I prefer women who talk to plants, emotionally relate to animals, and carry a book of poetry everywhere like it’s a bottle of medication.

Generationally, we are in a WEIRD situation where both Boomers and Gen Z have about the same level of understanding of computers and associated applications.

Schooling isn’t simply about quickly learning a new “skill” or technique and moving on. Just like going to the gym and working out, THE POINT IS NOT to only learn the proper form for the bench press or a squat, but to then do it OVER and OVER to grow (they are literally called “repetitions”).

As a teacher, one of the most frustrating catch 22s of being vocal about an issue is that if you speak up when you are younger, people will dismiss you as inexperienced and idealistic. So you wait until you are older, and when you speak up then, they dismiss you as jaded and tethered to the past.

I can’t be in a relationship with someone unless they own a library card.

“IOU” is the most useless verbal abbreviation ever.

This is a perfectly cromulent post. Although, anyone can feel free to embiggen it by replying.

Using what is thought of as AI (i.e., chatbots) for cognitive offloading = “I want to pretend I am intelligent, but I don't want to admit to myself that I am not.”

I feel like a political administration that tries to throw shade at South Park is like someone starting a rap battle with Eminem.

The forest was being destroyed, but many trees kept supporting the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that, because its handle was made of wood, it was one of them.

What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing? The demise of the English paper will end a long intellectual tradition, but it’s also an opportunity to reëxamine the purpose of higher education.

The return to pen and paper has been a common response to A.I. among professors, with sales of blue books rising significantly at certain universities. Some instructors are even considering oral exams. “Maybe we go all the way back to 450 B.C.,” one said.

Didn’t realize you started a second channel; even though I’m a teacher, consider me a “sub” 🙂 (loving the name of it too).

Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was set this evening. Hopefully, my night will be as interesting...

Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task This study explores the neural and behavioral consequences of LLM-assisted essay writing. Participants were divided into three groups: LLM, Search Engine, and Brain-only (no tools). Each completed thr...

The findings from this study DO appear “obvious” (to many). But this type of research is needed in order to counteract the marketing onslaught that is more than willing to sacrifice generations of learning on the alter of increased profits and/or perceived social relevance.

I feel like a fully “old” English teacher/washed up quasi-writer sitting here nursing a glass of 15 year old Macallan.

I had a conversation with someone recently who made the following observation about me: “Talking to you can be exhausting. It’s like you have this wierd combination of being intensely interesting and really boring at the same time.”

I have never felt so seen.

How is it possible that in 2025 Gmail STILL does not have a native dark mode in the desktop browser UI?

The world is filled with glass-half empty people regurgitating the line that “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” I prefer, instead, to think of it as “you MAKE 100% of the shots you don’t take” (both are equally valid since the hypothetical results in a state of epistemic uncertainty).

@michaelburns.bsky.social The latest stream with Jared was so good! Keep up the great work! (You don’t need “the channel that shall not be named.”)

My workstation at home is a PC, and one of my biggest gripes with Windows, data collection and AI slop aside, is that there is NO native TTS in the OS, the way there is in macOS (since the early 2000s!). There are third party solutions, but they aren’t as seamless as macOS’s implementation.

With all due respect to T.S. Eliot and April, March seems to be the cruelest month.

A fundamentally apolitical statement: public education cannot and should not ever be run like a business because in a business “the customer is always right,” but meaningful education is rooted in the NEED to be able to tell the “customer” that they are wrong.

More of this.

@michaelburns.bsky.social Not sure if you’ll see this, but after watching “Case of the Mondays” on DFW, I thought I’d mention ONE of the many sections in Infinite Jest that really sticks with me: pp. 692–697. Portions of that describe a person’s struggle with depression like no other…

It used to be a line from a movie: “So this is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause.”

College students caught between professors' AI bans and employers' growing demand for AI skills Research shows 75% of workers now use artificial intelligence on the job, yet many universities still classify its use as cheating.

No, they're not caught between anything. Stop it. The fact that AI may be used or useful in future jobs does not create a single dilemma at all for college students in how to actually complete their coursework. This is all nonsense & excuses for not doing the reading & learning how to think & write.

Line from a student’s paper: “Digital dating applications were developed for mainstream use beginning in the late 1900s, coinciding with the rise of the internet.”

I feel personal attacked by two phrases in that sentence.

It seems like everyone is pretending that their “AI emperor” has beautiful clothes on—am I the only one who sees (unfortunately) that he’s naked?

Teachers were “influencers” before it was cool.

I don’t count days. I count essays.