Why now?

pic.twitter.com/gJAwEtOuko

— Los Angeles Chargers (@chargers) December 15, 2023

Determining something is AI, and proving it, are different things. AI-generated text sounds perfunctory, it’s “soulless,” it has no “voice” to it. Human writing is like a fingerprint. Everybody is different. I can tell immediately if a student is suddenly using compound/complex sentences when, in the past, they used only simple sentences in the passive voice. (I recall an incident in our board history, now that I think about it, when a poster was accused of posting under two different identities, denied it, and then I undressed him by an analysis of how he used stylistic devices and punctuation {garlic in the shadows? What was his name}.

What I’m saying is…I can tell. I can’t always prove it to people who don’t understand writing well, and that’s a problem. The entire issue is one that academia is working with right now. Some places already have policies. Some places are wondering if Composition needs to be taught any longer. Some are working to find a framework to deal with it, since it won’t go away.

I don’t know what zn means by “invariably AI writing is going to do things I openly and clearly and very specifically don’t allow.” I try to write prompts that require synthesizing material that isn’t (likely to be) available to AI. If that’s what he means, then we are approaching the problem the same way.

There is a program called turnitin which schools can subscribe to which searches its databases for duplicate material, and flags it. That takes care of a lot of plagiarism. It has an AI detection feature that was pretty good for a while, but it seems to me it has been dialed back a lot in the past 2-3 months, possibly out of concern for litigation. That is…it is showing AI likelihood at much lower rates generally than it used to.

This term, for the final essay (and this isn’t new, but I haven’t done it in a few years), the students will be required to handwrite an essay in a timed-writing setting, without the use of laptops or phones.

It’s an interesting and challenging issue. But I am developing a growing resentment at the fact that I am being strained at having to police students – to whom I am only too happy to teach knowledge and skills that will benefit them for their entire lives – but who don’t care about that knowledge, or those skills, and only want a “grade” that will usher them into the land of plenty with less effort.

zn wrote:

Rams Brothers@RamsBrothers Byron Young (3rd round pick): 26 pressures, 6 sacks, 5 TFL, 2 FF —> 4-years, $5.5MM Kobie Turner (3rd round pick): 12 pressures, 5.5 sacks, 5 TFL —> 4-years, $5.39MM Jalen Carter (1st round pick): 16 pressures, 4 sacks, 6 TFL, 2 FF (1 TD) —> 4-years, $21.8MM Nolan Smith (1st round pick): 2 pressures, 1 sack, 1 TFL —> 4-years, $11.9MM Credit to the Rams’ entire staff for getting this kind of value/productivity out of the rooks. And Aaron Donald.

Byron Young and Kobie Turner play next to Aaron Donald, and Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith don’t. It may be that Carter and Smith play next to HOF DL on their respective teams. I don’t know other teams’ personnel well. But I do wonder how much of the credit goes to Donald for Young’s and Turner’s success.

How has it gone for Brockers, Gaines, Sebastian J-D, A’Shawn Robinson, et al. since they parted ways?

Hram wrote:

Kicking game would be a lot better if they could re-sign Massey to be the long snapper. just saying

Yeah, but, at this point, Massey would cost like $12/hour, or something

nittany ram wrote:

Robbie Gould

I suppose you would like the Rams to trade Stafford for Garoppolo, too. 🙄

That Bobby Brown tackle. When that happened, I gasped. He didn’t really get a body on him, and I thought for a microsecond that the dude was going to escape the tackle, when all of a sudden, Brown just flicked him backwards like a booger.

Kyren Williams absolutely decks Myles Garrett

Wow. That’s one of my favorite things from this season.

The upshot of all that is – as always – “Screw Minnesota.”

Which has really been my mantra since 1969 anyway.

nittany ram wrote:

Given their cupcake schedule, for all practical purposes the Packers are in. That leaves the Rams, Seahawks, and Vikings battling for the final playoff spot. The Rams and Seahawks will both likely finish 9-8, but the Rams own the tiebreaker. The Vikings beat the 49ers but lost to the Bears so it’s hard to know what to expect from them. They get Jefferson back next week but things are still shaky at QB. At least at the moment, the Vikings own the tiebreaker over the Rams based on a better conference record. However, they could easily lose 3 or more of their final 5 games to finish 8-9 or worse.

So…”Blah, blah, blah.”

Did I get that right?

zn wrote:

Zooey wrote:

Akers’ career so far has been doomed by injuries and an apparently poor team work ethic.

Akers is aching. So Akers didn’t get acres, instead he got achers.

zn wrote:

That’s an automatic 2-week suspension from the board, effectively immediately.

The Rams averaged 14.25 points per game, and were 1-3 without Williams.

With Williams, the Rams have averaged 26.375/game, and are 5-3. It appears that he is a difference-maker in this offense.

Of course, they were undefeated with Cam Akers starting at RB. Akers, btw, in case you missed it like I did, is on IR with MN because of an achilles injury in Week 9. He finished the season with 167 yards (2.78/carry) and 2 TDs. Akers’ career so far has been doomed by injuries and an apparently poor team work ethic.

zn wrote:

I apologize, Zooey, it looks like I stepped on your response to Invader. I was just drunk on enthusiasm for Dotson’s ascent.

Well, I spoke to my attorney about that, and he said that since you are the one who posted the tweet with that information originally, and I merely quoted it, it didn’t matter that invader addressed me with the question. You arguably had a priori rights to answer it.

So I was going to just drop it. But since I now have your apology in hand, indicating you know you did something wrong, I will call him back on Monday.

In the meantime, you will see that my answer appeared in two forms, 4 hours apart. That’s because the one that appears later didn’t post on account of having too many nested quotes, or images, or whatever hangs up posts, so I just revised the post to reduce the amount of code, and the second post got through immediately.

I just mention that in case you would like to delete one of them. (My attorney and I will be very interested to see which one you delete).