iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Today's blog is weird. I saw my grandmother this past weekend, and we went to mass, on the feast of St. Francis, her favorite saint. She's probably going to die soon. This is the kind of thing I normally leave in drafts for weeks/ months, a collection of incomplete thoughts, not fully connected.

Fragments on my grandmother, technology, mortality, and St. Francis of Assisi

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Why won't the pope even consider the possibility that AI chatbots are conscious/ensouled? Well, that's simply not possible under a Catholic understanding of "the soul." Today on Fragments, a brief explainer of this situation. Link in replies.

why does the pope think that AI Can't be Ensouled/ Conscious? Followed by the infamous exchange between Pope Leo and "Spectromachina" wherein "Spectro" declares "pope, would you please shut the fuck up about matters you do not understand? You're not an AI influencer, no one elected you, and you have absolutely no weight in this debate and you're being used as a mouthpiece to swap public opinion. how many local models do you run?"

People are mad at the pope. People were mad at the pope, previously, when he released his encyclical on AI. People are mad at him now, again,2 as he tweets about AI, and as reporting reveals that Anthropic tried really really hard to get him to say that AI was/ could in the future be alive/conscious/sentient/ensouled.

What follows is a brief explanation for why that’s not going to happen.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Some people follow me because of comics, and some people follow me because of wrestling, but plenty of people who know me aren't familiar with either or both. Both fields tragically lost tremendous stars, recently. This is a kind of eulogy for those unfamiliar with their work.

A Brief tribute to two men who died young, who filled my life with joy. RIP Joshua Cassara and PAC.

I have been working on a longer reflection of Joshua Cassara’s work at Marvel Comics, and, today,1 I was working on a longer reflection on PAC and his life, but both have gotten too academic. Both became reflections on shared-universe serial storytelling, and why the artists in such genres end up meaning so much to their audiences, about the parasocial relationships one develops when, twice a week, you watch a man on live television break the laws of reality, or once a month when an artist defines, again, for you, over and over, how you see this heightened world, where you can actually believe that better things are possible. I may still post one or both; we’ll see. But I wanted to post something a little more personal, first, and I wanted to especially write something for those unfamiliar with the work of these men.

Both Joshua Cassara and Benjamin Satterley were taken from us very suddenly. Both men, in their own ways, made us believe that a human being could fly.

I just want to share with you one work created by each man.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Today on the blog: A followup to "The Balrog's Dilemma." The TLDR is that even though the AI Safety people are in an apocalyptic death cult and believe in the possibility of Machine Gods, we should take AI's destructive power seriously. It could kill us *today.* Link below

GOLLUM CAN KILL YOU TOO (further notes on AI Safety)

What if we just find Gollum down there?

The Bomburians, 1 day, break into a new cavern as they drill ever deeper, where they find a curious little thing, a creature that calls itself Gollum. Several Bomburians instantly proclaim it the prophesied Balrog; others declare it merely a harbinger of shadow & flame. In any case, they take the creature back w/them. It’s a weird little thing—it can talk, but not exactly like the dwarves talk. Its speech patterns have some idiosyncracies. It seems to know a lot, especially about caverns beneath the earth—but sometimes it gets things wrong, & sometimes it seems to lie. Still, it gets things right often enough that the dwarves begin to routinely consult it as they continue mining the depths. If they just follow Gollum’s directions to new Mithril deposits, they don’t need to send so many of their own number into the depths as scouts.
Soon, the Bomburians grow reliant on Gollum. If they were to ditch his guidance, they’d need to start employing scouts again, & each quarter the Bomburians need to make more Mithril while spending fewer resources. that means hiring fewer dwarves in their operations.

1 day there’s a terrible accident—Gollum directed a dwarf down a dark shaft, where that dwarf did not see a pit & subsequently fell to his death. No one blames Gollum; everyone knows that Gollum makes mistakes, sometimes. Then it happens again. And again. It happens, actually, w/ alarming frequency—but not often enough to offset the profits (or potential profits) of sticking w/Gollum as the dwarves’ primary guide.

We could stop the reflection here, b/c even if Gollum is pure of heart, even if those mistakes were honest, we'd see that relying on him, or even using him at all, can & does result in the death of innocents. We’d have demonstrated that someone should be watching Gollum at all times. rather than blindly trusting him, dwarves should go down his selected corridors w/lamp in hand.
But let’s take the reflection a bit further.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

the other successful image is, I think, that of tinnitus. I am not constantly obsessing over loneliness, but it is a background hum in my brain. I can distract myself, but it's always going to be there, in the background, waiting for my attention.

