Cinemorphosis

Category: Education in the AI Age

  • How I Bribed My Students Into Talking on Canvas Discussion Boards

    How I Bribed My Students Into Talking on Canvas Discussion Boards

    Yesterday’s meeting featured the usual bureaucratic chestnut: making sure our online writing classes don’t devolve into glorified correspondence courses. The mandate was clear—students must get quick feedback from us, know how to contact us, have a tech-support lifeline, understand what materials to buy (not a $3,000 MacBook Pro?), and, above all, know the bare minimum of interaction they’ll have with their online peers.

    That interaction lives on the Canvas Discussion Board, which we’re told is the beating heart of digital education. From hard experience, I know this: if I don’t attach points, those boards become ghost towns. Students treat “attendance only” discussions like spam mail. The secret motivator is points—no matter how meager. Even the stingiest point values light up student survival instincts. They’d rather wrestle with a tedious prompt than lose three points.

    So here’s my new math for online classes:

    • Three 1,700-word essays: 220 points each.
    • Six building blocks (a.k.a. formative assignments): 50 points each.
    • Eight Discussion Board prompts: 5 points each.

    That’s the full enchilada: 1,000 points. Students stay engaged, the boards don’t wither, and I can claim my class is more than digital pen pals swapping files in the void.han digital pen pals swapping files in the void.

  • The Tabloid Mind Vs. The Thoughtful Mind

    The Tabloid Mind Vs. The Thoughtful Mind

    The verdict is in: after fifteen years of running their experiment on us, social media has mangled the human psyche. It has sandblasted away nuance, turned civility into snarling, and left us performing as shrill tribal mascots. The trouble begins with its essence: an Attention Machine. Every scroll is a sugar hit for the brain—quick spike, hard crash. We learn the trick ourselves, spitting out content like human Pez dispensers, packaging our thoughts as candy for the feed.

    Belonging is rationed out in likes and retweets, and the cost is subtlety. To win attention, you don’t weigh both sides—you crank the volume, you caricature, you inflame. What begins as a hook metastasizes into belief. We develop the Tabloid Mind: the reflex to turn every notion into a screaming headline. And once we inhabit the Tabloid Mind, we degrade, becoming not better humans but better performers for the algorithm.

    The Thoughtful Mind never stood a chance. A Tabloid platform attracts tens of millions; the Thoughtful Mind, if lucky, limps along with scraps. Yet the difference is stark. The Thoughtful Mind asks, listens, considers contradictions, and cools the room so clarity can thrive. The Tabloid Mind, by contrast, thrives on panic and rage, reducing discourse to a lizard-brain cage match where opponents are demons and the fire must never go out.

    A culture enthroned by the Tabloid Mind breeds paranoia, extremism, conspiracy, and violence. And violence doesn’t need to be shouted—it can be winked into existence by the constant drip of toxic adrenaline.

    I know the alternative exists because I live it daily in the classroom. When my students wrestle with bro culture, influencer fakery, or the cultural fallout of GLP-1 drugs, they do so with humor, nuance, and critical thought. The Thoughtful Mind lives there, in the room, face to face. No one is frothing at the dopamine mouth. No one is shitposting for clout. We disagree, we wrestle, we laugh—but we think.

    The Tabloid Mind is not sustainable. It’s a toxin, and unchecked, it will kill us. Our survival depends on choosing the Thoughtful Mind instead. The fight between them—clickbait versus clarity, heat versus light—is not just cultural noise. It’s the defining battle of our age.

  • Naked, Unshy, Beautiful: What Happens When the Killjoy Leaves

    Naked, Unshy, Beautiful: What Happens When the Killjoy Leaves

    I screened The Game Changers for my student-athletes, pausing every few minutes like a referee blowing the whistle on another bogus call. The film is a carnival of half-baked studies and overcooked claims about the superiority of a plant-based diet, and I wasn’t about to let it slide. Still, I tried to be generous: a well-planned plant-based diet can be a heart’s best friend. But then we hit my favorite scene, the one I couldn’t resist rewinding. Derrick Morgan, the former Tennessee Titans linebacker, is feasting with teammates on a vegan spread prepared by his wife, Charity. The science was questionable, but the spectacle of love, respect, and camaraderie at that table was undeniable. I told my students, “This—right here—is what eating is about. Not macros, not calculators, not the cold math of nutrition. It’s love.” A volleyball player nodded so hard in agreement, I swear I almost heard her whisper “Amen.”

