Ursula K. Le Guin was a master we didn't deserve. #commonplace #scifi #sciencefiction #leguin

Gang, it's time for some OG GenX ASMR. Remember those factory tours from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood? Here's a 30-minute compilation. You're welcome. youtu.be/iFnEWctHOio?...

Before Skynet. Before The Matrix. Before ChatGPT inspired a thousand think pieces. Harlan Ellison imagined an immortal AI whose greatest purpose was hatred. Nearly 60 years later, it's still one of the most disturbing stories ever written. Paperback deal: amzn.to/3Qr6yuQ

If AI Can Do the Assignment, Maybe the Assignment Isn’t the Learning "Eighty-three percent of LLM users could not quote a single line from essays they had written minutes earlier." That's one of the headline findings from this opinion piece based on a recent MIT Media Lab preprint that has already…

Every time this quote shows up in my reviews, it hits. Life is hard, yes. It sucks sometimes. But it will get better.

The great Harry Dresden, ladies and gentlemen. #dailycommonplace

"Every problem that society has, the library has, too, because the boundary between society and the library is porous; nothing good is kept out of the library, and nothing bad." (Susan Orlean, The Library Book) #dailycommonplace

How it’s going How it’s going to go

The One Study to Rule Them All (And What It Actually Found) Remember in Ready Player One when literally everyone in the world was convinced that finding Halliday's Easter egg would solve all their problems? Full-on societal obsession. People abandoned real life to hunt for a magic answer that…

[P] Pope Leo's energy lately youtu.be/SCkLfpqLpGw?...

For the record: The Washington Post can go fuck itself. Support pro-democracy media that doesn't have its head stuck up Donald Trump's ass. bit.ly/4qmEiFz

Silly routines & rituals

The Problem with The Anxious Generation — and What the “Ban All Screens” Movement Gets Wrong About Education There is a real crisis in children's mental health. I believe this because I see it daily in the schools I work in. The data supports it. The children themselves are telling us. On this…

Richard Feynman's Notes For Self-Education open.substack.com/pub/jillianh...

Teacher Side Hustles That Actually Fit Your Life (From Someone Who Gets It) This post contains affiliate links. If you buy something through one of them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. The national average teacher salary is $74,200. That sounds okay until you account for the…

Book Review - The Lies of Locke Lamora mikepaul.com/2023/03/25/b...

How to Read and Take Notes Like a PhD Student (From Someone Near the Finish Line) mikepaul.com/2023/05/17/h...

You Can Just Print An Air Purifier I don't have the time right now, but when the ol' dissertation is done, I can easily see a 3D printer getting heavy usage around these parts... 3D printers are one of the few pieces of technology in the last 30 years that are as revolutionary as they were…

Artemis II Astronauts Witnessed 6 Meteorites Colliding With the Moon | WIRED The shock and awe on the face of the folks at Mission Control as they chatted with the astronauts as this happened... During their flyby of the far side of the moon, the Artemis II astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft…

Porting Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii | Bryan Keller’s Dev Blog Since its launch in 2007, the Wii has seen several operating systems ported to it: Linux, NetBSD, and most-recently, Windows NT. Today, Mac OS X joins that list. Source: Porting Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii | Bryan Keller’s Dev Blog

The World’s Longest Outdoor Escalator Just Opened in China More impressive infrastructure coming out of China... The longest outdoor escalator system in the world is now running in Wushan County, China. At nearly 3,000 feet long, it carries pedestrians up 800 feet in elevation—around the height of…

AI doesn’t write well, but neither do most people Giles Turnbull has some thoughts on AI-generated writing: First of all, I’ll come clean about where I stand, generally speaking: I’m an AI sceptic, especially on using AI for writing. I can see it being useful for other things - but that’s because…

Artemis II Mobile Wallpapers Fear not, true believers. We can take our fascination with all things Artemis II on our phones. NASA has made a dozen mobile wallpapers available. Here are a couple I enjoyed: Source: Artemis II Mobile Wallpapers - NASA

Never Ending School Reforms.. From Larry Cuban.. As students, professionals, and parents, in the 20th and early 21st centuries, I, and most readers, have been the objects of these reforms, their implementers, or simply observers. School reform, then, is not something distant or far removed from…

