Archives: Tweets

Hey, another Appendix K post! I really liked this reprint/collection of weird Korean folktales collected by missionaries back in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Worth a read if you dig that kind of thing:

hallofadventures.com/eerie-tales-fr…

RT @weatherdak: Unsettling imagery of northeastern Siberia.

Abundant fires & extensive, blanketing smoke.

RT @koryodynasty: Just in: South Korean health authorities now say the country is in the midst of a second wave. twitter.com/yonhaptweet/st…

Oh, and you can buy the screens (and support the people who created the detector screen card) here:

https://t.co/4a2hdkq9jO

I can’t vouch for how well or reliably it works, but… it’s something, anyway. (I mean, if you want your own. In S. Korea, they’re being installed in all public bathrooms, apparently. Which… wow.)

I’m giving feedback on a storytelling assignment for my presentation class and this one guy’s story was about meeting a long-term humanitarian aid worker and how it was the most inspirational experience for him…

So I guess everyone’s* just always going to be scanning with their phone to see if someone’s installed a private camera to film them naked.

*Well, “everyone.” I haven’t seen red cellophane in a men’s bathroom yet. Doubt I will. That’s misogyny for you. What’s nuts is the “democratization” of this stuff. You used to need experts/conspiracies & it was so expensive governments wired up mostly just embassies, offices, and fancy hotels for spying.

Now random perverts w/an 80 IQ can wire up public bathrooms & shower stalls.

If I didn’t know better about how new laws (don’t) get enforced, I’d say there needs to be some kind of legal way to incentivize business/building owners into proactively doing more to make this crap harder to do. (Stick, more than carrot.) Except… yeah, right. https://t.co/wUCVJpc7BN I can see the newspaper article comments:

“We inspect regularly,” says the owner. However, employees looked confused at the claim, and privately confirmed that no inspections had ever been performed. The owner’s son’s fingerprints were later discovered on three hidden cameras.

I’m behind but there’s another of my “Appendix K” posts up now. (The series recommends accessible Korean books, movies, TV, and other media for FPRG inspiration, like the old “Appendix N” did for swords & sorcery). This week, a quick look at HONG GILDONG: hallofadventures.com/the-story-of-h…

RT @AllanKaster: The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 4
-now out in ebook and paperback! amazon.com/Years-Hard-Sci… Stories by @matociq…

@GeekinKorea I’m not using any of that this semester, though, and probably won’t from now on, for writing classes. Making it an explicit process-writing thing just sort of throws cheating out the window: it’s way harder to fake an understanding of the writing process than to just learn it.

@GeekinKorea Oh, I just swap in and out questions, build variant versions of the same question with answer orders changed, that kind of thing. I think it took about 3 semesters to build a roster of swappable sections I could plug and play together to build a “new” exam. @GeekinKorea I actually even had variant versions with the question slightly changed so that if someone DOES get hold of a copy, they’ll fail because the answers and reading text are the same, but the question is different so the “right” answers on Exam A are “wrong” on Exam B.

@GeekinKorea (i.e. as a way of being “generous” to students or something?)

*shrug* I have learned not to be surprised by even the most mystifying justifications… though I suspect a lack of proper TAs (who actually assist in course admin, I mean) is probably a big reason for it.

@GeekinKorea Ha, most students in our dept’s classes are there emphatically because it’s required… but they mostly don’t make serious efforts to cheat in my class either. Maybe the low stakes, but probably also because the test design makes cheating unfeasible overall. @GeekinKorea The discussion I mentioned regarding this guy’s explanation of why he’d flunked an exam in a course in his major department. From all accounts, “advantage” is seen as “normal” and even profs pretty much expect it. (And yet—or maybe *therefore*?—most don’t revise exams often.)

@GeekinKorea Oh, and I think the term for this at my campus is “advantage.” A student attributed flunking a major exam to not having “advantage” and when I asked and he explained it mean last semester’s copy of the exam, I said, “Oh, so you failed because you didn’t cheat?” @GeekinKorea Cue bewildering discussion about whether it’s cheating if everyone else does it, and if the prof knows that everyone’s doing it and doesn’t update the exam.

When I pointed out it’s a great way to ensure your future incompetence, I was told companies expect that, so it’s ok. smh

@GeekinKorea Yeah, that’s a smart approach for a conversational English exam!

@GeekinKorea It’s been enough of a discouragement that nobody’s tried to cheat yet, at least. But I’ve been requiring students to show their work in a process for years. It’s easy in writing courses… harder to apply in other areas, I guess. @GeekinKorea I have used random topic generation in exams, mind—actually bought d8s or d10s to class and had them roll on three tables of topics and then take their pick.

