Have you noticed that JD Vance ends up assigned only the tasks he is guaranteed to fail? Not only because he’s useless but because the tasks are unfulfillable.
It’s enjoyable to watch.
Those Who Show Up
And by the way, I have very little resentment towards the administration. When people have a strategy that they actively pursue, even if it’s hostile to my interests, I can respect that. The administrators were all here on campus every day during COVID starting on the day when the university reopened. I respect that. Administrators come to every event. I can’t get any professors to come to support their own students at the undergraduate research showcase. But the administrators are always there. Zero colleagues come to the presentations I organize at the International Studies Day. But there’s always somebody there from the Dean’s Office, asking questions, being actively engaged. Administrators are on campus on Fridays when professors treat Fridays like a part of the weekend, refusing even to answer emails on that day. They are always there during all events with students, 100% attendance.
It’s hard to be too upset with people who at least show up.
Boomer Joy
I know when all joy went out of my job as department chair. It was when the Boomers retired. Once the last one left, all I had was people who wanted to work as little as possible, work only remotely, come to campus twice a week at most, teach only the same old courses to avoid preparing new ones, assign as much stuff from self-grading digital textbooks, use pre-canned tests from those digital textbooks, and who have zero buy in into the future of the department or the institution.
Boomers were the soul of the university. Their retirements coincided with the post-COVID era when people discovered that they don’t like working. Moderate-effort workers turned into low-effort while the low-effort ones went aggressively zero effort.
God Help Hungary
On the subject of Orban in Hungary, he absolutely stinks and is disgusting. But the ways in which the liberal opposition in the EU tries to remove him also stink and are disgusting. This is the clearest situation of both options being worse. When you are choosing between the Russian hatred of everything good and the leftist hatred of everything good, that’s a sad situation.
God help Hungary.
He Is Risen
We had on of the catechumens read in Arabic during the Paschal service. Now I wonder what he is converting from.
In any case, what a wonderful day. Let’s celebrate triumph over death.
A Roundabout Way
“You know how you often go to restaurants with your friend Maria?” N asks.
“Yes.”
“I also want to go to a restaurant with Maria.”
“With my friend Maria?”
“No, with my friend Maria.”
“But you don’t have a friend called Maria.”
“Exactly!”
“Honey, what do you want?” I ask.
“I want to go to a restaurant with a friend but since I don’t have a friend, I’d like to go by myself.”
Students and AI
I have observed no change in how students learn as a result of AI. There are some attempts to cheat but they are in the same scope as 10 or 20 years ago. People on social media report observing massive changes in retention or attention spans. I haven’t seen anything of the kind.
Students almost invariably use AI as a limited-function Google. They aren’t very good at using it. I’m not seeing anything even marginally different in students, let alone anything catastrophic. It’s enormously easier to teach Zoomers than Millennials but this is not related to technology.
I have no idea where people find all this massive cognitive damage from AI they keep talking about. In my teaching, AI has the most marginal presence imaginable. I teach a lot in the computer lab. I tell students “use anything you want for the assignment.” They almost always go directly to Wordreference.com or Reverso.com.
Vigorous Talking
Yesterday, I took Klara to the kid’s gym, the playground and the bookstore. Throughout the trip that lasted almost 3 hours, she narrated, with a wealth of details, the story of a field trip she took with her class last year. After 3 hours of non-stop talking accompanied by vigorous physical exercise, she dropped into bed and was asleep within seconds.
Kids are hilarious.
The Wrong Baby
After I posted the video of the toddlers, I saw online that people have a completely different interpretation of what they are seeing. For some, the whiny loser baby demonstrates tenacity and desire for achievement. As if people who wanted achievement sat on their butts wailing and trying to attract attention.
The video is likely AI but the reactions are very human. People assume that somebody who whines the most is the person who wants something the most. But that’s crap. The ones who really want work on it in quiet concentration.
Great Symbolism
The boys in the video perfectly symbolize the dynamic between me and my colleagues:
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