Weeks 6 & 7 There are obvious differences when communicating with humans vs. computers. I’d say the main difference is understanding vs decoding. Machine translation has yet to focus on language learning but takes a decoding approach. I imagine this is akin to deciphering all the words of a sentence…

Week 5/12 Long at last we started learning a new language (Typescript) and framework (Angular) beyond 30mn ‘Hello World’ intros. Unfortunately, my excitement was sullied by my fear and the biases I absorbed talking to instructors that don’t like Angular (or rather prefer to React, another framework, or maybe I…

Week 3&4/12 — Among the myriad differences, computers are less forgiving than humans. Say you’re building a simple to-do list. A single typo would suffice to break your application. Whereas a grammatical mistake on your part might not hinder the flow of the conversation as your partner nevertheless grasps your meaning, a computer…

Week 2/12 I gobbled up today’s topic: programming languages. Our activities consisted of “Hello World” introductions of a few of the more popular and classic programming languages out there (C, Ruby and Python). It reminded me of when I was in high school and I would spend some nights “testing…

Week 1/12 — 9.21.2020 I love communication. I never studied it as a field in itself, but it made an appearance in all the domains I studied: as an undergraduate, I double-majored in Foreign Languages and Biology, where my niche fascination was cell communication. I pursued Linguistics for my masters degree, studying the…

Providing online access to a museum’s collections and data is one thing, but developing a curated experience out of it is another — Data visualization is a great way to celebrate our favorite pieces of art as well as reveal connections and ideas that were previously invisible. More importantly, it’s a fun way to connect things we love — visualizing data and kicking up our feet for a movie night. …

Data visualization can level up exhibits for both visitors and curators — When I was living in Paris at the beginning of this year, I went to a minimum of three museums a week. While this luxury was made possible by the combination of an ICOM card and unemployment, it was founded on a passion for museums. Looking back, some of my…

A mold (!) may contain the secret to curing vegetables in a quick way that brings a classic charcuterie flavor to all-plant dishes — Until recently, vegan charcuterie has been limited to items such as beet tartare, plant-based deli slices, and chickpeas. Superficially resembling charcuterie boards, most attempts result in a spread that lacks the complex flavors developed by charcuterie techniques. …

I tend to go to exhibits rather blindly, that is to say, I don’t do my homework first. I think this is quite normal, but the academic inside of me feels a need to prepare in advance. Having prior knowledge tends to improve the experience, but at the same time…