Dr. G
@coreygoergen.bsky.social
I used to teach and research; now I teach and play UFO 50.
Can’t help but hear “faster and more varied” in the robot voice from Radiohead’s “fitter happier.”
He also conflates the form of language (and art) with the actual thing: "produce content" as if output for which no one has accountability (and which represents no one's communicate intent) has any value in the world.
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January 3, 2026 at 2:07 PM
Can’t help but hear “faster and more varied” in the robot voice from Radiohead’s “fitter happier.”
Today’s chunk of #md is so rich that I’m not sure what to post, so I’ll just say that I love this burn of the Vermont / New Hampshire hay-seed: “a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands.” 🐋
January 3, 2026 at 11:32 AM
Today’s chunk of #md is so rich that I’m not sure what to post, so I’ll just say that I love this burn of the Vermont / New Hampshire hay-seed: “a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands.” 🐋
My morning’s 🐋 wormhole? The Seaman’s Bethel, a real New Bedford church without a ship-shaped pulpit until 1961, when complaints from tourists drawn to New Bedford by the Huston film inspired the construction of a mock-pulpit to match the one Huston filmed in Ireland. www.nps.gov/nebe/planyou...
The Seamen's Bethel - New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)
www.nps.gov
January 3, 2026 at 11:26 AM
My morning’s 🐋 wormhole? The Seaman’s Bethel, a real New Bedford church without a ship-shaped pulpit until 1961, when complaints from tourists drawn to New Bedford by the Huston film inspired the construction of a mock-pulpit to match the one Huston filmed in Ireland. www.nps.gov/nebe/planyou...
Reposted by Dr. G
"We used a freakishly advanced language model built on trillions of pages of text and crazy linear algebra engines powered by cubic meters of natural gas to achieve a task that could have been done with some dice and a look up table" is like 80% of popular AI applications
The parents of the first baby born in 2026 in this county outside Baltimore got their name ideas from ChatGPT. Hudson Oakley Winkler.
www.baltimoresun.com/2026/01/01/c...
www.baltimoresun.com/2026/01/01/c...
ChatGPT named Carroll County’s first-born baby in 2026
The first baby born in Carroll County in 2026 was named with help from ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot.
www.baltimoresun.com
January 2, 2026 at 5:39 PM
"We used a freakishly advanced language model built on trillions of pages of text and crazy linear algebra engines powered by cubic meters of natural gas to achieve a task that could have been done with some dice and a look up table" is like 80% of popular AI applications
Reposted by Dr. G
“Why are Americans mistrustful of AI?” asks the morning briefing thing I’m skimming while I “no” through literally a dozen questions being asked to me by a robot who stands between me and the person I need to talk to to schedule the x-ray that I really, really need
January 2, 2026 at 2:07 PM
“Why are Americans mistrustful of AI?” asks the morning briefing thing I’m skimming while I “no” through literally a dozen questions being asked to me by a robot who stands between me and the person I need to talk to to schedule the x-ray that I really, really need
Seeking investors and at least one trained bartender named Jonah to explore this exciting new restaurant concept. 🐋
Among the many fun details of today’s reading: Jonah, the bartender at The Spouter Inn who serves drinks from within the jawbone of a whale 🐋
January 2, 2026 at 2:20 PM
Seeking investors and at least one trained bartender named Jonah to explore this exciting new restaurant concept. 🐋
🐋 #md
MOBY-DICK WEEK. Dang. So good. Today we have @kimkelly.bsky.social in the far North, and also an animation/podcast from @camoot.bsky.social and her friend Raj.
Seeing a classic work fractally reconstructed through these phenomenal minds is the @flaminghydra.com way
flaminghydra.com/issue-473/
Seeing a classic work fractally reconstructed through these phenomenal minds is the @flaminghydra.com way
flaminghydra.com/issue-473/
January 2, 2026 at 1:53 PM
🐋 #md
Reposted by Dr. G
Anybody up for a bicentennial read-along of Mary Shelley’s THE LAST MAN?
