laz, laza, lazae

but he does pick up instruments somewhat easily, and the catholic church and the history of music are inextricably intertwined. so while nicky can't write lyrics he can write music.

cue centuries later, nile has fully cottoned on to the fact that joe's "let me show the great art museums" tour is really just about trying to remember where all his art of nicky ended up, spontaneously slips into a symphony show. the featured pieces include anonymous works written for my guiding light, and nile realizes nicky was humming the same melody when he was making yesterday's dinner.

When I asked why, a student answered honestly: It was too long, and she kept losing track of what the paper was about. This was not a remedial class: These were students who had cleared the admissions process and written essays good enough to get them here. Yet a routine academic reading assignment had defeated them.

Every generation of professors has complained that their students cannot read. The lament is usually overblown, but data have caught up to anecdote, and what I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch. There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires.

In February 2024, Adam Kotsko, who teaches in the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College, wrote in Slate that students who once handled 30 pages of reading per class meeting now seem “intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding.” Crucially, he added that this is “not a matter of laziness on the part of the students” but of underlying skills they were never given a chance to build.

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s 2024 investigation found the same pattern across institutions as different as the Stevens Institute of Technology and Wellesley College, where the average SAT exceeds 1400. Nicholaus Gutierrez, an assistant professor at Wellesley, told The Chronicle that the baseline for what students consider a reasonable amount of work has dropped so noticeably that he has cut his readings accordingly; a 750-word essay now strikes many students as long. At Stevens, the science and technology studies associate professor Theresa MacPhail described following the mantra of “meet your students where they are” for so long that she has begun to feel “like a cruise director organizing games of shuffleboard.”

Worse, the national data tell the same story in colder language. On the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing assessment, which is the most recent comprehensive writing benchmark, only 24 percent of 12th graders reached the Proficient level, and just 3 percent reached Advanced; another 21 percent scored below Basic. The reading side of the ledger is worse, and getting worse fast: The 2024 NAEP results released in September 2025 show 12th-grade reading scores at the lowest level recorded since the assessment began in 1992. Thirty-two percent of 12th graders now score below NAEP Basic in reading, meaning that, in the assessment’s own language, they likely “cannot draw general conclusions based on concepts presented explicitly in a text.” And yet more than half of these same seniors reported being accepted to a four-year college. That last sentence is the whole problem in one line: We are admitting a cohort that cannot read at a college level and are pretending otherwise.

Why is this happening? One reason, of course, is smartphones.

I came into teaching as a skeptic of the anti-smartphone argument: I had a phone in my pocket throughout high school and college in the 2010s, and I read long books anyway. I now think I was wrong, because the neuroscience has caught up. In a 2017 paper, Adrian F. Ward and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business showed that the mere presence of a participant’s smartphone — whether that be face down, powered off, untouched, or across the desk out of vision — measurably reduces available working memory and fluid intelligence on cognitive tests, with the largest effects on the most phone-dependent users. A 2022 study by Motoyasu Honma and colleagues at Japan’s Showa University used near-infrared spectroscopy to compare reading on a smartphone with reading the same passage on paper, and found that smartphone reading produced overactivity in the prefrontal cortex, suppressed sigh generation, and led to general lower comprehension scores; the authors argued that the sigh inhibition and prefrontal overload were causally linked to the comprehension decline.

So when a student tells me they “kept losing track” of a 20-page article, I have to acknowledge that they may be describing a measurable neurological condition. The neural pathways that support sustained attention are built by use, and they atrophy without it. Your body is a use-it-or-lose-it system, and the brain is no exception.

Another reason for the decline in student reading capability is increasing reliance on generative AI. In June 2025, Nataliya Kosmyna and colleagues at the MIT Media Lab released a preprint titled “Your Brain on ChatGPT.” They divided 54 participants into three groups writing SAT-style essays — one using ChatGPT, the second group using a search engine, the last group using nothing — and monitored brain activity with a 32-channel EEG. The ChatGPT group showed the lowest neural connectivity of the three, with up to 55 percent reduced connectivity compared with the brain-only group, and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.” Eighty-three percent of LLM users could not quote a single line from essays they had written minutes earlier. When the LLM group was forced to write without AI in a follow-up session, their brain activity did not bounce back to baseline; the researchers coined the term “cognitive debt” for the lingering deficit.

