Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 8hExactly. And it’s not just observing what people actually do, it’s also building theories about WHY and (for better or worse) creating systems that nudge users towards optimal behaviors. They’ve skipped the needs analysis entirely! 000
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 29/09/2026Fun to be back in the studio recording episodes for the next season of Pop & Play! We're tackling big and small questions about play, pop culture, and learning this season so if you've got some send them our way (a reply here works!). In the meantime, check out S6 tc.edu/popandplaytc.eduPop and Play | Media | Digital Futures Institute (DFI) | Teachers College, Columbia UniversityTeachers College Digital Futures Institute (DFI) is an interdisciplinary hub for digital innovation, with a mission to advance more just social futures that is driven by research, pedagogy, and public engagement. 000
Reposted by Nathan HolbertNathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 29/09/2026How to Learn Anything isn't focused on schools (though they do make a regular appearance), but this article captures one reason most of us struggle with the theories and practices of learning: In public conversations, learning is instrumentalized as a means of improving test scores.nytimes.com30 Ideas for Fixing U.S. Schools, Ranked by Experts (Gift Article)Math and reading scores are in a decade-long slump. We asked three dozen experts: What could turn things around? 011
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 29/09/2026The gods really do not want me eating salad this year 020
Reposted by Nathan HolbertKai Ryssdal @kairyssdal.bsky.social · 28/09/2026If a sentence in your newscast starts with “President Trump says…” you’re failing your audience. 823724529
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 29/09/2026Running around on the Inceptioned Manhattan buildings in Control Resonant is a ton of fun, but disappointed to discover my apartment was lost in the pattern 020
Reposted by Nathan HolbertAaron Trammell @aarontram.bsky.social · 13/09/2026♥️🔥♥️🔥♥️🔥♥️🔥♥️🔥♥️🔥♥️ ITS HERE!!!!! This book is about how game design on a whole, counterintuitively, became less imaginative because of Dungeons & Dragons. We often talk about Dungeons & Dragons as the ultimate fantasy. A pure domain of imagination where absolutely anything is possible. 718231
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 28/09/2026Seems like every day there’s a new video of grandpa snoozing during meetings in the oval. 000
Reposted by Nathan HolbertNathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 28/09/2026The biggest driver of educational misinformation today is the EdTech industry. If you believe learning is memorization and recall AI is a thrilling innovation. Our book pushes back against those that want to mechanize learning offering methods to find meaning and community in your learning journey. 142
Reposted by Nathan HolbertBrendan Davey @brendandavey.bsky.social · 11/09/2025I find myself thinking about this 1941 Harper's magazine article a lot. Point being, good, happy people don't turn into Nazis. Also, @cuny.edu (represent!) students seldom turn into Nazis. But the "scared spectator" and the "spoiled sons" often do. 🗃️ Archive Link below 👇 27323
Reposted by Nathan HolbertNathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 24/09/2026New book incoming! Everybody has ideas about learning, but much of it is confusing, demoralizing, and flat out wrong. In How to Learn Anything we pull together research on cognition, play, and design to share how we can all create powerful, more meaningful spaces for learning. Coming soooon (ish)! 3113
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 24/09/2026Being too lazy to know your own zip code or phone number (famously designed to be easy to remember) is not like forgetting long division. And your super duper plagiarism machines (famously crap at math) are not a calculator. 010
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 24/09/2026New book incoming! Everybody has ideas about learning, but much of it is confusing, demoralizing, and flat out wrong. In How to Learn Anything we pull together research on cognition, play, and design to share how we can all create powerful, more meaningful spaces for learning. Coming soooon (ish)! 3113
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 24/09/2026Kids repurposing tech to meet their extremely unique needs leaving adults baffled is one of my absolute favorite reoccurring stories 0126
Reposted by Nathan HolbertRenee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 23/09/2026New work featured in New Public!: There is no neutral feed algorithm. Each one makes source, ranking, & content diversity choices. @jonathanstray.com & I started MySky so you can see - and change! - these settings. Check it out here on Bluesky, in "Feeds" # newpublic.substack.com/p/meet-the-a...newpublic.substack.com🎛️📲 Meet the algorithm you can actually control and understandJonathan Stray and Renée DiResta introduce MySky, a feed that shows its work 37135
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 23/09/2026First poutine, universal healthcare, and now this!? 030
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 23/09/2026So they’re learning cursive again in New Jersey… [looks around at world burning and crumbling] Sure. 100
Reposted by Nathan HolbertPrisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Let's hire teens in the city and put them to work reaching out to various local cultural organizations to advise them how they can create actual teen friendly spaces at their organizations. The city has a department of youth services. Let the youth lead. 0748
Reposted by Nathan HolbertNathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 22/09/2026Just came across this photo I took in 2015 of a talk by Masayuki Uemura on the development of the NES. Why the Zapper? Americans love guns. 001
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 22/09/2026Just came across this photo I took in 2015 of a talk by Masayuki Uemura on the development of the NES. Why the Zapper? Americans love guns. 001