Anybody doing any interesting bluesky read-alongs of big books?
January 2, 2026 at 12:18 AM
Anybody up for a bicentennial read-along of Mary Shelley’s THE LAST MAN?
Reading 🐋 for the first time since it was required summer reading in high school. I’ve always known I probably read it pretty carelessly, but I was not prepared for how this thing starts!
January 1, 2026 at 6:45 PM
Reading 🐋 for the first time since it was required summer reading in high school. I’ve always known I probably read it pretty carelessly, but I was not prepared for how this thing starts!
Nick Jonas once cut me in line at a Mediterranean Grill.
Right folks. Feeling rather down at the moment so bringing back an oldie
Please Quote this with your most minor celebrity interaction
Please Quote this with your most minor celebrity interaction
December 30, 2025 at 2:06 AM
Nick Jonas once cut me in line at a Mediterranean Grill.
Reposted by Dr. G
I wasn’t sure they were going to publish this. So good for them.
The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’ Is Over. That’s Not a Good Thing.
All of higher ed now suffers the attacks of politics and technology.
www.chronicle.com
December 29, 2025 at 1:30 PM
I wasn’t sure they were going to publish this. So good for them.
Reposted by Dr. G
That is one of the hardest parts for me as an educator, to see how much it has affected students' confidence in their own skills and abilities. So many don't believe they can produce something as good as the LLMs.
The other thing about normalizing gAI use in higher ed is that we are teaching our students that they cannot trust their own creativity, their own thoughts and brains, their own skills without having it reshaped/shellacked/transmogrified by LLMs. We’re setting them up for failure and dependence.
December 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM
That is one of the hardest parts for me as an educator, to see how much it has affected students' confidence in their own skills and abilities. So many don't believe they can produce something as good as the LLMs.
Worth noting that “instructors have infinite time and energy to reimagine entirely their pedagogy with every new tech innovation” is at least as naive an assumption as “gen ai will go away.”
Academics literally cannot make Gen AI go away. As in it is not possible to make it happen on a political, legal, and technical level. We do not and will not command the massive violence necessary to make chatGPT or Claude disappear. Responsible pedagogy grapples with the fact!
No one says to legit business owners, "hey I see there's an underground market selling toxic knock-offs of your product: how will you incorporate the toxic product AND protect your customers against its harms?" But apparently it's fine to make this suggestion to educators with respect to AI.
December 27, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Worth noting that “instructors have infinite time and energy to reimagine entirely their pedagogy with every new tech innovation” is at least as naive an assumption as “gen ai will go away.”
And Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, got a guitar and he’s learning how to make it talk. His car’s out back if you’re ready to take that long walk from the front porch to his front seat. The door’s open, but the ride ain’t free.
And Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, eventually became a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Dawn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth!
And Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, eventually found himself on a planet called Third Earth, where he had a long-running quarrel with a group of anthropomorphic cats
December 25, 2025 at 12:04 AM
And Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, got a guitar and he’s learning how to make it talk. His car’s out back if you’re ready to take that long walk from the front porch to his front seat. The door’s open, but the ride ain’t free.
If summaries are useful to your process, you don’t need Gen AI to get them. Vetted summaries exist in book reviews, on Wikipedia, on the back of the book, on the publisher’s website, etc., etc., etc.
Gen AI continues to be a solution in search of a problem.
Gen AI continues to be a solution in search of a problem.
December 21, 2025 at 8:02 PM
If summaries are useful to your process, you don’t need Gen AI to get them. Vetted summaries exist in book reviews, on Wikipedia, on the back of the book, on the publisher’s website, etc., etc., etc.
Gen AI continues to be a solution in search of a problem.
Gen AI continues to be a solution in search of a problem.
