{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "title": "Nic Babarskis", "icon": "https://avatars.micro.blog/avatars/2024/47/1685639.jpg", "home_page_url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/", "feed_url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/feed.json", "items": [ { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/05/12/i-dont-think-ive-ever.html", "content_html": "

📸 I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tree so brightly flowering and leafing at the same time

\n\n", "date_published": "2026-05-12T13:30:37-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/05/12/i-dont-think-ive-ever.html" }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/05/12/apple-just-settled-a-false.html", "content_html": "

Apple just settled a false marketing case involving Apple Intelligence and I don’t think there is a direct correlation, but I find it noteworthy that the two ads apple has recently released featuring a K-12 classroom and college students don’t have a single whiff of Generative AI in them.

\n", "date_published": "2026-05-12T11:42:33-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/05/12/apple-just-settled-a-false.html", "tags": ["YouTube ","Web Clippings"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/05/11/looks-like-ghost-in-the.html", "content_html": "

Look’s like Ghost in the Shell is getting another reboot, but frankly I still haven’t gotten over this sequence from 2nd GiG.

\n", "date_published": "2026-05-11T22:21:21-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/05/11/looks-like-ghost-in-the.html", "tags": ["YouTube ","Web Whimsy"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/05/11/spring-progress-the-maple-shed.html", "content_html": "

Spring Progress 📸 2026.05.10

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The maple shed its blossoms and has moved on to leaves. #SP26.4

\n\n", "date_published": "2026-05-11T16:36:16-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/05/11/spring-progress-the-maple-shed.html" }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/05/11/could-christian-colleges-be-used.html", "content_html": "

Could Christian colleges be used as an ablative shield against GOP de-institutionalization efforts? When I read articles like this one I wonder about that.

\n", "date_published": "2026-05-11T11:41:31-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/05/11/could-christian-colleges-be-used.html", "tags": ["Research Clippings"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/05/04/these-photos-are-remarkable-texas.html", "content_html": "

These photos are remarkable:

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\"Bluebonnets_FredericksburgTX

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TEXAS! (by Erin Newman-Mitchell)

\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-05-04T15:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/05/04/these-photos-are-remarkable-texas.html", "tags": ["Web Whimsy"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/05/04/nicholas-carr-reviewing-a-book.html", "content_html": "

Nicholas Carr, reviewing a book by one of the world-wide-web’s earliest architects, encourages the reader to touch some grass:

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Not all technologies improve people’s lives. Just as Berners-Lee’s now omnipresent web shapes industries and markets, it shapes its users’ thoughts, perceptions, and relationships. As we’re slowly coming to understand, human beings did not evolve to be virtual creatures in a computer-generated world. The internet operates at a scale and speed that conflict with the brain’s deliberate pace of thought, the intellect’s slow accumulation of knowledge, and the psyche’s limited capacity for stimulation and social exchange. To be able to do anything and be anywhere at any moment seems liberating for a while, but it ends in a blurred and chaotic existence, the physical world’s familiar, steadying divisions of space and time dissolving in endless torrents of data. It’s an existence that may be vivifying to certain software programmers…but for the rest of us, the virtual world’s hyperkinetic superabundance ends up feeling like emptiness, a very, very busy void. We may be drawn to that void by our native attraction to information, novelty, and spectacle, but we’ll never make a home there.

\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-05-04T12:27:01-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/05/04/nicholas-carr-reviewing-a-book.html", "tags": ["Open Web","Web Clippings"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/29/tea-anemone-by-tatsuya-tanaka.html", "content_html": "

Tea Anemone by Tatsuya Tanaka at Miniature Calendar:

\n

\"A

\n", "date_published": "2026-04-29T21:06:23-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/29/tea-anemone-by-tatsuya-tanaka.html", "tags": ["Web Whimsy"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/29/westenberg-calls-it-withdrawal-but.html", "content_html": "

Westenberg calls it “withdrawal” but you could also label it sabbath:

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Any culture that systematically punishes withdrawal is going to lose its most concentrated thinkers to either burnout or invisibility. The modern knowledge economy, with its ambient pressure to post, ship, and stay in the conversation, is a machine for producing exactly that loss. The people we’ll wish we had in 15 years are, right now, being shamed into producing slop they don’t believe in, because the alternative is to drop out, and dropping out reads as failure.

