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Whenever I think about students using AI, I think about an essay I did in high school. Now see, we were reading The Grapes of Wrath, and I just couldn't do it. I got 25 pages in and my brain refused to read any more. I hated it. And its not like I hate the classics, I loved English class and I loved reading. I had even enjoyed Of Mice and Men, which I had read for fun. For some reason though, I absolutely could NOT read The Grapes of Wrath.
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.
However you feel about higher education, I think its undeniable that students using chatgtp is to their detriment. And by extension a detriment to anyone they work with or anyone who has to rely on them for something.
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize thereâs nothing in there. Not metaphoricallyâthe armor is literally empty. It doesnât appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body mightâve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what heâll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy whoâs got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didnât say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. Iâm not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. Weâre pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures Iâd put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so Iâm not sure why I asked.
Thereâs not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs Iâve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though Iâve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where itâs barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, Iâll never understand. But itâs a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. Itâs like heâs watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. Iâm careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. Thereâs no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like heâs looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. Thereâs nothing there. I ask him whatâs wrong, and again he points. Itâs the most emotion Iâve ever seen from him, and itâs barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When Iâm finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesnât put it on right away. I ask him if somethingâs still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I canât add anything else. Even if he could ask, thereâs no room left.
Next time he comes back, thereâs nothing wrong with his armorâhe lets me check to make sure. I ask him what heâs doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. Itâs in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but Iâll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but Iâm not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. Itâs candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. Itâs flavored with cinnamon. Iâm surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but itâs my own fault so I canât complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him Iâll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave itâs dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where heâs going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when Iâve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesnât move to leave.
I ask if heâs going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know heâs not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him Iâm grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him Iâve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him itâs a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone elseâs empty armor with trinkets. Iâm not sure if thatâs really why he does it. I tell him I donât have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. Iâm not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe itâs nothing at all.
â
I didnât edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
*sighs heavily* it would be nice to have a day when every event on earth isnât turned into this, but alas. seeing this start as a trickle of whining last night and become a deluge of rage today speaks to the place weâre in societally.
this isnât about the wedding or the bride and groom or opinions about anything else. they simply had a handful of Jewish guests and a Jewish officiant, and that is drawing intense levels of hatred and scrutiny under the tattered veil of âantizionism.â itâs convenient that the guests being eviscerated for this are just Jews.
the underlying desire here is to stop Jews from existing in public. idc if that sounds dramatic, weâre seeing it constantly. pop culture is a wealthy microcosm, but this is no different than accosting Jews on the street because theyâre wearing a kippah or banning the Star of David from Pride, no different from painting swastikas on Holocaust memorials. they do not believe that Jews should be able to comfortably exist, experience life, and be welcomed anywhere without being interrogated and forced to endure either litmus tests or slurs and dehumanization.
we saw this same commentary recently aimed at Jews who attended Knicks games. using hating on Jewish celebrities (for nothing more than being in public) to normalize it is part of the tactic to make that discrimination more palatable.
this ire at Adam Sandler and several of the other Jewish guests is the same ire that saw Scott Wiener harassed and thrown out of a Pride March despite his political record, the same ire that sees Jewish businesses vandalized, the same ire that firebombs synagogues, and ultimately the same ire that leads to Jews being hunted down on a beach or at a museum or at a music festival.
weâve been there for a while tbh, and because thereâs been virtually no pushback against it (except from the Jewish community, who no one will listen to), itâs gotten increasingly worse. seeing this go viral on every platform today is peak derangement.
the accounts driving this are violently antisemitic, and the support of it is intentional demonizing of Jews. itâs frightening how well itâs working.
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It took me about 15 seconds in to realize what was happening in this vid, but the second I did, I legit came. This is⌠I got chills and got so much validation for my theories about tap and pretty much any genre of music hereâŚ
Theyâre tap dancing, a kind of dancing typically associated with being old-fashioned and kind of silly. Personally, even tap dancing to old music is awesome in my eyes, but this is on a totally new and exciting level
The thing about tap is that itâs so often seen as a fancy, old-fashioned dainty dance that only posh (and generally white) people do in tuxedos but it didnât used to be the case.
Way back in the early days, it was where black performers in Vaudeville were legendary for it in Jazz and Jive routines. At about 1:37, this is where the Nicholas brothers go off.