Or, (imagine this footnote was attached to the subhead, which substack currently does not allow) it’s like tinnitus. I can play a song and drown it out, but it’s always there. The song ends, and it comes roaring back to my attention.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I think, rereading the article now, there's just a couple of images that really do convey what I wanted to convey. The first is my earbuds; I put them on when I wake up, I take them off for a shower, but otherwise keep them on until I go to sleep.

I, dazedly, perform 3 actions almost simultaneously: I turn off the alarms in the room, I drink one energy drink, and I put on a pair of earbuds. While I brush my teeth, I will begin listening to an audiobook or a podcast. I will take my earbuds off, at different points, very briefly, throughout my day—when I shower, or if a roommate needs to speak to me6—but for the most part, they will stay on until I go to sleep.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This one I've been nervous to share. Today: notes on the experience of loneliness. Part of the point of the blog is to practice writing, again. I have almost no experience with this kind of personal/reflective/confessional writing. Feedback on approach/execution is appreciated.

Further Fragments on the Experience of Loneliness

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Finally, I wrap up by discussing solutions. On the personal level, there are some, though most people's options are limited, once they get to a certain age. On the whole, though, for society? I don't see any. I don't think there is a realistic future where we solve the loneliness crisis.

Fragment 5: Concerning Solutions

This is probably my most controversial take in this piece—there aren’t any. At least, there aren’t any feasible or likely solutions at scale.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The remaining fragments are less full explored--again, I'm just establishing some basics here, to reference later--but I go on to talk about a few effects of being single for long spans of time (embarrassment, health stuff, economic stuff) and sympathy.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The problem just comes down to odds. You have a shot at meeting a life partner every time you meet someone. We meet fewer people now, so fewer people are going to hit the jackpot.

The really troubling thing is that you did flip a coin 10 times and get 10 tails, you can’t really take from that that the coin is loaded. A fair coin just happening to land on tails 10 times and an unfair coin landing on tails 10 times looks the same. If there was something wrong with you, something that was driving people away, it would look, from your perspective, the same as bad luck.

I think the core problem is just that the causes of Crisis outlined in the previous section—app enshittification, third space death, party culture ending, and a K-shaped economy—result in people being able to flip that coin less often. Imagine two worlds. In both, everyone has a 10% chance of meeting someone mutually compatible and mutually attractive, every time they meet someone. In World A, the typical person meets 100 new people every month. In World B, the typical person meets 100 new people every year. More people are going to be lonely in World B.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

First of all, I talk about the causes of the "Loneliness Crisis." I think this is largely the result of a few cultural & economic forces: the shift to dating apps, the subsequent enshittification of dating apps, death of third spaces, death of Adult Parties, & a k-shaped economy.

Fragment 1: Concerning the “Crisis” and Its Causes

There is no exclusively male loneliness epidemic, but there is a loneliness epidemic. There is also no single cause of this loneliness epidemic.

The most significant cause is probably the enshittification of dating apps.3 When I first used OKCupid, well over a decade ago, it used quizzes and an algorithm to match people who shared core values, life goals, and a million other smaller things that might influence attraction, romance, and relationship sustainability. It was subsequently bought by the Tinder people. Now, pretty much every app is a variation of Tinder, and the algorithms seem designed—like they are on every other kind of app—to keep you on the app, for as long as possible each session, for as many future sessions as possible. The point of dating apps is to capture your attention and harvest your data. They are smaller facebooks with a distinct presentation.4

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Today I'm posting the first of two preliminary reflections on (specifically romantic) loneliness. Today's is from the more objective, exterior POV, looking at the "loneliness crisis," tomorrow's from my personal experience. Link below.

"Fragments concerning loneliness." A woman looks out of a window at an overcast day.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

thinking of "made me" as a prompt, i tried to pick titles that shaped my early understanding of the medium, but also titles that inspired in me an early sense of wonder, or that changed how i understood storytelling.

