Whatever Is On My Mind

“But it’s confusing!” If you take the time to educate yourself it’ll no longer be confusing. Otherwise you’re just gonna have to learn to be ok with being confused.

“But it’s weird!” You probably do weird things all the time. Everyone does weird things sometimes. Life goes on.

“But it scares me!” Is it hurting you? No? You’ll be fine. Being scared and being harmed are not always the same thing. Learn to tell the difference and then act accordingly.

I still pay my dads phone bill cus I don't want anyone else to have his number

I have my dad's wallet where he has $37 and 3 years later, no matter how broke I am, I have not touched that money.

My grandpa asked for a KitKat the day before he passed, I got it for him but he never got to eat it. It's been in my fridge ever since.

When my daughter died, she had a carton of ice cream in the freezer. I would open it to look at the spoon tracks raked across the surface. It was comforting... like she was still there.

Mt brother was murdered in 2012. I still have a pair of his clothes in case it was all a mistake and he needs something to wear when he finds his way back to us.

My husbands phone line is still active after 2 years. His body wash, toothbrush, shampoo are all still in the same place he left them. Makes me feel like he will be back to use them again.

Before my mom passed she put a chocolate Christmas's tree in the fridge and said "no one eat this please it's mine!". When we moved it moved with us and will be in my fridge forever.

I still buy my dad something every year for Fathers Day. It's been fifty years. (Rose emoji)

I still have a body powder that he gave me when I was 6. I applied a little bit in my wedding day at 19.

I have the last meal my little sister cooked in the freezer. I miss her so much

The whiteboard in our house that my dad would write things on still has his handwriting on it from the last thing he wrote (three two hearts emojis) he's been gone almost 10 years, I miss him (smiling face with halo emoji)

My dad left me his car in 2019 when he passed. The trunk is full of beach towels and coats and hats. He was always prepared for any weather. Now I am too.

My dad passed away 22 years ago and I still have a jar of the last batch of jam he ever made in my fridge.

We emptied out the container of my moms coffee creamer and filled it with water and it's been in the fridge for nine years

my sister's still in my favorite contacts. she's been gone since 2016 & i've gotten at least 4 new phones...

He came home siging:

I hate you, you hate me

Let's go out and kill Barney

With a big shotgun, shoot him in the head

On top of Old Smokey

Where the skies are so blue

I shot Barney's head off

aesthetics of a community center basement

everyone goes to hell no matter what

you get out of hell through extreme effort via trial and error and contemplation, which is a type of effort, like they are developing some sort of ethic, maybe for work

Hell is the guy in charge (who is doing it wrong)

the Enlightenment is involved

Hazbin Hotel

over the top aesthetics

only really bad terrible people go to hell but that is still most of them

You get out of hell through martyrdom, maybe like a saint. if you think about it. and maybe it's kinda hot

Hell is other people (who are mostly weird perverts)

And it turned out I also couldn't watch the movie. I fell asleep in class both days we were watching it.

This, of course, meant I had to cheat on my essay.

And I got an A.

The essay was to compare the book and the movie and discuss the changes and how that affected the story.

Well it turned out Sparknotes had an entire section devoted to comparing and contrasting the book and the movie. Using that, and flipping to pages mentioned in Sparknotes to read sections of the book, I was able to bullshit an A paper.

But see the thing is, that this kind of 'cheating' still takes skills, you still learn things.

I had to know how to find the information I needed, I needed to be able to comprehend what sparknotes was saying and the analysis they did, I needed to know how to USE the information I read there to write an essay, I needed to know how to make sure none of it was marked as plagerized. I had to form an opinion on the sparknotes analysis so I could express my own opinions in the essay.

Was it cheating? Yeah, I didn't read the book or watch the movie. I used Sparknotes. It was a lot less work than if I had read the book and watched the movie and done it all myself.

The thing is though, I still had to use my fucking brain. Being able to bullshit an essay like that is a skill in and of itself that is useful. I exercised important skills, and even if it wasnt the intended way I still learned.

ChatGTP and other AI do not give that experience to people, people have to do nothing and gain nothing from it.

Using AI is absolutely different from other ways students have cheated in the past, and I stand by my opinion that its making students dumber, more helpless, and less capable.

So I had a passing knowledge of ww2, as much as anyone, so i figured that I could bluff the context around Churchill and just get some of his details down and I'd be fine.

So I pulled his Wikipedia up and read it. Didn't have time to write a speech, this was gonna be adlib. Then I jumped on google images and pulled a picture that reflected one thing from each of his Wikipedia sections (like, early life (picture of a train set) education (Churchill graduating) early war (you get the idea).

Bunged the pictures into a powerpoint and read the Wikipedia again with the powerpoint alongside, adding subheadings to jog my memory. Pulled a couple links from the bottom of the wiki for the bibliography, opened and skimmed to make sure they weren't wild, and saved the damn thing

We were lining up outside class for history and the guys in the class are telling some classmates about how I'd just smashed out my whole presentation. I asked everyone to let me go first since the knowledge wasn't gonna last long, I was going off having just read Churchill's wiki lol

They all agreed (champions) and one of the girls said she'd read up on Churchill a bit on her presentation about the Queen, so she promised to nod or shake her head if I was completely wrong.

I presented. I know I spent a minute on each slide and spoke relevantly. I remember at one point saying Churchill excelled in school, saw my classmate was shaking her head, and pivoted to say he didn't do well with formal education but got into some of the extracurricular activities that'd benefit him come war time. She nodded. I continued lol. One of the lads complimented me on that one afterwards

I don't think I learnt much about Churchill with this study. But I absolutely learnt about public speaking. I was using skills in research and apply my contextual knowledge. I also learnt to rely on classmates, even tho we weren't friends at all she had my back because it was easy and kind and cost her nothing

I got a B+ and a comment about being one of the more engaging and charismatic presenters (that would've been the adrenaline, and my classmates were watching fascinated to see if I could pull it off lol).

But I COULD write a coherent paper in 45 minutes, which is about the time it took me to slap together a dirty outline and fill it in, the way I had been taught to do in high school in my writing class. It wasn't gonna win any awards but it meant a B+ instead of a zero, and it meant I had an opportunity to work under pressure and practice skills I had learned. Skills I STILL use to this day, skills I have taught to others. Skills I use to help others edit papers. Skills I would not have and certainly wouldn't have been able to hone if chatGPT was doing it poorly instead.

The pieces that were stolen are among the very few (for a European collection) pieces of French royal jewelry remaining in public collections in France, and are more likely than not going to be dismantled for their gems really fast so lost forever. Their historical and cultural value is incalculable, because, again, we simply do not have a lot of French royal jewelry.

Even most worryingly, the Louvre which is the biggest museum in the world and one (if not the) most visited museum, is probably the French museum making the most money (sorry for the link to the Figaro, but this article is in fact full of interesting data). That such a theft can happen at the Louvre probably means that all the collections presented in French public museums are in danger of being robbed.

I care about the work of incredibly skilled artists that can teach us so much about their methods and lives and world being taken away from the public