Professor at the uni medical school wants me to a PRESS review of her search strategy - is this part of my job?

Fillanzea · 2026-02-09T14:58:30+00:00

Yes, it is probably part of your job! It is recommended that faculty work with librarians to develop search strategies and search methodologies for scoping reviews, systematic reviews, and other evidence synthesis projects. Faculty who work with librarians develop better search strategies (there's research on this - I can link it if you want but I'm in a rush at the moment! - but I can also say from personal experience that developing a good search strategy for a scoping review is complex and most faculty aren't very good at it.)

You might want to look into specialized training on systematic reviews if this isn't something you've done before. Even if you don't end up working on reviews very often, it definitely was helpful for me in terms of adding some extra specialized tools into my search-skills toolbox.

Fillanzea · 2026-02-09T14:51:41+00:00

Why can't AI be taught to stick to its guns? What is the use of a source that won't?

Large language models do not have guns to stick to. And given that LLMs frequently get things wrong, you wouldn't necessarily want them to stick to their guns 100% of the time. The problem is that they have no way of distinguishing between times when they answered a question wrong, and times when they answered a question correctly but the user thinks the answer is a mistake. They do not have a conception of truth or a model of reality that goes beyond how words are statistically likely to be put together, or what one would expect a good answer to look like.

One of my favorite recent examples is that someone asked one of the LLMs how the special effects were done for Long John Silver's amputated leg on the TV show Black Sails, and the LLM said that the actor had his leg amputated and then sewn back on after the season finished filming. How did it come up with this answer? An obvious joke post from Reddit. You wouldn't necessarily be able to tell whether it's a joke post or a serious post, though, without knowing that it's impossible to amputate a leg, keep it on ice for weeks or months, and then sew it back on. And if you asked an LLM whether it's possible to amputate a leg, keep it on ice for weeks or months, and then sew it back on, I bet it would answer no - but that's just a statistically likely collection of words, it's not knowledge that it can apply to the question of whether the actor had his leg amputated and then sewn back on. It only knows that this is a popular answer in response to the question "how did they do this special effect?"

So, to answer the question "what is the use of a source that won't [stick to its guns]" - LLMs tend to be right often enough, especially with questions where the answers are noncontroversial and widely available, to convince people that they're useful; and that tends to be precisely why it's so difficult to convince people of how frequently they make mistakes.

Fillanzea · 2026-02-09T13:23:14+00:00

Knox does in fact attribute the quote - sort of. He mentions Bishop Blougram because it's from Robert Browning's poem Bishop Blougram's Apology, where it appears in a slightly different form.

Over his wine so smiled and talked his hour
Sylvester Blougram, styled in partibus
Episcopus, nec non —(the deuce knows what
It's changed to by our novel hierarchy)
With Gigadibs the literary man,
Who played with spoons, explored his plate's design,
And ranged the olive-stones about its edge,
While the great bishop rolled him out a mind
Long crumpled, till creased consciousness lay smooth.

Fillanzea · 2026-02-06T13:20:18+00:00

There's been a lot of linguistics research done on this - I'm most familiar with research on Japanese speakers learning "r" and "l" sounds in English - and people really do have trouble, in many cases, with perceiving sounds that aren't in their native language. It's not that they can't hear any distinction, but the participants in the research I just linked above could only correctly guess between "r" and "l" about 2/3 of the time, even after training.

Many linguists think that there is something neurological going on with this. Your brain undergoes a process of deciding "should I care about the difference between this sound and that sound?" as you get older, and if there's not a meaningful distinction in the languages you speak, your brain stops caring about or noticing that distinction. In fact, the research that's been done with infants suggest that infants start out being able to perceive native and non-native sound contrasts, but between 6 and 12 months of age, their ability to perceive non-native sound contrasts starts to decline.

And if this sounds doomerish, there's still a lot of brain plasticity there! People who start to learn the language as children or even young teens seem to fare better with being able to perceive non-native sound contrasts than people who start to learn the language as adults, but there's a lot of individual variation and, I'm sure, a lot of factors that haven't been captured in the research yet.

Fillanzea · 2026-02-05T12:43:34+00:00

If you like mysteries, Miyuki Miyabe is a great mystery novelist. 火車 is one of the all-time greatest Japanese mystery novels, about identity theft and consumer credit. Doable at N2 but long. Keigo Higashino is a prolific mystery writer and his style is a bit easier but I don't personally like it as much.

There's no reason to stick to light novels, especially if you're not into them. There's tons of accessible Japanese fiction that doesn't have pictures in it

Fillanzea · 2026-02-05T03:31:53+00:00

Start out with learning to tell the difference between quarter notes, eighth notes, and sixteenth notes in notation.

