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inconsequential gibberish.
[20+] Hello. This is weird. I like things. And reblog things. Draws sometimes.
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doing things at the right age is literally a made up concept. you can start/pursue anything at any age. btw.
paulsblogofficial
remember that short story they made you read in school called The Lottery where the whole town gets together and just stones a motherfucker at random what the fuck was up with that
Actually, I know what was up with that!
When The Lottery (by Shirley Jackson) was first published, tons of people wrote into the newspaper that published it to demand to know what the hell it was meant to be about
I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story’s readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.
So basically the story is written in such a way that the uncritical nature of the townspeople is highlighted, when it comes to their own traditions. Every year the town commits outright violent murder, but because it’s ‘normal’ to them, they don’t think of it in those terms. The reader, who isn’t part of the town’s cultural assumptions, sees the horrific nature of their actions. But the characters in the story don’t.
In essence, it’s a story about normalization (before that phrase was coined). The point is to make you think about what cruelties might be passing uncriticized in your own culture, just because they seem ‘normal’ to you. Maybe your town doesn’t stone someone to death once a year, but there are other ways for communities to kill people, or let them suffer. And some of those are just as needless and just as rooted in unquestioned assumptions about how the world works, or how society needs to operate. The people in The Lottery were hesitant to give up their tradition because they believed it guaranteed them a good harvest. Revealing, in that hesitance, that the possibility of a bad outcome was more frightening to them than an atrocity they’d normalized.
nato-proxy-war-enjoyer
Teachers when a child shows a single ounce of individuality or creativity:
As a teacher: the big sharpener should have just made her laugh. It’s funny.
But the 70 sharpeners thing is where it gets a bit dicey because yes it was obviously the child joking and having a sharpener collection but on the other you have to think: Why does this child have so many blades on school property?? Obviously you can know the child won’t do anything awful but you don’t know what some other person might do if they get it or if administration that DONT know your child finds it
what nefarious thing is a child going to do with 70 intact sharpeners already at school? sneak into the bathroom where they hid a 2x4 and a tool box to build a macuahuitl?
hold on i need to google something
yeah this is funny
Anonymous asked
hi i'm about to finish undergrad and can i ask is there ever a point where you stop feeling like you actually don't know shit and are just making things up
markscherz replied
When you get into doing peer review, and find yourself pointing out mistakes and problems in the work of other, often more senior scientists, you may start to feel like you do actually know a thing or two. Unfortunately that often doesn’t really start until people are well into their PhDs, and even then I know some people who haven’t had much opportunity to do peer review… so maybe it’s not the best place to get that feeling.
Another good way is talking about your subject of study with literally any randomer. Chances are, you know a great deal more about the subject than they do, and getting to teach them something can be very rewarding, especially if you can disillusion them to commonly held misbeliefs. You can even do that right here on tumblr dot com—that’s basically how I got started.
I can also recommend reading extensively, and offering commentary or thoughts on the works of others. This is a great practice, because you don’t really have to pretend to be more knowledgeable than you are, but you demonstrate a grasp of the perspectives of others in your field. It can be very impressive if someone says ‘Wow, this really reminds me of Gould’s arguments from the 1970s’, or 'I was really swayed by de Queiroz’s arguments in his 1998 and 2007 papers’. You are not expected, as a young scientist, to have unique and ripe perspectives. But you should know which perspectives are out there, and be thinking about your opinion of them.
But in general it is, I think, a pervasive thing in academia, to fake it until you make it. Why, I know some fully tenured professors who seem to still be faking it now.
I'm getting ready to graduate undergrad as well. I went from a college dropout at 20, to returning to college at 33 and struggling through biology because my rural high school in the mid-2000s didn't teach much science (this could be its own post entirely), to joining a research lab and getting a job tutoring others in biology, to designing my own study to run to write my honours thesis and presenting my research at multiple conferences.
I'll graduate at 36 this spring, and I'm already accepted into one of my dream graduate programs. The last conference I went to, some of my peers were presenting research for the first time. They were anxious, scared, just beside themselves.. and I remembered feeling that way at first, too. But it got easier as I practiced, and I was able to help them get through it, too.
So my advice is this: Mentor and be mentored. Take the guidance others ahead of you offer; offer guidance to those following the path behind you. It helps you calibrate a genuine sense of where you are and how much you know. Do things you're not sure if you can do; ask for guidance when you need it, believe in your ability to learn as you go. Encourage others; don't fall into the trap of competing. Make friends who are on your path. Make time to reflect: daily, weekly, monthly, every semester. Look at where you started, where you are now, where you want to go. Realign as needed.
You got this. We all feel like imposters sometimes. Yes, everyone, even my PI, even my department chair, even my research director, even my internship leaders. You are not different from them, nor am I.. which means that, just as they are not imposters, neither are we.
