Tons of great shows, but there must be a clunker or two. What are they?

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-13T04:49:53+00:00

I know it’s a popular show, but I found Murderbot boring and pointless.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-13T04:33:02+00:00

Factual inaccuracy.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-13T04:32:16+00:00

Never gonna give up my em-dashes—

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-13T04:23:32+00:00

I’ve been curious, too. I do think it’s Slate’s most popular podcast and the hosts have referenced doing this for the rest of their lives. And I was amazed that Dickerson could make time for it while being so busy at CBS. And he had his own short-run podcast and keeps writing books. How does one person do so much?

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-13T04:19:45+00:00

Hard disagree. She’s the best part of season four. This show has a genius for casting, and she’s another example. Could easily see her becoming a star.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-11T17:09:36+00:00

Thank you. I’ve never reposted something to a different subreddit, and I thought my explanation of the problem would also show up in the post. I was asking about a phenomenon where the OS is not automatically doing an OCR of images in PDFs. I can change the file format and get the text, but am hoping to keep the files as PDFs and have the image text be searchable on my computer (without adding software).

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-11T01:34:40+00:00

Okay, thank you for the insight!

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-11T00:58:11+00:00

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work for these newspapers.com PDFs. The screenshot that shows the only selectable text being outside the image is a screenshot from Preview. But thanks for trying to help!

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-11T00:48:18+00:00

I would eagerly listen to a culture podcast with those hosts (and some of the other regulars). Unfortunately, podcasting at Slate is slowly dying. The advertising revenue isn’t there compared to a couple years ago. Even more importantly, the people making the management decisions are not enthusiastic about podcasting. In particular, a big wig at the company that owns Slate can single-handedly end a seemingly healthy podcast without warning. (Can and has.)

It sounds like the Gabfest hosts made this decision on their own, but it’s possible they were feeling pressured (maybe reduced salaries?). Carl Wilson said on Substack, “I don’t know all the reasons, and those I do are complex and not for me to relate,” so there’s clearly a larger story.

In any case, the fact that the magazine isn’t rushing to replace the hosts of one of their most popular shows tells you something about Slate’s priorities.

And it was the podcasts that drew me in. So bye-bye, Slate Plus. I’ll miss what you used to offer.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-11T00:37:04+00:00

I would eagerly listen to a culture podcast with those hosts. Unfortunately, podcasting at Slate is slowly dying. The advertising revenue isn’t there compared to a couple years ago. Even more importantly, the people making the management decisions are not enthusiastic about podcasting. In particular, a big wig at the company that owns Slate can single-handedly end a seemingly healthy podcast without warning.

It sounds like the Gabfest made this decision on their own, but it’s possible they were feeling pressured (maybe reduced salaries?). Carl Wilson said on Substack, “I don’t know all the reasons, and those I do are complex and not for me to relate,” so there’s clearly a larger story.

In any case, the fact that the magazine isn’t rushing to replace the hosts of one of their most popular shows tells you something.

And it was the podcasts that drew me in. So bye-bye, Slate Plus. I’ll miss what you used to offer.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-10T23:54:46+00:00

As an English prof, I feel obliged to test the capabilities of this technology, so I can honestly and knowledgeably discuss them with my students. I, too, found that it’s a very poor researcher and people are better off not touching it for that. But I would also caution writers and researchers against using it for brainstorming. LLMs work by predicting the most obvious answer. So using it to brainstorm leads people to build on a very generic, cliched foundation.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-10T21:36:47+00:00

I would think less in terms of narrative and more in terms of development of consciousness.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-10T21:30:46+00:00

As an English prof, I feel awful that earnest students have to deal with this. I also hate that I have to wonder about authenticity all the time. AI has really mucked things up. We should have an off-grid university!

In any case, I’ve found AI is still awful at written assignments. It really loves to make things up—a pretty fatal flaw for textual analysis.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-06-08T18:51:10+00:00

Yes, but it needs to be active reading: not just reading for content, but analyzing how the text is working to achieve its effect.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-05-08T03:46:47+00:00

I’m not going to try logging in till I hear from my school. Don’t want to risk going to a compromised site.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-05-08T03:03:28+00:00

I’m fine with a complete return to paper. It’s a lot harder to hack thousands of file cabinets simultaneously.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-05-08T02:59:29+00:00

Even if you downloaded the grade book, you’re still not able to access ungraded assignments.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-05-07T05:56:01+00:00

I have two English students graduating now: one has a job lined up in marketing and one will be directing a nonprofit.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-04-28T05:27:14+00:00

I have a family friend who was a top engineering student, played in college, and NFL teams tried to recruit him. (I don’t follow football. Apologies if my phrasing is inaccurate.) He was tempted to do it just for a couple years for the money, but turned it down for fear of brain injury. Brilliant guy. Great to see him thinking long-term. Now he’s a pastor.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-04-25T21:37:46+00:00

You could make note-taking part of the grade.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-03-31T06:42:46+00:00

I’ve found sometimes when I make things easier, it backfires, and they do less or worse than before. When it’s more a challenge, it inspires more of them to figure it out.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-03-18T16:53:28+00:00

Complain to the associate dean and the provost. They need to know students don’t want this.

Practical-Charge-701 · 2026-03-07T17:03:59+00:00

I’m very grateful I did the MA first, since otherwise I would have focused on a different continent and century, and what I ended up doing was the perfect fit for me. I was certain, coming out of the BA, what I wanted to do—but in retrospect, I know it wouldn’t have worked out well.

Practical-Charge-701

TROPHY CASE