@GeekinKorea … so they can also screenrecord themselves visiting the random topic generator page, and selecting a topic. And it’s step 3 of 10, so they’re not likely to redo steps 1-2 again just to get a topic they want. And they have to brainstorm and draft and analyze models onscreen!) @GeekinKorea It’s probably not 100% impossible to cheat, but way harder than on an in-class exam, and you’d need to be brilliant to avoid getting caught; any weirdness in the exam sends me to the video, where I watch them doing the work as if live.) Any tampering w/the video=disqualification.

@GeekinKorea Oh, well, in the days when I included multiple choice components, I did new questions every semester but retained copies of the old ones, so I could mix and match questions or just print off something from 5 semesters before; they’re not organized enough to collect that far back. @GeekinKorea These days I just design exams to give students the space to demonstrate the skills they’ve acquired, and give them list of unannounced topics. Actually building a random topic generator for online exams. (They screenrecord themselves doing the whole writing process…

@GeekinKorea “test coaching situation”?

As for arbitrating an emergency, I’ll usually accept anything they can actually document. Woe to those who submit fake documentation, though. (I’ve had a few: there’s a website out there that generates (recognizably!) fake medical certificates.)

@GeekinKorea I’ve actually had students show up 20 min before the end of the exam but insist on trying to complete it anyway. (One even managed to earn a C+ doing that!) But usually they agree to come back and take the test during another class’s test time, etc. More informal and situational.

@GeekinKorea Wow! That’s pretty generous, really, having a whole emergency day, so yeah, if they miss that, it’s 100% on them. @GeekinKorea Personally, if someone misses the exam and doesn’t contact me beforehand (or within 24 hours after if warranted by circumstances), they’ve already thrown away their grade. But the worst I usually see is someone sleeping in and turning up 10 min before the exam ends.

@GeekinKorea Ugh, well, then it’s 100% on them. *shrug*

@GeekinKorea That’s a lot! Did you ever hear from them?

(Curious, because I’ve occasionally had weird exam-timeslot conflicts in the past when a major prof. decided to schedule an exam during my regular classtime. That’s no excuse for not notifying you, though!)

@marc_laidlaw Sorry to hear you’re having all those other side-effects there. Oddly, I haven’t heard a siren once yet today. (Almost 4:30pm.) @marc_laidlaw Speaking as someone whose driving experience came mostly after age 40, I will say not driving much for 4 months left me a little worse on the road. Given how many people learn late here (and from terrible driving schools), I wonder if it was maybe more car accidents than usual.

@marc_laidlaw Yeah, it was kind of down to zero new cases for a while. I think we only have one new case this week (so far) but it’s started up again in Seoul and in a nearby city (Daejeon). I think it never got quite bad in our area for it to affect crime rates… @marc_laidlaw … but there’s definitely been some stress. One thing that’s helped, though, is that we never actually had to go all the way to any kind of strict lockdown. People stayed home a lot voluntarily. But many have tired of it, so I guess there’s more clusters coming this summer.

@GeekinKorea Yeah, I had an oddly surprising number of students basically drop out of my least demanding class this semester (the Presentation class). I even went out of my way to give students alternate ways of participating without appearing onscreen.

@marc_laidlaw Crossed my mind, except they publish local test results and we’d have seen a spike in confirmed local cases if it was that, but we haven’t so far. (The test turnaround is pretty fast now.) Even when we were at the local peak outbreak (IIRC April), we weren’t hearing many sirens! @marc_laidlaw Though it is possible some of the cases reported as “Daejeon” are actually local ones that were *contracted* in Daejeon, because they’ve reported contraction points first, and the followed up with neighborhood of residence a little later. I guess we’ll see!

Oh, and while looking up azalea poisoning (they’re toxic, apparently), I ran across this:

korea.net/NewsFocus/Cult…

Are Korean azaleas a different, non-toxic species? Or is it just such a low dose in petals that nobody gets sick? Inquiring minds, etc.

In the past few days at our apartment (in Sejong City), we’ve gone from occasionally hearing an ambulance siren (*maybe* once every month or two) to hearing 3–4+ each day. There were fire trucks the other day, too. Wonder what’s going on. Maybe just a blip, but… unsettling.

@GeekinKorea It’s good to hear the balance is different than I imagine.

I should clarify my main point earlier was that, “Go and sit in a library for two years,” is a powerful tool for filtering out people who’re innovative or interested in reforming things in a serious way.

