thebearthatreads

[thebearthatreads]

Superman isn't woke. You're just so evil that you see a man doing acts of kindness and you think it's a targeted political agenda

[thebearthatreads]

Sometimes I have to remind my dad that he’s a master furniture maker and most people do not possess encyclopedic knowledge of European and American furniture styles and the history of wood glue

[thebearthatreads]

"you can use ai to improve spelling and grammar"

[thebearthatreads]

My fellow creative friends: in our justified efforts to protest and push back against the use of AI in the arts and other areas that require the human touch/creativity/imagination, can we NOT become the AI Police accusing strangers of using AI?

Because I was just randomly accused of using AI in my writing. And I never have used AI for my creative hobbies and never will, but I also know I can't really prove I don't use it, so... frankly, the accusation really bothers me.

Look, I mainly learned to write by reading. Reading A LOT. My mom tells me I begged her to teach me to read when I was three years old - I don't remember that, but I DO remember reading short chapter books in kindergarten. I wrote my first Boxcar Children/Secret Garden-esque short story when I was six (weird fandom crossover as story inspiration, I know, but you can tell what some of my favorite books were as a little kid!). I wrote my first fix-it fic when I was ten (because I hated that the book I had just read ended on a cliffhanger with no sequel in sight after a decade). I read the Anne of Green Gables series so many times the binding split on half the books, and I genuinely believe the classics are called "classics" for very good reason.

All this to say... I use dashes, semicolons, and exclamation points far too often, I try to avoid cliche phrases or unnecessarily flowery language but sometimes it fits (I mean, there's a reason why the phrases have become cliche!, plus LM Montgomery is the queen of flowery descriptions [both literally and figuratively]), and there are some characters I write about who like to use big words.

And, at the end of the day, AI was (sadly) trained using human creations, including punctuation and language styles and vocabulary, so there is no one writing style or creative choice that automatically means AI was used.

Anyway, all I'm saying is: maybe, just maybe, there are better ways to protest AI than slinging accusations.

And for what it's worth, I will never use AI in my writing.

[thebearthatreads]

i suspect that a huge factor in the defense of students using gen ai (and academic dishonesty in general tbh) comes from the fundamental misunderstanding of how school works.

to simplify thousands of educator's theories into the simplest terms, there are two types of stuff you're learning in school: content and skills. content is what we often think of as the material in school- spelling, times tables, names, dates, facts, etc.- whereas skills are usually more subtle. think phonics, mental math, reading comprehension, comparing and contrasting; though students do those things often, the how usually isn't deemed as important as the what.

this leads to a disconnect that's most obvious when students ask the infamous "when will we use this in the real world?" they have- often correctly- identified content that the content is niche, outdated, or not optimized but haven't considered the skills that this class/lesson/assignment will teach.

i can think of two shining examples from when i was a kid. one was in middle school when they announced that we were now gonna be studying latin, and we all wondered why on earth they would choose latin as our foreign language. every adult promised us it'd be helpful if we went into medicine, law, or religion (ignoring that most of us didn't want to go into medicine, law, or religion), but we didn't buy that and never took it seriously. the truth was that our new principal knew that learning languages gets harder as you get older, and so building the skills of learning a language while it was easy for us was more important than which language we learned, and that's an answer twelve year old me would've actually respected.

similarly, my geometry class all hated proofs. we couldn't think of a single situation where you'd have to convince someone a triangle was a triangle and "look at it, of course it's a triangle" wouldn't be an acceptable answer. it was actually the band director who pointed out that it wasn't literally about triangles; it was about being able to prove or disprove something, anything using facts.

and so, so, so many assignments that are annoying as hell in school make more sense when you think about the skills as well as the content. "why do i have to present information about something the teacher obviously already knows about?" because research, verifying sources, summarizing, and public speaking are all really important skills. "why does this have to be a group project?" because you will have to work with other people in your life, and learning how to be a team player (and deal with people who aren't) is an essential skill. "why do we have to read these scientific articles and learn about graphs?" because if you can understand them, people can't lie to you about them.

now, of course, there's a lot we could do better- especially we as in the american school system. the reason i have an education minor but am not teaching is because of those issues. there are plenty of assignments that are busywork and teachers that are assholes and ways that the system is failing us.

but that doesn't mean you should cut off your nose to spite your face!

the ability to learn and grow and think critically is one of our most powerful tools as people. our brains are capable of incredible things! however, the same way you can't lift a car unless you consistently lift and build up to that, your brain needs to train in order to do its best.

so yeah, maybe chatgpt can write a five paragraph essay for you on the differences between thomas jefferson and alexander hamilton's governing philosophies. and maybe it won't even fuck it up! congratulations, you got away with it. but by outright refusing to use your brain and practice these skills, who have you helped? you haven't learned anything. worse, you haven't even learned how to learn.

[thebearthatreads]

Going to need this guy's lawyer

[thebearthatreads]

If you have achieved something, please remember to observe a mandatory period of basking in the warm glow of your achievement like a lizard on a stone, lest you teach your brain that effort is futile, actually, because it didn't get to enjoy its happy chemicals, so, naturally, nothing good ever comes of trying. (And no, avoiding punishment is not a reward!)

I recommend, like, 5% of basking time in relation to whatever time you invested into achieving the thing minimum. And if you can't make your own bask, friend-brought is fine (= tell your friends!).

[thebearthatreads]

i think the moon would like you

[thebearthatreads]

[thebearthatreads]

Insta was really interested in this, so I thought I'd post it here too! 🌻 Jumpscare of my eyes under the cut:

[thebearthatreads]

this is about oil. don’t forget that. this is like 99% about oil. they’ve hijacked everything, countries, religions, ethnicities, languages, all to use as cover stories for their invasions and wars for oil. The United States works for exxon, chevron, british petroleum, etc.

[thebearthatreads]

i love the -with mama trend but sometimes i get sad because that is clearly papa and he aint getting any credit raising those darn kids...

[thebearthatreads]

[thebearthatreads]

It's truly fucked up how ancient Ancient Egypt really is. Like, the New Kingdom period of Egyptian history ended in the 11th century BC, and that's the one they call the New Kingdom. King Tut's reign was one thousand years before the time of Cleopatra. The Great Pyramid of Giza was older to the Romans than the Romans are to us. Ancient Egypt is just fucked up old and it blows my mind every time I think about it.

[thebearthatreads]

"these researchers published a paper on something that literally any of us could have told you 🙄" ok well my supervisors wont let me write something in my thesis unless I can back it up with a citation so maybe it's a good thing that they're amplifying your voice to the scientific community in a way that prevents people from writing off your experiences as annecdotal evidence

[thebearthatreads]

decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: march 18th 2025

[thebearthatreads]