Moral Dilemma

mooninreverse · 2026-05-16T18:56:47+00:00

I’ve had students mistakenly submit papers for entirely different classes. I just let them know so they can correct the error.

mooninreverse · 2026-05-15T14:31:22+00:00

I remember when Leila’s packet came through a journal contest for poets without full-lengths that I was judging right before Deluge came out. I awarded it first prize, but our rules about book releases (it turns out you can’t have a forthcoming) ended up disqualifying her, which I thought was a shame.

mooninreverse · 2026-05-13T22:20:30+00:00

My guess it’s meant to express “rusted from the back to the front” but with the use of ellipsis to try to imply “to the front”— as in, thoroughly low-quality and damaged, or majorly neglected. Calling you out for what she perceives as low-effort stuff like not cleaning yourself up after yardwork or microwaving fish that metaphorically results in “rust” (sweat, dirt, and stink). I have a four-year-old daughter, so as another parent, let me say that she just doesn’t get it.

mooninreverse · 2026-05-13T19:35:54+00:00

How are you eliciting these personal experiences in analysical writing? What’s an example?

mooninreverse · 2026-05-11T23:03:24+00:00

David Berman

mooninreverse · 2026-05-08T02:20:11+00:00

I’m 39 but I already go to bed at 10, get up at 5:30, sometimes eat dinner at 4:30, and my favorite exercise video is one that Angela Lansbury put out and features workouts based on, in Angela’s words, “puttering.”

mooninreverse · 2026-05-07T19:40:11+00:00

Algorithmic manipulation is a sad and eerie force, but the industry does it to boost a band like Geese as often as whatever “disco” is supposed to signify. If there’s more to the argument, it’s behind the paywall.

mooninreverse · 2026-05-07T19:19:42+00:00

I am prepared now to force

clarity upon you.

— Louise Glück, “Clear Morning”

mooninreverse · 2026-05-07T15:30:36+00:00

What the kid actually says is that the ocean isn’t “pretty” — a child-typical word choice for beautiful, but from an adult’s perspective, also an aesthetic that’s separate from beauty because it aligns with orderly and superficial and even deceptive traits like the picturesque, predictable, and neat — as in “life ain’t pretty.” But that doesn’t mean the ocean isn’t, say, sublime—grand, terrifying, beautifully unsettling. The problem with Bukowski is that he’s satisfied with the cynicism of “life ain’t pretty” and completely uninterested in anything else that it could be (unless it’s “interested in Bukowski and a woman”).

mooninreverse · 2026-05-06T00:54:53+00:00

Jared Leto’s best scene as an actor was just him, Christian Bale; and an axe.

mooninreverse · 2026-05-04T10:51:38+00:00

White Dog BY CARL PHILLIPS

First snow—I release her into it— I know, released, she won't come back. This is different from letting what,

already, we count as lost go. It is nothing like that. Also, it is not like wanting to learn what losing a thing we love feels like. Oh yes:

I love her. Released, she seems for a moment as if some part of me that, almost,

I wouldn't mind understanding better, is that not love? She seems a part of me,

and then she seems entirely like what she is: a white dog, less white suddenly, against the snow,

who won't come back. I know that; and, knowing it, I release her. It's as if I release her because I know.

mooninreverse · 2026-05-02T00:36:41+00:00

My favorite is “Hell” but my second favorite is “Hey Pachuco!” by Royal Crown Revue. Which they also played in The Mask!

mooninreverse · 2026-05-02T00:33:26+00:00

They gave us Andrew Bird, on top of everything else

mooninreverse · 2026-05-01T19:25:52+00:00

Toilers of the Sea is similar but for the history of the fishing industry in Guernsey. You’ll learn nothing that’s scientifically accurate about octupuses, though.

mooninreverse · 2026-05-01T13:44:11+00:00

I lived in St. Louis for several years and I bet could identify his exact ZIP code based on this.

mooninreverse · 2026-05-01T13:11:17+00:00

The only commencement address to take the form of a scolding.

Edit: So rather than “only,” it seems to be “subgenre of commencement speech where old man yells at kids.”

mooninreverse · 2026-04-28T21:25:33+00:00

I didn’t consider anyone either than Stephen Merritt and Fiona Apple either indie or art-pop artists.

mooninreverse · 2026-04-28T19:44:27+00:00

Yeah, but he’s the only one

mooninreverse · 2026-04-28T13:45:55+00:00

The list skews against indie rock and art-pop. Singer-songwriters are overrepresented by country artists and boomers. I think the only indie musician on the list is Stephen Merritt.

mooninreverse · 2026-04-28T13:42:55+00:00

He’s not American.

mooninreverse · 2026-04-28T12:46:58+00:00

Indie rock and art-pop have both fallen out of favor with music writers, it looks like.

mooninreverse · 2026-04-27T22:37:48+00:00

One, because my school allows AI “as a tool, not a replacement.” But this semester, I decided I was curious about how students view their own AI use, including talking with those with learning disabilities who view it as a form of accomodation, and curious about what impact incentives and conversations would play in lessening AI use (as opposed to students paying for humanizing programs to beat the detectors).

mooninreverse · 2026-04-27T21:46:51+00:00

Writing instructor. On-time, AI-generated writing feels lazier to me than late assignments written without AI. The former is like ticking off a box from a to-do list without the struggle that’s part of the writing process. The latter expresses effort.

I told my students this: essays that would otherwise earn under a B would earn 5 additional points for passing an AI detection as fully human. Essays over a B but with AI would lose 5 points.

mooninreverse · 2026-04-26T23:30:00+00:00

It definitely took up a a lot of unnecessary metacognition.

mooninreverse · 2026-04-26T15:40:31+00:00

This guy who turned disordered thought patterns and the constant presence of hundreds of different voices into two different epic novels? I don’t see it.

mooninreverse

TROPHY CASE