McMindfulness: how capitalism hijacked the Buddhist teaching of mindfulness
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/mcmindfulness-and-the-case-for-small-talk-1.5369984/mcmindfulness-how-capitalism-hijacked-the-buddhist-teaching-of-mindfulness-1.5369991
On McMindfulness
dthic
quote the former Buddhist monk Clark Strand here. This was in a review of your work. “None of us dreamed that mindfulness would become so popular or even lucrative, much less that it would be used as a way to keep millions of us sleeping soundly through some of the worst cultural excesses in human history, all while fooling us into thinking we were awake and quiet.”
corporate mindfulness programs are now quite popular. And as we all know, most employees these days are extremely stressed out. The Gallup poll that came out about four or five years ago said that corporations — and this is in the U.S. — are losing approximately 300 billion dollars a year from stress-related absences and seven out of ten employees report being disengaged from their work.
The remedy has now become mindfulness, where employees are then trained individually to learn how to cope and adjust to these toxic corporate conditions rather than launching kind of a diagnosis of the systemic causes of stress not only in corporations but in our society at large. That sort of dialogue, that sort of inquiry, is not happening.
An integrity bubble is where there is a small oasis within a corporation – for example let’s take Google because that’s a great example of it.
You have a small group of engineers who are getting individual level benefits from corporate mindfulness training. They’re learning how to de-stress. Google engineers [are] working 60-70 hours a week – very stressful. So they’re getting individual level benefits while not questioning the digital distraction technologies [that] Google engineers are actually trying to work on. Those issues are not taken into account in a kind of mindful way.
So you become mindful, to become more productive, to produce technologies of mass distraction, which is quite an irony in many ways. A sad irony actually.
mindfulness could be revolutionized in a way that does not denigrate the therapeutic benefits of self-care, but it becomes interdependent with these causes and conditions of suffering which go beyond just individuals.
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more on mindfulness in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=mindfulness
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/24/779136094/climate-planners-turn-to-virtual-reality-and-hope-seeing-is-believing
Virtual reality is an immersive experience that can trick the human brain into thinking it’s real. But tricking people is not the goal of the sea level rise simulation being used at Turner Station, says Juliano Calil, one of the program’s developers.
The goal, he says, “is to start a conversation and help folks visualize the impacts [of climate change] and the solutions, and also discuss the trade-offs between them.”
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more on VR in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=virtual+reality
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-04-17-how-one-university-is-gamifying-medical-educationhttps://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-04-17-how-one-university-is-gamifying-medical-education
instead of Super Mario or Zelda, they’ll be playing a game called CD4 Hunter, which launched last June and focuses on teaching students the first step in the HIV replication cycle. In the game, players roleplay as the virus and are charged with moving throughout the bloodstream to identify receptors, get past immune defenses, and target and infect cells.
Without much of a clue as to how to design or program a game, Urdaneta-Hartmann won a $10,000 grant from Drexel to develop her own skills in educational gaming and create a tool for students in the program.
So far, Urdaneta-Hartmann claims the CD4 Hunter app has nearly 2,900 downloads on the iTunes store today.
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more on gamification of education in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=gamification
TikTok says it doesn’t censor content, but a user was just locked out after a viral post criticizing China
TikTok says it doesn’t censor content, but a user was just locked out after a viral post criticizing China
by intechnology
Families of missing Uighurs use Tiktok video app to publicise China detentions
/https://uighurtimes.com/index.php/families-of-missing-uighurs-use-tiktok-video-app-to-publicise-china-detentions/
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Nov. 28, 2019
TikTok sorry for blocking teenager who disguised Xinjiang video as make-up tutorial
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/28/tiktok-says-sorry-to-us-teenager-blocked-after-sharing-xinjiang-videos
A spokesman for the platform on Thursday blamed a “human moderation error” for the removal of a video by 17-year-old Feroza Aziz disguised as a makeup tutorial to avoid being censored.
Owned by the Beijing-based technology company ByteDance, TikTok is one of few Chinese apps that have gained popularity outside of China. TikTok has said that it does not apply Chinese censorship rules on the international version of its app.
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more on tik tok in this iMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=tik+tokhttps://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=tik+tok
The Importance of Universal Design in Online Learning
Dec. 11, 2019 • Webinar 2pm ET
utilize Learning Management System (LMS) analytics to promote self-improvement in instruction, student interaction and institutional frameworks.
In our new webinar, join D2L to explore strategies in Universal Design of Learning (UDL) and to understand how D2L supports UDL through the design of its Brightspace LMS platform – and via third-party partnerships – to provide students multiple ways to gain knowledge, engage and demonstrate learning.
Webinar participants will learn:
- In-depth details about D2L UDL features
- Useful insights about universal design provided by Dr. Sheryl Burgstahler of the University of Washington, including concrete steps to make your courses more universally designed
- Information about third-party integrations
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more on universal design in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=universal+design
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/22/surprised-about-mark-zuckerbergs-secret-meeting-with-trump-dont-be
Thiel is notorious among Silicon Valley billionaires for explicitly endorsing Trump in 2016 and speaking at the Republican National Convention that year. Thiel, a libertarian who runs a company that enhances government surveillance efforts, has also questioned the value of women voting.
a series of dinners at Zuckerberg’s home in California with conservative pundits and activists like white supremacist Tucker Carlson of Fox News.
It’s safe to say that Zuckerberg’s politics are issue-specific and generally party-agnostic.
Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard after two years. Zuckerberg has enrolled for the past decade at the University of Davos, where rich people pretend they are smart and smart people pander to the rich. If someone chooses to study world politics from Henry Kissinger, you can assume that he will have some twisted views of how the world works.
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More on Siva Vaidhyanathan in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/04/15/no-millennials-gen-z-gen-x/