Former professor here!

Students these days are fucked. Professors are fucked too. Two points about AI and one about grade inflation. I’ll keep this brief and give you three quick observations:

1. US, Canadian, and UK students are increasingly under pressure to pay more for everything. When you need to choose between working to pay rent and studying, you outsource to AI. Student athletes are, by far, the worst due to the exploitation opportunity athletics programs view them as. Practice more, study less, shop it to AI.
2. Student evaluations caused me more pain than anything else. I won a student curated Teacher of the Year award at my university. I’m good at teaching and love it. My student evals were from the ones that got bad grades. Those students spent more time challenging a C or below than actually studying. I know other professors grade inflate just to avoid bad evals and lost time. The eval system needs reform.
3. The rapidity in the decline in critical thinking, writing, and problem solving skills is shocking. One moment that sticks with me was when a student insisted Flint, MI didn’t have a water problem but a political leadership problem. OK, fair, explain. They just stared at their laptop blankly. Started typing. Read a chatgpt response. That stuck with me. They probably heard a talking point or used AI for their question and had zero understanding of the situation at all. Its my job to inform them and educate, but it was the blind reliance on AI as their rationalization and knowledge tool that stuck.

Neocities.org is my new favorite surfing the web activity. I also have my author website there because its amazing.

I have an internal morality, economy, and democracy check:

Does Steve Bannon, Steve Miller, or Russell Vought think it’s a good idea? If yes, it’s terrible and will hurt everything and everyone but them.

I will buy a used Pixel for this from a third party.

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Windrose but I’m hitting the “this got repetitive fast” stage and am starting to return to my classic RPGs. I’ve fired up an oldie but a goodie from the glory days of Bioware - Dragon Age: Origins. Dark high fantasy RPG. Absolutely loved it when it came out and I’m revisiting it. Its a little wonky compared to similar contemporary games like BG3 but oh so much fun.

“Enchantment? Enchantment!”

That is an excellent breakdown. I’m glad I’m not the only one noticing these posts. Poor data analysis being published or claims taken at face value.

I interacted with the Guardian editorial team once in the UK. I had a dataset on academic censoring and we were focusing on sharing the qualitative responses. All seemed on the up and up but we never moved forward for a variety of reasons with the story. Editors and the journalist were great. Tough questions, good insight, etc. Seemed like a good outlet. But that was earlier 2025 and in less than a year, I read that trash we are discussing.

This paper is of the same caliber as all of those cigarettes are safe papers from the 70s. Funded propganada with a PR firm plying it to a willing news source.

As an aside, is the Guardian becoming a shit rag? Lately (last year or two) I’ve noticed a huge dip in their quality.

Yeah. When I moved to Europe, everyone used WhatsApp. Its impossible to get around without it. I’m leaving now and it will be deleted faster than you can say fascism.

When I’m tired this is my shortcut. I usually edit them out in drafts but miss a few in my substack posts. I am more machine now than man I guess.

Agree. Also, amazing DS9 avatar. Just noticed.

I left it. This paper was under review for 197 days (yep). Got the word two weeks ago and frankly, fuck it.

Happy to have a larger academic career chat too. It wrecked me over the long term. Now my aspirations are to work in a board game store.

Hero. I never knew that and always did the shift alt.

Had a paper rejected because em dashes obviously mean AI. I love em dashes for long breaks that rest between a ; and ( ) for the reader. I just tossed my hands up and do not give a shit. I write how I write.

Nailed it.

You, dear user, are my spirit animal now.

No worries. 27,000 USD out the door in summer of 2023(?) If memory serves.

Just got a used Kia Niro (2023 maxed out edition) for 39,000 CAD.

I will use this opportunity to say i’ll miss my bike.

Got a Chevy Bolt used with a battery replacement after their warranty debacle. They had a glut of them due to that. Never looked back. It got me, realistically, 200+ miles of range. I never had a problem. No mechnical, no range issues, nothing. I’ve never had a flawless car experience before that.

If you have the ability to charge at home or reliably at work, get an EV. There is nothing to fear.

Hopefully he can dock in the UAE and use AI to repair the crater that was a data center.

I despise LinkedIn for encouraging such shitty verbal veneer to gloss over a rotten corporate foundation.