Archives: Tweets

@ergates That’s a good one! (And yeah, sometimes there’s nothing better, even if I’m usually more of a Howlin’ Wolf guy myself.)

My son’s new favorite song to dance around crazily to is a good one.

https://t.co/oeN7w7Tg3K

What led to this discovery, you ask? Why, musical parasaurolophoses (parasaurolophae? Parasaurolophi?), of course:

@Ashbless @_MattCardin Cool, thanks!

What To Say? gordsellar.com/2021/01/27/wha…

@chaiwalla5 @wetcasements I mean, at my previous job (interviewed 2006) the guy before me interviewed in a natty sweater and track pants, hair unbrushed. But even then, that seemed insane to me. (I was in a suit, like everyone at every interview I’d been to that month.) That job no longer exists either. @chaiwalla5 @wetcasements But even in 2006 everywhere I applied asked for teaching demonstrations. (Though most didn’t really support it. Most were like, “Teach this group of faculty, who absolutely will not participate in the pretend lesson.”)

@wetcasements @chaiwalla5 @koryodynasty Well, you’re not the only person he really hates. It’s not a great loss, though, at least not in my opinion.

@tabray @JWSchmidt Absolutely. I actually wished that the system was built to accept percentile final grades and display both side by side. (This, at least, could offset the sense that a C+ is always a grade in the 70s.) @tabray @JWSchmidt I think effort and thought could probably allow us to devise lots of ways to balance having standards with fairness… if administrators decided to prioritize the latter. Maybe the next generation will…

@JWSchmidt Yeah, it’s a downer. Apparently it became necessary because of rampant grade inflation. But ends up being a quota system imposed on each class individually, which is rough at times.

If you grade sensibly, the mandatory grading curve usually takes care of itself, but… once in a while, you get a class that’s unusually excellent, and suddenly 65% of your students get a B+ or a C+ for what would have been A+ work in any other class you taught last year. 🙁

The past few days, South Korea’s (understandably) been up in arms and loudly discussing about the President suggesting the solution to the abuse of adopted children being, basically, a generous exchange policy. 🙄

(I was wondering when an English writeup would to hit Twitter…) twitter.com/JoongAngDaily/…

RT @JoongAngDaily: A coalition of adoptive parents and adoption activists slammed President Moon Jae-in Tuesday for remarks about allowing…

Huh, somehow I did not notice Twitter had added the ability to restrict responses to Tweets to people you follow until today…

@spacenakji Yeah, somehow my son has just gotten into it. Presumably it’s just the combination of “DINOSAURS?!?!? AND ROBOTS?!?!? AT THE SAME TIME?!?!?!”, when it’s on, I guess? I am grateful for my noise-canceling headphones.

This is glorious. (Well, the, er 85% (?) that I can roughly follow of it, anyway.) twitter.com/mountebank_sco…

@JustinHowe Or, worse, will seek out things to perceive as you “pointing out all the damage” and as a pretext to lash out at someone.

@JustinHowe … and also (because of the wider invisibility of those same fracture points within your given culture) will tend to leave you without appropriate (or any?) tools for addressing them even if/when you do eventually consciously recognize them….

@Shineanthology That’s very flattering, @Shineanthology. Thanks, sorry to be slow. I was mired in grading exams and teaching a winter intensive course. I’ll have to check out KSR’s book when I have more time! 🙂

@Shineanthology @david_mitchell No worries, and you’re welcome! The original account by Hamel seems to be pretty short, from what I remember, but Ledyard’s analysis gives useful context and so on.

I will check that out, I’ve heard good things!

@ADetectiveGamer Dying Earth RPG did this kind of? 1-3 were different gradations of failure, 4-6 were different gradations of success. You spent points to reroll, and in opposed rolls one trait trumped another in the case of a tie. (Like rock beats scissors beats paper beats rock.)

In “exciting” developments, I seem to have chipped a tooth last night. But I was able to get a dentist appointment for this afternoon. We’re lucky to be in the least-badly-hit city in Korea, COVID-wise, but it’s still anxiety-inducing. “I’ll be in an office? No mask? How long?”

@fosterempathy @Freeirony My friends were mostly in the same boat as me, at least till high school—social cliques didn’t mix in that town—but occasionally I ended up friendly with kids who were seasoned in dealing with hangovers and pregnancy scares by the 8th grade. My mind was blown by that.

@jeeyonshim

@fosterempathy @Freeirony I’m not totally surprised either: I never got up into that stuff in middle school but some of my schoolmates definitely did. The stuff that some of them took as normal blew my mind—but I was raised pretty sheltered from mainstream 80s Canadian teen culture.

@jeeyonshim @KevinKulp Excellent! Thanks for the info! This line from Shing’s site caught my attention:

“My themes are inspired by old museums, cabinets of curiosities, pre-Linnaean taxonomy, and the quiet horror of colonial era collecting.”

Yeah, this is gonna be fun.

