Category Archives: personal

This Title is a Very Ideal Title, Which Does Things Like Inform Readers About the Blog’s Subject Matter

arts, personal, teaching, writing 2022.12.13 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

AI bot ChatGPT writes smart essays — should professors worry? (nature.com) For a long time now, I’ve wanted to study Cold War-era fiction from the communist countries of the era. It’s fairly well-known that authors in those countries were restricted in how they wrote, essentially conscripted as propagandists for the state. As such, from the accounts I’ve read, most stories from those countries are stultifying in their adherence to formulas, protagonists invariably coming to sing the praises of communism (if they weren’t already at the…

Sighted

personal, politics, rhetoric, television, transgender 2022.11.21 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

I didn’t bother unpacking my television when I moved to Platteville at the start of September; on top of not really using it that much in recent months, I also wasn’t sure just how I wanted to position it in my new apartment. After the chaos of my first weeks here, and especially after getting so sick in the middle of the month, my television kind of stayed on the back burner for a long time, especially since I had my streaming television app on…

Flipping the Switch

personal, teaching 2022.11.07 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

[The following blog contains mentions of child abuse, bullying, and death.] Even though my everyday behaviour definitely falls in line with what most people would probably refer to as introverted, I’ve never felt fully comfortable referring to myself as an introvert. When I think back to my earliest coherent memories, from when I was around four years old, I remember myself being kind of extroverted within the very small circle that my family kept, and as a very curious child, I was eager to go…

Want Not

mom, personal 2022.10.31 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

One of the more frustrating things I had to deal with in my final years living in Toledo was how Mom’s trash cans were taken from her at one point, and despite promises of them being replaced by the family member generally responsible for these things, that promise was never delivered upon, until I had to spend my own money buying new garbage cans (at a time when I was barely getting paid anything at all). On more than one occasion, Mom simply hauled sacks…

All Its Use

food, mom, personal 2022.10.24 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

When I went vegetarian in 1993, I understood that I would be responsible for cooking pretty much all my food after that point, since my parents rarely cooked a fully-vegetarian meal. I’d done some cooking before then, and I enjoyed it — I grew up watching PBS cooking shows on Saturday afternoons — but the routine of doing so much cooking was definitely more of a challenge than the infrequent meals I’d been cooking for myself up to that point. All these years later, I’m…