Solar Eclipse from Dark of the Moon art002e009301 (April 6, 2026) – Captured by the Artemis II crew during their lunar flyby on April 6, 2026, this image shows the Moon fully eclipsing the Sun. From the crew’s perspective, the Moon appears large enough to completely block the Sun, creating nearly…

VOLUMES: ONE (SELECTIONS FROM MUSIC CONCERTS 2019-2023 BON IVER 6 PIECE BAND) | Bon Iver 11 track album Finally got the chance to put this in my ears with the onset of Spring Break. Justin Vernon never ceases to amaze me with his inspired combination of analog and digital music tools. This is tons…

China Covered the ‘Sea of Death’ in Trees. Here’s What Happened. China’s Taklamakan Desert was an unforgiving landscape. Was is the operative word, since it isn’t as unforgiving anymore Source: China Covered the 'Sea of Death' in Trees. Here's What Happened.

Google’s Stitch Update: “Vibe Design” and the Shrinking Distance Between Ideas and Tools Google recently announced a major update to its experimental design tool, Stitch. If you haven’t heard of it before, Stitch is an AI-powered interface design tool—but this update signals something bigger than…

The Greatest Baseball Catch You’ll Ever See And maybe the best superhero pose ever struck...

To be clear: the SAVE Act does not simply require the identification voting ALREADY requires. It demands proof of CITIZENSHIP— a birth certificate with a name that matches yours now (bye, bye, married women), or a passport— both of which are expensive and take a long time to obtain.

Jonathan Haidt promotes transphobic conspiracy theories (like the idea that girls are being "transed" by social media) so I guess it's not that surprising that he is the favorite pseudo-scientific pop psychologist cited by supporters of dangerous censorship legislation that will kill trans kids

I'm no birder, but I've stumbled upon Get Birding with Sean Bean (he shouldn't die in this series) and I am ABSOLUTELY here for it. youtu.be/m9aroePaO90?...

Seeing this quote today reminds me of something from Harlan Ellison, “Sat cito, sat bene: It is done quickly enough if it is done well.”

AI as Co-Teacher or AI as Replacement? Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com “Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community.”— Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? There’s a moment in Philip K. Dick’s novel when the line between human and machine doesn’t shatter—it…

The danger isn’t that AI can’t teach. It’s that it can simulate teaching well enough that we stop asking what’s been replaced. www.eclecticeducator.com/p/ai-as-co-t...

AI Schools and the Illusion of Efficiency mikepaul.com/ai-schools-a...

AI Schools and the Illusion of Efficiency Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Pexels.com A recent investigation into Alpha School, a high-tuition “AI-powered” private school, revealed faulty AI-generated lessons, hallucinated questions, scraped curriculum materials, and heavy student surveillance. Former…

Well, this was certainly a learning experience. Heck, it still is. I'm working on a couple more articles, so I guess I'm going to get more practice :) Yes. I am now officially published. This was a team effort, and I'm so glad I had the opportunity.

This week's hallway quote from Ursula K. LeGuin...

Why Do They Fear Dragons? I've been reading a lot of Ursula K. LeGuin lately. Whether or not it's because I hadn't read much of her work before I read The Dispossessed last year, I'm not sure. But I wish I had. I'm working through her essays published in The Language of the Night and am transfixed…

Why We Still Need Shakespeare’s Words Before we argue—again—about whether Shakespeare is still relevant, it’s worth watching a three-minute clip that does more to answer the question than any curriculum guide ever could. On The Late Show, Ian McKellen closes an interview with Stephen Colbert by…

Starfleet Academy, Season 1, Episode 5. I won't spoil it for anyone, but DS9 fans will enjoy it. I know I did.

The Building is Closed, The Vibe is Open The first great snowstorm of 2026 hit Kentucky last week and sent many schools either to pure snow days or Non-Traditional Instruction (NTI) days. So, I spent most of last week sitting at my desk, unshowered, unshaved, and low-key fiending for in-person…

My post-holiday TBR stack has overtaken my desk at home. Working here is... problematic, at best. Perhaps I should adjust the stacks in a more productive arrangement... No, 'tis best not to disturb the tomes before they are ready for me.

The “prosecute the former regime at every level” candidate has my vote in 2028.