@GeekinKorea Interesting. I’ve seen just enough inside the system to have a pretty jaundiced eye. The stories of corruption and abuse I’ve heard—and how they were thoroughly tolerated—has something to do with that. Obviously not universal, but the usual crapshoot.

I should note that I’ve long had the similarity in mind, but the opposite direction: that chaebol families often behave like wannabe authoritarian autocracies (and for the most part, they generally get away with it).

If you’re thinking, “There’s something sexist about the fact he saw her dad, grandpa, and brother as garden variety tin-pot dictators but then realized a chaebol parallel exists after she came out of the woodwork,” then, yes, I agree. But then again, it’s partly because of the reaction I’ve seen to Kim Yo Jong, which feels different than the reaction I remember people having to Kim Jong Un.

Well, that and the theory that she’s jockeying to be next in line by coming out swinging feels *very* chaebol to me.

The Kims are basically your typical (albeit really screwed-up) chaebol family run amok, except they have a whole nation of people to torture, instead of just employees and unfortunate customers. https://t.co/Ox6npavoNR And yes, I have to admit I thought this after reading a little about Kim Yo Jong and then thinking immediately of Cho Hyun Ah. (The famed “macadamia nut rage” heiress who was in the news a few years ago.)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_rage_…

@GeekinKorea Sure, but lots get into that racket in their 20s—often b/c mom & dad urged it.

(I have the same criticism of the teacher-recruitment system.)

One needs a certain amount of luxury to be able to to pursue it: not everyone can just sit in a library for a year or two.

RT @vicjkim: Siri, show me sexism and ageism in South Korea in one image twitter.com/koryodynasty/s…

@GeekinKorea @edap63 Yeah, we got a new case too, which I assume was caught down the road in Daejeon. 🙁

@GeekinKorea Oh, then it’s just the usual incompetence I’ve come to expect from 공무원. Sorry, but the filtration method for who gets gov’t jobs—”Hey, sit in a room and study for two years for a chance to get a job that pays terribly for years but is ‘stable’!”—can’t attract the best people.

@GeekinKorea Do they have finals next week? (If so, my guess is the side-effects of self-imposed sleep deprivation.)

@GeekinKorea I’ve looked at some alternative systems available online, since building something from scratch is beyond my abilities; I may do it for subsequent semesters, but if the system in place is working, I may just go with that— Export/import class function would save me lots of work.

@GeekinKorea I can even upload files directly to MySpace (Commons) with only ~5% failure rate, since getting a thunderbolt-to-Ethernet dongle.

(It shouldn’t be necessary & is still oddly high, but, eh, I expect that’s as good as it’ll get for local hurryware for an unpopular use niche.)

@ecmyers @Nefarious_Wes Ha, it’s no use, Doctor.

@ecmyers @Nefarious_Wes Yeah, it’s a liveable workaround for now. I go out pretty rarely so I just live with it for now. (Especially since I seem incapable of actually putting contacts in. Tried MANY times, but always involuntarily blink.)

@GeekinKorea No kidding. I uploaded my last video for the semester today. Such a relief.

@Nefarious_Wes @ecmyers I’ve figured out how to positio the glasses so I can see w/o fog. They just need to be a little further down my nose. No big deal.

Another of those Appendix K posts I’m doing!

hallofadventures.com/along-with-the…

@ahimsakerp I also suspect it may be worst for our generation. Teenager these days apparently more often than not see the contents of their digital accounts as WAY more fungible. They post stuff, delete it a day later, maybe only share privately, make secondary accounts and then delete…

@ahimsakerp Well, I was a bit taken aback. This was not someone I’d expected to land in the Antivaxxer ‘sphere.

But… I do think this is something we’re gonna have to reckon with in our online lives, which we didn’t really have to, at least not on this scale.

Can you see yourself in the nursing home, reading your high school friend’s hateful, fallacy-laden screeds against science or interracial marriage or vat-grown meat or increasing the UBI’s accessibility or the research into helping same sex couples produce biological offspring? I guess I need to get better at just unfriending people. I do unfollow without hesitation, at least, but somehow unfriending the last person I’m still connected to from a certain period or area of my life feels like it compounds the loss, if that makes any sense? I dunno.

Like, I’d rather just not know about that. I’d rather not have to see that kind of degeneration play out in front of me. And it’s not just this friend. We all crumble in some way, over time, under the pressures of life, given enough time. And I’ve just realized that, you know, that’s something we’re all going to be watching in realtime: the slow, ongoing crumbling and collapse over time of the bodies and psyches of not just our close friends, but people who were once friends, lovers, acquaintances, coworkers…