Notices by Douglas (douglasvb@m.ai6yr.org)

Ew.

The Google Doodle today goes to Gemini barfing up an answer about inventions by women.

Did a little rambling down through Big Sur this afternoon.

@skinnylatte woah when did SF housing get hot again? Six months ago it seemed like a ghost turn.

@ai6yr @cvvhrn lol no I knew about that days in advance. Anyway we didn't even drop down to Furnace Creek or Stovepipe Wells. Or even Panamint Springs. We went on the ultra back roads today 😅

@cvvhrn @ai6yr I think we're going to go to Manzanar tomorrow if it's open.

@cvvhrn @ai6yr I would suggest against it on Lippencott Road. We found an utterly destroyed BMW SUV abandoned about a mile from the intersection with Saline Valley Road. I'll post photos of that later.

But assuming no snow you could absolutely do Saline Valley Road.

Oo I think we will do Barker Ranch on Saturday. Any tips for that?

@ai6yr @cvvhrn maybe you can find wherever these incidents get logged and follow its progress tonight and into the next few days 😅

That BMW is only coming out on a flatbed wrecker.

@ai6yr @cvvhrn I called Inyo County dispatch but they only had one person working tonight and they had an involved 911 call so they asked me to call CHP up in Bridgeport to report the vehicles. I dutifully did so and hopefully the CHP dispatch relays that information to DVNP tomorrow.

They've got my call back number. I wouldn't be surprised if I get a confused call from a trooper tomorrow morning wanting more details.

I was specific that they didn't need to send anyone out tonight to those vehicles. If anyone was out with them, they're probably already dead at this point 😬 No point in having some troopers get stranded in the snow overnight.

@ai6yr @cvvhrn and occasionally other lost things

@ai6yr @cvvhrn they couldn't have made it in since the snow so I think it's been there at least two days. Maybe more.

@ai6yr @cvvhrn I didn't find the owners and regional dispatch isn't going to tell me anything. So hopefully someone found them and hauled them out a day or two ago.

@ai6yr @GhostOnTheHalfShell @cvvhrn as the kids say...

Big bruh moment

Yeah I've got no idea. It would be not too bad to get it to where Lippincott Pass Road intersects with Saline Valley Road but after that... I guess pedal to the metal until you get so stuck there's no way back.

They got stuck in the low point on the road.

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @ai6yr @cvvhrn I can confirm that its blinker was NOT on 🤣

@ai6yr @GhostOnTheHalfShell @cvvhrn it's blocking the road so I would think they would close the road until it was pulled out. We were able to use our winch to drag my truck over some big rocks to get around it. But a lot of people wouldn't be able to do that.

Could be it's been there over a month. But it was in pretty good shape still and it powered up when I touched a door handle ( a small pump kicked on under the vehicle like many modern cars do when the car thinks it's about to have someone get in). I don't think the electrical system would still work if it had been there for a month.

@ai6yr @GhostOnTheHalfShell @cvvhrn yuuuuuuuuuuuup

@claralistensprechen5th @ai6yr @autolycos that's one of those plants where maybe it's okay if it goes extinct 😬😬

I used to review student work digitally. I would type up notes, do tracked changes edits, and etc.

At some point last year I slowly switched to printing out student work and reviewing it by hand with a pen. I'm not sure why I changed my process but I did. Once I finish a review, I scan it in and send them the PDF plus leave the hard copy outside my office for them.

Students initially didn't like it because they had to interpret my handwriting.

But in the last few months, students have been quite happy because they know I'm not using AI to review their work. They can literally see my handwriting.

The students can (and often do) feed their work through AI to do a pre-review before sending it to me. I have other thoughts on the usefulness of AI in these cases but I allow the students a great deal of latitude in that regard as long as they disclose and document what they're doing with AI. They don't need me feeding their work through AI.

I suspect it'll become a differentiator between how I approach education and how some colleagues are now approaching it. If I'm not using my expertise, then why am I even employed when the students could use an LLM without a faculty member doing it for them?

Anyway... It turns out handwritten feedback once again has a place in education.

I've also gone back to paper and pencil in-person exams. Students are not entirely thrilled about it but some are starting to come around to the idea.

#academicChatter

Holy shit a committee member for a dissertation fed the dissertation draft into ChatGPT and asked it to decide if it was good enough. Without permission from the student.

Pretty sure this is really bad for several reasons. I'm mainly concerned that the student just got screwed because suddenly his unpublished work is out in the wild and without his consent or permission.

ChatGPT said it was a good dissertation so I guess the committee member will vote yes now.

But wow. This dude shouldn't be a professor anymore.

So I wonder who is teaching banned chokeholds...

I don't think I'd spontaneously figure those out on my own.

@msbellows Wow I'm a bit surprised they're selling it! Looks like they're retiring.