May Notes

Bothsidesism – also called false balance, is a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports.

Cloze Activity- Activity in which words are removed from a passage for a learner to fill in as an exercise in reading comprehension.

Confirmation bias – the tendency to favor information confirming or strengthening one’s beliefs or values, while disregarding contradictory information.

Apoliticism – apathy or antipathy towards all political affiliations. A person may be described as apolitical if they are uninterested or uninvolved in politics. Being apolitical can also refer to situations in which people take an unbiased position in regard to political matters.

Cross pressured – A voter who is caught between conflicting elements in his or her identity – religion, ethnicity, income level, peer group.

Free rider – An individual who does not to join a group representing his or her interests yet receives the benefit of the group’s influence.

“When I think of grace I think a bit of being in the flow. Coming to the suchness of the situations and wrapping your attitude around it and working with it when it is not what you thought you wanted. So often what you didn’t want is actually some part of your path…So grace is being at one with, moving into the wave so it doesn’t knock you over, and getting back up if you slip and fall on your butt. ” —

D. Katie Powell

If money is the goal, you will never have enough. – Scott Galloway.

Stupid people are incredibly more fearsome than intelligent people.

A stupid person is one who causes losses to another person or a group of people while they gain nothing or may even suffer losses. Italian economist Carlo Cipolla considered this the golden and most important law, never to be forgotten. He did not consider stupidity a matter of IQ, but rather a lack of relational skills.

Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that in any time and place and circumstance dealing and/or hanging out with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

Cipolla added that “stupid people are deadly dangerous because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand stupid behavior.” In such a view, stupid people’s attacks always catch intelligent ones by surprise.

Cipolla stated that “there are people who, by their illogic actions, not only cause harm to other people, but also to themselves. Such people belong to the genus of the super stupids.”

Stupid people are the most dangerous type of people. They are more dangerous than a bandit.

Common sense tells us that intelligent people, no matter how hostile they may be, are predictable. In contrast, stupid people are not.

Anhedonia – a diverse array of deficits in hedonic function, including reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure.

March Notes

I had forgotten how lovely the 30th Street train station in Philadelphia is. Photo taken Sunday, March 24, 2024 by Robin Tinay Sallie.

If I knew anything about being black in America it was that nothing was guaranteed, you couldn’t count on a thing, and all that was certain for most of us was a black death. In my mind, a black death was a slow death, the accumulation of insults, injuries, neglect, second-rate health care, high blood pressure and stress, no time for self-care, no time to sigh, and in the end, the inevitable, the erasing of memory. – Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah in The Fire This Time A New Generation Speaks about Race

‘amygdala hijack’ – The constant exposure to news that puts a person in fear puts the brain in a continuous state of dysregulation, which makes it hard to get from a threatening point A to some more safe point B in the future.

Bellwether – named for the wether, or castrated sheep, fitted with a bell to indicate where the flock was going.

“quiet quitting” – The practice of doing no more work than one is contractually obliged to do, especially in order to spend more time on personal activities; the practice of doing little or no work while being present at one’s place of employment. Workers only do the job that they’re being paid to do, without taking on any extra duties, or participating in extracurriculars at work. The term suggests a norm where people do more work than they’re paid for. Racialized women bear the brunt of this extra labor, with studies showing that women of color do more office “housework” and have less access to “glamour work” (ie work that gets you noticed by higher-ups, and can lead to your next promotion) than white men do. Just doing the work that you’re paid for should be the standard, not an act of mutiny.

Tang ping – lying flat: living a low-desire life. It is a “resistance movement” against the “cycle of horror” of high-pressure schools and endless-hours jobs.

When I speak, I don't speak as a Democrat or a Republican. I speak as a victim of America's so called democracy.

You and I have never seen democracy. All we've seen is hypocrisy. I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter or a flag-waver – no, not I.

I’m speaking as a victim of this American system.  And I see America through the eyes of the victim.  I don’t see any American dream. I see an American nightmare.

Black victims of Americanism are waking up and they're gaining a new political consciousness.

- Malcolm X

Authentication is the process of verifying your credentials, and that you’re allowed to access a system.

Authorization involves verifying what you’re allowed to do within that system.

“Culture refers to the learned, socially acquired traditions of thought and behavior found in human societies. It is a socially acquire lifestyle that includes patterned, repetitive ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.” –Marvin Harris and Orna Johnson 2003

Quotidian – occurring every day: belonging to each day : commonplace, ordinary quotidian drabness.

…identity is comprised of our values, experiences, histories, memories, relationships, and the roles we carry. It is influenced by so much.

Tiffany Hammond

Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic, and philosophy of science and history that explores the intersection of the African diaspora culture with science and technology.