This is the first neurophysiological evidence that early reliance on LLMs measurably alters the brain’s engagement with writing tasks, and it is consistent with what those of us in front of classrooms are watching happen in real time. When I assign analysis, I am not trying to extract a polished product; I am trying to put the student’s mind through resistance in order to make it stronger. Offloading the struggle to a chatbot does not “free students up for higher-order work.” It deprives them of building the strength to do any substantial cognitive work at all.

There is a final factor that is contributing to this decline in reading skills, and that is that the students arriving in my classroom today are the first cohort to have experienced Common Core-influenced reading instruction across the entirety of their K–12 schooling. Whatever the standards’ original intent, the on-the-ground implementation in many districts replaced sustained reading with the practice of pulling “evidence” from disconnected short passages, the same format used on the standardized tests that increasingly determine school funding. The education scholar Natalie Wexler, among others, has documented this pivot in detail: Students drilled on “finding the main idea” in two-paragraph excerpts never build the stamina or background knowledge that longform reading requires. The pandemic then added fuel to a fire that was already burning. NAEP scores for 13-year-olds dropped sharply in 2022 and have not recovered. A 2023 EdWeek survey found that 24 percent of secondary-school administrators described pandemic learning loss in English and language arts as “severe or very severe.”

In July 2025, the journalist Mary Harrington argued in The New York Times that “thinking is becoming a luxury good.” The ability to read deeply and reason at length is fragmenting along class lines as ultra-processed digital media replaces text in everyday life, much as ultra-processed food has replaced cooking. Her longer treatment of the subject in First Things makes the more provocative case that we are witnessing the end of print culture itself, and with it the end of the cognitive substrate on which modern liberal democracy was built.

I see this stratification in the classroom and on the page every week. My students from districts that protected sustained reading through small class sizes, strict phone policies, and faculty who refused to teach to the test all arrive with their attention relatively intact. My students from districts that surrendered to devices and standardized testing arrive cognitively winded. A democracy that requires a literate electorate is now training one fraction of that electorate out of literacy while marketing to the other a “deep work” lifestyle as a luxury good. The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow.

I do what I can in my own classroom to address the problems. I break 20-page articles into two halves and assign the first half with explicit analytical tasks. I require exploratory writing before formal drafts. I model (visibly, on the board) how to track an argument across pages or distinguish a source’s claim from my own analysis. I make structured peer review explicit, because the workshop format I used to take for granted now collapses into “this is good” and “maybe add more details” the moment I step back.

But I want to be plain about the limits of what an individual instructor can do, and all of these solutions have costs. Scaffolding a 20-page article into halves compromises the integrity of the argument I am asking students to engage, just as modeling note-taking in a credit-bearing rhetoric course is using a college slot to teach a middle-school skill. None of the syllabi I teach are designed to deliver this type of cognitive rehabilitation, and pretending otherwise has produced credential inflation. We cannot keep conferring degrees on students who cannot do what the degree is supposed to certify.

I’m afraid I don’t have answers. I do, however, have some questions that may point us in the right direction. If higher education is going to respond to the reading crisis as a structural problem rather than a private burden carried by composition instructors and adjuncts, it has to stop avoiding the following questions: If a majority of incoming students cannot read at a level the curriculum requires, are we admitting students we cannot serve, or offering a curriculum we cannot provide?

Why are first-year writing and reading-intensive general-education courses still the most adjunctified, lowest-paid, highest-load corner of the university, at the precise moment when their work has become the most important work the institution does? What is the responsible institutional response for AI usage: Is it a syllabus statement, or a sequencing principle that requires students to demonstrate the cognitive work themselves before AI assistance is permitted?

Why are most college classrooms still phone-permissive by default? K–12 districts from Florida to California are now banning phones bell to bell; higher education has somehow lagged behind the public schools. Universities benefit from a pipeline they did not build and refuse to repair. What would it mean for a university system to invest seriously in the reading instruction happening in the high schools that feed it, rather than treating remediation as something to be quietly outsourced to first-year composition instructors?

The thing I am no longer willing to do is pretend this is a temporary adjustment period, or that “students will adapt.” They will not adapt on their own. The conditions that produced this collapse are still in place: the phones, the algorithmic feeds, the test-prep excerpts, staffing models that load the reading-intensive work onto the most precarious faculty, and now the chatbots that finish students’ sentences before they’ve even begun to think of them. If we want literate citizens, we will have to rebuild the conditions for literacy deliberately, against the grain of every incentive currently pointed the other way. I know the academy has the will to do that. It also has the obligation."