(And I’m restructuring my “writing” class this winter to integrate a lot more conversational practice because there’s NO way TEFL students can sit in Zoom for 3-4 hours of writing instruction per day, four days a week—but Zoom is, I gather, mandatory. 🙄)

Oh, hey, if you like journaling games? Go back this:

kickstarter.com/projects/jeeyo…

Based on my (frankly moving) experience with the previous journaling game by @jeeyonshim and @KevinKulp, it’s going to be an outstanding experience. Very highly recommended.

@jeeyonshim Thanks! I loved the game—the experience was wonderful and helped brighten 2020, which is saying something—and I’m looking forward to the Field Guide to Memory, which I excitedly backed on sight (and ought to have mentioned here). 🙂

Thanks for creating such a wonderful game.

@marc_laidlaw Yeah, though in this class we’re still at the “a paragraph needs to be about one thing and have unity,” so it’s a little off structurally.

@Freeirony Oh, yeah.

The student was very concerned about caffeine addiction. (That student is a Chinese exchange student, and… well, I saw Starbucks in big Chinese cities a decade ago, but maybe they’re from someplace where coffee hasn’t caught on quite as strongly? I dunno.)

@Freeirony “Melon-mp3”? I didn’t look too closely while looking it up but it’s some kind of phone app thing. Streaming services are catching on now.

About drinking, it was more a reference struggling to stop drinking till blackout drunk. The middle school story was eye-opening, tho.

11. How I managed to get accepted into the ROTC.

12. Why my favorite superhero is Dr. Strange.

13. A detailed explanation of traditional Korean clothing.

Overall not bad grading day. Only hitch is that about three students didn’t submit exam process completion videos. 🙁

(The last one is right in principle, but grammar got in the way of some of the claims making sense, to the point where it’s a bit like Reefer Madness but for fast food: the idea that vitamins and minerals in burgers induce uncontrollable rage is especially puzzling.) 8. Why environmental pollution is really, really bad, and how there are many varieties of pollution.

9. How workplace sexism works, and why it’s bad.

10. Why people like superhero movies so much.

So far this isn’t as exhausting to grade as some of my other exams.

(Way less anti-feminist ranting here, which is a welcome change.) 5. Why kids need phys ed classes. (Written in pitch darkness!)

6. The story of a student’s first class with a beloved phys. ed. teacher in high school.

7. Why fast food is bad for us.

@tweetsbymoi @JustinHowe Yeah, unpasteurized milk is probably harder these days than rennet? Which seems way more available now than when I looked a decade ago (even if it’s not exactly cheap):

smartstore.naver.com/cheeseforum/ca…

@tweetsbymoi @JustinHowe Do you mean the unpasteurised milk, or the rennet? The former, yeah, it’s hard here—some people contact farmers but it’s a pain. (I used to sort of know someone who was raising goats and sold the milk here.) Rennet’s easier, but take ssome hunting around online.

13 more writing exams to go!

The first one started fun: “How I snuck beer and hard liquor along on a middle school trip.”

But it ends sad, like basically, “And now I’m an alcoholic and can’t stop drinking and it’s ruined my life,” which is not where I expected it to go. Hm.

@tweetsbymoi @JustinHowe I used to make it, though now it’s available at Costco so I haven’t bothered for a while. But it is life-changing, for sure.

I think I may start homebrewing again a bit this winter.

(If you think that speaks volumes about how faculty are regarded, well… yeah? Kinda? Maybe? But admin works all through Xmas week too, so only sorta. Koreans have their big family time-off holiday in the fall, not in winter. Still, the grading crush is over the top.) With this many students completing their exams late, I guess I’m just going to have to be less generous with the time I give students to get the exam done. (8-9 days instead of 10-11, maybe?)

Wow, a lot more students missed the deadline for their (discontinous, online) final exam this semester.

Which sucks, since I gave them as much time as I realistically could… and this means I’ll be grading more of them at the last minute. The uni extended the midterm exam period, but crammed all exams for our most grading-heavy (writing) classes into the 2nd week, and didn’t give *us* more time to get grading done. Also, the winter intensive course starts during our grading window (which is over Xmas week).

RT @livingarchitect: Deep-freeze data that will last 1,000 years itpro.com/infrastructure…

@GeekinKorea You could probably contact them after exams are done and ask, on condition their names are removed.

(But honestly it’s probably just as easy to write new stuff that does the same. )

Hey, new Appendix K: inspiration for those fantasy gaming in a Korean milieu. This week’s installation is a history byb Gari Ledyard’s titled THE DUTCH COME TO KOREA (about Dutch castaways who ended up in Korea for a loooong time):

hallofadventures.com/the-dutch-come…

@GeekinKorea This is like a Bollywood movie in the form of TEFL writing exams—the full range of emotions. 🙂 (Well, if you end with another great one, and throw in a song and dance number or two.)

RT @NoLore: You aren’t imagining things. The pandemic is not being reported in the way that you are experiencing it.

@ArchivistsAlley Yeah, it was pretty fun, my gargly French pronunciation nonwithstanding.

@JustinHowe Hahaha, that’s hilarious. 🙂