There to Hear It

politics, teaching 2023.01.02 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

Strife in the Schools: Education Dept. Logs Record Number of Discrimination Complaints (New York Times via yahoo.com) 2023 marks one hundred years since Upton Sinclair published his exposé on American colleges and universities, The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education. It’s a book that I’ve been revisiting lately in my research, and while it may not be as well-known or as consequential as some of Sinclair’s other works, it’s still worth reading today. Although some parts of the book haven’t aged so well (such as…

Mask On

personal, politics 2022.12.26 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

It’s Time to Wear a Mask Again, Health Experts Say (New York Times via Yahoo! News) During my final years in Toledo, I would occasionally see people wearing face masks at stores like Meijer and Kroger, especially during the winter. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone wearing face masks outside of hospitals and doctors’ offices before then, but I was enough of a Japanophile to know that wearing a mask when one is worried about spreading illness is far more common in Eastern countries than…

Shedding the Weight of Old Dreams

computing, internet, personal, writing 2022.12.19 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

While testing out the new ChatGPT chatbot several days ago, as I detailed in my most recent blog, I had neglected to notice that the bot allowed you to post follow-up questions in your session, to ask for more information or clarifications or such. While not perfect, this makes the chatbot exponentially more useful at certain tasks, so I want to take back what I said last week and state, on the record, that ChatGPT does represent a quantum leap forward in chatbot technology. I’ve…

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…