\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-04-29T09:40:25-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/29/westenberg-calls-it-withdrawal-but.html", "tags": ["Web Clippings"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/28/heres-a-nice-little-primer.html", "content_html": "

Here’s a nice little primer on the history and scope of the U.S. Forest Service.

\n", "date_published": "2026-04-28T07:22:20-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/28/heres-a-nice-little-primer.html", "tags": ["Web Clippings"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/25/the-eldest-shares-her-mom.html", "content_html": "

The eldest shares her mom and grandmothers' interest.

\n\"\"\n", "date_published": "2026-04-25T18:34:44-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/25/the-eldest-shares-her-mom.html", "tags": ["family","Web Whimsy"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/25/spring-is-sprung.html", "content_html": "

📸 Spring is sprung

\n\n", "date_published": "2026-04-25T17:01:29-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/25/spring-is-sprung.html" }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/23/there-is-a-particular-bus.html", "content_html": "

There is a particular bus driver on Route 24 of Capital Area Transportation Authority that (density and time permitting) will\nIntentionally wait until embarkees sit down before driving onward. And it’s little stuff like that which makes me feel good about living in a Midwest town.

\n", "date_published": "2026-04-23T20:45:07-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/23/there-is-a-particular-bus.html" }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/23/philip-cohen-reflecting-on-the.html", "content_html": "

Philip Cohen, reflecting on the intersection of the perverse incentives of ‘publish or perish’ + low consequence editorial accountability + generative AI:

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I assume you are appalled at the idea of journals publishing such fabricated results. However, there are a lot of people who would draw a different lesson from this example: Why spend an hour getting this real data, doing some recodes, running the model, and sharing the data and code — when ChatGPT already “knows” the answer? They see the small errors in the table above, and compare the time it took to produce them, and conclude that the ChatGPT approach is much more efficient and almost as good. This is productivity!

\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-04-23T12:30:00-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/23/philip-cohen-reflecting-on-the.html", "tags": ["Research Clippings"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/23/to-the-extent-i-pay.html", "content_html": "

To the extent I pay attention to Home and Garden trends I always got the impression the platonic ideal for lawn maintenance was a golf course fairway.

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Meanwhile I’m out here weedmaxxing

\n

\n", "date_published": "2026-04-23T11:01:36-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/23/to-the-extent-i-pay.html", "tags": ["family","Web Whimsy"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/23/world-press-photos-photo-of.html", "content_html": "

World Press Photo’s 2026 photo of the year, Separated By ICE:

\n

\"Distraught

\n", "date_published": "2026-04-23T09:35:39-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/23/world-press-photos-photo-of.html" }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/20/currently-reading-permanent-crisis-the.html", "content_html": "\n

Currently reading: Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age by Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon đź“š

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On the growing challenges early modern education reformers claimed (and overpromised) the humanities could address:

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The humanities came to stand in for the contradictions and tensions that, as we have traced in this chapter, characterized nineteenth-century liberal education or allgemeine Bildung: tensions between method, research, and ways of knowing on the one hand and ethos, teaching, and questions of how to live on the other. The scholars who helped establish “the humanities” as a distinct institutional domain within the modern university and identified themselves with it gradually claimed (and sometimes gained) a monopoly over these questions and concerns, especially as other scholars (natural and physical scientists in particular) began to regard such questions as outside their own domains (witness Pinker). Yet the academics who did so much to make the humanities possible within universities also inherited all of the contradictions and confusions that beset Diesterweg in the 1830s. (p. 79-80).

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My first blush thought on this is that focusing on humanities stakeholders overpromising intellectual unity allows for side-stepping the issue of disenchantment (the loss of “magic” as Max Weber might phrase it). In this chapter they do briefly address figures like Alasdair MacIntyre and Brad Gregory, but brush them aside pretty quickly.

