"Bluesky is dying" = Bluesky fits nicely into a more analog life. Much easier to dip in casually and go away for long stretches, giving social media bits of partial attention vs ongoing, obsessive attention. The trick, I guess, is making something that's smaller-scale financially sustainable

As an antidote to an "AI helps me crank out more articles and be more efficient" world, this is the warm, wonderful fourth movement of Brahms' First Symphony, an orchestral masterpiece he quite famously worked on for 20ish years

As an antidote to an "AI helps me crank out more articles and be more efficient" world, this is the warm, wonderful fourth movement of Brahms' First Symphony, an orchestral masterpiece he quite famously worked on for 20ish years

"Question and answer. Old ways are the best ways." (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) And the trick is making the English classroom a slow place of process -- a patient place -- when the architecture of the school year rests largely on pace, timelines, marching through material

Those lost lines from Act 5 where Macbeth fires Seyton and the messenger for bringing bad news

As a flat-prose AI world causes us to remember what is well and truly human, was thinking today about how almost everyone's favourite teachers were memorable and influential because they were different, unique, quirky in some distinctive way

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania. A Midsummer Night's Dream, 2.1.62

There are really very few "musts" in this life. This most certainly isn't one of them.

Copyright, you say? Why as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric. (Hamlet, 5.2.336)

One point I haven't seen made about AI (though I'm sure it has been made somewhere) is that it reveals a deeply ingrained habit of ignoring how a product is made, that this disappears in the face of the user's perceived need or comfort

Happy birthday to a composer whose intensity has constellated many midnights. youtu.be/M8RyWFA7PSY?...

Alas, he’s mad. Hamlet, 3.4.121

While today is traditionally about getting tricked and feeling foolish if you fall for it, in the world of 2026 we can perhaps think about the power of foolery, cleverness, creativity to keep us resilient and light-hearted, indeed to keep us sane

Writing vs "document production" is a helpful distinction. Are you working with the blank page on one side and your thoughts, feelings, memories on the other, using all your capacities to create a relationship between them? In the end, writing is all and only process, an exercise of one's faculties.

Happy Roderigo Day, which is every day in a world where there are Iagos flying around everywhere, everywhere

And April is here Fortunately, every month is National Poetry Month Unfortunately, every day is now April Fools Day

Have never forgotten Stephen Lewis speaking at a conference and saying that in all his UN work in Africa, whenever they asked kids what they wanted they would always say they wanted to go to school. I think of that whenever I lose track of gratitude or purpose. Rest in peace to a great Canadian 🍁

The end of Hamlet when the improvised scheme is falling apart and Claudius is flailing, failing

In Our Time is a knowledge goldmine -- if you aren't familiar with it, do yourself the favour of a visit to their episode archive. It won't be your last!

Less curation, more creation; less customization, more experimentation

That lost Shakespeare play where a character that's a cross between Iago and Dogberry runs a country

Ok, fun's over Canada, it's the end of March, this better be the last time

Here’s food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels

Testing data is highly context-specific and should not be used to rank schools like we're in one big sports league

I'm not saying I'm middle-aged and Canadian, I'm just saying that seeing Rush back in action at the Junos tonight was pretty great

It hasn't reshaped me because I don't use it. Recommending nothing more than "attentiveness" in the face of this technology is an empty, passive cop-out that cedes the power of choice and action without so much as a whimper

The degree to which this becomes an AI-interfaced space will influence my time here I will always want as little to do with it as possible

'Tis bitter cold, / And I am sick at heart. Hamlet, 1.1.8-9 #ShakespeareSunday

Since it's World Piano Day, ten minutes where Chopin captures what relentless, haunting passion sounds like A piece that's been a part of me for my entire life, as some of my earliest memories are connected to being in the living room and listening to classical music, mesmerized

The sensation of opening a book and interacting with another's mind in the most delicate and complicated way. It's miraculous. Why would I ever get a robot to summarize this for me? To ever say walking through the woods is tedious -- just cut the trees and bring me the lumber?

so much of all this seems to be just the decadence of taking things for granted, thinking it all happens by magic and will just continue to happen magically, having a vague flicker that you're hurtling toward madness but dismissing it because magic

English teacher life: spring break is a great chance to mark

and beneath the still-wintry surface, the lake, patiently restless for freedom

Life in Canada: How much snow, you ask? On March 28? Between snowfall and blowing snow off the driveway, enough to hide a picnic table. Yeah, that's real, there's a picnic table in there

Life in Canada: sometimes the end of March resembles the end of January

Everything is terrible, but there is no need to preface joy with an apology; leaning unapologetically into joy is one of the things that will save us all

schools embrace AI

Spring Roster Kenneth Lochhead c. 1993

English teacher life: it's the end of March and it won't stop snowing; there's a metaphor in that

As a teacher, have heard the contradictory claims for a long time: we have NO IDEA what the jobs of the future will be, but also TECH IS INEVITABLE so you have to get on board the future train. It's all just the clamour of profiteering. Instead, let's find quiet places to read, write, think, talk.

The daily push for meaning, dignity, depth in a world seemingly bent on absurdity, degradation, simulation

AI tools have just popped up in the programs I use in a way that makes me long for the days of that little paperclip guy He was just mildly annoying -- he wasn't trying to eat my brain or anything

Canadian law of physics: when you say to yourself that you've brushed snow off your car for the last time, because spring is here, you will use that brush at least three more times

The tech promise from the internet to AI -- that it frees you from rote tasks to do higher level work -- of course ignores the fact that the former is the foundation for the latter. You have to know the stuff, have done the stuff; otherwise, you're just skating on the surface, and the ice is thin.

BREAKING: Macbeth had conversations with witches witch continued and continued

One of the trickiest things of living in this time is how seductive normalcy is: we will cling to any piece of it, use it to convince ourselves that things are as they were and will continue to be so, even as another part of your brain is on full Starship Enterprise red alert

Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day / Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops. Romeo and Juliet, 3.5.9-10 #ShakespeareSunday

Fans of the AFL's Port Adelaide Power sing the INXS classic "Never Tear Us Apart" before the start of every home game, and as a child of the 80s I have to say that is one of the coolest things in sports 😎

Being and Nothingness

Following an Australian sport from Canada means you can often wake up, check if your team won, then watch the full game if they did Since you know what happened, you can focus on the how It's like reading Romeo and Juliet, except you've swapped out tragedy for victory