Most people outside academia can't understand how discipline specific research is helpful. Academia can communicate it 1000 different ways; it's not going to help them understand. The media & federal government must showcase academia's value. Some research can take decades w/out any known value

Costco has these thin pistacio chocolates. I suggest you buy some and eat the entire box.

For the last 36 years, since I was a young child, I have owned these Christmas houses. This evening, we noticed a TREMENDOUS spelling error on the side of the house.

I have a silly academic question: I have noticed people citing my blog in scholarship (awesome). I tried adding my blog posts to google scholar but they aren’t showing up as indexed. Does anyone have experience with blogs and their Google scholar profile?

I regularly have dinner with an electrical engineer (family member) who designs wafers to put more transistors on. He is in his late 70s, loves his job. That kind of technical expertise is inspiring.

I ate 4.

That Texas tech surveillance is the ultimate big brother. a colleague texted me pictures of the forms they have to fill out.

wubba lubba dub dub

Grades are in, no emails in inboxes. Kids are still in school for a few more hours. *turns off computers* *hums imperial march* *opens box of chocolate covered pretzels*

the AI hype (not specific to LLMs) is billionaire paranoia about living forever. Listen to Thiel talk. He is petrified of dying. Same with Musk.

Today I learned that the school kids have a term for when some in class keeps interrupting and is causing problems: YouTube brain. I’m telling you, I think social media is going is going to be very uncool for gen alpha.

almost to a student, they reported regular use of AI systems—even the students most loudly and vocally "anti" AI had carved out exceptions—to paint with too broad a brush, students saw their own use of AI as considered, moderate, & defensible while other people’s was lazy, dangerous, condemnable+

LLMs are creating too much code churn, not enough efficiencies.

I am sincerely, adamantly against GenAI use in K-12 schooling. Catastrophic for cognitive development.

Overall, the usage of "reading" in literary studies articles in 2010s (74/1000 words) is 2x what it was in 1920s (34/1000). Within "reading", the use of "[adjective] reading" in the 2010s is 1.4x in the 2010s (310 "reading"'s) what it was in 1920s (220). Within "[adjective] reading" = quoted plot.

It’s sad because the “history repeats itself” cycle is getting shorter

It’s 40 degrees today in my town, which is unremarkable unless you consider that is 50 degrees warmer than yesterday morning.

Have you used anaconda navigator? taught with it? How does it hold up?

This story goes hard.

Letter writing/admissions/final grades all in the same day. *inhales chocolate covered pretzels*

it’s like drinking salt water

I yearn for the early 2000s place where peope had their own weird websites.

Fantastic! A program that goes over your BibTeX file and adds DOI fields (and other fields). Works very well! github.com/dlesbre/bibt...

I believe college students should learn calculus because it makes you think with a level of precision. I think students should take the introduction to physics and engineering. The point of college is to learn stuff, be challenged by that stuff. Maybe that makes a person a better worker, maybe not.

I agree that we don’t already know how to teach “AI literacy” well. But I also think literacy is too modest a goal. College students should graduate knowing how ML works; it’s liberal knowledge analogous to RNA or trig, not search-engine skills or Excel. And we do know how to teach it in that way.

There are at least three in my town, one is that weird burnt orange color.

I was having a conversation last night about the loss of scholarly conversations, although we both thought this issue predates LLMs.

It’s good to see papers start to address LLMs as structural plagiarism — provenance, more hidden than the original words or training data. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Have you played expedition 33? Worth $40?

I honestly think OpenAI is going to be the AOL of the 90s. Long term, google and Apple will eat its lunch.

Have you ever sat at your dinner table listening to a mechanical Engineer and an electrical engineer (both family members) discuss the technical details of surface tension? Invigorating. (Seriously)

"Paula Krebs, executive director of the Modern Language Association, said she expects graduates of the program will be in great demand" www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

Co-sign

My pet “we don’t talk about this enough” is that the House of Representatives was capped. We should have like 2-3,000 members. It would be much more democratic and responsive to voters If it were uncapped. And I simply don’t care about the ”it’s just too many people.”

We have a local used DVD store that sells buy 3 get 6 free. you can‘t give them away. (I gobble them up)

This Fall, I taught a 400-level comics course at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, under our Major Authors rubric, on the comics Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. I posted a recap of each week using #comicteaching. This thread contains all of those posts, as well as a link to our syllabus.

How is this? www.amazon.com/Dragonriders...

My fourth grader at the dinner table: “I told my friends 6-7 is a lionfish. both are an invasive species.”

Ah yes letter writing season

Home made Chex is amazing!!

Someone explain to me Peter Zeihan. What is his deal?

As a reminder, Sam Altman is not an AI researcher. He is a pitchman. A venture capitalist. An investor.

Me realizing the 500 word abstract only needs to be 250 words.

you know how in the mandalorian there is the phrase “this is the way.” Sorta like a motto but a motto that within the world, people know. Is there a literary term for this device? Is it shibboleth?

I have never been on that platform, never will be.

My university wants professors to create IG accounts to promote our classes and, yeah, I'm not going to do that.

I believe the ideology of individualism enhances the surveillance state through the incentivization of cell phone ownership. I think cell phones are a way to track, control, and surveil the populace.

I unsubscribed from all streaming services. Instead, I started buying DVDs. I can only watch enough that my per month dvd buying (and I mostly buy from a local used store) is dramatically lower than the monthly service. I suggest looking into it.

The rag and bone shop of the heart