    Because what is food without community? Nothing but calorie slop shoveled into our mouths like feral beasts at the trough. Food made with love is alchemy: it transforms ingredients into joy, health, and communion. Yet here we are, obsessed with mimicking the hollow thinness of the GLP-1 crowd, mistaking the absence of appetite for virtue. We’ve lost the plot. Food isn’t just fuel; it’s the oldest social technology we have, a medium for bonding, story-telling, and remembering why we bother to sit at a table together in the first place. Strip away the love, and you might as well be gnawing protein paste in solitary confinement.

    Someone with a strong sense of love and bonding is the unnamed Pommeroy brother who narrates the John Cheever short story “Goodbye, My Brother.” He explains that their father was drowned in a sailing accident, which accounts for the family being “very close in spirit.” Their widowed mother taught them that “familial relationships have a kind of permanence” that must be treasured. And so, when the clan gathers at a stately beach house in Laud’s Head, they long for a reunion soaked in sea air and camaraderie. Instead, they get Lawrence—the Puritan gargoyle in their garden party.

    Lawrence is the sort of malcontent who makes wallpaper peel just by standing in a room. He sneers, scolds, and sours the air with his joyless rectitude. A family feast must be stripped of flavor for fear of offending his ascetic palate; a laugh must be stifled, lest he glare with Calvinist disgust. He walks through the beach house like an undertaker taking notes. Even his children, described as thin and timid, seem malnourished by his anti-life, as if he has siphoned out their childhood and replaced it with dour lectures. He is not merely unpleasant—he is a contagion, a slow cancer metastasizing through the family’s shared spirit.

    Cheever’s brilliance is to render Lawrence as the Apollonian impulse run rancid: all order, no play; all restraint, no abandon. The rest of the Pommeroys, by contrast, embody the Dionysian: eager for pleasure, indulgence, the salty joy of swimming naked in the Atlantic. Lawrence cannot let go, cannot laugh, cannot live—and so the family cannot breathe in his presence. Only when the narrator, finally fed up, smacks his brother with a seawater-heavy root, drawing blood, does relief arrive. Lawrence slinks away with his joyless brood, leaving the others to rediscover pleasure, freedom, and even grace. The final image is unforgettable: the narrator’s wife and sister, unencumbered and unclothed, walking out of the ocean like radiant sea-goddesses. It’s as if Lawrence’s exile returned them to the very pulse of life.

    Cheever reminds us that one malcontent can poison the banquet, but also that expelling the killjoy—by violence if necessary—can restore the fragile ecstasy of family. The message is clear: the Dionysian will not be denied, not even by a Puritan scold with a permanent scowl.

  • Food as Storytelling, Not Spreadsheet

    Food as Storytelling, Not Spreadsheet

    I screened The Game Changers for my student-athletes, pausing every few minutes like a referee blowing the whistle on another bogus call. The film is a carnival of half-baked studies and overcooked claims about the superiority of a plant-based diet, and I wasn’t about to let it slide. Still, I tried to be generous: a well-planned plant-based diet can be a heart’s best friend. But then we hit my favorite scene, the one I couldn’t resist rewinding. Derrick Morgan, the former Tennessee Titans linebacker, is feasting with teammates on a vegan spread prepared by his wife, Charity. The science was questionable, but the spectacle of love, respect, and camaraderie at that table was undeniable. I told my students, “This—right here—is what eating is about. Not macros, not calculators, not the cold math of nutrition. It’s love.” A volleyball player nodded so hard in agreement, I swear I almost heard her whisper “Amen.”

