Month: September 2024

Debate night in America.

One thing I know is that this isn’t going to move the needle for the people who’ve dug in on either side. Those who roll with Trump believe what they believe and that is all it will ever be. Those who don’t have their own set of beliefs. Each have media to support this world view. Who will be impacted are those in the middle who have yet to decide what if anything to do. That number is getting smaller and smaller. We are living in an America that looks more and more like it did before I was born. The rampant polarization is not only detrimental to us as a culture but to the security of the nation itself. We aren’t united on anything anymore. That feels less like hyperbole than it does truth.

I’m worried about the future I am leaving my own children. I cannot even begin to consider what they might one day be leaving their own.

I am angry. I am angry most of the time anymore. Some of it has to do with kids at home, some of it has to do with the rampant use of chatgpt as work that students are turning in for credit, some of it has to do with the state of the world, some of is is about getting old and being old in a world where everything I interact with trends younger. There is probably more–discontent with my levels of success and debt to name a few–but the ones I mention live at the forefront of my imagination because they are problems that I have to find peace with not being able to change. Just before I started the blog for the day I was grading thesis statements which were ostensibly about personal matters in students lives. Many of the thesis statements, however, were pure AI. It was in the construction of the work. It was in how they blended out the personal. I cannot change these things. I can deal with them or not deal with them–though both cause varying degrees of stress. It feels like most of what surrounds me brings me stress as opposed to joy and that is just not a healthy way to live.

Balance. That is a healthy way to live.

I plan to spend the next 30 days discovering (or rediscovering) a sense of balance and learning how to maintain that in the face of the many many things that disrupt me in this world and in this life. As I said, I cannot change the things I cannot change. I find it very hard to accept them, but I must find a way to live alongside them; to exist in harmony with what I find unharmonious.

It may be time to bring back the singing bowls. Sound, always a powerful force in my life, is a source of harmony. Perhaps through that I will learn ways to exist in this space.

It is going to be another long football season. I have a bright spot in watching Drake win games and my son compete for his opportunity to play. They won their first non-conference game in a long long time last night, defeating a solid Eastern Washington Team on the red Roos Field. The win is a huge step forward for a team that was (and in some cases still is) seen as a lucky shoe-in for the fcs tourney by being the best of a league of bad teams. However, this year only Marist, St. Thomas, and Valparaiso have taken losses through this two week old season. The other 8 teams are undefeated. St. Thomas was the school who was supposed to challenge and still could. The Tommies took losses to Sioux Falls and Northern Iowa thus far this season.

Desert Vista losing has become an expectation, but I expect a win this week–one of 4 expected wins for the season. I think the boy will look good after being knocked out of the game this past week with an elbow injury. He recovered quickly, and probably could have finished the game had it ever been in contention. It wasn’t but it will be this week against an 0-2 Valley Vista that has given up 98 points while scoring 12. We’ve surrendered 97 but scored 57, keeping it close against the backups. The key will be blocking Bentler and Villa, who have racked up the most tackles consistently over the two losses.

That’s ten. More to say but tommorrow.

Or flailing at least. I am in that space between being productive and allowing myself to drown in a sea of leisure. As previously described, I live in a house of leisure. The Lady Talis is the sole light of effort around me, but her light points to the physical. She doesn’t want to sit behind a desk for hours and grind. Neither do I, whereas I used to. I don’t think that love is gone but the desire has faded quite a bit in light of all the leisure, distractions, and ultimately the lack of willpower to resist the people I’ve surrounded myself with who have no clear desire to do more than exactly what they are doing right now and often cannot fathom why one would want to do more or put in more effort for more than the bare minimum–especially in regards to what is outside of their own desire or comfort zone.

Yes, in some ways I’m talking about being a father to growing boys. But I am also talking about being a professor both student facing and faculty facing. People get comfortable. People decide they don’t want to do more than what they want to do. Growth mindset curls and dies. I’ve been fighting this uphill battle for years and I am losing badly at this point. I’m losing on multiple fronts, I think. It isn’t clear what it will take to get right.

Some Thoughts:

1. Found a baby turtle on the side of our house. I suspect it belongs to the turtles the neighbors across the street own. Shocked it made it all the way across the road.

The morning bus comes around 6 am. The sign posted near the stop says 5:50, but it is always late. So, a dozen people stand under the growing heat of a weekday morning waiting impatiently for the opportunity to load up and be taken to jobs that they’d rather not be working. Some of them realize that the jobs they have are an opportunity to live and afford some of the things they want, even if they cannot afford most of the things they want. Others, like Jazzie would rather not work. Samuel considered that as he walked towards the bus stop watching a sea of familiar faces hanging low, distracted by their phones or watching the traffic zip by. Jazzie was not there again. He hadn’t seen her in three days.