Good luck!
Good morning class! Today we’re gonna play a Kahoot. Get out your chromebooks and join the Padlet. Your quiz today is on Blooket. You’ll need your Quiibo login. Write down your response on the EdPoob. Your homework is to do the Nubu. It’s on Nubu. Don’t forget to do the Nubu. The Nubu is a test grade.
I might be wrong on this: I think it actually is significant to not solely focus on but note how bad that essay is, because 1) it would pass no evaluation in any context and 2) because the TA was extremely generous towards it. She did everything right, every single thing right in responding to a student who was clearly expressing that in their ideal world she would not exist. She shoved all of that down, responded strictly properly by rubric, and was still sold out by her institution, what should have been her class solidarities, even though she held to exactly what the people who vilify her insist she is incapable of: engaging, “academic neutrality”, etc. She did it, as is extremely usual. They didn’t care. They were ranging for her and they’re goddamn hypocrites. People I think should know that; at least for her.
For folks who may not know what this is in reference to;
So I reblogged this once already so I could more easily read and respond to it on my computer (typing on a full keyboard is way easier than on a fucking phone).
This is genuinely one of the most infuriating things I've read about recently. This girl just straight up DIDN'T DO THE ASSIGNMENT. Then complained about discrimination because the person grading it was trans.
She got a ZERO because she didn't do the assignment. She didn't even properly CITE her source, which was the bible. There is absolutely a proper way to cite the bible, btw. And she didn't do it.
This was the assignment, btw:
She did not do almost ANYTHING this assignment required. She deserved that zero.
this was the TA's reaction, btw:
"Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting point for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.
"While you are entitled to your own personal beliefs, there is an appropriate time or place to implement them in your reflections. I encourage all students to question or challenge the course material with other empirical findings or testable hypotheses, but using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc. is not best practice.
"You argue that abiding by normative gender roles is beneficial (it is perfectly fine to believe this), but to then say that everyone should act the same, while also saying that people aren't pressured into gendered expectations is contradictory, especially since your arguments reflect a religious pressure to act in gender-stereotypical ways. You can say that strict gender norms don't create gender stereotypes, but that isn't true by definition of what a stereotype is. Please not that acknowledging gender stereotypes does not immediately denote a negative connotation, a nuance this article discusses.
"Additionally, to call an entire group of people "demonic" is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population. You are entitled to your own beliefs, but this isn't a vague narrative of "society pushes lies," but instead the result of countless years developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved. You may personally disagree with this, but that doesn't change the fact that every major psychological, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric association in the United States acknowledges that, biologically and psychologically, sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed.
"I implore you apply some more perspective and empathy in your work. If you personally disagree with the findings, then by all means share your criticisms, but make sure to do so in a way that is appropriate and using the methodology of empirical psychology, as aligned with the learning goals in this class. If you have any additional questions or concerns about this or would like some additional educational resources, I would be happy to discuss this further and provide you with them."
(all typos are mine, I had to type it out from screenshots in this article, which ALSO CONTAINS THE WHOLE ESSAY SHE WROTE)
Can we talk about how PERFECT this response is? This TA did their due diligence when grading this paper. The essay? It was hot garbage. I read the whole thing.
The other instructor for this course AGREED WITH THE TA!
"Samantha, I am the other instructor for this course, and I have also take the time to read your paper. I concur with [redacted] on the grade you received. This paper should not be considered as a completion of the assignment.
"Everyone has different ways in which they see the world, but in an academic course such as this you are being asked to support your ideas with empirical evidence and higher-level reasoning.
"I find it concerning that you state at the beginning of your paper that you do not think bullying ("teasing") is a bad thing. In addition, your paper directly and harshly criticizes your peers and their opinions, which are just as valuable as yours. Disagreeing with others is fine, but there is a respectful way to go about it. That goes for discussion posts as well as reaction papers.
"Please employ more thoughtfulness in your future assignment."
There is genuinely no reason, at all, for this TA to be placed on leave. The TA was just doing their goddamned job.
As someone who had to write all kinds of essays about all kinds of things in high school (and in college, but that's somehow less relevant to this). I was able to write about being pro-gay marriage (before it was legalized in the US), being pro-abortion and being LGBTQIA+ AT A CATHOLIC SCHOOL. And I still managed to get As. Do you want to know how? I used real sources and cited them. I actually followed the assignment while still getting my point across.
It is absolutely possible to write essays disagreeing with the premise without completely flouting the assignment. I promise you it's possible.
I could vent about this for HOURS. That's how much it pisses me off.
Based on the essay itself, this genuinely feels like the student is such a bigot that she doesn't want a trans teacher and is using a RIGHTFUL zero to try and get that TA fired. She is claiming discrimination while actively discriminating against the TA.