    Because what is food without community? Nothing but calorie slop shoveled into our mouths like feral beasts at the trough. Food made with love is alchemy: it transforms ingredients into joy, health, and communion. Yet here we are, obsessed with mimicking the hollow thinness of the GLP-1 crowd, mistaking the absence of appetite for virtue. We’ve lost the plot. Food isn’t just fuel; it’s the oldest social technology we have, a medium for bonding, story-telling, and remembering why we bother to sit at a table together in the first place. Strip away the love, and you might as well be gnawing protein paste in solitary confinement.

  • The Road to Studio City Is Paved with Lane Closures

    The Road to Studio City Is Paved with Lane Closures

    Yesterday I braved my cousin Pete’s 75th birthday blowout in Studio City, dragging my wife and one of my twin daughters along for the ordeal. Like a fool, I skipped the Google Maps pre-check. The punishment: three lane closures on the 405. What should have been a breezy forty-minute jaunt became a 95-minute death march in a metal box. I joked that Pete should’ve hired a therapist specifically for the traumatized survivors of Southern California traffic—“Welcome, let’s unpack your freeway PTSD before the cake is served.”

    The party itself was bigger than I bargained for—150 guests orbiting around a swimming pool, lubricated by a taco bar, hummus hills, pita plains, and charcuterie slabs that could feed a small country. A band of four septuagenarians hacked out Beatles and Stones covers with the enthusiasm of men reliving their garage-band glory years.

    I chatted with cousins and one of the guitarists, but inevitably the conversation veered into my professional life: “So, Jeff, what about AI in the classroom?” I gave them my stock answer: AI is a double-edged sword. It can turn us into lazy bots outsourcing our brains—or, on the bright side, it can make my grading life less of a grammar police beat. I explained that AI gives every student a free grammar tutor, a perk I never thought I’d live to see. And yes, I confessed my own guilty pleasure: I write a sprawling Nabokovian memo, feed it to the machine, and tell it, “Sharpen this. Add acid wit.” What comes back is so tight and sly that I want to light a candle in gratitude.

    Left unsupervised, AI churns out limp, hollow paragraphs—Shakespeare’s “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” But with a solid draft and precise marching orders, it can take my word-bloated gasbaggery and spin it into crisp, surgical prose. The tool is neither angel nor demon; the sin or virtue belongs to the user.

    Of course, I also sinned in the culinary department. My “moderation” consisted of three or four thick slabs of brie smothered with figs and crackers, plus a couple of carne asada tacos. I had a token bite of my daughter’s birthday cake, which was so sweet it could have stripped paint, but that was restraint by default, not discipline. I’m certain I left Pete’s bash two pounds heavier.

    The drive home was mercifully shorter—just an hour—though Google still had the gall to insist the 405 was the “fast” route, lane closures and all. Let’s just say the 405 and I are on a trial separation for at least a year.

  • SZA in Our House: Why My Daughters and I Sigh When Taylor Swift Comes On

    SZA in Our House: Why My Daughters and I Sigh When Taylor Swift Comes On

    In my freshman writing class, I recently staged a little spectacle about thesis statements. To illustrate contrast, I pulled out two cultural heavyweights: SZA and Taylor Swift. Hyperbole was the hook. My admiration for SZA was real; my critique of Swift was exaggerated for theatrical effect. Still, my tirade sounded more like a roast than a teaching tool:

    “While Taylor Swift may rack up 25% more Spotify streams than SZA, numbers don’t tell the whole story—unless, of course, you mistake a stadium chant for art. SZA sings with depth and raw emotion, while Swift wheezes through her catalog like an underfed Victorian orphan. SZA’s sound is bold, kaleidoscopic, and alive, drawing from the lush soul of the ’70s. Swift, meanwhile, serves up limp sonic garnish—music with the texture and excitement of a wilted celery stalk rescued from beneath the fridge. SZA makes adult art; Swift makes musical mac and cheese for the kid’s menu at Chili’s.”

    In reality, I don’t think Swift is a wasteland of celery stalks and Victorian wheezing. I admitted to my students that Swift is likely a good person, a competent artist, and that I wish her well. My guilt lingered, though. Bombast is a teaching trick, but sometimes the fire singes the wrong target.