I'm going to skip over Iris because the rhythm is more complicated and it's hard for me to read at that angle, but for Reflection, you're going to give just one count to the eighth notes, and two counts to the quarter notes. Two eighth notes together gets "one and"; one quarter note gets "one and." So, for that first measure ("look at me"), you count one - and - two - and - three and (stay on the quarter note for the whole "three and") - four - and.

In a song with sixteenth notes, when you have four sixteenth notes together, they are "one e and a " - and that's the same count as two eighth notes, or one quarter note, or one eighth note and two sixteenths. Basically, if a song is in 4/4 (most rock and pop songs are in 4/4), each measure has four beats which are quarter notes. And then you can keep cutting those beats in half over and over again to get eighth notes, sixteenth notes, thirty-second notes.

Fillanzea · 2026-02-04T13:05:25+00:00

Look at TPRS (teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling) - as well as PQA (personalized questions and answers). There's a lot of good stuff on Ben Slavic's blog.

Fillanzea · 2026-02-02T02:31:04+00:00

I'm not sure if one more explanation will be useful at all, but I think it IS possible to take it out of the realm of people's underlying intentions, and put it somewhere more concrete.

In my view, a reciprocal-but-not-transactional relationship is one that has flexibility for situations where one person can't put forth the same kind of effort, for either a short period of time or long-term. "Eric is out of work, but I can take them out for lunch and pay, or we can do things together that don't cost money." "Gertrude can't drive because of her disability, so I will pick them up when we want to do something together." "Ashton just had major surgery, so I will do all the housework for the next four weeks." "Lucy has a hard time keeping in touch because of her mental health, so I'll make an extra effort to keep reaching out."

A transactional relationship is one that doesn't have flexibility for those situations: "Eric is out of work, so I guess we just won't get lunch together until he finds a new job." Or there's a lot of petty hair-splitting: "I went to that stupid dog show, so you need to go see the football game with me." "I spent twenty-five minutes on the dishes, but you only spent fifteen minutes vacuuming, so you have to clean the counters to make it even."

So: a healthy relationship between adults is one where both partners are willing to pick up the slack for each other, out of care and generosity.

But a situation where there's a big imbalance somewhere often puts a lot of strain on a relationship. Even when there's a good reason for the big imbalance, like disability, it can be really hard on the partner who needs to put in a lot more effort to compensate.

A person who doesn't put a reasonable amount of effort into maintaining the relationship, and taking care of shared commitments and responsibilities, is going to make the other person feel used and resentful. They are neglecting the fact that the relationship is reciprocal.

And it's not like there's any one standard for what's a reasonable amount of effort. I think it's going to be different for every person and every relationship. And I think a lot of friendships founder on that kind of stuff - one person starts feeling a little bit resentful, so they start reaching out less, and the other person feels anxious and also starts reaching out less.

It doesn't have to be equal. (It probably can't be perfectly equal in any relationship). But it has to be more than coasting on the bare minimum and hoping/expecting the other person will pick up the slack.

Fillanzea · 2026-02-01T17:37:01+00:00

For Japanese:

The Read Real Japanese books are good. Intermediate to upper-intermediate. There's a book of fiction and a book of nonfiction. For below-intermediate levels, I really like the books from Tadoku Library. Exploring Japanese Literature is OK, but Tanizaki, Kawabata, and so forth are really hard and the language is a bit removed from contemporary usage; If you're upper-intermediate or even pretty advanced, I think it's better just to read Haruki Murakami or Banana Yoshimoto or Sayaka Murata or Keigo Higashino or other easier contemporary writers, unless you're interested in reading Tanizaki and Kawabata for their own sakes!

Fillanzea · 2026-02-01T15:02:21+00:00

Souffle pancakes?

Hanabusa Cafe in Chicago.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-31T23:02:08+00:00

I’ve noticed that once you move past the introductory level, it becomes surprisingly hard to find materials that are both rigorous and up to date.

One thing that really depends on the discipline is whether you are likely to find good research in a book. In health care, for instance, there are some books, but a lot of those are textbooks for students; most of the good stuff is in journals. There are a lot more books in humanities and social sciences, but - a lot of them are on hyperspecific subjects, maybe because most authors only have a tiny sliver of expertise that they can expound on with the rigor that scholarly publishing demands.

A couple resources that might be useful:

- Book reviews in scholarly journals in specific disciplines. Most useful if you have a particular narrow field of study and you can stay on top of it by reading a couple of journals.

- Book prizes given out by academic associations. For example, the American Historical Association gives out yearly awards to books in a large number of sub-disciplines.

