Went to #UCBerkeley today to see the student encampment for myself. It was graduation day on campus so a lot of students with caps/gowns with their family.
When I was there as an undergrad, we studied the protest movements that occupied Sproul Hall. Black and white, grainy photos of a distant era. Something to theorize and discuss in class.
It was surreal to see for myself the past very much connected to the present.
I was worried the #UCBerkeley encampment would be the next to fall after Alt-Right groups and then the cops attacked the #UCLA encampment.
Now I’m not so sure this will happen at Cal. It’s a community college that happens to be a world class University. The community hosted “Kid’s Day” at the encampment.
I didn’t think it was possible to love #UCBerkeley any more than I do but today felt like one of those days.
The sun was out. After visiting the encampment, I grabbed some Korean at Steve’s BBQ in the “Asian Ghetto” - finished it off with a Snapple from the liquor store next door. All the things I used to do as an undergrad eons ago.
And then I venmo’d the kids at the encampment some money and signed the UC Alumni BDS petition.
I’ve never been more proud of Cal and this community. I can see why the Chancellor won’t touch this baracade. After they get past the baby strollers, they’ll be a lot of people who are willing to get arrested to protect the students and what they believe in.
The protest encampment at UC Berkeley is currently about 150 tents strong, but so far the administration has refused to call police or disperse the group. Classes continue, and commencement is on track to take place as scheduled.
Daily upload - Jan 21 - "Teasel" photo on display at UC Berkeley, Jan 3 -31, 2024
My photo exhibit, "Round, Mostly," at The Faculty Club at UC Berkeley is on display! Each of the ten photos contains something round or round, mostly. Please stop by, take a look! Comments welcome.
This is a rough initial artistic interpretation, but hopefully conveys a sense of what the moment could maybe have felt like. (Keeping in kind that the image is totally filmi, like an RRR set in Berkeley.)
We're anxious about blurring fact and fiction. So after first telling the story, and reading excerpts from the source article, we passed around this image, explaining how we tried composing it with AI art tools.
Folks understood. And one participant even asked about the prompt!
To be incredibly clear, we also made sure that the printed image being passed around included the words "artistic interpretation" in black-on-yellow text.
Thus far, we've made use of AI image tools only to colorize images for our tour, not to make new ones.
But as the new tools get more powerful and photorealistic, it's getting easier to confuse fact and fiction.
We'll keep grappling with how to do this responsibly, even as we keep trying new storytelling tactics, both high and low tech.
Very proud to have contributed to this new piece advocating the promotion of agency and #HumanCenteredDesign in speech #BCI research. Recommendations for promoting user agency in the design of speech neuroprostheses, with Narayan Sankaran, David Moses, & Eddie Chang. #neuroethics#UCBerkeley#UCSF
A woman with paralysis speaks through a digital avatar after 18 years.
Brain-computer interfacing #BCI is an incredible field and one I've always been interested in. I can't believe how far it has come in the last 10 years.
I can't imagine the pain of being trapped, silent and aware, for that long. Hopefully this tech helps her find some happiness, and others who can benefit from it as well!
"Toll taken of fire damage showed the following towns destroyed by fire: Boyes Springs, Sonoma County; Markhams, Sonoma County; Trinity, Sonoma County; El Dorado, El Dorado County; Woodacre, Marin County."
Some of these towns were so thoroughly destroyed, they have almost no evidence on the internet. It took me quite a bit of searching to figure out where Markhams was. Visit the blog post to see.