Blurts

Thel pandemic and recent election processes have been very puzzling for me to process. I struggle to understand how people some of whom I know can possible take the positions that they do. I don’t remember having this frustration in years past. Perfectly cognitively capable and logical people willing to believe really ignorant things. The psychologist in me offers some suggestions regarding how this might happen, but persistence of ignorance over time seemed to make no sense from perspectives on personal bias and resistance to abandon flawed beliefs despite solid evidence top the contrary.

Psychology Today has an abbreviated analysis by two scientists (one I have known for years) who have taken a crack at offering ways to understand and possibly change. The Psych Today article is an abbreviated version of their new book which I own, but admit I have yet to read. I didn’t really find much new in the explanation of causes although the organization would be useful for those who have not been focused on what might explain the unexplainable. The suggestions for how to respond to each issue offer some useful things to try.

I write about the Brave browser and ecosystem repeatedly because I support the goals of the company – protecting individual privacy AND compensating online content creators. The success of this company depends on public adoption of the chromium browser, content providers signing up with Brave to receive compensation for viewer visits, and the support of the system by advertisers. I suppose contributions of participants to purchase BAT (the crypto used to compensate viewers and content creators) could be added, but this contribution seems less important that the other variables as the process could work without this component if enough people used the system, accepted the Brave collection of ads, and then used the BAT accumulated from ad exposure to compensate creators.

This recent article from Seeking Alpha summarizes data on these issues.

Take a look at Brave.

Cindy and I have had the opportunity to work with the technology program of our local school district. Recently, they have decided to explain how the money dedicated to tech has been spent. This seems a great effort to keep the public informed and perhaps an effort more districts should consider.

Richfield, MN, tech community update.

I wrote a recent post lamenting the loss of Skitch and my replacement for marking up photos for instructional posts making use of screen captures with arrows, boxes, and annotations. My recommendation still holds and has some advantages over what I will describe here, but I have since learned some things that would have solved most of my problems.

I signed up for some summer online Apple conferences and I picked up the following technique from the conference focused on Citizen Sciences. I didn’t add much to my citizen science skill set, but I did learn some things about Apple Photos that solved my markup problem. Sometimes it helps to have someone show you the hidden features.

Apple photos offers some basic editing features, but I had not noticed the markup capabilities. To find the markup tools, you need to go to that three dot … icon and this will allow you to turn on the markup tools.

The markup tools will appear at the bottom of the Photos window (see red box). To draw a box or circle in order to bring attention to something within a screen capture, you select the pencil and the desired character. I find it difficult to create a circle or square freehand. However, if you continue to hold your pencil or finger on the screen after drawing something, Photos will try to regularize what you have drawn. You can also make use of predrawn shapes. For this approach, select the + icon at the bottom of the window. How I was I do know the meaning of … and +?

The + will provide access to shapes and text.