— Tyler Jagt, 1 June 2026, "My Students Can’t Read"

YOURE SO RIGHT THOUGH

In the books, when they’re talking about Ilya switching to a Canadian team, Ilya proposes leaving Boston for a Canadian team himself. It is brought up explicitly because America is bad for Russians at the moment, and he wants non-Russian citizenship. And during the conversation, Ilya has this moment where he can tell Shane wants him to come to Montreal, but Ilya doesn’t want to because Montreal could never afford both of them. Ilya says “Not Montreal,” and Shane immediately understands. He proposes Ottawa as an alternative because it needs a star center and has the cap space for Ilya.

And, critically, I cannot find a single mention of the fact that Ottawa is a bad team in Heated Rivalry itself.

Like. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I can’t remember any mention of the fact that Ottawa is terrible. I pulled up the pdf of the book and searched couldn’t find a single mention of the word “Centaurs” in it. I searched every mention of the word “Ottawa” and couldn’t find a single mention discussing how Ottawa was a bad team. The closest we get is Shane saying that they need a star center, but still needing a star for one position is a very different thing than it being the shittiest team in the whole league. And you’d think that Ilya would maybe bring up the fact that that team is absolute ass and would destroy his career if he went there if that was a legitimate concern. The Long Game rewrites its own canon to victimize Ilya and make Shane the villain in the Ottawa move. Its claims are fundamentally and irrevocably inconsistent with the explicit text of Heated Rivalry.

The entire dialogue around Shane being selfish in the Ottawa move drives me absolutely raving insane because it is fundamentally based in revisionist history. Shane is at no point in the conversation a driving factor in Ilya’s decision to leave Boston. Ilya decides he wants to be on a Canadian team before he even talks to Shane. The fact that he wants to come to Canada specifically is because of Russia, not Shane. And picking Ottawa is for the sake of Ilya’s career.

Signing with Montreal is outright considered and rejected by Ilya so he doesn’t have to take a pay cut. The explicit reason why he doesn’t want to sign with Montreal is the fact that Montreal cannot afford both of them. And that decision is later recast entirely into Ilya picking Shane over hockey. If Ilya wanted to pick Shane, he would have just taken the pay cut in heated rivalry and they would have been playing on the same team since fucking 2018–and it would have been on a team that Ilya himself describes as “the most legendary team in the entire league.” He would have had a great team and been tearing it up winning Stanley Cups but he didn’t want to take the pay cut or hit to his captaincy and his position and Shane fucking understood that and found him an alternative that wouldn’t require him to sacrifice his own position.

They explicitly pick Ottawa so that Ilya’s career doesn’t have to suffer and then the Long Game revises the entire narrative to turn it into how Ilya sacrificed his career for Shane. It is absolutely nonsensical when read in light of their conversation around the move itself. They outright reject playing on the same team so Ilya doesn’t have to sacrifice his own career.

And then!! All of the reasons why Ilya shouldn’t have to sign with Montreal suddenly do not matter at all when it’s Shane who has to suffer them. Shane has to take a pay cut? Laugh it off. Hubby will provide. He loses his entire career as narrative punishment for “making” Ilya sacrifice his career, but signing with Ottawa was explicitly so that Ilya wouldn’t have to sacrifice his career. Ilya actually does what Shane is accused of and villainized for in The Long Game, and Shane never did it to begin with. I feel like I’m being gaslit by an entire fucking fandom. Can anyone hear me hello

shane: ok so how about ottawa [which there is no mention of being a bad team in this book], they need a star center and can afford you

ilya: sounds good

ilya in TLG, on a rebuilding team that he chose for his career instead of being closer to his boyfriend: i sacrificed hockey for you hollander

shane: omg im so selfish and such a bad boyfriend :(((( i dont deserve ilya :(((((((

Round Two, Bracket 7

Propaganda below the cut:

and troy smiles, “right, because you were with roz the whole time.”

“i mean, yes, but also because you and dallas kent spent years calling me and jj ‘rush hour’ and asking hayden if his wife was his beard to cover up his big gay relationship with me.”

the rest of the centaurs blink. harris puts his head in his hands and groans.

GOD. 💀

And what's sad is that I feel it in my spirit that if Game Changers had been written by a better author who actually took the realities of Shane's Asian race seriously (and not just for her fetishizing exotic long-haired twunks but I digress), we would actually have a much more believable depiction of Troy Barrett as the kind of bigot who'd legit say that crap.

Like, ain't no way you're standing idly by as your BFF rapes scores of helpless women and lies about it; as the two of you bully everyone in the locker rooms AND on the ice dropping f-slurs like candy; as you terrorize everyone within hearing range openly mocking & disrespecting their (alleged) sexualities (cuz he's also spreading nasty rumors about players)--and then suddenly expect me to believe you're not also being racist towards them as well.

