Quizzes have always struck me as less-than-ideal because they don’t capture the depth of student understanding. As I’ve gone back to them, though, I see how good they are at capturing whether students just bothered to pay attention, and maybe that was always the point.

Queen has always had a place in my musical heart, but my exposure was mostly limited to the one CD I bought in high school. Turns out that I’ve been missing out on bangers like Under Pressure and Radio Ga Ga.

Needing to bulk download some PDFs for a lit review is making me think of Aaron Swartz which is making me furious at AI companies.

We have spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars at our local indie bookstore, justifying each cent as helping it stay independent. Seeing it get acquired by B&N is devastating, no matter how much independence they claim they will let it keep.

me: “hey, kiddo, can you plug your headphones into your Switch?”

kiddo: “ugh, fine, I guess SOME people don’t want to hear the melodious sound of going through portals”

me: “…”

kiddo: begins humming Portal theme song louder than the sound effects were coming through her Switch

Look, I’m biased, but it feels like a self-own for a “school picture day” flyer to use an AI-generated approximation of a school picture instead of an actual photograph?

Some English words see a g-to-w difference when compared to French (e.g., gaufre ↔️ waffle, Galles ↔️ Wales) BUT in some cases, English has both the different AND original versions, so we have near synonyms like warranty/guarantee and warden/guardian.

The day after proudly announcing that Copilot Premium had been activated for all faculty and staff (no action required from us!), a university office has developed a form letter for how to disable it. Or at least my colleague and I got the same answer verbatim.

Got an AI-generated flyer from kiddo’s Kentucky school today that put a Texas flag in the artwork, and I have questions.

Just double-checked a CFP deadline, and it’s a full month later than what was in my head. I will be riding this high for the rest of the week.

Looks like it’s another year of wondering why the ParentSquare school communication app’s website will show image previews to logged out visitors. Better than full-size images, I guess, but why can someone who isn’t logged in see anything?

Every time kiddo’s school does a fundraiser, I think about how much of a shame it is that there isn’t some system for automatically collecting funds from the local community to make sure schools have enough money to operate. It seems like there ought to be something there.

I have one question about the upcoming season of Slow Horses, and it is whether it will confirm my theory that one throwaway detail in the source material is a deliberate reference to the Franco-Belgian comic series XIII.

No idea how Queen albums (including live albums, which are something I’ve recently discovered I like) wound up on the fourth-tier streaming service my library provides access to, but I’m quite glad.

Looking at the program for an upcoming conference, I see a co-author on one paper who taught one of my undergrad classes when he was just getting started at my alma mater. This is a fun-but-weird feeling, and I hope he’s there in person so I can say hi.

“‘Gotta scratch ’em all!’ Yeah, it’s from when Ash had a lottery ticket phase.”

There’s nothing like subscribing to a new podcast with dynamic ad insertion to teach you about the two businesses in your area that do podcast advertising. (Though I did VPN to Bordeaux for the next set of episodes, so let’s see what that changes.)

Going over an assessment data report generated by my university, and while I don’t consider myself a data analysis expert, I have some complaints about how data are being presented here. Not doing much to challenge my suspicion that assessment data are often more performative than productive.

Because trademark bullying is in the news lately: Did you know that Intellectual Reserve owns the top-level domains .lds and .mormon, presumably for the sole purpose of preventing anyone else from using them?

Taken aback when I found some of my siblings listed within one of the systems where I work. There’s probably an “explainable creepy” rather than “inexplicable creepy” reason for this, but it’s still weird.

Nan, mais c’est qui le type qui a traduit “se tenir au drone de secours” comme “stand with the relief drone” en Heave Ho 2 ? Parce que c’est bien différent, ça.

J’ai déjà écrit sur combien j’aime le faux français dans Heave Ho 2, mais j’avais oublié mon exemple préféré : quand le chef de cuisine prononce « burger » comme un verbe du premier groupe.

Today’s as good a day as any for an “accept with minor revisions.”

Uh, tandoori paneer tikka is amazing. I did not know you could prepare cheese like this, and I love it.

First impression of my new push mower: I get why they aren’t more popular, but I’m also mad that in decades of mowing lawns, I never knew it was a viable modern option and not just a prop for movies set in the 50s or whatever.