Day: July 28, 2026

Not a lot to actually say here. I’m at Hatley Castle–film version of the X-Mansion. I am here on a writing/working day to try and keep rolling towards being ready ahead of the semester. I want to be able to keep my focus on the teaching instead of building a lesson each week to teach. I am done with that life. It doesn’t help my stress levels. I’d rather stay ahead and be able to spend time and energy on the writing, which is where it belongs.

It will be nice (and practically a first) to be ahead of the game in that sense.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Seattle police say 15-year-old arrested in connection with festival shooting had a ghost gun” 33 in the mag. Entirely untraceable and possibly 3D printed. How does a 15 year old get hands on a strap like that?
2. My eating is off. I’ve not been eating right at all. It is hard to explain consumption, but in short, I am eating more and moving less. This is not the way.
3. Gotta say more because I have more time, but as I may have mentioned before… not a lot to say.

I spent a lot of time today using ChatGPT as a tool to refine my semester lessons. It is good for some things. It is especially good at helping me define strategies to limit how much students use it to generate so-called self-written work. Of course, anything it can tell me to use as a strategy it can defeat. Overall the key for me is to help them avoid using it as a crutch and relying on the very specific kind of language that is common to the model. That is what makes things like Dungeon Crawler Carl seem GPT–it uses all of those basic conventions. It isn’t bad storytelling so much as basic writing that because of those common conventions sounds like it could’ve been AI.

I’m drifting again.

The point I was trying to make is that AI has its uses. I don’t think it should be the one dreaming up plot lines and trying to tell stories. I think it should be an assistant. I think it is a tool, but unlike other tools it is too easy for people to have it do everything and simply forget they are a bigger part of the process than cut and paste. That’s the problem right there—It takes away the human element. That part should matter. If we keep going this way, it won’t for very much longer.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Chiefs assistant Eric Bieniemy’s son charged in shooting of his mother in Virginia, authorities say” The dude is 27. No longer a child forced to be under a parent’s roof. I don’t know the real details but I realize that at that age there ought to be any alternative to shooting your mom. Of course, real anger doesn’t age. He might be holding on to stuff.
2. Last Week Tonight is back! The bit about Buc-ees is wild.