Especially since this is THEE Shane Hollander, the Asian phenom in the white-dominated sport of wonder-bread hockey; who's been singlehandedly embarrassing the entire league with how amazing he plays. On top of how polite & kind Canada's "Golden Boy of Hockey" is, in an environment stuffed to the gills with toxic masculinity & crass chirping to publicly demean fellow players--especially rival players.

And you mean to tell me the National Caucasian League wouldn't smart at having some Asian guy beat them at their own game? When the exact same people get PISSED at Asian Exceptionalism even outside of sports--"oh, they're taking our jobs; they're taking our kids' seats in ivy league schools, etc etc!" Now they're taking our Stanley Cups?! In the ONE (1) major white sport we still had left?! 😭😩 You mean to tell me Dallas & Troy & their goons weren't dropping racist slurs on top of the homophobia we already KNOW Troy & Dallas used on Shane in CANON?

Fic Writers Talk

Hey friends, I was encouraged to make a post about anyone interested in looking for a Beta or becoming a Beta for fics!! In addition, I also did some research to find resources for fic writers to use to help with writing. I say this as someone who SUCKS at writing, was never good in English class, but also has so many ideas for fanfics and not knowing how to go about it!

Here are some tools I found:

Thesaurus

Synonyms

Power Thesaurus

Rhymes

Books on Writing

Learning How To Write Better Fiction

Prompt Generators

Plot Generators

Worksheets for Writers

Grammar Checks

Grammar Checks (with AI toggle)

Ellipsus Plus Information -> Website

Writing Resources

Writing Resources 2

Also, Tumblr has some accounts that post great advice towards creative writing !!

5 Writing Tips That Aren’t Talked About Enough

Almost Crying Advice

Look of Love vs Hatred

Sexual Tension Advice

Body Language Advice

Body Language Advice 2

Other Words for "Look"

Other Words for Walk

Writing Fear Advice

Writing Fear Advice 2

Writing Slow Burn

Writing High Tension Advice

Writing Non Sexual Intimacy

Writing Injuries in Fics

Sleep Deprivation Advice

He Said, She Said Advice

Alternatives to "Said"

Stuttering Advice

Microexpressions for Attraction

Facial Microexpressions for Writers

Different Names for Colors

Writing Description Notes

How To Fix Over Writing

How to Fix Under Writing

# Writing Tips and Tricks Tag

# Writing Advice Tag

@/Luna-azzurra Blog | @/pantserpen Blog

Now, who is interested in becoming a Beta reader, needs a Beta reader, or wants to be both? Any recommendations on how we can make a group for easy communication while also remaining private in our identity (for safety)?

Personally, I would love both (: We can make a community group on Tumblr I think? We can utilize Google spaces. I would avoid things that we have to use our phone numbers for, mainly safety.

greyscale hollanov pt 3 🖤🩶🤍

Pre-order THE RAKE AND THE CAKE and meet these two idiots--I mean, absolutely charming elves~

Brook - a noble fckgirl with disappearing magic and Aisling - an ambitious baker with a very hot... oven

Art by Sarah N. cover by Cormar Covers <3

THE RAKE AND THE CAKE

a Marriage Market Misadventures story

For years, Aisling worked to get a stall inside the Everend midsummer market. Now she finally has one, and her cloud cakes are flying off the shelves. She just needs to win a few wildly contested competitions and she’ll finally have enough investment to perfect her proprietary oven–and prove once and for all that she’s just as brilliant as the rest of her family.

Brook, on the other hand, usually spends the midsummer market magically disappearing or hooking up with her flavor-of-the-year. That, and ducking her noble family’s demands that she take advantage of the busy marriage market to finally settle down with someone appropriate. If only she could convince someone to pretend to be engaged to her, to get them off her back.

Attraction blooms hot and fast the moment Aisling and Brook meet, and they quickly reach a mutually beneficial arrangement. But if their engagement is a lie, what else is, and how can they really know?

This is not to say that feeling anger is abusive; it's human to feel anger. But if you've ever felt like your anger was "unjustified" or were afraid to express it outwardly because you expected it to be dismissed ... ask yourself how you would react if the roles were reversed. I find that a lot of folks who were The Grown Up in a relationship with their parents hold themselves to much different standards than they hold other people.

GIF COLORING CHALLENGE - show gif with and without coloring

thank you for the tag bbys @firstprinced & @sunnypeachyy <3