Thursday, December 4, 2025

I am in love with this guy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriskindareads?igsh=OTR0emg0amJsa jlk

He has a newly discovered love of reading and it is so inspiring! The kids are gonna be alright as they say...

Greetins all

Sun again. There are beach warnings for high surf but I sure don't see any signs of wind in our back yard. Some people go out on the jetties to watch the big waves at this time of year but it is kind of dangerous. No thanks. I almost feel guilty having nice weather here when it is so bitterly cold elsewhere. But we will get ours when it rains for a week straight.

So I did the gym yesterday and then bought some more clay. Lifting the 25 pound bag reminds me of how much strain it is for me to carry the same around on my azz. Today I will again do the gym and go to the studio and start new items. Same routine which I find comforting.

Regarding books, one of the best I have read is The Forgery of Venus. It is the story of a young artist who falls in with some forgers and then mysterious things happen. Quite good. Liz I hope you find a good choice for the group. The fruit treats look great! Nice presentation.

And yeah don't get me started on AI. I listened to a NPR interview with a reporter who designed an AI of himself to do interviews and had it call his friends. The result was superficially believable yet his friends all figured it out because of lack of nuance. Totally appropriate responses and yet lack of personal guile and humor. And yeah CC no telling what mischief could occur in the legal world.

Speaking of mischief, CC so glad you have the vent in and will soon be free of repair workers. You deserve your home to yourself. Our lawn service is here and while they are pretty quick, we always have to chase around and get the dogs in and make sure the gates get closed and put up with noise. Guess I am a curmudgeon.

Banana bread!!! Cream cheese frosting! Now there is an excellent idea. Walnuts I hope.

So I just sent my very first Venmo. Only took about 5 attempts. Lordy I am so tech challenged. So much of it defies logic. Sent $ to our house cleaner who hurt her knee walking dogs.

Well DD I am glad your mom has accepted hospice. They will help her a lot. My mom was on it for a year and then got kicked off because she did not die. About 6 month later they put her back on but equipment was changed out and it was dumb. Making that decision is a recognition of change to come and it sounds like your mom has a hard time with change. Wishing the best. Stay warm.

Not sure whats for dinner tonight - DH will go to the hippie dippy grocery in search of pot pie and other delights. Probably no banana bread.

Diane S

Best to take your time with Venmo and Zelle, for 5 times isn't a bad thing. I hAve two friends who both accidentally sent money to the wrong people. One for nearly $1000 who thankfully got it back because the person he sent it to was a good soul and the other for a small amount who did not get it back. It's always the most challenging with common names!

Never feel guilty about good weather. You paid your dues in Nebraska!

I agree with CC on Venmo - too easy to pick the wrong person. It's a great service but one has to be careful.

There is so much to be concerned with about AI. I did use it my last year of teaching for a couple of things: if I wanted a quick multiple choice quiz to measure comprehension it worked pretty well, although I did edit every quiz it generated because there were mistakes. But it was nice to not have to invent the entire quiz myself. I also used it for sub plans. I would find what I thought anyhow, was a high interest news article and I would run it through AI and ask it to edit it to my student's reading level (very helpful) and generate comprehension questions. I would post the document on the platform w used, with questions imbedded in the article so they didn't have to search the whole article, just the previous sections. Easy peasy for the sub: I left them a copy with the answers, and then they could read it aloud, pause, have them answer the questions, continue reading. Most of my subs really liked it.

Students often tried to turn in work that was AI generated. Either they would forget to ask it to write at a 9th grade level, and I'd get some college level response about symbolism in To Kill a Mockingbird, or I would get something so bland and boring, but error free. No matter how a kid struggles with writing, their own voice is going to be so much more interesting. I had students write really beautiful things that I know was their own work because I saw them handwriting it. There were times they surprised themselves. AI takes that discovery from them.

And apropos of nothing, two deer just appeared behind my fence eating on some scrubby trees. (there's a buffer of natural trees etc between our yard and the yards behind us. )If I hadn't sat down to write, I wouldn't have seen them. They're very well fed and quite pretty.

What if a student were to ask AI to generate a summary of a book, then rephrase the summary in their own words? Sort of like a modern cliff note but easier to access. How would a teacher know that the student didn't really do the assignment?