I'm reading Mansfield Park for the first time, and on one hand I really understand why it's not the most popular Jane Austen, but I actually really like Fanny. She's so principled and full of inner strength.

I've gone from thinking of ai as an intriguing technological innovation, to thinking of it as promising but imperfect, to thinking of it as more of a hindrance than a help, to thinking of it as dangerous, to thinking of it as outright evil.

At the dentist and they are playing "Everybody Hurts" and it feels a little inappropriate.

Legal experts commenting on the Afroman case cite the precident of Starting Nothing vs. Being Nothing

Sinners was probably the best movie I saw this year.

Most modern people profoundly misunderstand what the law IS, and I think the current state of America reflects this. The law is not a threat. The law is not a cudgel or a weapon to be employed by the powerful. The law is a safe path.

Happy Ides of March to all who celebrate

Cross my heart and hope to die Here's the digits that make pi 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944 592307816406286208998628034825 342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786

It occurred to me that the whole "thin blue line" thing doesn't make sense anymore since American cops wear black, not blue.

You know when you're vacuuming and there's a some bit of fluff or something and the vacuum doesn't pick it up and you grab it and carefully feed it to the vacuum? You make more work for yourself to pretend to yourself that the vacuum is working. That's writing with ai.

Loved the recent episode of @lingthusiasm.com where @gretchenmcculloch.com and @superlinguo.bsky.social talked about diglossia. From my inexpert position I completely agree that French is a diglossia, certainly in Canada and probably in general. Seems like a predictable effect of the Académie.

I hope Trump gets deposed soon, but if he's going to keep being a dictator I wish everyone would just admit it.

So strange that Will Arnett loves being associated with Arrested Development and hates being associated with Bojack Horseman. They're both great shows, but Bojack does so much more to show what Arnett can do!

A short story of mine was published! Read it here! lowestoftchronicle.com/issues/issue...

"Presentations produced by AI are more interesting than ones students wrote themselves" Yeah probably. But with all my heart what is even the point? Are you educating students or producing presentations?

George Gershwin never tasted a chocolate chip cookie.

Makes me glad to be a Canadian.

I cannot wait for this movie it looks SO good. youtu.be/QQn9TfXkzTk?...

One of the first academic conferences I ever attended, the residence building caught fire in the night and I had to evacuate and sit in the cafeteria at like 2am until we got permission to re-enter the building, then I presented my paper at 8:30 the next morning to an empty room.

I hate writing rejections that say "this isn't a reflection of the quality of your writing". Why lie? Of course it is! Just admit it! I'm not a child! Be straight with me!

One of my favourite genres of clickbait article/video is where they pretend to assume you have an insane opinion and present an argument for the obvious explanation. I'll give an example:

Woke up with a first line in my head, but no story to go with it.

It is very weird, as a pacifist, to observe how many people are either implicitly or explicitly pro-war.

I wrote a play a while back, and I really liked it, and submitted it to a contest, and heard a few days ago that I didn't win, or place, or get an honourable mention, or anything at all. And I should get over it. Why would I expect to win? But I am really very very disappointed.

I made peanut butter cookies and peanut butter and jam cookies.

Recommend me a poem.

I wish I loved the Human Race; I wish I loved its silly face; I wish I liked the way it walks; I wished I liked the way it talks; And when I’m introduced to one I wish I thought What Jolly Fun! -Walter Raleigh (not that one)

I'm having a Darwin Day* *"I am very poorly today, and very stupid, and hate everybody and everything"

Did anybody ever actually tell that poor rabbit what was up? Doc?

Did we ever actually find out if you're afraid of the dark?

Did Mr Rogers ever get an answer to whether anyone would be his neighbour?

Did they ever actually tell us how to get how to get to Sesame Street?

Did we ever actually get an answer to the question who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

All I want is for people to laugh and cry and tell me how brilliant I am and shower me with money for my amazing writing. Is that so much to ask? Instead nobody reads it and the feedback I get always includes the line "best of luck submitting it elsewhere".

I am le sad.

Imagine if twenty years from now people were struggling with the viability of a smartphone that sits on your desk and has a giant screen, because we'd just stopped making desktop computers and nobody could remember how.

As a Canadian with a morbid curiosity but sometimes missing context: why Minnesota?

I'm not going to give examples, because I don't want to use actual student work, but when students actually write their own papers instead of getting AI to write it, sometime they phrase things so very strangely. And weird phrasings are really cool!

I forgot my binder at home. I realized it on the bus, because I was wondering why my backpack was so light. Sure enough, my binder, with all my notes for all my classes, wasn't there. I texted my dad, but he was at work. "Sorry Buddy, I can't help you until lunchtime. Try Mom?"

Feeling listless. Give me a first line and I'll write a short story from it, live.

There is a certain genre of academic who makes it their mission in life to never ever admit to being wrong about anything and it is very weird to watch.

Listening to a post-mortem episode of a long running podcast that's ending and boy there's an unspoken subtext that the main guy didn't want to stop but they are forcing him out.

Finished another book chapter!

Hollow theatricality.

Matthew 25:35 "I was a stranger, and after checking my papers, confirming that I had entered the country legally, ensuring that I had no outstanding parking tickets, and making sure I didn't have an accent, you welcomed me in." Powerful stuff.

None of the cautionary tales about AI warned me how stupid it would all be. I don't just mean how stupid the AI would be, although that too. I mean how stupid the whole situation would be.

Watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with the fam last night. Can you imagine this movie being made in the age of Netflix lighting?

Your periodic reminder that "Judeo-Christian" is just a not-very-subtle anti-muslim dogwhistle and people who say it just mean Christian. They're often even evoking antisemitic history, usually stupidly but sometimes maliciously.

Schools were closed on Wednesday and Thursday, then my kids had a pd day on Friday, then Saturday was Saturday, then we are snowed in today and schools are closed tomorrow for a holiday. So my kids have at least six days off school, and for most of them there are no sidewalks and it's hard to leave

I don't care at all about being sweary. In the right circumstances it can even be charming. But it's embarrassing that this is the second Olympics in a row with a Canadian cheating scandal.