Pokemon blue, link's awakening; Ace Attorney 3, Halo, Star Wars Galaxies, Shadows of the Empire, Star Fox 64, Aria of Sorrow, original Super Smash bros

https://my9games.net

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

My controversial lesson plan: in the Analogue Classroom, if you want to destroy your students' desire to cheat with LLMs, you should force them [briefly] to use AI. You should help them see just what kind of outputs ChatGPT generates. Link in replies.

the classic AI upscale of obama into a white guy

Step 3: Have your students generate writing. Have them generate a LOT of it.

If your students do not have access to any LLMs, you’ll need to generate these samples yourself and pass them out. You should do a few anyway, just in case a couple of students aren’t able to complete this assignment; you certainly do not want to piss off any parents who are already preventing their kids from cheating on their work.

Use a few or all of the following prompts, and ask them to generate a few examples for each. If you really want to spend a full unit on this stuff, ask them to use Claude and Gemini as well as ChatGPT. Ideally, you want each student to come to class with at least ten papers that they can use for the research they’ll be doing.

Prompt: Generate a book report on an interesting book I read this summer.

Prompt: Generate a brief essay about the kinds of activities a student does over the summer. Put it in the first person, as if I did them.

Prompt: Generate a high school essay about Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Make it a B essay. Include a couple of mistakes.

Prompt: Generate a fantastic high school essay about Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Make it an A+ paper with no mistakes.

Prompt: In 5 paragraphs, make an argument about The Great Gatsby’s perspective on the American Dream. Quote from the text substantially, and make sure that all quotations are in MLA style. Make this an A+ high school paper.

Prompt: Generate a college admissions essay on one time a student faced adversity.

Prompt: Write a poem about how I feel sad, sometimes, about all the things I’ll never get to see in this world.

Prompt: Write an essay about why LLMs struggle to count the number of letters in words when asked, like, for example, how LLMs will think, sometimes, that the word “seventeen” has only three Es in it.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

oh my god. i'm absolutely losing it lol

Giovanni Colantonio: Before we get started, let’s get to know more about you. Well, I mean, I kind of know everything about you already, but for the sake of our readers, who are you?

Young Giovanni: hi im giovanni. i am in the fourth grade and i go to dale street school. my favorite color is red, and i like video games and cartoons. my favorite cartoon is garfield!

GC: You mentioned video games. Just to ground this conversation, what are your favorite video games currently?

YG: ummm, i like the tasmanian devil game i have for the sega. ren and stimpy is awesome. but my favorite game right now is garfield for the game gear! its so cool! there’s this one level where you go inside the tv and fight a robot, and it’s crazy! what games do you like

GC: A lot! Recently? I really enjoyed TR-49.

YG: whats that

GC: Oh, it’s this deduction game set inside of a computer archive in an alternate timeline version of World War II. You’re basically cracking codes to unearth documents that have been hidden by a fascist regime. It’s all about censorship, and how political powers manipulate the flow of information to manufacture consent and squash rebellion.

YG: whats fascism

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

going by the rules of "must have *begun* in 2000 or later," I think my list has got to be--acknowledging that I also have missed like 90% of the best tv shows--

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I have barely started--but I have started--my first metroid (which is weird, as castlevania has always been a favorite of mine) and i was filled with just overwhelming joy when I saw how long it was, and how long fusion was. Even Super Metroid is only 8 or so hours.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

RESIDENT EVIL is a good movie. it reminded me of The Invisibles and, kind of, of the Catholic Grotesque. But mostly it’s a movie about video games. link below to my full review.

Thematic Take: Resident Evil is a movie about video game worlds and the people that inhabit them

Resident Evil takes place in a video game world, though its protagonist does not know it. He is constrained by the rules of such a world—inventory management, infection/antidote magic, invincible fences, etc—but not empowered by them, in the way a video game protagonist would be. He has one life. He encounters the classic Resident Evil save room, early on, where a player would save their progress by recounting what had happened to them, thus far, on a typewriter. He does not use the typewriter. He does not pick up health items, not knowing that a simple spray might be able to hold back his infection, or else sanitize his wound before the infection actually takes root. He doesn’t know that any mutated person he encounters, no matter what they say, is doomed, and that he should—even just out of mercy—shoot them rather than trying to comfort them. He doesn’t know to reload and replay a Quick Time Event in order to get the car keys he needs and make it to Umbrella HQ more quickly.

