Fresh off a few conversations about teachers who use AI, teachers who instruct their high school kids to run their essays through an AI program before handing it in, and one parent who was instructed to buy headphones for his kindergartener(!) to use with the tablets the school provides — Evan Rosa took the words right out of my mouth:

I recall from 2006 and the first iPhones on, the pacifying nature of holding a … I guess it would have been Blue’s Clues at the time … up in front of a child in their backseat who’s screaming, and just out of a desire for some sanity, you turn on that blue light and you dazzle them with this thing. And then you hand it to them and they start interacting and you start congratulating them for how easily they got it and how amazing it is that kids know how to pinch to enlarge — there is a tragic and so… such a sad and, I think at an aesthetic level, an ugly thing about that.

Presented without comment:

Me: Nope, nope, nope. We really have to go. So we can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way.

My 2 1/2-year-old: Actually, I wanna do it the hard way.

After a busy work weekend, including 4 1/2 hours of driving, I finished listening again to that Joe Rogan podcast with Sebastian Junger from 2017. Even better than I thought. Regardless of agree-disagree, it’s all good stuff. I sometimes share a podcast that I just think anyone could easily share. But here I think that if you want to understand why so many people listen to Joe Rogan, particularly some of the perfectly normal reasons people got into him in the first place — and this is a big if, if you want to understand — it’s not a bad place to start.

What’s on the teeveeee, kids?

One of the few songs from my guitar dabbling days that I can still play is Blink-182’s “Stay Together for the Kids.” I still remember sitting poolside c. 2006 in Longview, Texas and learning it. What it unfailingly reminds me of, though, is the acoustic cover of the song in Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s documentary Restrepo.

And that also reminds me of this excellent interview with Junger from 2017. While I occasionally caught a good one, I’ve never been a Joe Rogan podcast listener — I’d be surprised if I’ve listened to even half a dozen of them. And I miss the days when that meant little to nothing more than that I didn’t care about podcasts and definitely had no time for two-hour podcasts.

Reprimand to a Naive Deity

Will’s book of choice today, which he dug out of the storage room we call an office.

Omar Eduardo Rivera, a blind computer technician, was working on the 71st floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower on September 11, 2001, when a hijacked plane flew into the skyscraper. After Omar and his guide dog, Salty, fought their way to the stairwell, he unclipped the dog’s leash and ordered him to go. Convinced he would die, Omar wanted to give his beloved Labrador retriever a chance to survive. But Salty refused to leave his owner’s side, despite the panic and the intense heat. For nearly an hour, Salty patiently guided Omar down 70 flights of stairs to safety. The tower collapsed shortly after they escaped.

Some thoughts and memories about 9/11, inspired by a military analyst. There’s more here than I have the time or the heart to expand right now, but it’s something.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”