It's a fort! We can just lock the door!

You mean like all those people you interviewed and you spent thousands of column inches on from 2015-2024? Thanks but no thanks, Times.

The way people tell me not to bother speaking out against gen AI because ‘it’s too late’ like I’m sorry tell that to NFTs and other such nonsense. Interest speaks, fam …

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

If you're from Around Here* and want to know what's going on, Professor Seamster is an essential follow _________________________ *I'm coy about where YLCC is, but you do find it in the upper Midwest

Good reporting of the cesspool in Motherjones www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Everyone needs to listen to Gustav Holst's "The Planets", not for hoity-toity nerd reasons, but because every epic sci-fi movie OST for the past century has been directly lifting shit from this one specific collection of pieces, and you deserve to hear your favourite motif in its native environment.

I can feel my childhood RETROACTIVELY CHANGING just from learning that this series exists

We have Missy Elliott on my pre-class playlist at YLCC and she's always a hit. Interestingly, so is Metallica. Not drawing inferences, just considering the data points

This letter is the most powerful (and grounded) statement I've seen yet on AI in higher ed, and how we should all be reacting:

Whatever do you mean?

WHAT MARVEL THINKS DAREDEVIL SHOULD BE: what if we explore police brutality and civic corruption using metaphor… WHAT DAREDEVIL SHOULD BE: the kingpin punching a guy through a concrete wall while shitty Wu Tang sample ADR’d line goes “he’s using the deadly tiger fist kung fu style”

This description/reflection from @mattdinan.bsky.social on how he essentially delegitimized using LLMs as a way to outsource student thinking/writing is a model on how to work through your values and build a course around them. mattdinan.substack.com/p/the-ai-ske...

Randomly stumbled across this today. I give advice for a living. I'm gonna put this on a plaque for my office.

As the man says, sound on for this one:

6) Art is, in the end, a way of taking a feeling out of my head and trying to jam it into yours from across space and time. There may be some tasty junk food made by AI eventually, but without intention, our appetites to make will be unmet, and we will eventually move on. 6/6

The thing I have found about my current job is that there is no piece of learning I do not use. It's not just about facts (although those, too). Learning to do proofs taught me patience with material and the skill of banging my head against a brick wall.

YOUR STUDENTS ARE NOT YOUR CUSTOMERS. Get the fuck out of education if that's the way you're talking about them.

I went to the Trump Kennedy Center Honors Cursed By The Monkey’s Paw and all you got were these 1500 words of observations www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

When I am finally victorious and my ideological enemies thwarted, all who opposed me shall be lined up and dutifully distributed their equitable share of the rights I fought for and they so vigorously opposed, because That Was The Fucking Point

I had shingles in my early teen years. I cannot express to you how badly you do not want to get shingles. get the fucking vaccine.

this is a good excuse to post my all time favorite Star Trek meme

I don’t want to vote for a Democrat who promises to get Trump’s voters to vote for them. I want a Democrat who wants to put Trump in prison

Trial by combat should be an option in academia. We should be able to present a tenure packet and challenge the decisions of the provost/dean in a trial by combat. We should be able to challenge the provost to combat if they "can't see the pedagogical merit" of a course.

Study after study shows campaign ads barely move the needle. So where does money’s real power come from? I ranked the five ways money corrupts politics—from least to most corrosive. What I’ve learned from 15 years of tracking political money:

NEW — I put together a list of independent journalism subscriptions that would make great holiday gifts. From music to politics, astronomy to alcohol, tech to social justice, there’s something for [almost] everyone. Support indie media *and* surprise and delight your loved ones! My guide:

I mean, huh

It might be easy to find things like this merely petty or superficial, but that would be a mistake. Demeaning, erasing or eliminating celebrations or acknowledgments of Black America is straight from Redemption playbook, and is intended to reinforce the racial hierarchy and signal its reinstatement.

YOU SHOULD SUBSCRIBE TO TAL'S NEWSLETTER TRUST ME THIS WAS RIVETING, AND I AM FROM THE MIDWEST AND LITERALLY HAD TO LOOK UP WHAT PASTRAMI IS Beef, I guess

The “garbage” destroying America isn’t in Minnesota’s Somalian community. It’s in the Oval Office. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

subscribe to the handbasket, a one-person operation that produced both of these stories in one day. www.thehandbasket.co/subscribe

This is disgusting, cowardly garbage. Let trans women play tennis. Everyone who entertained 'just asking questions about men in women's sports' should understand that this was never, and is is not, about sports, but pretending it was sure did pave the way to erasing trans people from public life.

Every use-case people think they "need" and LLM for is actually papering over a different issue. The teacher using ChatGPT to write narrative reports bc the demand is unreasonable & overwhelming *actually* needs more support and/or compensation or a reduction of demand. It's a LABOR issue.

It’s true. We shouldn’t pretend that. Trumpist culture is not the same as American culture and not equal. Trumpist culture is proudly ignorant, defiantly against America’s founding values and subsequently developed values, venomously bigoted, and generally despicable.

I will say, if I never again hear “private public partnership” again in my life, I will have heard it enough.

Generational theory is bullshit AND ALSO Gen X is the best generation because we were the last kids who were allowed to grow up by ourselves, not shepherded through a variety of adulthood-training programs

Maybe related, maybe not — I talked with Emily Keegin about rural aesthetics and politics www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...

Teaching thing I find useful: if a student stops showing up for class, make the subject line of your email "Is everything OK?" When people are overwhelmed they'll often avoid even opening bad-news emails (cf. me & my bank statements). This way, they know I'm reaching out to help, not chastise.

Reuters reached out to everyone that Trump or his subordinates singled out publicly for retribution, and reviewed hundreds of official orders, directives and public records. The result: the most comprehensive accounting yet of his campaign of payback. www.reuters.com/investigates...

We see something similar at YLCC, although not yet as pronounced as described here. I chalk it up to the way American high school is now taught (at least where I am).

Someone told me I would have been a good carnival barker. It wasn't meant as a compliment. I totally take it as one

We're gonna need a truth and reconciliation commission and Nuremberg style trials to reckon with all of this evil, and any Dem candidate for office who shies away from a full reckoning in the name of "moving forward as a nation" can get well and truly fucked

Happy Thanksgiving

It's a tangent to Dr Cottom's point, but I love love love working with GED/HiSET students. Give me a classroom full of them and I know we'll have a stellar semester. They show up; they work and think; they know what they're about

This just reaffirms my drive to, somehow, be named the Grand Duke of Luxembourg

Two of the best writers/thinkers here on Al Gore's Internet*, presented free of charge! _________ *Or Beyonce's Internet, depending on your Terms Of Service

Master of Magic Arguably the original XCom; the sequels were fine but I like more of a sandbox than they provide

Marge from the church breakfast committee is about to go John Brown on this fascist rent-a-cop and meanwhile Eric Swalwell and other Congressional and Senate Dems want "masks off and badges out", the nice middle ground.

I would wipe Rise of Skywalker from continuity and make tony gilroy write the new end to the sequel trilogy. It can be as bleak as he wants it to be bsky.app/profile/benj...