Rynling R&D

I bitch and moan about GenAI, but I think it’s important to emphasize that it’s not all one thing, and that many applications of these programs can be super useful. Like in language learning, for instance, or in helping researchers in STEM fields organize and present data. Just because some people are evil and stupid and lazy doesn’t mean the technology is “bad” by default.

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For me at least, that really hammered down the point that the “enemy” isn’t necessarily the technology itself. Rather, it’s how institutions use the technology to exacerbate pre-existing inequalities related to labor.

In my last post I casually said that “reading makes you smarter,” but it’s probably worth explaining what that means.

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So I’m not saying that reading will make you a “genius” at your field; only time and practice will do that. Rather, reading helps develop and maintain the basic cognitive skills associated with intelligence. Reading won’t turn you into a rocket scientist, but it will help you remember where you put your car keys.

ChatGPT and its ilk are, as they exist now, dumb as fuck. This is one of the many reasons why it’s distressing to see young people offload basic tasks and decisions onto what’s essentially a Magic 8 Ball. If I had to guess, though, I’d say that a lot of people actually need this cognitive crutch (such as it is) precisely because they’re no longer trained or encouraged to read. And, from where I’m standing, I can see an enormous gap in the performance of students who are able to read and the students who choose not to.

HUNTER'S MARK: A Bloodborne Anniversary Zine
https://huntersmarkzine.carrd.co/

Hunter’s Mark is a free, digital, open-call fanzine celebrating Bloodborne, announced publicly on the tenth anniversary of the main game and to be released for free on the tenth anniversary of the Old Hunters DLC.

It seems like there are no applications for this project; you just sign up and tell the mods what you're submitting. Sounds good to me!

I've actually been looking for an excuse to write about Rom the Vacuous Spider. Before she was a giant horrible creature, Rom was a scholar at Byrgenwerth College, and I'd like to take a shot at telling her story. My idea is that Rom desired a longer life and deeper insight for the sake of scholarship, and that she was obsessed with the "publish or perish" cult of academic productivity. If nothing else, I've been keeping a running list of fake book titles that might appear in Bloodborne, and this would be a fun opportunity to share my delusions. I'll call my story "Progeny," because... Idk, a swarm of spiders is as good of an analogy for academic publishing as anything.

Question #5: Dark tourism is the recreational practice of visiting locations associated with death and disaster. Please give an example of one such location and explain why this is (or isn’t) “dark.”

Student answers include:

- USP Florence prison
- Pripyat in Chernobyl
- Pablo Escobar's house
- New York sewer system
- Beijing Amazon warehouse
- Krak de Chevaliers in Syria
- Century III mall in Pittsburgh
- Korean demilitarized zone
- Area 51 in Nevada
- Waffle House

Someone also wrote "single-player Minecraft," and I gave them full credit.

ETA: In retrospect, I realize that the majority of these answers were generated by ChatGPT. I sure hope the students using ChatGPT for college quizzes now aren't going to be using ChatGPT as law students and medical interns in a few years haha oh man. It's fine, we're all fine.

Perhaps it might be good to clarify that I'm not making fun of "students" as a general category of people. There's all sorts of knowledge in this world, and we all have to start somewhere.

Rather, I'm annoyed by how the system of higher education has facilitated the relative ignorance of the ultrawealthy, who apparently can't find Russia on a map.

I don't actually dislike ultrawealthy college students. Most of them are friendly and well-socialized. Many of them are quite charming, and they have fun stories. I don't find 20yo children attractive, obviously, but it's interesting to observe how they dress and present themselves. As individual people, I like them. It's my job to support them, and I do genuinely want to see them learn and grow and succeed and be happy.

At the same time, it can be frustrating to be confronted with the naked reality of the fact that these kids aren't any smarter or more talented than anyone else, and that their privilege comes entirely from the wealth of their parents.

Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West
https://www.amazon.com/Legions-Early-Medieval-Agrarian-Studies/dp/0300246293/

From North Africa to the British Isles, pigs were a crucial part of agriculture and culture in the early medieval period. Jamie Kreiner examines how this ubiquitous species was integrated into early medieval ecologies and transformed the way that people thought about the world around them.

Kreiner tracks the interlocking relationships between pigs and humans by drawing on textual and visual evidence, bioarchaeology and settlement archaeology, and mammal biology. She shows how early medieval communities bent their own lives in order to accommodate these tricky animals—and how in the process they reconfigured their agrarian regimes, their fiscal policies, and their very identities.

Yes!!! Someone wrote a book just for me!

I've always been really curious about European history and culture, but I'm bored to tears by wars and kings. This is exactly the sort of scholarship I've been craving.

I recently had to submit an undergraduate teaching report, and I thought I'd share some of it in case anyone is interested in challenges relating to student preparedness after the pandemic and the opportunities presented by AI technologies.

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So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not much interested in stories about heroes these days. All things considered, I’d much rather write stories about monsters.

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I was so violently shocked during that interview that I probably lost a year off the end of my life, but I still think about what a nice summer that was. I’m also still friends with many of the people I met during the program. I got what I came for, and I made a lot of warm and interesting memories in the process.

I’m still baffled by the mentality espoused by everyone in the program, though. If you’re so miserable and exhausted that you’re literally experiencing visions and time loops and tears in the fabric of reality... you can just leave?

I'm usually not the sort of person who writes stories as therapy. Usually I write stories because I think they're interesting.

The story I'm writing about Calip and Tauro in Tears of the Kingdom is very healing, though. Perhaps you'd think that what goes on inside higher education shouldn't be the source of trauma, but it's not always healthy to see what actually happens on the factory floor.

I think, to explain this, it's useful to draw a distinction between primary education, secondary education, and higher education. In the first two, to a certain extent, the goal is to help children and young people meet and overcome challenges while they gradually acquire a better understanding of what it means to be a human in this world. Meanwhile, in higher education, the goal is to fund, conduct, publish, and disseminate research, with the purpose of "teaching" being to train fellow professionals. In other words, the goal of primary+secondary education is to help young people open gates, while the purpose of higher education is to be the gatekeeper. And this makes sense, right? You'd like the people designing nuclear reactors and playing with giant electromagnetic particle accelerators to have the appropriate training, for example.

(This is not to say that people who don't go to college don't have valuable specialized skills, or that everyone who completes college or a graduate program is actually well-trained and competent. The system has many problems! But you get the general idea.)

Still, I think there's often a cultivated lack of empathy and compassion in higher education that can be difficult to deal with, especially over time. And for me at least, it's good to sit down and think about why I wanted to do this in the first place, and how it could be better. Essentially, it's healing to reframe my workplace trauma as a love story, and hopefully I can bring that sense of positive energy back to my career.