Reposted by Dr. G
I feel like "academic hiring" discourse is always kind of downstream of the fact that in the 50s we started building a giant public system to make a college education almost universally available and in the 80s and 90s we started taking it apart to go back to the only-the-rich model
December 20, 2025 at 2:22 PM
I feel like "academic hiring" discourse is always kind of downstream of the fact that in the 50s we started building a giant public system to make a college education almost universally available and in the 80s and 90s we started taking it apart to go back to the only-the-rich model
This is a great joke but ,actually, I think their worldview would lead, long term, to a massive buildout of public transportation options.
Very disappointed by Pluribus. Two episodes in and there has only been one bus, and it was only on screen for a few seconds.
December 17, 2025 at 2:32 PM
This is a great joke but ,actually, I think their worldview would lead, long term, to a massive buildout of public transportation options.
Reposted by Dr. G
Reposted by Dr. G
every time i read about one of these college presidents promising to reinvent the liberal arts education i think of "marge v. the monorail"
Yes we all agree that this is the reason colleges are in trouble
December 9, 2025 at 4:57 PM
every time i read about one of these college presidents promising to reinvent the liberal arts education i think of "marge v. the monorail"
Finally watched the GDT Frankenstein. What’s the consensus out there on it?
December 8, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Finally watched the GDT Frankenstein. What’s the consensus out there on it?
Reposted by Dr. G
it’s an important moment for arguing in favor of habits of mind, modes of learning that are worth teaching
and if caring—about details, students, art—is not central to that discussion, what are we doing
and if caring—about details, students, art—is not central to that discussion, what are we doing
Today is pub day for my third book: Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century. It is a handbook on how to read. It argues for the foundational importance of *caring* to thought. It offers an anatomy of close reading's five steps so we can hone the skills to perform them. It argues for why to read
October 21, 2025 at 11:53 PM
it’s an important moment for arguing in favor of habits of mind, modes of learning that are worth teaching
and if caring—about details, students, art—is not central to that discussion, what are we doing
and if caring—about details, students, art—is not central to that discussion, what are we doing
Reposted by Dr. G
I didn’t get the wording down precisely, so I won’t quote it, but one of the things that hit hard in the room:
Reactionaries waging culture wars against the humanities have a more accurate account of our power than we do. And our humility is not admirable, but an abdication of responsibility.
Reactionaries waging culture wars against the humanities have a more accurate account of our power than we do. And our humility is not admirable, but an abdication of responsibility.
October 22, 2025 at 11:58 AM
I didn’t get the wording down precisely, so I won’t quote it, but one of the things that hit hard in the room:
Reactionaries waging culture wars against the humanities have a more accurate account of our power than we do. And our humility is not admirable, but an abdication of responsibility.
Reactionaries waging culture wars against the humanities have a more accurate account of our power than we do. And our humility is not admirable, but an abdication of responsibility.
Reposted by Dr. G
If I could offer students one bit of…advice: be brutally traditional about what is printed on your degree.
If you are first-gen or in any way non traditional, this goes double. Let rich kids get degrees in AI. You get something called “English”.
If you are first-gen or in any way non traditional, this goes double. Let rich kids get degrees in AI. You get something called “English”.
The danger is that degrees are regarded as worthless as nobody believes students have acquired any skills any more, at least not ones they couldn't have hot from just going into an office job from school.
In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.
October 17, 2025 at 3:24 PM
If I could offer students one bit of…advice: be brutally traditional about what is printed on your degree.
If you are first-gen or in any way non traditional, this goes double. Let rich kids get degrees in AI. You get something called “English”.
If you are first-gen or in any way non traditional, this goes double. Let rich kids get degrees in AI. You get something called “English”.
Darkly humorous that I had to click through an ad for the LA Times’s collaboration with Perplexity’s AI browser to read this review.
“Today, Dr. Frankenstein's descendants keep promising that Al won't destroy civilization while ignoring Shelley's point, that the inventor is more dangerous than his monster.”
October 17, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Darkly humorous that I had to click through an ad for the LA Times’s collaboration with Perplexity’s AI browser to read this review.