\n

Is the unifying promise they address really a sign of hubris when the pre-Enlightenment world (particularly in Europe) had a unifying meta-narrative that underpinned intellectual life?

\n", "date_published": "2026-04-20T15:02:10-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/20/currently-reading-permanent-crisis-the.html", "tags": ["Research Clippings"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/20/what-are-we-doing-whats.html", "content_html": "

What are we doing? What’s going on?

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ghoulish

\"A

\n", "date_published": "2026-04-20T14:57:26-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/20/what-are-we-doing-whats.html", "tags": ["Web Clippings"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/19/a-thesis-for-why-the.html", "content_html": "

A thesis for why the pathway to a permanent ceasefire with Iran remains elusive, through the framework of zero-sum logic:

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What follows is not necessarily continuous war, but recurrent escalation: blockade followed by countermeasures, interdiction followed by retaliation, each step justified by the last and narrowing the space for restraint. External actors may push for de-escalation, and markets may demand stability, but those pressures cannot override the underlying structure—the struggle over relative power

\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-04-19T09:51:43-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/19/a-thesis-for-why-the.html", "tags": ["Web Clippings"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/17/our-minds-cant-sit-still.html", "content_html": "

Our Minds Can’t Sit Still Anymore:

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When a user hears silence, they’re reminded for a split second that they’re a person staring at a phone.

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In other words, those gaps and spaces when our content isn’t stimulating our brain are precisely where we remember that we’re human beings.

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And for this exact same reason, I’d argue that we literally need those moments. They teach us that we’re not just brains on a stick amusing, scrolling, and vegging ourselves to death. Silence—or just the lack of stimulation—reminds us that we’re embodied souls aching for something deeper than dopamine.

\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-04-17T16:31:52-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/17/our-minds-cant-sit-still.html", "tags": ["Web Clippings"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/16/the-grid.html", "content_html": "

📸 : The grid.

\n\"\"\n", "date_published": "2026-04-16T11:30:00-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/16/the-grid.html" }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/15/spring-progress-the-maple-awakens.html", "content_html": "

Spring Progress 📸 2026.04.08 The maple awakens #SP26.3

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\"Auto-generated

\n", "date_published": "2026-04-15T19:35:07-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/15/spring-progress-the-maple-awakens.html", "tags": ["Web Whimsy"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/15/i-generally-believe-that-the.html", "content_html": "

I generally believe that the fewer tech devices in a classroom the better (except a raggedy desktop in the corner…preferably next to an old transparency projector, and a TV strapped to a wheeled stand)–but its notable that there is NO GENERATIVE AI in this promo.

\n", "date_published": "2026-04-15T16:13:44-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/15/i-generally-believe-that-the.html", "tags": ["YouTube ","Web Clippings"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/15/public-domain-review-highlighting-works.html", "content_html": "

Public Domain Review highlighting works that feature Notre Dame today:

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Highlights from the many centuries of artworks to feature the Notre-Dame de Paris — which caught fire 5 years ago #onthisday — from its illuminated punctuation of medieval skylines to grainy detailed studies at the birth of photography: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-notre-dame-cathedral-in-art-1460-1921

\n\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-04-15T10:34:38-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/15/public-domain-review-highlighting-works.html", "tags": ["Public Domain","Web Whimsy"] }, { "id": "http://thebigbabooski.micro.blog/2026/04/14/currently-reading-science-democracy-and.html", "content_html": "\n

Currently reading: Science, democracy, and the American university : from the Civil War to the Cold War by Andrew Jewett đź“š

\n

On the argument that the middle 1800s scientific democrats (a Jewett definition for educational reformers) viewed science as a type of ‘theory-to-practice’ for Christian doctrine:

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the first generation of scientific democrats in the universities identified ethics, rather than God’s handiwork in nature, as the point of contact between science and Christianity. They portrayed science as the highest expression of a mode of interpersonal behavior prescribed by God. (p. 34)

\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-04-14T15:02:44-04:00", "url": "https://nic.babarskis.blog/2026/04/14/currently-reading-science-democracy-and.html", "tags": ["Research Clippings"] } ] }