.social for the good stuff on #activism, #organizing, #media & #tech
We’re big on storytelling here & with this year’s National Storytelling Week being on the theme of Speaking Story into the Darkness we had to shout even louder about it.
We’ve been sharing stories of kindness every single day for 5 years to encourage people to see kind & share what they’re seeing.
1/2
We’re big on storytelling here & with this year’s National Storytelling Week being on the theme of Speaking Story into the Darkness we had to shout even louder about it.
We’ve been sharing stories of kindness every single day for 5 years to encourage people to see kind & share what they’re seeing.
1/2
In the winter of 1983-84, I'd dropped out of school and was a rent-free stowaway on a different college campus in a friend's on-campus housing quad. As if that weren't enough, I also survived financially by working under someone else's work-study number/contract and getting paid in cash under the table.
Ah, the good ol' days.
One weekend, Timothy Leary was booked for an evening to speak at the campus auditorium. My friend and I, we knew only superficial stuff about Leary, his involvement in the counter-culture of the 1960s -- the usual. But as my friend said, "Eh. We should go hear him talk. I mean, he's old. He'll be dead soon!"
And so, with the carefree bulletproof attitude that people in their 20s excel at, and tickets in hand, off we went.
It was a commanding performance. Leary was intelligent, funny, and very physical. His hair was silver, his skin pale, he wore all white, and a spotlight followed him as he moved and gestured expansively across the stage, clutching a mic.
The main thread of his talk -- at a school with a reputation for technology and science degrees -- was to walk us through humankind's various evolutions and revolutions.
He pantomimed drawing ourselves up out of the primordial ooze. He became a primate, leaving the trees and walking across the savannah. The Stone Age. The Bronze Age. Eventually, he talked about the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution -- all the technological revolutions, including the then-current computing/computer programming innovations that so many in the audience were striving toward making a living at. And he had equally captivating movements and quips all along the way, all the way up to the present moment of... 1984.
Now, he said, we were on the cusp of a new revolution. He wanted to distinguish it from every other technological revolution, and he called it the "Information Transfer Technology Revolution."
Yeah, it was a mouthful, not exactly catchy. It was where he lost a lot of the audience. Information? Information is obvious. Information is free. It's indisputable.
No, Leary said. You're deluding yourselves. He went on to describe how information, information ITSELF would become the new Coin of the Realm, and whoever controlled the information and the flow of information would rule. At this point, the audience was openly scoffing. What was he talking about? That was ridiculous.
Well. Not if you own and operate the means of communication. In Marxist terms, communications have become the means of production.
Of course Leary was an idealist, so he imagined and described how all that would be in the hands of the people, how liberating this revolution would be, rather than what is actually happening now.
I'm a storyteller. During Trump's first term, before the office of the presidency had even a fraction of the wealth and the apparatus that that now controls it, I was emceeing an event, and I told this story as part of a short preamble to the night's theme of psychedelics.
When I got to the quote about information becoming the new coin of the realm, people in the audience audibly gasped at the realization of what Leary has actually been saying, as they grappled with what that would mean in the hands of corrupt leadership.
And now, that "leadership" behind the curtain has not only stolen the information, the truth, the facts. They are actively working to ensure that our minds are hollowed out, that we come to depend on their version of forming ideas. We're being force-fed not just lies but a specific technology known to atrophy our cognitive abilities and be habit-forming. Designed to make critical thinking seem like an enormous effort, an inefficient waste of our oh so valuable time.
And it is precisely our time that is valuable. Our time and our attention, sucked away so that we have no resources with which to object. And now it's stealing our information-conveying jobs, so that we have no money with which to fund an alternative.
I listened to as much of Bruce Springsteen's new protest song dedicated to Minneapolis as I could, which was a bit less than two of the four and a half minutes.
I have so many thoughts, most of them unkind, so I'll spare you.
Instead, let me point you to the work of Paul MacLeod, a Canadian singer/songwriter who died in 2016. I can hardly believe it's been a decade since his death.
At a time in my life when I was struggling with -- so many things, really. At that time, a Canadian friend gifted Paul's first album to me: Tell the Band to Go Home.
When I was feeling at my lowest, or just not feeling up to the task of being... I don't know... being a partner, a parent, a friend to myself even. When I was low, something about listening to that album carried me through.
It's not a "happy" album, the songs aren't upbeat. But it's beautiful and human, and deeply reassuring. ALL of the songs on that album are protest songs. They protest how hard life is, and in the protestations you can see what the world ought to be, what it could be, why it's worth trying for, and how beautiful it is no matter what.
Paul made the world a beautiful place to be, even as he sang about the pain of it.
If you know me, you know that because of the way my brain is wired, I'm mildly anhedonic when it comes to music. I can enjoy it, but not -- as I've come to learn in my old age -- the way most people enjoy it. I don't get the same visceral sensations others get, the tears, the gut punches, the shivers.
Except for lyrics. Good lyrics can slay me. And if they're good enough, the musical piece as a whole gives me the tiniest bit of insight into what the rest of you feel like all the time when you listen to music. If they're good enough, I actually have a moment of envy for what I must be missing.
