Nothing but questions

I try not to read The Chronicle of Higher Education because it is, incredibly, worse rightwing propaganda than the New York Times, often (for example). But a few former colleagues were sharing around this post about how students can't read anymore (one of many such articles of late), and one particular part of it struck me enough to write a little thread about it. (You can read the article here, and you can read my thread without an account here)

Sirus Bouchat (@bouchat.bsky.social)

I don’t typically repost things from the Chronicle but one part of this stood out: “When I assign analysis, I am not trying to extract a polished product; I am trying to put the student’s mind through resistance in order to make it stronger. ... https://www.chronicle.com/article/my-students-cant-read

Bluesky SocialSirus Bouchat

Obviously it feels resonant for me that part of the joy in reading, writing, and thinking critically isn't about pursuing perfection or showing off how smart you already are; it's about finding challenges that help you create intellectual strength, build new avenues of curiosity, and sharpen skills that make continuous engagement possible.

But I also think there's at least two underlying motivators for doing work that is cognitively challenging in some way. One is intense curiosity. If you're always wondering how things work or what makes things make sense or why the world is the way it is, self-motivating to undertake the hard labor of finding more answers simply makes sense. It's archetypical intrinsic motivation.

The other maybe lies in the realm of self-respect or integrity. A self-concept that hinges on being the type of person who is willing to undertake hard tasks for the sake of something meaningful or worthwhile, or as a matter of principle, or even just to discover whether something is worthy.

That is, doing hard cognitive work presupposes having questions, and a sense of self that relies on asking them.

So that's what I want to know about. Broadly:

• What questions are motivating you right now?
• Are there questions that have always motivated you and remain unanswered?
• How are you pursuing the answers to your questions? Where and how do you seek out information?
• What skills are you building that will keep you learning more?

Links 'n' Things

There's too much that's happened since I last did this, so just a few select things:

• More people are going hungry now than at the height of the pandemic, and it's only going to get worse, globally, with grain shortages and price spikes as the Iran war and super El Niño converge
• New research suggests 1 in 6 patients with COVID-19 will develop a form of long covid
• Protests in Albania are surging, and it's not as simple as the headline story about resorts and corruption would suggest
• Congress is moving right along to fuse Israeli and US armed forces
• Tennessee is tracking trans people, and Mt. Sinai is prepared to cooperate with the Trump admin's request to fork over trans minors' health information
• The CIA is ...interested... in critics of AI data centers
• Hundreds of Wikipedia editors are threatening a strike (and you should support them)
• Meta deployed facial recognition code and capacity in their surveillance glasses
• If you've been following news from Delaney Hall, please consider that starving people to death in prison isn't new
• The EU is seemingly moving forward with "return hubs," following US' ICE playbook

Some good things, as a treat

• Indie bookstores aren't dying
• How Ukraine's mid-range strikes are fucking up Russia's defense and logistics
• A new zine from Fuck Hope: The Desert is a Wild River