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SIFT with WikiPedia and AI: Killings in Minnesota
The national and international events of the past several weeks have been positively dizzying and even disorienting. As I write this on January 27, 2026, we (as a nation) are recovering from the shock of two killings by federal law enforcement officials (ICE and CBP) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Incredibly, even though both shootings / killings…
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Nature, Screens and Healing
My New Year’s Day morning meditation podcast supplement today was: “Best Of: How Spending Time In Nature Helps Our Health” by #NPR1A. This podcast episode from NPR’s Studio 1A features an interview with Marc Berman, the author of “Nature and the Mind: The Science of How Nature Improves Cognitive, Physical, and Social Well-Being.” In the…
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Vivaldi Web Browser
Sometimes my social media feeds in Flipboard on my iPad bring serendipitous links to my attention, and that was the case early yesterday morning with this video from South Iceland from the Vivaldi web browser team. I have not visited Iceland yet, but my buddy and podcasting partner, Jason Neiffer, has, and he’s raved about…
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Scratch Animation Reverse Engineering
A teacher friend in Oklahoma sent me the following video clip, which I converted to an animated GIF via Adobe. Her question to me was, “How did the student code this in Scratch?” Apparently the student did NOT save the project, so the actual code is not available for inspection and analysis. This is a…
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3I/ATLAS Deep Fake Videos
For many years (at least six for me) we’ve heard warnings about “deep fake” videos and the ways artificial intelligence / AI platforms will accelerate the dissemination of false and misleading information. Welcome to December 2025, when interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS are very real, but convincing / realistic videos of noted astrophysicists like Dr. Avi…
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Fact Check Substack with a Superprompt
CLAIM: On 20 November 2025, 30,000 students in Charlotte, North Carolina, staged a walkout from school to protest Trump’s ICE immigration raids in the city. FACT CHECK RESULT: The past couple weeks here in Charlotte, North Carolina, have been both surreal and crazy. For insights into why, I recommend you watch the video from last…
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Interactive Fiction Database and CYOA Video Stories
I grew up in the 1980s and loved reading “Choose Your Own Adventure” (CYOA) stories. From time to time, as an advocate of “Playing with Media” and “Show What You Know with Media” pedagogy and learning, I’ve created my own CYOA stories and helped others create them too. Today I learned about the “Interactive Fiction…
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Burning DVDs in 2025
This evening I successfully burned two DVDs for the 40th Anniversary of the Mint Hill Historical Society, which is coming up on Saturday. For several years now I’ve been volunteering with the MHHS, helping with oral history interviews and their website. For Saturday’s event, they want to play a silent slideshow of 1087 photos on…
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Vibe Coded: AI Who’s Who
Over the weekend I successfully completed my eighth vibe-coded project, and I’m really excited about it! It’s called the “AI Cultural Canon,” and it’s basically a Firebase-powered front-end website for 27 people that arguably comprise a “Who’s Who” list in the world of AI / artificial intelligence. Visitors can read a short bio, see a…
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Inbox Alchemy via Vibe Coding
Back in September I wrote about my “DIY Federated Reader” experiment: a Gmail-to-Mastodon bot that turns my newsletter inbox into a public, federated news stream I’m able to read as a “feed” in Flipboard. This project is now featured on the “Trusted Voices” page of ResistAndHeal.com, a website and project I started in December 2024.…