You know about cold opens if you’ve ever watched Saturday Night Live or The Office. At its best, the cold open is both entertaining and a non sequitur. On SNL, it takes place before the guest host comes out; similarly on The Office, it often doesn’t connect to the larger story. I try to operate my class the same way: The cold open is nothing more than a fun conversation starter. After the conversation dies down—and it might last 5 seconds or 50—I move on to the attendance question portion of my opening. At its best, the attendance question connects to the cold open. It lets me share something about myself and opens the door for my students to share a little bit with me.

AttendanceQuestions_
_Ideas__1.pdfDownload

Inimical – tending to obstruct or harm; unfriendly; hostile.

Permacrisis: An extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events.

Carolean: Of or relating to Charles III of Great Britain and Northern Ireland or his reign. 

Kyiv: The capital of Ukraine, on the Dnipro River.

Lawfare: The strategic use of legal proceedings to intimidate or hinder an opponent.

Partygate: A political scandal over social gatherings held in British government offices during 2020 and 2021 in defiance of the public health restrictions that prevailed at the time.

Splooting: The act of lying flat on the stomach with the legs stretched out.

Sportswashing: The sponsorship or promotion of sporting events in order to enhance a tarnished reputation or distract attention from a controversial activity.

Vibe shift: A significant change in a prevailing cultural atmosphere or trend.


Warm bank: A heated building where people who cannot afford to heat their own homes may go.

Ikigai (生き甲斐, lit. ’a reason for being’) is a Japanese concept referring to something that gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living.

Timeboxing – Give each task on your to-do list an allotted amount of time, schedule it on your calendar and continue working until time is up. Make sure to block out any distractions while you’re working. Proactively scheduling blocks of time on your calendar to focus — and breaks throughout the day to restore your ability to focus — is “really critical” for productivity.

Decorating Eggs

One of the highlights of 2023 was going with Roxana on a date to the Umbrella Arts Center in Concord, Mass, on March 25th, 2023, to make fancy Easter eggs.

Ukrainian pysanky eggs are decorated using a wax-resist method, resulting in unique Easter egg designs that are deeply symbolic and meaningful. Making pysanky eggs requires patience, attention to detail, and a steady hand. In the 2 hour workshop we each had time to decorate one egg..

October 2023 Notes

Rivers students pose for a photo in front of a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Morehouse College campus in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 9, 2023. Photo by Robin Tinay Sallie

No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.

Martin Luther King

Luchadoras – the masked female wrestlers who use the sport for empowerment and are cultural icons in Mexico

Solopreneurship is a distinctive approach to entrepreneurship where an individual operates and manages a business single-handedly. According to a report by FreshBooks, as of 2021, there were an estimated 41 million solopreneurs in the United States, highlighting the growing trend of individuals pursuing their entrepreneurial ambitions independently. Solopreneurs take on multiple roles within their business, from ideation and planning to execution and customer service. Unlike traditional entrepreneurs who may build teams, solopreneurs handle all aspects of their business operations on their own.

You want to make America great again? Ditch the silly hat and start reading and watching a variety of news sources. Don’t be scared of the truth because that’s how we will get stronger.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Play: imaginative, self-directed, intrinsically motivated and guided by rules that leave room for creativity. Play can provide a significant amount of joy without offering a specific result. Play benefits adults by releasing endorphins, improving brain functionality, and stimulating creativity. It can help keep us feeling young and energetic. Play can improve our memory and stimulates the growth of the cerebral cortex. Play also triggers the secretion of BDNF, a substance essential for the growth of brain cells. For me, play an essential component of making art.

Photo Monograph– a presentation of a body of work (rarely more than one) to present the photographs in question. Included writing (where present) need not be critical or academic and often serves to enhance (talk up) the photography. Use high-quality and well-focused images and that you proofread your text (especially images captions) carefully.

Artist’s monograph – a concise publication of a single artist’s work. Monographs can be extensive or niche in what they present. A monograph can be structured as an interpretative analysis of an artist’s work written by the artist themselves and/or a selection of scholars, or as a wordless or an almost-wordless picture book.

” To see something spectacular and recognize it as a photographic possibility is not making a very big leap. But to see something ordinary, something you’d see every day, and recognize it as a photographic possibility – that’s what I’m interested in.”

Stephen Shore

You cannot stretch a muscle: muscles simply increase their “stretch tolerance.”

You cannot truly “stretch” a muscle. Muscles are not very elastic, and muscle length does not really change despite what the word “stretch” implies, they extend and retract. The distance you can extend a muscle is determined by the sensitivity of the stretch reflex, which is the body’s automatic defense against the dangers of overstretching.

Muscle inhibition allows muscles to unlock and extend open. Muscles do not “stretch” to a longer length, but they can extend further and further by increasing their “tolerance” to a stretch. More and more research shows that proper stretching does not make muscles permanently longer. Instead, stretching re-educates the nervous system to tolerate a greater degree of muscle extension without firing pain signals.