    That guilt sharpened when I stumbled across Spencer Kornhaber’s “How Did Taylor Swift Convince the World That She’s Relatable?” over morning coffee. One line hit me like a cold shower: “The most consequential American singer of the past 20 years, Swift can claim commercial achievements that equal or surpass those of the Beatles, Madonna, and Michael Jackson.”

    Relatability is her true superpower. Swift has broadcast her heartbreaks, doubts, and longings in ways that make her sound like a big sister or Greek chorus to her fans’ lives. Her brand isn’t just pop—it’s therapy with a backbeat.

    Kornhaber nails it: “Listening to a Swift song is like eating a candy bar that transmits a personal essay into your memory. If you eat enough candy bars, it becomes a novel, and then a series of novels, and then (this is when you become a Swiftie) a virtual-reality, open-world video game you play with friends and strangers.” It’s a metaphor that could apply to any great artist. I thought of The Truman Show, where daily life becomes the commodity, the spectacle, the art.

    Swift deserves her accolades. She is a master craftsman of polished, radio-ready memoir-pop. But her songs still strike me as a touch bland, like a dependable frozen dinner—satisfying but forgettable. My twin daughters agree. When a Swift track seeps out of SiriusXM Coffee House, we sigh in unison and silently wish it were SZA.

  • Typepad, R.I.P.: Obituary for a Dinosaur

    Typepad, R.I.P.: Obituary for a Dinosaur

    In 2006, I wandered into the Wild West of self-publishing and signed up with Typepad. Back then, blogs felt like a revolution: you could pour your obsessions straight into the digital void without begging gatekeepers for approval. I created three: Herculodge, where I indulged my radio fixation; The Breakthrough Writer, course content for my freshman comp class; and The Critical Thinker, the companion for my critical thinking students. Typepad cost me about $150 a year—a fair price for a soapbox in the dawn of the Blog Era.

    But by April 2025, my soapbox had turned into a rickety stool. Typepad was wheezing like a geriatric dinosaur stumbling into an unfamiliar world: constant downtime, glacial load times, the unmistakable stink of neglect. Research confirmed my suspicion—it had been sold, stripped for parts, and left to rot. I canceled my subscription. Out of nostalgia, I kept Herculodge in basic mode, mainly because its archive of radio reviews was still linked to Thomas Witherspoon’s venerable SWLing Post, a site that embodies everything good about radio: community, continuity, and voices across the airwaves.

    But in truth, Herculodge had gone dormant long ago. After the 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles, I went on a spree, bought a dozen radios, reviewed them all, and then, slowly, stopped. The flame flickered, and I moved on.

    Yesterday the official death notice arrived: “We have made the difficult decision to discontinue Typepad, effective September 30, 2025.” Translation: pull the plug, bury the dinosaur.

    This little obituary for Typepad drags me back to the Blog Era, when voices as sharp as Andrew Sullivan’s rose to the level of public intellectuals, while hobbyists like me tinkered in the shadows of niche obsessions, broadcasting to niche audiences. Blogs felt cozy, almost literary: you in a robe, cat on your lap, coffee steaming, ruminating about Virginia Woolf before hitting “publish.” Compare that to today’s Hot Take Era: dopamine-charged combatants spewing rage, preening for likes, and mistaking tribal points for thought.

    The end of Typepad is the end of that quieter world.

    I’ve since migrated to WordPress, which works better, loads faster, and hasn’t collapsed into irrelevance. I have mixed feelings about AI image generators: sometimes they hit the mark, but mostly they’re garish clip art pretending to be art. Still, I pay two hundred bucks a year to carve out a little order from the chaos, and it’s worth every cent. Cheaper than therapy, and with fewer platitudes.

    Typepad’s death isn’t tragic—it’s just the final shovel of dirt on an era already gone.

  • Classroom Playback: What a Football Player Taught Me About the Hedonic Treadmill

    Classroom Playback: What a Football Player Taught Me About the Hedonic Treadmill

    I’m starting a series I’m calling The Classroom Playback, where I revisit conversations from class discussions and reflect on how they challenged my assumptions. More often than not, I’ve found it isn’t the instructor who does the teaching—it’s the students. This is my first installment.