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 21/09/2026There it is. Why bother with fiddly nudges to culture and carefully worded guidelines when you can just hijack the US science apparatus yourself and drive it right over the cliff.arstechnica.comRussel Vought will reportedly be given veto power over all NIH grantsPending move comes over the objections of the NIH director. 010
Reposted by Nathan HolbertMissing The Point @missingthept.bsky.social · 21/09/2026President Trump is 0-2 against pools. 141046174
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 20/09/2026Honestly probably Adventure. The first game where I was like, “I HAVE to figure this out” 010
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 20/09/2026This is a beautiful and challenging read. It’s impossible to be a parent. It’s impossible to be a kid. We do our best, because we must. Honesty, empathy, responsibility, love are all we have.nytimes.comIn Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? (Gift Article)A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice. 010
Reposted by Nathan HolbertRadley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 19/09/2026From 2021 to 2025, Stephen Miller was making $567K/year as head of his America First "think tank." He owns $100K-$250K in Palantir stock alone. His estimated net worth: ~$2 million. The immigrants he's deporting to third-party countries to be tortured and disappeared don't get an attorney at all. 21892279
Reposted by Nathan HolbertMatthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 19/09/2026More to the point, once again we seem to be just happily jettisoning decades of work on ideas like distributed cognition and network actors in order to do a hard reset on the binaries that have already done a great deal more harm than any AI agent has yet to do. 4497
Reposted by Nathan Holbertvideogame history @vghistory.bsky.social · 19/09/2026the space tablet, print ad, imagery (1982) archive.org/details/byte... 819548
Reposted by Nathan HolbertSarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 19/09/2026Don’t forget, this is how the Kennedy center dismantling started. The folks at your institution doing equity work might be the first targeted, but the institutions themselves are always the target. Hope folks have learned this now. 3950330
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 19/09/2026Exactly like his last time in office, everything is as bad or worse than we said it could be. 000
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 18/09/2026Many people should be tried and convicted for this war crime. Negligence, hubris, ego, and blood thirsty ghouls all contributed to the murder of these children and over 1000 civilians in the initial days of this pointless war. 110
Reposted by Nathan HolbertJason Leopold @jasonleopold.bsky.social · 18/09/2026HUGE EXCLUSIVE from @bloomberg.com Inside the US ‘Kill Chain’ That Destroyed an Iranian School Pentagon investigators discovered that flawed intel, outdated imagery & overreliance on AI contributed to a missile strike that killed 123 children in Minab 🎁 www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...bloomberg.comInside the US ‘Kill Chain’ That Destroyed an Iranian SchoolPentagon investigators have discovered that flawed intelligence, outdated imagery and an overreliance on AI contributed to a missile strike that killed 123 children in Minab. 11026681406
Reposted by Nathan HolbertNathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 10/09/2026I don't think AI is going to kill us all on the account of a super intelligent decision we can't possibly comprehend. But it might wipe us out when it decides "delete global water supply" is the correct response to a request to return a case of La Croix. 142
Reposted by Nathan HolbertKieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 18/09/2026This is the far more likely pathway for how AI will end us all, btw. Not via some superintelligent swarm of paperclip maximizers, but by a cascading sequence of dumb fuckups driven by human beings who have arranged things to be fast-moving and catastrophically fragile while also being really lazy. 17391150
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 18/09/2026Google Scholar get out of here with this "Quick read" shit! Never has a company torched its reputation so quickly and entirely. 010
Reposted by Nathan HolbertNathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 18/09/2026Hammond: When we have control again... Party House cat: You never had control, that's the illusion! 111
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 18/09/2026I think a lot about my education professor Dr. Write who used to tell us over and over again, “your classroom is not the most important thing in your students lives.” Seems relevant while working on a syllabus quiz about how to send a proper email with my middle schooler this morning at 7am. 031
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 18/09/2026Hammond: When we have control again... Party House cat: You never had control, that's the illusion! 111
Nathan Holbert @snowdaylearninglab.org · 18/09/2026Some of these examples are worrying, but in the form of “we designed a system to accomplish its task no matter what and it’s now doing things we don’t like to accomplish pointless tasks.” Not AGI, just short sighted design.arstechnica.comCovert uploads and megalomania: OpenAI details new "misaligned" agent incidentsModel maker commits to new framework for reporting misaligned models. 110
Reposted by Nathan HolbertCharles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Same Northwestern:dailynorthwestern.comUihlein family to donate $35 million for Northwestern footballThe Uihlein family has committed to donating $35 million to Northwestern over the next three years to “support the continued growth and success of its football program,” the University announced Tuesd... 12216
Reposted by Nathan HolbertMayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 16/09/202617 new public bathrooms. Across all five boroughs. Because you can’t wait — and you shouldn’t have to. 20696571406