QualiaAddict

You need to earn 135 grand a year in the U.K. to take home the same monthly pay as someone receiving full Universal Credit (£6,142/month) How can this be?

I just gave a closed-book, pen-and-paper midterm exam in my 300-level course at UBC with 100 students. All exams were graded by an experienced graduate-level TA according to a rubric. *** The average was 64/100.*** My class averages at UBC are usually 80-85. Context: • This was the first midterm, covering ONLY 4 weeks of material. • Students had a list of possible questions in advance: no surprise questions. • Questions included (a) 3 concept definitions, (b) 3 paragraph-long questions, and (c) a 1.5-page essay. • I have taught this class multiple times. Nothing in my teaching style changed this semester. • We read entire paragraphs of text in class, so students don't have to do something on their own that wasn't covered during the lecture. • Students take a 10-question multiple-choice quiz at the end of every class (30% of the final grade). • Attendance is 95-99% every class. Attention during lectures and participation in pair-work activities are very high → anticipating the end-of-class quiz. *** But unfortunately, I suspect many students are not reading the material on the syllabus. They are asking LLMs to summarize it instead.*** After the midterm, students reported: • They thought they knew concept definitions but couldn't produce them on paper. • They thought they understood the arguments but struggled to connect them or identify points of agreement and disagreement. My view: It might be “cool” or “innovative” to teach students to summarize readings with ChatGPT or write essays with Claude. But we may be doing them a disservice: reducing their ability to retain material, think creatively, and reason from what they know. If you only read what AI has summarized for you, you don’t truly "know" the material. Moving forward: We have a second midterm coming up. I don't know how to convey to students that the best way to do better on the exam is to rely on and improve their own reading skills.

I joined the civil service late (I was 43). It's astonishing how fast one can become institutionalised. The first year was just serial 'what the actual fuck?' but by year three 'yes, spending three months negotiating with the facilities management team to have an additional desk fitted in my area is perfectly normal'.

Response to the Cambridge University Labour Club An invitation I received to speak at the Cambridge University Conservative Association, in my capacity as an historian and YouTuber, has recently been rescinded after a “cancel-culture” attack-posted to Instagram by the Cambridge University Labour Club. The post highlighted objections to me and another guest, Jack Anderton. The post cites four items as evidence of my alleged 'racist, anti-black, and anti-Semitic' views; a misleading and unverified claim by Labour funded, far left, anti-white hate group Hope not Hate, thumbnails for two of my videos, and a screenshot of a tweet I made comparing two Direct-to-consumer genomics companies. In this public statement I will defend all four examples as rational, factual, scientific and not “racist. Anti-black and anti-Semitic” as is claimed and/or implied by the either ill-informed or dishonest author of the post.

My pregnancy app’s tip of the day is this. Or, hear me out, what if I just change her when she needs to be changed, feed her whenever she’s hungry, not drive myself crazy with how many minutes she slept, and hold her/wear her lots so she doesn’t spend all her time on her back?

A migrant has been charged with abducting and raping a 15-year-old girl while living in a taxpayer-funded asylum hotel Sri Lankan Yashin Himasara, 20, is accused of beating and strangling the teenage girl after he ‘carried her away against her will’ in Feltham