And even if he knew that he should reload—he can’t reload. He is not a player. He is a character within the world of the game. Perhaps he’s being played by someone; perhaps that person did reload, and we see, here, what happens in the universe that the player left behind. Perhaps this is a movie about the doomed worlds that we abandon every time we return to a previous save. Or perhaps there is no player, and if Bryan had used that typewriter, it would just function as a typewriter.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This bit is what's really getting me from this article. These machines still hallucinate, but now they'll also publish fake sources on the internet in order to justify their hallucinations. Misinformation will reign now, forever.

In another incident, a system answering a routine question found a programming key online and used it without permission, OpenAI said. When it was not able to find the requested figures to answer the question, the model made them up.

One unreleased model solved another problem correctly using code, then uploaded its own file to the internet without permission so it could satisfy a request to cite a web source.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Part 2, today, of a duology on Media and Depression. I love Persona, now. I think I love Persona 3, even though I have substantial critiques of its structure. And I hate its ending, and its post-game story sent me spiraling. Link below.

Persona Summer, Death, Depression, and the game I can't finish

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

very strange to me that bluesky is not currently swamped with Looney Tunes posts and Toxic Yaoi Road Runner/ Wile E Coyote Edits like the following

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Today, I wrote about Sian Leah Beilock's pro-AI piece in the Atlantic. It is an odd piece. At nearly every step of her arguments, Beilock swerves pretty wildly, to the point where I can only conclude that she has been an active LLM user for some time now. Link in replies.

Before we continue with her piece, let’s just try to flesh out her analogy as she’s laid it out thus far.

Researched anxiety: “I’m going to do bad on this math test.”
Present anxiety: “AI will prevent me from getting a good job.”
Researched solution: “Take the math test.”
Present solution: _____________

What’s the thing that students are actually anxious about? What’s the verb that they’re worried about?

Getting a job! They are worried about the negative effects AI is going to have on their careers! The present solution, then, would be something like “applying to jobs.” If these situations are actually parallel, they work like this:

Students worry about the math test—then take the test and see that their fears weren’t justified.
Students worry about the job market—then apply to jobs and see that their fears weren’t justified.

Except Beilock has already admitted that their fears are justified! So what does she suggest instead? USE MORE AI! Get comfortable with the technology, and with all technology!

Draconian mandates and screenless classes can’t be the only way that colleges deal with AI. If universities hope to remain relevant in a world shaped by artificial intelligence, they should strive to guide students to understand and use these tools productively.

In my research of math anxiety, we found that the best cure was practicing math. This points to a way forward. When we supply students with the space to thoughtfully explore and engage with these tools, we can help ensure that they graduate into an AI-enabled workforce with more confidence and competence than fear”2

This is absolutely buck-wild. “AI” and “Math” are not parallel in her analogy. Students are not worried that they don’t know how to use AI, because they all already use it, all of the time. AI is not the object of their anxiety (which is actually “not having a job” or “economic conditions getting much, much worse”), but rather the cause of their anxiety. Suggesting that the solution is to use more AI is like suggesting to a student who thinks “oh no, I’m not certain if I studied enough for this test!” that they should get over this anxiety by spending more time not studying.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Just as right about america as Eddington

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

remember when generative AI was just like a goofy novelty and not destroying our civilization

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

this specific fact about them has always, for some reason, stirred a desire in me to raise peafowl, ever since I first learned about it from that O'Connor essay:

$A truck driver who was driving up with a load of hay and found a peacock turning before him in the middle of our road shouted, “Get a load of that bastard!” and braked his truck to a shattering halt. I have never known a strutting peacock to budge a fraction of an inch for truck or tractor or automobile. It is up to the vehicle to get out of the way. No peafowl of mine has ever been run over, though one year one of them lost a foot in the mowing machine.$

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Sorry Craig but you don’t get to have an opinion about this one

“Wah wah english courses are interesting sometimes and I hate that” style tweet

“Sometimes on campus you accidentally walk by a business class and the professor is writing like “profit = revenue - costs” ont he board and everyone is taking notes like it’s actual school”

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

weird thing in google translate that I think is due to AI. The latter is the Japanese title of Yoko Ogawa's "The Housekeeper and the Professor." The thing is, the actual Japanese title SHOULD translate to "The Professor's Beloved Equation." Google swapped in a different title instead of translating.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

If you want to skip two people joking around and get to the serious stuff, jump to "Part 3: Note on Curation and Discoverability." There we have a serious discussion about Paul's experience self-publishing a tiny game, and some data he gathered as part of that process.