So when I tell you that Paul MacLeod's music carried me through the bad times, I'm telling you that his work was so good it even got through to ME.
Paul was not only a wildly talented musician and composer, he was an amazing lyricist. His words, set to his music, brought me visceral comfort when nothing else could. Still does sometimes.
Even if I'm not "in the mood" for his work, if I set it to playing it grabs me anyhow, and I get lost in it.
Sometimes back in the day, with three restless kids in the car, I'd put it in the CD player. It felt like having someone hold my hand. You know the way a person can do that, without trying to offer up any solutions to your problems or telling you everything is going to be okay? It was like that. I was held. As a side bonus, it quieted the kids down, too. I'm pretty sure that to this day, somewhere in the back of their adult brains, they all still know his lyrics and his strumming style by heart.
Probably his best protest song was written when Margaret Thatcher was still the British Prime Minister (he references her in it).
Black Boys on Mopeds, it's called.
Go ahead. Listen to Springsteen's protest song (if you can get through it), and then go listen to Paul's (you won't want it to end).
It's about a different time and place, but the problems it speaks to, and the sentiment, and the world-weariness of it all -- these are universal and timeless.
Paul MacLeod, Black Boys on Mopeds. After that, you might find yourself listening to the whole album. Don't worry. I'll wait here for you.
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kiakJ3lSl1tK2J3NkN89QgMrHFXvga7Lk
I’m really enjoying Noura Mint Seymali’s new record, “Yenbett.”
She’s from Mauritania, which is nestled between Senegal and Algeria. Her music def reflects that.
Aside from being an multi-instrumentalist, she’s also a storyteller. Her music is called Griot music, named after the West African storytelling culture.
https://noura-mint-seymali.bandcamp.com/album/yenbett
#Music #NouraMintSeymali #Africa #Mauritania #WestAfrican #Griot #Storytelling
Dear #TTRPG #RPG folks, I'm seriously considering getting back into GM'ing at some point. Problem is, it's been 3 decades and my standard has changed more than my personality over that span. I want to approach this with as much theory as creativity.
I am also simply in need of a theoretical deep dive.
I would like to hear your suggestions of books (edit: print much preferred) that can help me get into good #GM'ing and #storytelling please!
Dear #TTRPG #RPG folks, I'm seriously considering getting back into GM'ing at some point. Problem is, it's been 3 decades and my standard has changed more than my personality over that span. I want to approach this with as much theory as creativity.
I am also simply in need of a theoretical deep dive.
I would like to hear your suggestions of books (edit: print much preferred) that can help me get into good #GM'ing and #storytelling please!
"Visione" è un'illustrazione nata come poster per un festival di cinema. Gli organizzatori scelsero un'altra mia proposta perché questa era "troppo intima" e per il festival serviva qualcosa di più incisivo.
Finito il lavoro ho capito che questa immagine mi apparteneva profondamente. Ho deciso di finirla comunque perché raccontava molto di me ed è diventata una delle stampe a cui voglio più bene.
#Illustrazione #Art #Visione #arte #Storytelling #ritapetruccioli #illustration #poster #cinema
"Visione" è un'illustrazione nata come poster per un festival di cinema. Gli organizzatori scelsero un'altra mia proposta perché questa era "troppo intima" e per il festival serviva qualcosa di più incisivo.
Finito il lavoro ho capito che questa immagine mi apparteneva profondamente. Ho deciso di finirla comunque perché raccontava molto di me ed è diventata una delle stampe a cui voglio più bene.
#Illustrazione #Art #Visione #arte #Storytelling #ritapetruccioli #illustration #poster #cinema
'Bandersnatch': The Works That Inspired the 'Black Mirror' Interactive Feature (2019)
#HackerNews #Bandersnatch #BlackMirror #InteractiveFilm #Storytelling #Influences
OnlineFirst - "When the land becomes the sea and the sea becomes the land: Disrupting processes of appropriation of Miärralándda" by Britt Kramvig and Tarja Tuulia Salmela:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486251410805
vanlifelandscapes.weebly.com
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Britt-Kramvig
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tarja-Salmela
#landscape #seascape #UmeSámi #colonialism #storytelling #figuration #Miärralándda
Today we bring you an ep on #IndigenousFuturisms, #optimism in First Nations #storytelling, & 🧡 #Ochrepunk🧡 with special guest, Matthew Ngamurarri Heffernan 🖤💛❤️
Matt is a Luritja man, software #developer, creative #technologist, #playwright, #poet, and #cybernetics PhD student 💻✍️🎭 He’s a developer at #Indigemoji & creator of sci-fi play #TheRobotDog 🤖🐕
Press play for a yarn about Matt’s work on the #JeddaTest (inspired by the #BechdelTest, focused on Indigenous rep), his play, and #Solarpunk ☀️
How I archived 10 years of memories using Spotify
https://notes.xdavidhu.me/notes/how-i-archived-10-years-of-memories-using-spotify
#HackerNews #memories #Spotify #archiving #storytelling #personaljourney #music