    I teach a college writing class to the athletic department—an eclectic mix of football bruisers, soccer strikers, volleyball hitters, and water polo warriors. Two days ago, in the context of an essay that addresses a generation of young men who don’t work or study but play computer games in their bedrooms, I introduced the concept of the hedonic treadmill, the cruel little loop in which humans adapt to pleasure until the buzz wears off and they need to crank the dial higher, faster, and louder, until finally the machine spits them out, exhausted and miserable.

    To make the point vivid, I shared a story from a former student. His older brother had dropped out of college, moved back in with mom, and made a religion out of lying in bed. His life consisted of Netflix marathons on a laptop, constant texts to his girlfriend, and a bong glued to his lips. A self-sedated sloth with Wi-Fi.

    So I asked my athletes, “Does this guy sound happy to you?”

    One of the football players, a psychology major with a grin as wide as the end zone, shot up his hand and said, absolutely—this guy was living the dream. No responsibilities, no alarms, no essays. Everyone, he insisted, would be content to live such a life.

    My jaw dropped. A psychology major dazzled by the ecstasy of permanent adolescence? I reminded him—gently but with a sharp edge—that life demands connection, structure, and purpose if humans are to flourish. Without it, the brain rots. He smiled, nodded, and conceded my point. But the nod was polite, the smile indulgent. I wasn’t sure I had actually shaken his conviction that the guy with the bong had cracked the code.

    After the football player declared his envy for the bong-hugging bed-dweller texting his girlfriend, I scanned the room and realized my grand metaphor had belly-flopped. My hedonic treadmill example didn’t land, to use modern parlance. What I intended as a cautionary tale of mental rot registered instead as a spa brochure: Netflix, weed, and endless texting looked less like disintegration and more like a vacation package.

    With fifteen weeks left in the semester, I’ve had to remind myself of two things. First: I can’t demolish their fantasies in one lesson. The hedonic treadmill requires repeat assaults, examples from all angles, until they feel—not just know—the despair of a life without meaning. Clearly, Bong Boy failed to deliver the emotional punch.

    Second: these kids belong to the “I’ll Never Buy a House” Generation. Their skepticism is hardwired. To them, the fantasy of collapsing in bed with Netflix and THC isn’t just laziness; it’s an antidote to the endless hustle culture they know they’ll never escape.

    Therefore, my football player presented me with a lesson: As an instructor, I can’t be myopic and teach ideas such as the hedonic treadmill from a limited point of view. I have to see things through my students’ eyes. 

    I’m close to sixty-four. My students are nineteen. If I want to reach them, I need to remember the golden rule of teaching—or sales, or persuasion of any kind: know your audience, speak to their anxieties, and try to see life through their eyes. Otherwise, you’re not a communicator—you’re just an old, out-of-touch crank with a lecture.

    I want to thank my football player for opening my eyes and reminding me that the classroom is instructional for both instructors and students alike. 

  • Bong Hits and Netflix: Teaching the Hedonic Treadmill to the Hustle Generation

    Bong Hits and Netflix: Teaching the Hedonic Treadmill to the Hustle Generation

    I teach a college writing class to the athletic department—an eclectic mix of football bruisers, soccer strikers, volleyball hitters, and water polo warriors. Two days ago, I introduced the concept of the hedonic treadmill, the cruel little loop in which humans adapt to pleasure until the buzz wears off and they need to crank the dial higher, faster, and louder, until finally the machine spits them out, exhausted and miserable.

    To make the point vivid, I shared a story from a former student. His older brother had dropped out of college, moved back in with mom, and made a religion out of lying in bed. His life consisted of Netflix marathons on a laptop, constant texts to his girlfriend, and a bong glued to his lips. A self-sedated sloth with Wi-Fi.

    So I asked my athletes, “Does this guy sound happy to you?”

    One of the wide receivers, a psychology major with a grin as wide as the end zone, shot up his hand and said, absolutely—this guy was living the dream. No responsibilities, no alarms, no essays. Everyone, he insisted, would be content to live such a life.