Learning: acquiring knowledge and skills and having them readily available from memory so you can make sense of future problems and opportunities. Learning requires memory, needs to happen all ours lives and is an acquired skill.

Durable learning is effortful. Rereading text and massed practice are the least productive.

Retrieval practice – recalling facts from memory – is much more effective learning strategy.

All new learning requires a foundation of prior knowledge.

Elaboration– process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know

Emotion makes something feel relevant and then it’s memorable.

Goals: SMARTER ~ Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Risky, Timeline Driven, Exciting, Relevant

How people think about a country depends on the stories they hear about it.

Robin Sallie

August Notes

Bee by Robin Sallie

Tessellation – tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of geometries. A periodic tiling has a repeating pattern. Some special kinds include regular tilings with regular polygonal tiles all of the same shape, and semiregular tilings with regular tiles of more than one shape and with every corner identically arranged. Whenever two or more polygons meet at a point (or vertex), the internal angles must add up to 360°. Only three regular polygons(shapes with all sides and angles equal) can form a tessellation by themselves—triangles, squares, and hexagons.

“You don’t get to pick 2 or 3 days out of the week where you wanna be a leader… it’s an everyday thing.” –

LeBron James

Creemee is to soft serve ice cream as sofa is to pop. Creemees are essentially soft-serve ice cream. It’s ice cream pumped through a machine to make it more airy and soft.

Marketing = Tells the world you exist

Branding = Tells the world you exist uniquely

Storytelling = Tells the world we must exist together

Dennis Ross

“Ghillie suit” is a reference to the Ghillie Dhu (English: black-haired youth or dark-haired lad), an earth spiritclothed in leaves and moss in Scottish mythology.

Autophagy – a vital process in which the body’s cells “clean out” any unnecessary or damaged components. The term “autophagy” derives from the Ancient Greek for “self-eating.” Researchers believe that a person might be able to induce autophagy by fasting – voluntarily going without food for extended periods — hours or sometimes a day or more.. Fasting is different from traditional calorie restriction. When a person restricts their calories, they reduce their regular intake of food. Fasting may or may not result in calorie restriction, depending on how much food a person consumes during feeding periods. Fasting is different from traditional calorie restriction. When a person restricts their calories, they reduce their regular intake of food. Fasting may or may not result in calorie restriction, depending on how much food a person consumes during feeding periods.

July Notes

Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

– Franz Kafka
Breathe

Box Breathing: Box breathing is a technique that helps to control and regulate breathing, which calms the mind and reduces stress. It involves inhaling for four counts, holding for four counts, exhaling for four counts, and holding for four counts. To practice box breathing, sit comfortably with a straight spine. Inhale through the nose for four counts, hold for four counts, exhale through the mouth for four counts, and hold for four counts. Repeat for a few minutes.

4-7-8 Breathing: The 4-7-8 breathing technique is a simple yet powerful method that involves inhaling for four counts, holding the breath for seven counts, and exhaling for eight counts. This breathing exercise helps reduce anxiety and promote relaxation. To practice 4-7-8 breathing, sit comfortably with a straight spine. Inhale through the nose for four counts, hold the breath for seven counts, exhale through the mouth for eight counts. Repeat for a few minutes.

Diaphragmatic Breathing: – Also known as belly breathing or abdominal breathing is a technique that involves breathing from the diaphragm, where the belly expands and contracts with each breath. This type of breathing stimulates the relaxation response and reduces stress. To practice diaphragmatic breathing, lie down on your back or sit up straight, place one hand on your chest and another on your stomach. Take a deep breath in through the nose, and feel your stomach expand. Hold the breath for a few seconds and breathe out slowly through the mouth, feeling the stomach move back in.

Alternate Nostril Breathing: This breathing technique, also known as Nadi Shodhana, helps to balance the right and left hemispheres of the brain, which calms the mind. To practice alternate nostril breathing, sit comfortably with a straight spine. Using your right hand, place your thumb on your right nostril and inhale deeply through the left nostril. Use your ring finger to close the left nostril and exhale through the right nostril. Inhale through the right nostril, close it with your thumb and exhale through the left nostril. Repeat this for a few minutes.

Breath Counting: Breath counting is a mindfulness technique that involves focusing on the breath and counting each inhalation and exhalation. This technique helps to calm the mind and reduce stress. To practice breath counting, sit comfortably with a straight spine. Close your eyes and focus on your breath. Count each inhalation and exhalation until you reach ten. Start again at one and continue for a few minutes.

Ratfucking is an American slang term for political sabotage or dirty tricks, particularly pertaining to elections.

Femicide – not just the killing of victims who happen to be female. It’s a systematic violation of human rights. Whether through domestic violence or sexual assault, the victims of femicide are women who were killed because they are women.

The word ‘dog’ comes up a lot … well, I was a wolf. …I used to eat dogs.

JERRY WEST