We need to stop ignoring the obvious: this was a setup.
The essay is intentionally bad. You cannot write an essay that bad unintentionally, and even if you could, you would not then cry discriminating for being part of the biggest religious group in the US.
This woman saw that she had a trans woman in front of her and decided to try and ruin that trans woman's life to kickstart her own career in the reactionary talk show and podcast circuit. She already had an appearance on Fox, iirc.
This was planned, and what she wanted, and her victim did nothing wrong and was STILL placed on leave simply for happening to be trans. Since when are people just placed on leave when someone challenges a paper worth 3% of the final grade, especially when it is a paper so clearly intentionally written to be offensive, and to be failed? She was abandoned by her University, so so this fucking vulture can make her name for robbing a trans woman's life.
The student responsible for this originally "broke the story" through notable corpse Charlie Kirk's TP USA, and now TP USA is already promoting events where she will be speaking. This is was literally all a publicity stunt where the worst people on earth took advantage of the fact that everyone in power is a coward who would much rather destroy the life of a trans woman than stand up for her
So this thread has a lot of what my mom and her colleagues have been seeing over the past few years. But as my mom says, the solution here isn’t to keep dumbing everything down and keep destroying standards, if for no other reason, because it doesn’t work. Like this person said, it’s really not about accessibility. These students aren’t unable to do the work, they’re unwilling, and I think it’s due to what I’ve been saying for years: students have a “the customer is always right” mindset and sense of entitlement towards higher education. As someone who actually finished her degrees during the pandemic, I’m sick to death of people acting like all of this is because of trauma. Be so fucking real right now. Every generation goes through hardships. But we’re seeing an entitlement epidemic where students show up, demand college classes be as easy as possible, refuse to do anything remotely challenging, and demand to get good grades despite poor attendance, cheating with AI, and missing deadlines. I do not believe goalposts should be moved and standards should be lowered for people who refuse to even try, because that’s just rewarding bad behavior. When two students showed up to my mom’s office and said they need more time on quizzes because they don’t do the readings, her response wasn’t to give them more time, but “no, you need to do the readings.” I’ve said it a million times but keeping deadlines and actually showing up somewhere when you’re supposed to is one of the cores of functioning as an adult, that’s part of what college is supposed to prepare you for, and students shouldn’t be able to do no work and miss a good chunk of class and receive a good grade—like wtf are we doing here, then, if you don’t have to demonstrate you actually learned anything to get an A? But these students think they’re entitled to an A just by virtue of registering for the course
And again, making the assignments easier doesn’t reduce AI cheating because that’s not why the students are cheating. Contrary to what people on tumblr say, cheating students aren’t poor little meow-meows. They’re cheating because they’re lazy and entitled. I know from experience that this site screams and cries when you say that, because all of the discourse on here revolves around justifying people’s bad behavior and absolving them of any responsibility, but like I said before, students cheat with AI on ungraded drafts in my mom’s classes—drafts intended to be a low-stakes way for students to practice writing. Their AI usage has nothing to do with being fearful of bad grades, but instead a complete and utter unwillingness to do the work assigned to them in a class they signed up for. (I do think universities that encourage AI usage, as bsky OP mentioned, are absolutely a problem here though! Stop lowering standards ffs!)
If social media contributes to this problem, I think it’s because these entitled students have a bunch of enabling rhetoric online reassuring them that their bullshit is okay and they weaponize therapy speak they learned on tiktok to their professors who, god forbid, treat them like adults and try to hold them accountable. And I feel like that’s what’s missing in this thread, like, oh my god, these people are adults. These are not middle schoolers. Adults are responsible for their actions and should face consequences for them. Babying and coddling these adults and acting like it’s completely reasonable for them not to read a book in college is part of why they’re getting away with it! They don’t do the reading? Guess what: they fail. That’s how life works—or it should, as opposed to “oh darn I guess I can’t include any books in the syllabus for my reading/writing class anymore.” Like come on. I know this will set off this anti-intellectual website in particular but no one is a victim because they refuse to read a book! (And no, I’m not talking about people with disabilities who can’t read, so don’t even try.) Like, students refuse to read anything that isn’t tech-based? Then they fucking fail and waste their tuition money. Yes, this addictive tech is a huge problem, but it doesn’t resolve you of all responsibility. Put down the phone and fucking read.
Maybe these adults throwing temper tantrums over basic schoolwork need to face consequences, and maybe these adults are like this because they’re used to a lifetime of teachers bending over backwards to meet their demands after their mommies got on the phone and yelled at the teachers for giving them a bad grade; you don’t know how often my mom comes home from work and says “I can’t believe I’m the first person who ever told these students ‘no.’ Where do these childhoods come from???”