    My jaw dropped. A psychology major dazzled by the ecstasy of permanent adolescence? I reminded him—gently but with a sharp edge—that life demands connection, structure, and purpose if humans are to flourish. Without it, the brain rots. He smiled, nodded, and conceded my point. But the nod was polite, the smile indulgent. I wasn’t sure I had actually shaken his conviction that the guy with the bong had cracked the code.

    After the wide receiver declared his envy for the bong-hugging bed-dweller texting his girlfriend, I scanned the room and realized my grand metaphor had belly-flopped. My hedonic treadmill example didn’t land, to use modern parlance. What I intended as a cautionary tale of mental rot registered instead as a spa brochure: Netflix, weed, and endless texting looked less like disintegration and more like a vacation package.

    With fifteen weeks left in the semester, I’ve had to remind myself of two things. First: I can’t demolish their fantasies in one lesson. The hedonic treadmill requires repeat assaults, examples from all angles, until they feel—not just know—the despair of a life without meaning. Clearly, Bong Boy failed to deliver the emotional punch.

    Second: these kids belong to the “I’ll Never Buy a House” Generation. Their skepticism is hardwired. To them, the fantasy of collapsing in bed with Netflix and THC isn’t just laziness; it’s an antidote to the endless hustle culture they know they’ll never escape.

    I’m close to sixty-four. My students are nineteen. If I want to reach them, I need to remember the golden rule of teaching—or sales, or persuasion of any kind: know your audience, speak to their anxieties, and try to see life through their eyes. Otherwise, you’re not a communicator—you’re just a crank with a lecture.

  • The Missing Demon in Elizabeth Anderson’s Morality: A College Essay Prompt

    The Missing Demon in Elizabeth Anderson’s Morality: A College Essay Prompt

    In her essay “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?,” Elizabeth Anderson challenges the belief that morality is grounded in religion. She argues instead that morality emerges from evolution and learned cooperation. As she explains:

    “It follows that we cannot appeal to God to underwrite the authority of morality. How, then, can I answer the moralistic challenge to atheism, that without God moral rules lack any authority? I say: the authority of moral rules lies not with God, but with each of us. We each have moral authority with respect to one another. This authority is, of course, not absolute. No one has the authority to order anyone else to blind obedience. Rather, each of us has the authority to make claims on others, to call upon people to heed our interests and concerns. Whenever we lodge a complaint, or otherwise lay a claim on others’ attention and conduct, we presuppose our own authority to give others reasons for action that are not dependent on appealing to the desires and preferences they already have. But whatever grounds we have for assuming our own authority to make claims is equally well possessed by anyone who we expect to heed our own claims. For, in addressing others as people to whom our claims are justified, we acknowledge them as judges of claims, and hence as moral authorities. Moral rules spring from our practices of reciprocal claim making, in which we work out together the kinds of considerations that count as reasons that all of us must heed, and thereby devise rules for living together peacefully and cooperatively, on a basis of mutual accountability.”

    Anderson asserts that morality can and does exist without religion, assuming that people are rational enough to sustain moral authority within society. Yet there appears to be a missing element in her account: the demonic. Even without religious belief, it is difficult to deny the presence of a destructive force within human nature. Steven Pressfield, in The War of Art, names this force “the Resistance”—an inner demon that tempts us to waste our lives. Phil Stutz expands on this idea, calling it Part X in his therapy practice, a concept further explored in the Netflix documentary Stutz.

    For your essay (approximately 1,700 words), respond to the claim that Anderson’s essay, by omitting the demonic dimension of human behavior, does not provide a complete or persuasive account of morality. Argue instead that Phil Stutz’s therapeutic framework—especially as presented in Stutz—functions as a kind of substitute for religion. His system offers a narrative of human struggle: being trapped in immediate gratification (a life of the flesh), striving for Higher Powers (a life of the spirit), and acknowledging sin or innate depravity (Part X).

    To support your argument, draw on the work of Phil Stutz, his co-writer Barry Michels, and Steven Pressfield. Be sure to include a counterargument with rebuttal and a Works Cited page with at least four sources in MLA format.