🐋🐋🐋

would anyone be interested in hearing how faculty & staff might not get merit raises this year (keeping in mind that we are below the national average for salaries) but yet CU still paid $2 million for access to a version of ChatGPT that is about as good as the free version? anyone? #ruminating

I really appreciate @elizabethwithaz.bsky.social's reflections on how she explored the social impacts of technology with her students by introducing them to the people - the ghost workers - whose labor makes “AI” systems possible. Read this week’s @civicsoftech.bsky.social and find the lesson at:

Free book idea for Mo Willems!

the question's not whether teenagers are interested in books, it's whether they have adequate time, support, bandwidth to take them seriously

The thing about imagining your own personal Star Trek is that every single 18th c novel works with the word “space” in front of the title.

“If you were in charge of Star Trek what would you do?” Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” in space. Obv.

Teachers weren’t wrong to ban Wikipedia as a research source. Wikipedia became more credible due to active choices made by the org and (really) its community editors. No real evidence that any of the Gen AI companies are interested in taking that path.

Season 3 of Bluey is for the freaks and weirdos (complimentary). Every 8-minute episode leaves my child totally confused and me in tears.

Teachers weren’t wrong to ban Wikipedia as a research source. Wikipedia became more credible due to active choices made by the org and (really) its community editors. No real evidence that any of the Gen AI companies are interested in taking that path.

The 2 pieces of advice I got most often in grad school were: 1. Publish X articles to be competitive on the market (in which X increased from 2 to 4 over the course of my degree). 2. Read now when you have the time! You won’t have time when you’re a prof!

we should give teachers time to read

Season 3 of Bluey is for the freaks and weirdos (complimentary). Every 8-minute episode leaves my child totally confused and me in tears.

My students in general turn in noticeably better work if I give them one class period to write than they do if I give them an evening. The only explanation we can manage is that the classroom is a less distracting environment.

Yes, that’s the issue. I’ve been trying to find a way to articulate this: to the extent that LLMs serve a purpose in education, it’s an indictment of the education system, not a praiseworthy feature of LLMs.

I think some (maybe even a lot?) of this is anxiety about perceived class / gender divides between work in higher ed and k12 ed that, if they ever existed at all, are now fully collapsing.

📢📢📢

The thing about Grammarly’s Expert Review feature is that any LLM would confidently edit your document in the guise of any writer, living or dead. This is not meant to be a defense of grammarly.

Sort of wild that the “you prefer human writing” blurb is written to nonetheless extol the virtues of AI generated text.

i wonder about people forming newsletter/blog collectives where they edit each other and get work out into the world together, not for the purposes of building a business, but for the purposes of doing good work, keeping the tools sharp, and speaking needed words into the world

Using Grammarly for the first time in forever ... WHAT? As a non-native speaker writing primarily in English, I used to use it to check prepositions, point out too long/convoluted sentences etc. It now offers to summon colleagues both living and dead to "expert review" the piece??? What?

We had an AI expert give a talk at a recent in service day. One big piece of advice was to use it for brainstorming. “Ask it for 200 ideas. Pick the good ones from the bad ones.” But, like, brainstorming is fun! That sounds incredibly tedious!

Really dislike the way this piece denies the young adult it disparages any agency. They are just “doing what they were taught.” Further, the idea that J-schools aren’t telling students about the job crisis is not credible. I heard it so much 20ish years ago that I changed majors…to English.

The first streamer to offer a live feed of just the song and dance sequences from every musical on the platform will get all the streaming subscription money from all the toddler parents (or maybe just all of the money this toddler parent spends on streaming).

I think the greatest gift college professors in the humanities can give to students right now is a seminar room where, for 80 minutes twice a week, nothing that happens to them is a sales pitch for an AI product.

🌿 Leaves of Grass poems as motivational quotes: I am everything. You are too. You are not your job. Everybody dies.

As someone whose recent reading materials consists mostly of picture books for toddlers, I find the rhythms and transitions of “SoM” familiar. The lines become an expansive catalog of things and remind me in a way of Margaret Wise Brown’s “Goodnight Moon.” 🌿

🌿 Grass: a symbol of democracy—stretching and yearning underfoot and in our hands—or symbol of America’s continued attachment to the English class structure? An invasive, artificial, environmentally destructive species or the thing to touch when we’ve gotten too online? Discuss.

🌿 🐋 so far my glib take is…Melville would have loved the internet (complimentary); Whitman would have loved the internet (derogatory).

Walt Whitman is apparently alive and well and going on awkward first dates with my friends in 2026. 🌿

This does not really capture my feelings about the preface, but it does capture how my broken brain hears his name! 🌿🌿🌿

Only just got started on the #log prologue this AM, but real whiplash going to Walt’s optimism re: America a day after reading the end of Moby Dick! 🌿

🐋 final chapter—incredibly tense even as Ish continues to break throughout for Whale facts Bible Soliloquys he didn’t hear Racist tangents Obvious omens (over-explained and ignored or misinterpreted) Portentous birds The ocean, as only itself and also as everything that is, ever was, or will be

I think the % of students who truly keep up has always been single digits & there has always been an equal number who do nothing regardless of incentive. The vast middle has mostly good intentions & regularly does some work, but they are mainly youths. They are a mess. That’s the job. It’s fine.

🐋 chat, I am stating the indoctrination process early!

🐋 the boss at the work retreat: “All varieties were welded into oneness and were directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.”

🐋 oh my god, the end of “The Symphony”! I mean…the entire chapter! But also…the end! You got me, Ishmael! 👁️👁️

Working up a pitch for a limited prestige tv drama where the conceit is that each episode depicts a different vessel in the time before, during, and immediately after it crosses paths with The Pequod. 🐋

Ishmael is the one exception to the “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” rule. Yes, Ishmael, I understood the import of Ahab putting Starbuck in charge of his safety rope. Yes, Ishmael, I also want you to explain it to me. Two things can be true!!! 🐋

Yesterday, we had Ahab misreading the witches prophecy; today, Starbuck soliloquizing about murder while King Duncan sleeps. How many Macbeths are on this ship, anyway?! 🐋🗡️🧙‍♀️

🐋 I’ve been wondering where Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker fit into our Muppet Moby Dick, but they are obviously involved with this demonic lightning storm situation!

(sneezing) 🐳

🐋 re-reading Moby Dick had been a series of revelations (it’s funny?!) and corrections (until yesterday, I was sure that Queequeg had his casket built in Nantucket), but Ahab “death-temper[ing]” his harpoon in Queequeg’s blood was lodged somewhere in the back of my brain and shook loose today.

🐋 Queequeg commissioning, not needing, and then marking up his coffin reminds me of Richardson’s Clarissa turning her coffin into a writing desk. So…what are the other great literary coffins?

🐋🐋🐋 Ishmael body shaming Dr. Johnson…

🐋 really enjoy learning about Ishmael’s research methodology in “the decanter.” He claims he can tell a book is about whaling by its smell. And he pays a professor for a translation with a box of sperm whale candles.

“Soliloquized Stubb” is art. 🐋

“Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish” is one for those of us in the middle of the Bravo reality/Melville Venn diagram. I keep hearing it in the voice Captain Sandy uses to talk about “MARITIME LAW.” 🐋

Hey chat, is Moby Dick both Isekai and Slice of Life? 🐋