duas aves

10 ways to have a better conversation

jkottke:

Celeste Headlee is an expert in talking to people. As part of her job as a public radio host and interviewer, she talks to hundreds of people each year, teasing from her guests what makes them interesting. At a TEDx conference two years ago, Headlee shared 10 tips for having a better conversations that work for anyone:

1. Don’t multitask.
2. Don’t pontificate.
3. Use open-ended questions.
4. Go with the flow.
5. If you don’t know, say that you don’t know.
6. Don’t equate your experience with theirs.
7. Try not to repeat yourself.
8. Stay out of the weeds.
9. Listen.
10. Be brief.

Watch the video for the explanations of each point. I’m pretty good on 1, 5, & 7 while I struggle with 3, 4, and sometimes 6. 9 is a constant struggle and depends on how much I’ve talked with other people recently. (via swissmiss)

Reblogged 1 week ago from jkottke 18 notes

polyanthea:

The blank page is not blank. No text has one single author. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we always write on top of a palimpsest. This is not a question of linear “influence,” but of writing as dialog with a whole net of previous and concurrent texts, tradition, with the culture and language we breathe and move in, which conditions us even while we help to construct it.

Many of us have foregrounded this awareness as technique: using, collaging, transforming, “translating” parts of other works. I don’t even have thoughts, I have methods that make language think, take over and me by the hand. Into sense or offense, syntax stretched across rules, relations of force, fluid the dip of the plumb line, the pull of eyes…

-Rosmarie Waldrop

Reblogged 1 week ago from polyanthea 20 notes

A biologist explains CRISPR to people at five different levels of knowledge

jkottke:

For the second part of an ongoing series, Wired asked biologist Neville Sanjana to explain CRISPR to five people with different levels of knowledge: a 7-year-old, a high school student, a college student, a grad student, and an expert on CRISPR. As I began to watch, I thought he’d gone off the rails right away with the little kid, but as soon as they connected on a personal issue (allergies), you can see the bridge of understanding being constructed.

The first installment in the series featured a neuroscientist explaining connectomes to five people.

Reblogged 1 week ago from jkottke 7 notes
thegetty: “Illustrations from a 19th-century book of fables in the style of Aesop, but with vegetables instead of animals. The land of vegetables is ruled over by a benevolent dictator squash named Cucurbitus I. See the fully digitized book through...thegetty: “Illustrations from a 19th-century book of fables in the style of Aesop, but with vegetables instead of animals. The land of vegetables is ruled over by a benevolent dictator squash named Cucurbitus I. See the fully digitized book through...thegetty: “Illustrations from a 19th-century book of fables in the style of Aesop, but with vegetables instead of animals. The land of vegetables is ruled over by a benevolent dictator squash named Cucurbitus I. See the fully digitized book through...thegetty: “Illustrations from a 19th-century book of fables in the style of Aesop, but with vegetables instead of animals. The land of vegetables is ruled over by a benevolent dictator squash named Cucurbitus I. See the fully digitized book through...thegetty: “Illustrations from a 19th-century book of fables in the style of Aesop, but with vegetables instead of animals. The land of vegetables is ruled over by a benevolent dictator squash named Cucurbitus I. See the fully digitized book through...

thegetty:

Illustrations from a 19th-century book of fables in the style of Aesop, but with vegetables instead of animals. The land of vegetables is ruled over by a benevolent dictator squash named Cucurbitus I.

See the fully digitized book through the Getty Research Portal here.

Reblogged 1 month ago from thegetty 1,543 notes