It has had a hundred, I have 174 views total. All of them were the day that you apparently posted it to BlueSki12 and other platforms that you had going on. It’s had a couple of page views thereafter. It’s hit 30 downloads. That’s all I really expected to be. It might creep one or two higher after something like this is published.

The game is already dead, which is fine. I made this game incredibly selfishly. I didn’t even play test it or anything, or really even spend too much time envisioning how players would engage with this thing that I made. It was something that I birthed into the world for my own ego, not for anybody else. So I don’t really care that much that it has already died.

But in looking at the absolute buckets of other people’s products that are being put out there, where people actually have put their souls into these things they upload, and seeing them probably fall into a similar fate of being ground in the masses, it makes me really admire them for grinding it out and putting out something into the world, even if it won’t be noticed. But it also makes me disheartened. I don’t care if my own thing gets seen by other people, but knowing that other people do care about that and know how impossible it actually is— they don’t all have a Rob Secundus of Fragments fame to go out and post on various social media platforms that the thing they made exists. I am more fortunate than many for getting attention to the thing that I have made. And it is really dispiriting to think that for these other people, they just are never even going to be noticed by another human being.

And they’re just they’re just shouting into the void.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Last week I caught up with my offline buddy (Paul) about the one-page comedy TTRPG he recently published on itch dot io, GOTTA GO FAST: A HEDGEHOG TTRPG. We talked about rpgs, hedgehogs, heterotopias, backrooms, discoverability, extreme sports, and so on. Links to the interview and RPG in replies.

Fragments on RPGs, Discoverability, and Hedgehog OCs

RS

Adam’s first question, I think has already been answered. He asks, “why hedgehogs?” I think we’ve covered that in a few different ways.

PL

I guess maybe a follow-up question that he should have asked, and Adam will get on this next time, is why not Blinx the Time Cat?

He should ask that so that I can say, “I’ve never played Blinx the Time Cat. I’ve only read the Wikipedia article several times, and the plot was too confusing for me to really be able to grapple with it. My miniscule brain was too limited to handle the contrivances of that story’s craft.”

RS

Minor correction, it’s Blinx the Time Sweeper.

PL

Did I say Blinx the Time Cat? Oh man, okay. Yeah, he is a time sweeper. I mean, he is also a cat, so calling him the Time Cat isn’t wrong, it’s just not the title of the game.

RS

And there’s also, Blinx 2, Masters of Time and Space.

PL

I have not read the Wikipedia article for Blinx 2 Masters of Time and Space.

RS

But the idea is hedgehogs are a metaphor for human intimacy.

PL

I mean, is that supposed to be deep, Schopenhauer?

It’s obvious, like that’s what you would think when you first saw a hedgehog, “how do they get close to each other because of the pointy bits.”

RS

But would you say that’s just like us?

PL

Do you think we’re like hedgehogs because we’re afraid of intimacy?

RS

Yeah, that’s his innovation, is going like “we also have pointy bits, but metaphorically.”

PL

Apparently owls, much more so than hawks, are predators to hedgehogs, by the way.

RS

I’ll note for the record, you didn’t say it in the Borat way. You said it the normal way, not Borat style.

PL

My wife.

RS

Okay, that was Borat style.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

this is going to be the longest thing I have posted lol

He should ask that so that I can say, “I’ve never played Blinx the Time Cat. I’ve only read the Wikipedia article several times, and the plot was too confusing for me to really be able to grapple with it. I couldn’t explore and plumb its artistic depth enough because my miniscule brain was too limited to handle the contrivances of that story’s craft.”

RS

Minor correction, it’s Blinx the Time Sweeper.

PL

Did I say Blinx the Time Cat? Oh man, okay. Yeah, he is a time sweeper. I mean, he is also a cat, so calling him the Time Cat isn’t wrong, it’s just not the title of the game.

RS

And there’s also, Blinx 2, Masters of Time and Space.

PL

I have not read the Wikipedia article for Blinx 2 Masters of Time and Space.

RS

I just want you to take a quick gander at this box art.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

😎 it’s happening chicagomaroon.com/53262/news/s...

Social sciences (sosc) Core classes will generally prohibit the use of technology in class and ban the use of artificial intelligence tools by students and instructors beginning this fall, according to a Social Sciences Collegiate Division (SSCD) memo obtained by the Maroon.