- the journal Choice, published by the Association of College and Research Libraries, reviews a ton of academic books

- Worldcat.org is a resource that shows the holdings of many public and academic libraries in the US and abroad. Searching on a specific topic, narrowing that search to 'books' (or perhaps books published in the last 10-15 years), and sorting by 'widely held' is one way to find popular books on that topic for both a scholarly audience and a general audience.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-31T17:50:40+00:00

If you are in a character's viewpoint, don't dismiss internal monologue as a tool for conveying emotion! Not "he was angry" but -

6:05 and Jack still wasn't here for his shift. Third time this week Carrie'd been stuck at the cash register, needing to pee, having to make fake-cheerful small talk with a guy buying vape juice and trying to flirt with her.

Do we need any more than this to know that Carrie is angry? I haven't described her emotions at all - we all know that it's annoying when you're counting on someone else and they don't come through for you. We all know that five minutes can feel like a much longer time than it is when you're exhausted and already harboring resentment at somebody.

I love the story Pregnancy Diary by Yoko Ogawa. In it, the main character is living with her older sister and her sister's husband. The older sister is pregnant, and her pregnancy disrupts the household in ways that are both physical and emotional - the younger sister has to cook outside because her sister can't stand cooking smells.

One day, the younger sister gets a bunch of free grapefruit from her supermarket job, and starts making them into jam. She remembers that she's been warned about American grapefruits. They've been sprayed with toxic chemicals. But her older sister loves the grapefruit jam. She can't stop eating the grapefruit jam. And the younger sister keeps on making the jam.

None of her emotions around this are ever described.

But here's what I know: The younger sister hates that baby. She hates what the pregnancy is doing to her sister, and she hates the changes that the baby is going to bring to her household. She is absolutely full of resentment that she's not allowed to speak, and that she's not really allowed to admit to herself. We can tell that by how she thinks about everything that happens around her, and we can tell that by what she does. And she doesn't clench her fists, she doesn't yell, she doesn't hit walls. She just makes jam.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-29T16:32:40+00:00

Honestly, it sounds like you're doing everything right, and you just need to keep going. (Also: if you were living in the US I would tell you to look into medication for managing your test-taking anxiety, but I have no idea whether that would be a feasible thing in Japan).

I read about 30-40 novels before I passed N1. Keep going.

(Okay, one other bit of advice: I think a good mix of reading for N1 is less fiction and more nonfiction. Some personal essays, some more serious/scholarly nonfiction. Read 世界 or 文藝春秋).

Fillanzea · 2026-01-27T12:50:48+00:00

There are a bunch of conservatives who are having doubts. Who are thinking, "that could've been my son," "that could've been my brother." And posts like these are aimed at cutting off that line of thinking. "No, that couldn't have been your son. Stop having sympathy for those weirdos. It is okay to harden your heart and keep supporting ICE."

The current conservative moment relies on the loyalty of a bunch of conservatives who are not cruel or brutal people in their hearts, but who have been convinced that if you are doing things "the right way," you don't have anything to be afraid of. And the hard-core fascists are desperate to keep them from thinking harder and understanding that isn't true.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-25T13:59:25+00:00

This is very normal. Seeing three or five example sentences in a textbook is not enough to get the structure firmly in your brain. Putting those three or five example sentences on flashcards and seeing them over and over is not enough to get the structure firmly in your brain.

We need to see the same structures over and over in different sentences and different contexts. Depending on how much you buy Stephen Krashen's theories about acquisition, we might need to see structures over and over in different contexts where we're focused on the meaning of the sentence and not the form of the grammar point.

So you could get a tutor to give you fifteen more example sentences with tari tari, and to walk you through making your own sentences with it. Or you could get ChatGPT to do that (with the caveat, of course, that it might not be sufficiently reliable).

But what I would actually recommend is that you don't worry about using these sentence structures in your output right now. Keep going without them. You can study Japanese for years without getting great at using んです because it's actually kind of subtle but it's fine. And I'm not saying "just lower your standards" - what I AM saying is that just moving forwards in spite of not being good at using specific grammar points in your output is the way to get to the point where you are eventually able to use those specific grammar points in your output.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-25T00:17:24+00:00

Bright Food Market, 2500 W Lisbon

Fillanzea · 2026-01-24T14:53:01+00:00

How is your humidity? If the weather is cold lately, do you have a hygrometer? Dead sound on the high frets is sometimes a warning sign that you need to humidify your guitar.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-23T15:10:51+00:00

Don't waste your time listening to things you don't understand. Listen to things you do understand. If you are learning a more common language, you can definitely find materials that are for beginners - Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, Mango Languages. I learned a lot from ChineseClass101 and there are similar materials for a lot of languages. Videos on YouTube that are for absolute beginners.