Itâs such an expressive and joyful kind of dance and matches so well with hip hop beats and rhythm, which is why the modern reworking of it is so awesome.
Im sure a lot of people also watch the op video and they assume that âclapâ sound is part of the music just because a LOT of modern music samples that sound and in some music it is just the sound of hands clapping, but no that is a sound being made by all their shoes at once.
I am gritting my teeth at the mere suggestion that tap is primarily associated with dainty white people.
Tap is a distinctive American art form that comes from a blending of African dance traditions with Irish dance traditions. It was developed by Black and white dancers and came up alongside and deeply entwined with jazz.
Certainly the tap that ends up in musical theater often seems old-fashioned and white but thatâs a musical theater issue, not a tap issue. That is only one small part of tap, which continues to have a strong African-American tradition.
The Nicholas Brothers, above, are in a clip from the film Stormy Weather, which has an almost entirely African-American cast. Some of the other scenes in the film include Bill âBojanglesâ Robinson, one of the greatest tap artists of all time. He was very well-known generally and was in quite a few Shirley Temple movies in his day. (Shirley Temple, herself, was a tap dancer â which Iâll be real is probably contributing to people thinking itâs old-fashioned and white, because itâs easy to forget the Black man dancing alongside her, I guess.)
Hereâs Bill Robinson with Cab Calloway in Stormy Weather â heâs performing a variation of his famous âstair danceâ in parts of this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY3fbvBRiaM
Hereâs probably the most widely famous version of the âstair danceâ, from The Little Colonel:
Thereâve been a lot of white tap dancers through the years â see, for example, everyoneâs favorite clip of two men torturing a speech therapist:
⌠but a lot of its most famous practitioners have been Black and itâs weird to me that people donât know that.
Today Iâd like to talk a little about Savion Glover, who is one of (if not THE MOST) famous living tap artists. This is from 2002:
and this from 2014-ish:
And if you are saying, well, I never heard of this guy, I guess today you are going to learn about this guy. But I bet you know THIS guy:
Mumbleâs dance is choreographed by, and mo-capped from, Savion Glover.
This guy. This guy is SKILLED, ok? Heâs in his 50s now; heâs been a professional tapper for over FORTY YEARS â he made his Broadway debut at age 11. Heâs in that movie, Tap, that I linked a clip from above. Sometimes his tap seems a little old-fashioned â other times it is like nothing youâve ever seen before. This is intentional â heâs paying tribute to his teachers and tappers of the past by learning and performing their signature moves, but also heâs got his own style.
It is absolutely worth going through whatever you can find on YouTube. Look for âBring in da Noise, Bring in da Funkâ â he was Tony nominated for the choreo & his performances in this musical. (The MDA telethon performance above is an excerpt â he did these for several years on the telethon.)
I like this one, because you can watch modern African-American tap alongside modern-traditional Irish dance and you can see that these are related, but distinct, art forms. They share a common ancestor, but theyâre also so different. Right around 4 minutes, Colin Dunne (the man in the cover image below) and Savion Glover start dancing together, trading off, and itâs AMAZING.
Sidenote, if anyone ever hears of a revival of âBring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk,â please tell me, I want to see it liiiiiiive.
Letâs finish off with Gloverâs special guest performance at the Stockholm International Tap Dance Festival last year:
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on another note, watched The Mummy (1999) the other day and I couldnât help feel like the OâConnells and the Addams (Addams Family Values (1993) would get on really well ya know? The OâConnells are basically the pastel adventure version of the Addams, surely they would just be vibinâ over tea and crumpets in an extremely haunted mansion having a ball of a time
*Rick and Gomez, still frantically sword fighting*
Rick: Have I mentioned how wonderful my wife is yet, I really feel like I havenât really expanded enough on how wonderful she is
Gomez: do go on, I would be delighted to hear about how wonderful your wife is, I strongly encourge all men to extoll the virtues of their wives with rapturous praise, however I should perhaps mention my wife is in fact better
*sword fighting intensifies as both men rapturously extoll the virtues of their wives*
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Rosalies Medieval Woman, one of my favorite online historical resources, is no longer active as a historical/reenactment resources, as Rosalie Gilbert has stepped back from reenactment. The site-as-was is fortunately still viewable via the Wayback Machine (some pictures are missing).
stormborns
tangentwithtanner
titsay
gummygunk
janainaart
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ellievsbear
annaxmalina
