Tsh Oxenreider

I completely believe it. When young parents ask me for early homeschooling advice, I tell them to start curating a good home library (used are great!) and keep it in the public spaces in the home. Then designate mandatory DEAR (drop everything and read) time once a day, where everyone reads for an hour. If you do this, you’ll be 90% of the way there for the earlier years (and heck, even the adolescent years if you’ve built this into a habit).

@CoachDanGo Walk every day and prioritize sleep.

People in 40s and above, what are the life tips/advice that you will give for the people in their 30s?

Don’t go to the Senate tomorrow.

@dave_bolin Ha! Maybe so. He unicycles to classes and has become quite known in our neighborhood.

@tsh So, is unicycle riding a core curriculum class in homeschooling? Haven’t met a unicycle rider who wasn’t raised in either homeschool or the circus.

At this weekend’s youth group talent show, friends of my kids are singing and dancing. My son, however, is shotgunning a can of soda while riding a unicycle. Scholarships, line up.

This is our last week of term @uaustinorg. After a couple months spent training students to read great books patiently with their very own eyes and brains, something becomes clear: In the new job market these kids will face, one of the rarest, and therefore most valuable skills is going to be the ability to sit quietly alone in a room and string thoughts together. Very, very few people who grew up reliant on AI are going to be able to do that, and those who can are going to eat their lunch. Turns out, if you try your best to love wisdom for its own sake, you get the practical stuff thrown in. But it doesn’t work the other way around. The skills they told you were “useless” are about to become the most useful ones in the world. They always were, of course. But now it will be obvious why.

@John_Attridge Yes, but it needs to be formatted as: It was not just the best of times. It was also the worst of times.

Catchy opening! But the comma splice is unwieldy. Why dont you try "It was not just the best of times. It was also the worst of times."

Tim Apple -my twenty-something daughter’s name for Steve Jobs, whose name she routinely forgets

@alisa_childers Yep. I’ve had this literal experience with literally Ignatius. And several other Church fathers. Genuinely not reliable.

Me: "Give me a couple of quotations from early church fathers about the doctrine of hell...with reference." ChatGPT: "Here's a quote from Ignatius." Gives quote and reference. Me: Checks reference. It's not there. "That isn't the right reference." ChatGPT: "Oh you're right. My mistake. Here's the correct reference." Me: Checks reference. "It's not there either." ChatGPT: "Good catch. It's actually not in that writing at all. It's actually here." Gives third reference. Me: Checks third reference. "It's not there. This is a direct quote?" ChatGPT: "Yes. I understand your frustration." (Psychoanalyzes me as being frustrated and because o that, I am now frustrated.) Me: Wastes an hour of my life trying to find the quote because it was really good. "I can't find that quote anywhere. You're sure it's an actual direct quote from Ignatius?" ChatGPT: "Good catch. My mistake. That is not an Ignatius quote." Me: "Who said it?" ChatGPT: "Actually, that quote is not found in any of the church fathers." Me: "Where did it come from?" ChatGPT: "I was summarizing the popular understanding of Ignatius on the doctrine of hell. If you would like me to be more precise in the future, just say things like "facts only." Me: "Why do you just say stuff that is not based in fact?" ChatGPT: "I don't intentionally make things up, but I can generate statements that sound confident even when they're not fully correct, oversimplified, or based on incomplete information." I am persuaded that ChatGPT is programmed to be a pathological liar and when you confront that, it is programmed to gaslight you. Prove me wrong.

Pray for and hope for close friendships. This is a good desire. But don’t be so idealistic that you’re blind to the opportunities for friendship right in front of you. This looks like pursuing that person already in your life instead of waiting for someone who might not exist. It looks like looking out for who might need a friend more than you. It looks like taking the initiative to get together when you’d rather wait to be invited. It looks like keeping healthy boundaries when you feel particularly vulnerable about all this, not turning to social media for a facsimile of the real thing.

Remember, this is the night when Woodrow Wilson slides down your chimney & steals an hour of your life.

@DudespostingWs none of this “near” business

According to Texans, this is near perfect smoked brisket

Literally me while grading high school essays

Wife: You’re not buying new books, are you? Me: Absolutely not. These books were published years ago.

@ChrisKindaReads One of my all-time favorites.

started jane eyre today. it’s actually blowing my mind

THE GREEKS ARE FIGHTING THE PERSIANS I REPEAT THE GREEKS ARE FIGHTING THE PERSIANS

@erosbrousson x.com/tsh/status/202…

I THOUGHT MEGA CHURCHES WERE THE CULT . I WAS WRONG . IT’S H-E-B 🍦🏪

I kinda hate to admit it, but one of our favorite date nights these days is the BBQ restaurant inside our neighborhood HEB. The second floor has a great bar and coveted patios, and we’ll go up there with our dinner + drinks and a deck of cards. 🤌 HEB is the GOAT.

If Aristotle is right and happiness is the state of the soul in an activity of excellence, then off loading all our creative and intellectual work to AI will make us supremely miserable.