It used to be that they’d walk out of the apartment complex together, or at least nearabouts. The truth was Jazzie barely seemed to realize he was walking behind her as they stepped past the gates, either racing across the street under the warning of a crossing light counting down to zero, or waiting because they’d both timed it wrong and knew it would be another 5 minutes at least before the walk sign clicked white again.

He’d never spoken to Jazzie. Once he tried, mangling a muttered combination of “hey” “whats up” and “How are you” into something that sounded closer to a dogs growl. She turned briefly, her dark hair spilling across her eyes before she raked it back cooly with one hand. She regarded him with a look of curiosity that evaporated instantly as the light shifted to green and the walk sign blared out it’s short cadence. He never tried speaking to her after that.

I had the chance to watch my son live for the first time this season. They faced the #15 team in the state. They are far below being top 30. What stood out to me most is that he actually is starting to look the part. The kid has a future. He’s a 15 year old sophomore starter who is probably developmentally exactly where his D1 playing brother was at the same point in his HS career. They have different games. #16 (formerly #5) is a hitter whereas his big bro is a cerebral cover guy whose tackling is largely about ‘ankle-biting’ to big effect. They both use their bodies well, and #16 is at the point where he is going to hit a growth spurt and grow into more speed and power. He needs to do track this winter and spring to reach that next potential step, and I am going to make sure he does it.

Still, he’s on a losing team and that kind of thing can break your spirit. This is not going to be a team with a winning record — likely in the two years he has left after this one, which leaves me with the question of whether or not he should stay. I think he should. There is something still to be said for loyalty in my book, and he does so much already that he will only grow to have a larger role and more opportunity to play the game this way. On the other side of the argument, he is not practicing against talent and that is going to hurt him. I need to find a way to help him practice harder, which will hopefully make his team practice harder. He cannot get better by giving this little effort.

The team is bad, but he looks good. I’m happy with where he is at skill-wise, but far from satisfied.

Maybe I should call this one worn out Wednesday, because I am certainly well and cooked. This is the end of my in-person teaching week and the start of the football week. Drake travels to Eastern Washington this weekend to play of the red field of the Eastern Washington Eagles. The game promises to be a tough one for Drake. EW is coming off a 42-27 win over Monmouth while Drake only played a half of football due to weather conditions. Monmouth is not a top tier FCS club, but the 42 points show that EW can score. Drake has to be ready to stop that. They need to be ready with limited depth. They won’t be taking their full team on the plane ride to Washington. My boy will be left behind, which I am learning is simply how things are done in the first half of the season. Even their star players all started with time on the scout team and wound up starting later in the season. Based on conversations, he will likely see his first action on the 28th of September when divisional play starts. That puts him out this week and out again for the trip to South Dakota barring any changes. The team makes its bones on divisional play, and they want guys fresh and ready to rock by then. He’s carved out a role on special teams and could see additional time on defense. I do wonder if they’ve considered him for the O side of the ball at all. They are looking thin at WR.

The High School season started with a loss for my youngest. He has his chance to right the ship tomorrow at Williams Field. Unfortunately, confidence is low. They’ve been practicing poorly and that bad energy could carry into the game tomorrow night. The program suffers from a few maladies, the worst being several ego problems. There are players whose egos are out of line with their talent and size. This leads to bad energy across the team. They’ve yet to learn how to fix this. Hopefully they can do it soon.

The pros kick off Thursday as well. That means fantasy season. That means new life for this old wire. You’ll hear all about it next week.

I’m turning back to 4.451, which happened four years ago in September of 2020. There is a strange bit of kismet in this particular post. Here is a quote:

I’m not in the mindset of knowing what I want beyond the clearest and most simple of moments. I want to curl up with my partner. I want to watch the Chiefs v. Ravens. I want to get the things done I need to get done. I don’t want to sleep. I don’t have a clue what to eat, so as a result I don’t want to eat. I’m not playing video games because I feel like that is time I should be doing other stuff.

The Chiefs and Ravens face off again this week. I have gone from not playing games to spending a weekend doing nothing but playing games. I personally shifted away from the action and active goals of the past few months towards a standard position of sloth–perhaps inspired by the lack of energy around me. I have to say that the Lady Talis has been a candle in this fresh darkness. She is all about action and projects and finding ways to do things that are not leisure. For whatever reason, by engine isn’t turning over like that. Instead I am up at 4:51 AM, restless and trying to understand what to do in order to get myself going and make sure success is the foremost in my actions.

Some weeks you come into it feeling like the world is going to open doors for you. Others you feel like the world wants to catch you in an alley and rough you up. 