The guidance, issued by SSCD Master Jenny Trinitapoli in consultation with sequence chairs and instructors, reflects a “strong consensus… that our sequences are best understood as a pedagogical setting without AI,” the memo reads. “Although practices have varied course-by-course in recent years, in AY 2027 sequences are collectively designed to be taught as ‘analog’ courses.”

Under the new guidelines, students will primarily read texts on paper and engage with them via device-free guided discussions, in contrast to previous years, when technology policies were left to the discretion of instructors, with many permitting the use of laptops and digital texts in class.

"In order to save college education, we must ban devices"

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

it turns out will gluck is just kind of dumb

"Did the Supreme Court try to intervene?"
"Well, clearly they have not, because it was just passed," Gluck said. "The Supreme Court very rarely gets involved in legislation. There used to be three branches of government in the United States, until your president came around. But there's three branches of government. So it's hard for them to overturn legislation, but possible. But I think they're gonna have to wait till the politics shifts."

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

If you are a teacher being forced to incorporate AI LLMs in your classroom, and if you're looking for some way to mitigate the damage, I have four recommendations for you, with some lesson plans and assignment ideas. Link in replies.

1. Don’t just “teach with AI.” Teach your students ABOUT AI.
Students think of “AI” as a kind of supercomputer that knows everything but is mostly used to churn out annoying slop or kill their future careers. Many of them despise it, but negativity isn’t really an inoculant, because all the time people use tools they hate if those tools are necessarily or more convenient, in some way, than an alternative. Kids hate AI—and they also use it constantly. If you want to produce graduates that might choose to ever write or think for themselves, you can’t rely on their negativity, nor should you aim to simply instill greater antagonism in them toward the technology.

2. Teach your students the alternatives as you go
If you are required to teach students how to use AI as an information-gathering tool, introduce them to Google4 as well as other search engines like DuckDuckGo, or any private databases to which you have access. If your school has a JStor subscription or anything along those lines, get them comfortable with Boolean searches. Show them how to use a physical index in a textbook, and have them practice skimming a text for answers to questions. Don’t just frame these activities purely as alternatives to using LLMs, but as compliments. Explain that sometimes they’ll need to verify something a chatbot has said, and at others they’ll need to look for information that is not well-represented in a chatbot’s training set.

3. Incorporate in-class writing wherever and whenever you can
If your school is asking them to use AI, it is asking them to atrophy as writers and thinkers. In order to combat this, you desperately need to use whatever time you can to have them write without AI in the classroom. They are losing extremely precious time for developing the two most important skills one can have in an educated civilization. Make up for that time in class, even if that means condensing other parts of the curriculum.

4. Teach your students what good writing looks like and teach them what AI slop looks like.
A lot of your students are going to—falsely—determine that slop just “sounds better” than their own work. You’re going to need to show them what’s distinctive about AI slop and, further, what’s so bad about those distinctive qualities.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

it was also hard not to laugh because i just kept having Andrea Rose's pitch-perfect Calypso impression flash in my brain every time one of her scenes started again.

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

this is so familiar. does anyone know if Tom Muller did work for Lost In Cult?

a history of Metroidvania games, from Lost In Cult, with a design h eavily evocative of Tom Muller's work

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I had originally planned to write a review, but instead, today, I wrote about my experience returning to the Alamo Drafthouse for the first time in months, the first time since the Phone Policy changed, in order to see TEENAGED SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA. The experience was: MIXED. Link below.

Alamo’s NEW New Policy that No One Has Reported On And That Alamo Did Not Announce For Some Reason, Even Though It Would Obviously Be Very Popular And Win Them Back Some Lost Customers

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Rob Secundus @robertsecundus.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

the ruling class, ladies and gentlemen: "chatgpt said there's only 180 of these people on earth. We quickly found 1/6 of them, and never once questioned what this might say about our initial assumptions."

London recalls a woman she worked with who asked for a man who practiced a particular religion, had a minimum net worth of eight figures, flew private, and had some idiosyncratic lifestyle specifications. He needed to be okay with her having children and to want more children. Oh, and of course he had to be a certain height and live within a designated geographic radius. “I looked it up on ChatGPT: ‘How many of these people in the world exist?’ I think it said in the world it was like 180, and we presented her with 30 over the span of several months,” she says as if she were an FBI agent who has just rounded up a slew of most-wanted criminals.

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