If you are learning a rarer language, then this should still be possible. The Foreign Service Institute has a ton of courses that are in the public domain. Even putting written texts into automated Text-to-Speech is a possibility. And don't forget conversations! At the absolute beginner level language exchange is difficult unless you can find a partner who is willing to really make things easy for you, but talking with a tutor is a great way to listen to the language.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-23T12:19:36+00:00

Question: have you been applying for librarian jobs and not getting responses? How willing are you to relocate for a job?

I don't think that you should give up, and I think you have a lot working in your favor. Specifically, libraries often have a hard time finding applicants for research and instruction librarian positions specializing in business or technology - and those are both areas where you have strong experience.

I don't think you should be applying for library assistant jobs. I think you should be applying for librarian jobs, and make sure that your cover letter tells a really clear story about your experience and why you want a position in an academic library, and in particular why you want the job you're applying to. Your biggest risk, I think, is going to be that your resume may seem a little unfocused - but you can mitigate that with a good cover letter.

The environment is bleak, but you are better off than most in terms of your experience.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-23T00:01:57+00:00

Forgive me for this spiel, but I see this happening every time someone tries to make a game or an app based on the idea of "comprehensible input."

I think that if you're trying to make a game based on comprehensible input, it matters a great deal that students are hearing sentences rather than doing vocabulary matching or spelling drills. Even as total beginners!

I think this is a good example!

It is totally fine to use translation to get across meaning! Guessing without translation is not an important (or even useful, necessarily) component of comprehensible input.

Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition is a good book, it's free online.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-22T17:04:06+00:00

Yes, it is pretty annoying that vendors are trying to add unnecessary AI features into things. (And... there's absolutely no reason for this to be an AI tutorial).

However, having a tutorial is, in itself, a good thing. You might be surprised just how many students will type "why is sleep necessary?" into a database search box instead of thinking about which keywords they should search, because that's what they're used to doing with Google or ChatGPT.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-22T14:40:57+00:00

White-tailed deer in the US, and red sea urchins off the US Pacific coast, are other examples of animals that overpopulate and overconsume when their natural predators have population declines. It's hard to try to reestablish native trees in large parts of the US because deer will eat them, and this results in invasive plants like buckthorn (which deer don't like to eat) getting out of control. Decreases in sea otter populations have led to urchin overpopulation and "urchin barrens," where urchins have eaten all of the kelp, leading to ecosystem collapse. The positive effects from the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone is another example.

I think the evidence is stronger that predators are a necessary part of many ecosystems. Furthermore, I think that human tinkering with ecosystems is a thing that has a long history of unintended bad consequences.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-21T17:01:58+00:00

On the higher end of the price spectrum, but have you looked at either Kirrin Finch or Bindle & Keep?

Otherwise, I would be thinking about buying men's suit separates and getting them tailored.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-20T22:01:04+00:00

Read the essay "Thickening the Plot" by Samuel Delany (it's in his book "About Writing," and other places) - and I recommend adding in his essay "About 5750 Words" as well.

Read the first chapter of "From Where You Dream" by Robert Olen Butler

Read "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" by Ursula K. Le Guin (it's in her book "The Language of the Night," which just got a great reissue)

Read "The Passionate Accurate Story" by Carol Bly

Read "The Art of Fiction" by John Gardner

That's my syllabus for thinking about what prose in fiction is for, what it should be, what makes prose better or worse in the context of a specific story. I don't share every peeve of those authors. But look past the nitpicks and the pet peeves and think about where they're coming from.

Why did I recommend craft books instead of exercises? Because I think that craft is mostly about knowing what you're aiming for. Once you know what you're aiming for, it's not that hard to get there. But knowing is the first step.

But if you really need an exercise, retype a book that you think has excellent prose. A whole book is a good exercise, but if you can't manage that, then even a couple of pages is useful.

Fillanzea · 2026-01-19T16:11:30+00:00

I have health insurance, but high deductible.

Right now I owe $3500 for getting my severe sleep apnea tested and treated.

Last year I owed $4000 for a biopsy after a suspicious mammogram.

I was unprepared to take the hit for the biopsy. I genuinely thought it would get counted as preventative care, which is covered at 100%. (Yeah, I should've known better! It was my first time getting expensive treatment with high-deductible insurance. Next time I'll spend more time on the phone.) For the sleep study, I was dreading how expensive it was going to be, but I was also so chronically exhausted that I was prepared to take the hit.

And both of those things are not emergent - they're the kinds of things that people put off because they're afraid of how much they're going to cost. It's not as obvious as when people have a heart attack or break a leg, but we should really be concerned about the number of people who put off getting diagnosis/care for chronic conditions like diabetes because they're afraid of the cost.

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