I took a screenshot of this image from the New York Times this morning. It’s hardly the worst of President Trump’s offenses, but it crystalized for me how humiliating it is to have such a petty buffoon sitting at the resolute desk.
Skies like this make the hours on the road worth it!
On our last warm day before winter, Oliver invited some friends over to celebrate his ninth birthday. We got to enjoy playing games in the yard, including a nearly invulnerable piñata, followed by gifts and cake. It was wonderful!
We also spotted the otters playing in the lake, but they were too elusive for the camera.
Griffin and our Spanish exchange student, Irene, went to the homecoming dance in style.
As I’ve mentioned before, I play with AI regularly to make sure I understand how it works. Gemini, Google’s LLM, has generally been pretty impressive. It’s not without its hallucinations (and numerous other concerns), but more often right than wrong.
Today, I was working on some exercises for my beginning computer science students. They need to be able to use Cartesian coordinates in their Python programs (using the “turtle” module). Most of them need more practice. I created a simple polygon in GeoGebra so that they can identify the vertices. I needed to create a bunch more.
Then I thought, This is a perfect task for Gemini! I explained what I wanted to Gemini and this is what it came up with:
Yikes! Even if math isn’t your thing, I suspect you’ll be able to see some egregious errors here. It is utter nonsense, wrong in just about every possible way. I’m surprised that it knew which axis to label x and y. (Even then, it added the specious “0” and “e“.)
I think my colleagues in the math department don’t have to worry about being replaced by AI “teachers” quite yet.
It’s hard for me to believe that someone wrote this copy with a straight face. It seems like a mockery of AI — a dystopian satire of the robot apocalypse. Humanizer? Really???
It’s that time again! Maggie enters eighth grade today while Griffin begins his junior year. It’s an orientation day at both grade levels, so there won’t be any real classes until tomorrow. (For the teachers, orientation is far more work than a regular class day, so I’ll definitely earn my meager keep today!)
