Historian Around Town

I will add the following: our students lack the research skills required to audit an LLM essay for errors. They don’t arrive on campus with these skills; we teach it to them over four long years. So throwing freshmen in the deep end and saying “swim your way to a shore of rectitude” is folly.

This Pope guy has some bangers

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features."

There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

I Set A Trap To Catch My Students Cheating With AI. The Results Were Shocking. "Students are not just undermining their ability to learn, but to someday lead."

To “my students and to anyone who might listen, I say: Don’t surrender to AI your ability to read, write and think when others once risked their lives and died for the freedom to do so.”

www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...

🌙 The Moon will reach apogee (farthest from Earth) at 3h UT (now) on 20 November. At this time the Moon's distance from Earth will be 406,691 km or 252,706 miles and span an angular size of 29.4 arc-minutes. 🔭
#stargazing

The actual secret to why I know stuff is that I ask a question any time I don’t understand literally anything. I don’t care how simple it is. Anybody who makes fun of you for asking a simple question likely doesn’t know the answer either

Finally got to the "I want to burn it all down" portion of the gen AI-era semester, where I realize they're all using some sort of LLM to "help" organize their thoughts and it's just spitting out raw sewage onto the screen.

You guys wish you were on the level of sincerity I’m on. I’m listening to You Get What You Give by New Radicals and feeling emotions. As a matter of fact I DO have the music in me. I DO have the dreamers’ disease.

I've heard about this and wonder how it works without the students seeing the AI instructions?

Reposting this, because it's the best alt text I have ever written.

The newe Florence album ys amazinge

Rosalind Franklin and the damage of gender harassment Spurred by a recent report on sexual harassment in academia, our columnist revisits a historical case and reflects on what has changed—and what hasn’t

Thinking only of Rosalind Franklin today, and what was stolen from her (and so many other female scientists alongside her).

Farmers' Almanac says it will cease publication after 208 years, citing financial challenges A 208-year-old publication that farmers, gardeners and others keen to predict the weather have relied on for guidance will be publishing for the final time.

Farmers' Almanac says it will cease publication after 208 years, citing financial challenges

I had 9 meetings about students using Chat GPT/LLMs on their papers today.

If you want to know why professors burn out, ask anyone trying to teach critical thinking and writing skills to Freshmen....

Why Trump would be perfect for an honorary U-M doctoral degree Awarding Trump an honorary doctoral degree would be an opportunity to recognize the long way the University has walked in less than two years. U-M juniors may still remember times when the campus code...

@umich.edu faculty call for an honorary degree for Trump

“We have proven that we have no hard moral principles and no hill on which we will die.”

www.michigandaily.com/opinion/op-e...

Pope Francis looks repelled by a diagram of the Orthodox theological position that the Son and the Spirit both proceed from the Father alone. In a second image, Pope Francis points approvingly at a diagram of the Filioque, in which the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son together.

I have found an EXCELLENT meme for the church history lecture on Wednesday (which includes the Great Schism)

Yesterday had some extra steps but was manageable. My takeaway is to look at what I couldn't do and find alternative ways to do them, in case this happens again.

What I couldn't do: enter attendance or grades. The lecture videos were on the Panopto tabs when Canvas came back, so they uploaded automatically, though I'm not sure how

2 students emailed me papers instead of uploading them. I was even able to record the lecture classes on Panopto.

Yesterday morning,I used Banner to email my 4 classes. I sent 2 in-person classes the lecture materials from the Canvas module page. I emailed the readings to a third. I sent the direct link to Achieve to my online class and gave them an extension on last night's assignments...

Picture of no kings protest Huntsville

Huntsville AL No Kings and I know for a fact this shot did not capture everyone. 🫶🏻

#nokings #kindnessiscool

Can't believe the turnout was this big in Huntsville Alabama of all places. #NoKings

I haven't had the capacity to keep up with moderation lists for a bit, but this one is really obvious, so I'm stealing some energy from Future Me: a list for the extremely obvious wave of inauthentic accounts following today's newly-created US gov accounts

bsky.app/profile/did:...

Top funny thing from @adapalmer.bsky.social ‘s INVENTING THE RENAISSANCE: “Filippino Lippi’s Saint Thomas Aquinas Interrupts the Annunciation to Introduce the Virgin Mary to Cardinal Carafa who paid for the painting, while patient Archangel Gabriel just has to wait.”

www.wga.hu/support/view...

CFP: Star Gazing: Astrology and Astronomy in the Medieval and Renaissance Imagination Call for PapersStar Gazing: Astrology and Astronomy in the Medieval and Renaissance ImaginationPopular Culture and the Deep Past 2026

#CFP : Star Gazing: Astrology and Astronomy in the Medieval and Renaissance Imagination

cmrs.osu.edu/events/cfp-s...

In memoriam...

28.

24.

Please stop posting AI generated videos to show how bad they are.