I've spotted a huge decline over the last two years. What's upsetting is how so many of our current third years have declined since their first year. I did a seminar with them the other day, on the topic of the environmental impacts of different diets. One guy told me confidently that there would be no additional agricultural lands if we all went vegetarian.

"Cool," I said. "What's your source for that?"

"I'm sure I read it," he said.

"Fair," said I, "go and look it up. Find an academic source, let's assess it to see if it's robust."

The first thing he did was go to Google, and then read the AI summary.

"That's not a source," I said. "Find me a source."

Five minutes later, he happily tells me that a Guardian article says so, and mentions the World Economic Forum.

"Okay," I said. "Neither of those are academic sources, and the WEF is secondary anyway. Go to Google Scholar, and find a journal article."

Ten minutes later, he tells me he can only find articles that say it's a very complex issue in spite of pop cultural received wisdom, and we don't actually know.

A THIRD YEAR. This man has a dissertation due in THREE MONTHS. This is a skill we taught him in first year, and it's all dribbled out of his ears in the quest for easy summaries from an autocomplete algorithm. And I dearly wish I could say he's an exception, but Jesus Christ, that would be a lie.

I'm currently writing a lecture for the second years for their research methods module, and I normally wouldn't need to do this. But I'm having to re-introduce them to the basic concepts of how to actually analyse findings rather than lazily take whatever they seem to say at face value. I'm trying to find a good paper that had Surprising findings, because I want to show them a research question and a set of results and then get them to speculate and research on why they found something so different, but that's a difficult thing to search for.

They're the pickiest because they only eat things they can catch by plunging into at least six feet of water feet-first and are as close to their maximum carrying capacity as possible, to maximize calories-per-trip.

They're the Least Picky because so long as something fits those parameters, Osprey will go for it.

He's captured truly stunning images and video of ospreys over the years! You can check out his videos here: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkSmithphotography

Here's more of the osprey with the shark (a bonnethead, not a hammerhead), too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahXFtVJ2QCk

And I clutch the little warm tubes of blood and feel this sick person warming my hands and I think about how kind you might be and how I wish I could hold your hand and how badly, how really really badly, I want you to get better and stay warm and hold someone’s hand again.

And anyway sometimes it’s better to not think so vividly about the people I’m doing tests for. I’m a good little cog in a vast machine of people all trying to heal and cure, and my cog feels so fucking small sometimes. But I hope the blood I prepare for you helps you breathe better and laugh and wake up feeling well rested.

but instead i started with "pop quiz: do you know which books the nazis burned first? yeah, don't worry, most people don't. there was this gay jewish guy who created the Institute of Sex Research where, among many other sex-related services, he interviewed people from all walks of life, collected scientific data on the topic of sex, sexuality, and gender expression, and performed transition surgeries, even made an effort to hire his trans patients so they could have stability. anyway it was this institute's books on what we now call LGBTQIA+ people that was the first casualty, and the institute itself was shut down"

then i hit him with the "everyone's comparing the kansas law to nazi germany and how jewish people had their documents invalidated, but that was in 1938, and it's only 'similar.' the truth is that in 1933, the nazis invalidated trans people's documents. yup, five years earlier. yup, not just 'similar' but exactly what kansas did, invalidated documents that allowed trans people to live as safely as possible"

so then i threw in my pet bugbears (education enhancement, marginalized narratives, etc.) and said we need legislation that queer history must be included in the curriculum when teaching about ww2 bc i think it's fucking STUPID to be like "nazis are bad bc they burned books" but never even know WHICH books. don't @ me. i'm right. it's stupid and should be included along with everything else bc we're a part of everything else. i'm tired of still fighting an uphill battle for gay rights bc idiots think we used to not exist or whatever. ditto trans rights. ditto people who are like "white people are the only innovators" bc like?? they just have personally never heard of any innovators that weren't white. like we can't keep fighting against total and utter incomprehension of basic reality

anyway. then i obviously finally got around to "yeah, so make sure that kansas shit doesn't happen here."

(my reps' phone people must LOVE me. /s)

but i feel like i had a good productive phone call that took the guy taking calls completely off-guard and really engaged him intellectually by leading with that question, so i feel like i've upped the chances of him advocating the concern properly to the representative