I don’t know which one is happening this week. I know that this Turnback Tuesday is my start of a terribly short week in which I am dealing with a family birthday, a football game, a college kid’s wish to make it on a plane for traveling to his first away college game. I’m feeling physically down–fatter than I have in weeks. I am feeling mentally lost and either unable or unwilling to find my way out of it. I cannot say what it is that has me so jacked and off, but I need to find personal solutions. It isn’t the world closing the doors for me so much as me walking into the back of them.

I’ve been blessed with opportunities. I need to take control of them.

So, Nanwrimo has officially crapped the bed and tapped into everything that is wrong with where we seem to be headed as a society. They produced a statement on AI that argues that it is ableist and classist not to support AI in writing. “Not all brains have [sic] same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing,” the organizers write in the “Ableism” section. “Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals.” While I understand the concept of nuance in argument, I believe such a blanket statement does damage to the very idea of writing as a profession and especially as an art. Daniel Jose Older had a more direct argument:

Hello @NaNoWriMo this is me DJO officially stepping down from your Writers Board and urging every writer I know to do the same. Never use my name in your promo again in fact never say my name at all and never email me again. Thanks!

This response sums up quite a bit of the responses from published authors. While I understand the use of AI as a tool in writing–especially in terms of easy access to research, no one is fooled by what writers (or supposed writers) are asking for when they ask to use AI. Well, almost no one. I asked chatGPT to weigh in on the argument. It told me this:

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has a policy on AI use that emphasizes the importance of human creativity and effort in the writing process. The organization encourages participants to focus on producing original work through their own creativity rather than relying on AI-generated content. They state that while AI tools can be used for inspiration or as a starting point, the bulk of the writing should come from the author themselves.

The policy likely reflects concerns about the integrity of the challenge, which is designed to push writers to develop their own skills and ideas by writing 50,000 words in a month. Using AI to generate large portions of a manuscript would defeat the purpose of this personal and creative challenge.

In response to such a policy, one might argue that while AI can be a useful tool for brainstorming or overcoming writer’s block, it’s important to maintain the spirit of the challenge by ensuring that the final product is genuinely the author’s work. Balancing the use of AI with the creative effort expected in NaNoWriMo is crucial to preserving the integrity of the event.

However, the statements on AI I’ve read from nano argue that this is not the case and in some areas encourage AI use. They write, ““’Winning’ is a personal achievement and has always been based on the honor system! If using AI will assist your creative process, you are welcome to use it,” adding, “Using ChatGPT to write your entire novel would defeat the purpose of the challenge, though.”

Herein lies the problem with adding the term ableism to your argument. To quote the aforementioned chatbot, “Ableism is discrimination, prejudice, or social prejudice against people with disabilities or those who are perceived to have disabilities. It manifests in various forms, including negative stereotypes, biased attitudes, and systemic barriers that disadvantage individuals with disabilities. Ableism can occur at both individual and institutional levels, leading to exclusion, marginalization, and the unequal treatment of people with disabilities.”

Is an inability to conjure amazing works of fiction now a disability? Perhaps we need to stop treating those with ability as somehow being part of a class of people who have prejudice and start treating those with talent as people we can look to as Icons. I’m not mad at Stephen King because he is an amazing storyteller. I don’t find myself marginalized because I haven’t published as many books as him or thousands of other authors or even that my abilities are not at that level. The unequal treatment I receive is justified, because his stuff is better. The exclusion–the no’s I’ve received from his publisher specifically is justified because his stuff is better. That is okay. That is not ableist. There are some arenas in which better is simply better. We don’t water down our sports competitions because some players are better than others. It is extremely rare to see rules created to make it so other players are on par with the stars.

I’d love to rant more, but ten is ten, and I’m done here.

Now that I’m done uselessly defending Coach Prime’s honor for the week, I can move on to more interesting banter. The idea of what is interesting shifts from person to person. I have two grown sons who live with us and are totally into Basketball and Apex. I enjoy playing Apex, but I’m not watching the ALGS and cheering along. I’m also not following basketball in the off season (or largely the regular season either). I’m a football guy. It is football season. I’m the dad who is helping his kid log stats for college scouts and scouting with him so he has the edge on the competition for the next week. All of this brings me joy, but all of this largely disconnects me from a family that does not care. We appear to exist in these silos and the loudest is the one that gets the most attention and creates the vibe.

I think most households are like that. I think where we excel is finding that shared space where everyone may enjoy an activity. We do that through playing games. In truth, games and the culture surrounding those games (be it board, word, sports, video, etc) is the dominant culture of the household. We may fail to recognize it at times as we swing towards the loud nature of football (friday through sunday!) but a game is a game is a game, and leisure is surely what powers this home reality. Of course, said that way, it is in fact leisure that is the core culture of the house. Unfortunately, for someone who needs to be ‘locked in’ at times, that culture can be destructive.

As with everything in human reality, the key is balance. Still finding mine here.