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Are we really at a stage in public education where we consider it OK to have literally Google-branded schoolchildren whose learner identities are tied to being "responsible AI" users of private for-profit technologies?

Black-and-yellow bird with a blue eye ring perched on a strand of barbed wire against a soft green background.

I'm not sure if I'm legally allowed to post two #birdoftheday posts for #birdonawire

But here's a closer view of the male Black-headed Trogon, showing his darker head and iridescent back.

#CostaRica #birds #trogon #nature

Oregon pilot program giving cash to homeless youths sees staggering reduction in homelessness The state program gave participants $1,000 cash payments each month for two years. At the end of the project's first phase, 91% of participants reported being in stable housing.

An Oregon pilot program giving cash to homeless youths sees a staggering reduction in homelessness. The program gave participants $1,000 cash payments each month for two years, and at the end of the project's first phase, 91% of participants reported being in stable housing.

This burnout -> weird observation is something I’ve been thinking about all day. It’s true for me, I think, and not good. I think part of it is also being alone too much bc of understaffing.

Portland Author Omar El Akkad Wins a National Book Award Andrew Jankowski

Portland author Omar El Akkad won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for "One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This."

But so many will remember. We say that, sometimes, when it's our children killed: Remember. And it may seem now like it's someone else's children, but there's no such thing as someone else's children. The problem with fixating on the abyss into which one's opponent has descended while simultaneously digging ones own is that, eventually, it gets too dark to tell the difference.

but there’s no such thing as someone else’s children.

(From One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El Akkad)

Just reading through this new OpenAI "teen literacy blueprint document." A few things jumped out. 1) document mentions multiple times that rigorous instruction must be protected but also seems to be suggesting/1
cdn.openai.com/pdf/openai-t...

struction. Classrooms should maintain and strengthen foundational curricula by protecting and expanding rigorous instruction in a core knowledge base of history, ethics, civics, math, science, and literature—the foundational subjects that students need. AI literacy requires consistent, sustained funding for schools—including to strengthen core curricula, maintain small class sizes, and recruit teachers

in this passage that this core knowledge would be taught in service of AI literacy rather than vice versa, which is an odd framing. ("AI literacy requires..."). But not surprising-this doc is about how to use AI everywhere. /2

I am averaging one book read per month this year. March: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El Akkad. Highly, highly recommend. “And it may seem now like it's someone else's children, but there's no such thing as someone else's children.”

The winner of the 2025 National Book Award for Nonfiction is ‘One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This’ by Omar El Akkad. #NBAwards

Close-up macro of a tiny spiny red-and-black insect with horn-like projections and bright red eyes standing on a green leaf.

Enjoy this little demon, #Bugsky

At first I thought this was just a small fly, but when I got my macro on it I found this alien creature. I think it's in the genus Poppea, a type of treehopper. Found at @casabentbill.bsky.social #CostaRica #nature #insects

We could solve like half the problems in education with smaller class sizes (like 15 instead of 30 kids crushed in a room). Including that it would be easier to find teachers b/c they wouldn’t get so burnt out.

Library work is, in part, an endless series of spatial reasoning tests and 5th-grade math word problems, done by English majors, with the knowledge that failure means moving large numbers of books a second time. They should cover this in library school.

Can I quietly ask we stop talking about what "AI" *could* do in education and identify instead what's actually happening with AI in education? I'll start...

The purpose of education is not workforce readiness

Over the past several years, the mainstream publishing industry seems to have decided that boys and young men don’t read fiction. It is so so frustrating trying to buy a variety of books to appeal to everyone (university campus private school + university lib popular reading collection).

We keep yelling about the male loneliness crisis and focusing on everything except the harms the system itself is causing. If teen boys don't get mirrors for masculinity, and other kids don't get windows and sliding glass doors, then we're doing kids of all gender identities a major disservice.

This is another consequence of the colonization of New Adult, esp of the romantasy variety, into YA. Publishers aren't just selling YA to adults, they're selling YA to adult women (usually cisallohet and white). That category doesn't want a book about 14yo boys playing basketball. My teen boys do.

a close up of a bald man with a beard and mustache looking up at the sky . Alt: A slow zoom in on Tupac Shakur's face. He's leaning his head back and blinking slowly, looking blank.

Going through the spring 2026 young adult fiction releases, and from what I can tell so far, all of the books with male protagonists are romances. I don't see any sports books, male friendship, action/adventure, humor, mystery, or dystopian books (that don't share the stage with romance).

I have attended maximum-capacity, waitlisted, public art history lecture 2/3 for the fall semester. Aiming for perfect attendance with the December class. There is nothing like learning in-person with a group. A great teacher helps a lot, of course. A+ highly recommend.

Congratulations by the way: some thoughts on kindness, by George Saunders, though it is a commencement speech made into a tiny book. I do like it a lot and think of it often.

A line of Ramona Quimby, a young girl with a choppy bob cut. She has a furious frown. The text, by Beverly Cleary, reads: "I am too a Merry Sunshine," insisted Ramona, but she got down from the table and ran out of the room.

finding joy despite the world in 2025 is like this lol

A bright red glow reaches up into the darkness, illuminating the silhouettes of tall slightly scraggly, spruce trees

Swirls of green and red light sweep down from the sky, lighting up the forest and contrasting against the Stark silhouettes of trees

Dramatic swirls of green and red light swirl down from the middle of the sky, starkly contrasting against the bear of Poplar, tall Spruce trees.

Still more dramatic curtains of light sweep down from above in sheets of green and red. The tall bear poplars and spruce spires our starkly silhouetted.

I really need to get to bed, but I just poked my head out the back door again. This is the view from my deck. All of this is looking south. When the geomagnetic storms are like this, the oval overshoots me and stretches into the US, which is why so many are seeing it tonight. #aurora

This is such a “you can have both” situation (phonics instruction AND kids reading whole books in school), and the fact that it’s being pitched as either/or is equally mind-boggling and so depressingly predictable.

It is actually so insane that two sides on offer are “old guy who says we read via vibes” and “moral panic fueled policies advocating for state mandated adoption of boxed curricula based on a podcast people listened to once.” The crisis is a crisis. How we respond to the crisis is also a crisis.

There's a lot that Emily Hanford doesn't say in her reporting on SoR. Research on reading points to the complexity, nuance, contextuality, and diverse influences on becoming a successful reader. This is a great overview of a few of the issues with how journalists frame Science of Reading.

performative reading, lack of reading skills, nobody's reading anymore -- NO!

tell me about a book that changed you

for me? the *extremely* ahistorical novel, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY which I read at 13 and was like, "Oh, art can be *everything* to a maker, for good and bad"

But I know I *can* read more, and am working on making that happen!