But students are not victims because they refuse to do any assignment that doesn’t personally entertain them, and it’s an incredibly childish mindset. As my mom tells students when they complain a text was boring: “I don’t care. I’m not here to entertain you.” Adult life is full of having to do shit you don’t want to!
And there’s this addition
Which, yes! Again, this is the core of the problem: they don’t care enough to look at assignment instructions. And I don’t think their laziness and apathy should be accommodated
tl;dr I think this thread brings up real problems, but universities coddling this bad behavior from entitled adults only makes the problem worse, adult students should face adults consequences, and standards exist for a fucking reason and shouldn’t be lowered for people who refuse to try. And btw, my mom still has plenty of hardworking students who do well in her classes with all the same access to social media, so, #notallstudents. It’s a choice, and professors are still willing to help the students who try (and to reiterate: this isn’t about students who truly need accommodations, this about neurotypical students who genuinely refuse to do anything)
Not only should teachers be paid more, they should have paid work hours dedicated to lesson planning and paperwork. Drops mic and walks away
There’s a non insignificant number of adults who don’t know you’re allowed to learn stuff outside of school.
medusadyke
academic dishonesty is not something you can spin as moral lol i do not want to share a career field let alone a social sphere with a bunch of chatgpt using ass bitches
medusadyke
"you're just scared your diploma is going to devalue" i'm afraid you dumb bitches are going to become my colleagues and drag social services to hell
"i don't care if they make their whole way though uni with chatgpt" i think you guys are so internetpilled that you have forgotten there are actual jobs out there that require people to know what they are doing in any way possible or else people die
i know a lot of people study just to get paid well but girl this is engineering be for fucking real take this seriously
ALT114 people died in the Hyatt Regency collapse, and in the US it's the third largest structural collapse fatality count, behind 9/11 and the Pemberton Mill collapse in 1860.
I've learned about this tragedy in my physics classes, to demonstrate tensile strength, and as a reminder about the importance of calculations being done right. I've also learned about it in my legal classes as an example of construction defect lawsuits. I've seen it referenced in disaster response classes.
Between AI and the current Presidential administration, we're barrelling right back towards this nightmare.
ALTThere are multiple errors that resulted in this collapse, but these stand out to me:
1. Kansas City was facing high unemployment and needed to attract jobs and business into the city. So the planning and inspection departments may have looked too closely at the designs.
2. An engineering firm too lazy to double check their designs or design changes by the manufacturer before approving them. The error that resulted in the collapse was one that the owner of the engineering firm said that a "first year engineering student" would spot.
3. The steel manufacturer treating preliminary plans as final plans, not verifying the math on their end.
The bridges' original design could only hold 60% of the minimum load required by city code. The design changes recommended by the manufacturer halved that. Less than a year and 3 weeks from opening to the public, the whole thing collapse.
Articles about the collapse say that everyone "trusted" the other party to have done the calculations correctly.
A significant portion of the population trusts what the computer or AI tells them, without checking. Imprecisely calibrated AI hallucinate information. The US economy is going into a downturn and federal regulatory agencies are being gutted.
We are going to see the Hyatt Regency Collapse repeat over and over for decades, not just in buildings, but in medicine, manufacturing, the environment, etc.
Some of this we're just going to have to weather, but the message for AI users comes straight from IBM (once the world's leading computer manufacturer) back in 1979:
"A Computer Cannot Be Held Accountable. Therefore A Computer Should Never Make A Management Decision."
The owner of the engineering firm that designed the Hyatt Regency spent the rest of his life lecturing on the disaster, to serve as a warning to his fellow engineers about the real-life consequences of sloppy design.
I don't think Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk will have the courage or the honor to do that when OpenAI / Meta / xAI are responsible for getting people killed.
So if you're going to blindly trust the AI to do critical work tasks, I hope you're prepared to be making an apology tour for the rest of your life if it all goes wrong.
Don’t join the army to get free college. First two years of community college is free. Peace corps and Americorps have scholarships and student loan forgiveness programs for their volunteers. If you’re not rich you probably qualify for Pell grants. Go to a state college. They teach you the same things they do at fancy colleges. Sometimes there’s scholarships for people of a certain background. Ethnicity. Sexuality. Gender. Religion. Go to a grad school that’ll give you free tuition for working there as a teacher or assistant. Become a stripper or something. Just don’t join the army.
If you want to do something structured and physical for a few years and see the world like do a working holiday in Australia or something. Join the peace corps and do some agricultural work with them. Volunteer with some other overseas organization that’s setting up infrastructure in poor countries. Spend a summer in Alaska working in fishing or Arctic tourism. See if you qualify to be a United Nations volunteer. Work on a ranch. Become an apprentice to a welder or electrician. Train to become a ship captain. Just don’t join the army.
